Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Every man's memory is his private literature.” - Aldous Huxley

Before he even opens his eyes, Reid knows he's in hospital. It's bright behind his eyelids, it smells faintly antiseptic, machinery beeping rhythmically. He fusses as he wills himself to open his eyes, to slightly blurred vision. He immediately recognises the figure at his bedside as he turns his face, peering through the blur.

“Hey there, Spencer,” Morgan says. “Good to see you.”

First name? That's new. It's unexpected, but nice. Whatever is happening, he's in hospital, so it tracks that Morgan is worried about him.

“I can't say the same,” Reid murmurs, “you're blurry.”

Morgan chuckles. “Figures, here.”

Reid keeps still as Morgan eased his glasses onto his face for him – maybe he forgets to breathe a little – and suddenly the world is in focus.

“Thanks.”

Morgan looks relieved to see him conscious, but tired. He's shaved his head – or at least his hair's cropped a lot shorter than normal. Is that new? It seems new. Maybe Reid's just out of it, still dulled by whatever drugs they've had him on.

Just then the door to the room opens, and Hotch and JJ come in. He blinks slowly; there's something that feels off, and weirdly enough it's the hair again. They both look fine, nice even, but there's a weird feeling, or a lack of one. A lack of recognition, of memory. It feels like a sudden change, even though they're people he knows and sees every day.

“How long have I been out?” he asks, turning his attention back to Morgan.

“You had surgery two days ago to fix a brain bleed. How are you feeling?”

“Alive. I can't remember what happened.”

“The doctor said things might be a bit disjointed after such a serious injury. The unsub set off a bomb, and you caught the worst of it.”

“Worst of it?”

“You were outside the blast radius for actual blast injuries, but you got slammed into a wall, out cold. I got myself a concussion the same way.” Morgan tips his head to show a graze along the top of his skull.

“You were there?”

“Yeah, but I've got a harder head I guess. You can't remember anything, pretty boy?”

“I'm not sure.”

He tries to recall what happened, but his head feels like it's overstuffed with cotton balls, and when he lifts his hand to touch it, he feels bandages covering most of his cranium. From beneath the bandages curls of his hair are free, which doesn't make any sense. His hair isn't long enough for that, at least not that much free hair. He feels around, to make sure it isn't loose threads of bandages, and shakes his head to try and clear the hazy feeling out.

“Are you okay, Reid?” Hotch asks.

“My hair's too long,” he says, feeling a little ridiculous. “Did they do something to my hair?”

“They probably shaved some of it for the surgery, sorry,” Morgan says.

“But it's too long.”

“Spence,” JJ says, “What do you mean it's too long?”

“My hair, it's—”

He gestures his hands around his ears, trying to demonstrate, fighting the bubble of panic that threatens to rise in him. Why is his hair long? Why does his entire body not feel right, like it's not his own?

“Spence, what's the last thing you remember? Take your time.”

It's an incredibly open-ended question, especially for someone with an eidetic memory. The better question would have been what he doesn't remember, but that itself is so dependent on context that he's still lost. Okay, he can narrow it down; he just has to pick a pattern, something that's familiar, significant and often-repeated.

He tries to recall the last case they discussed in the BAU room, recalls the smell of it the morning after the cleaners have been through and varnished the round tabletop, the placement of everyone in the room; JJ by the screen, Hotch directly across, Gideon, Prentiss, himself and Morgan in the round.

“We were going to Baltimore, for that case involving the Russian mob.”

Hotch, JJ and Morgan all share a look, and he knows he's said something that's worried them.

“Reid, that was four years ago,” JJ says. “It's twenty-ten.”

It can't be – the memory feels recent. He can't place it exactly, its as though his memories are liquid; there's nothing, until a few things start to come into focus, and then that memory of the workup of the Baltimore case is crystallised. Everything before that feels linear and right.

“Do you know what city we're in?” Hotch asks. “Where we had a case this time?”

“I—I don't remember.”

“Do you remember what we ate for dinner three nights ago, at the hotel?” Morgan asks.

“No.”

The four of them stand in silence for what feels like an awfully long time.

“The doctor said there could be some temporary memory loss,” Hotch says. “I'm going to go talk with the neurologist.”

He gives Morgan a look before he leaves, and Reid sees then that Morgan is – well, he looks weirdly vacant.

“It'll be fine, Spence,” JJ says, but she's looking at Morgan, too. “Just temporary. You should rest.”

“Yeah,” Morgan sounds finally, but doesn't look at him as he makes to leave the room. “Rest up, kid.”

His brain might be compromised right now, but he's fairly certain there's a lot going on that he clearly needs to be brought up to speed on. He also knows they'll all avoid doing so until he's rested and recovered some more. It's frustrating, but medically sound.

“Did we at least solve the case?”

“We did, but you got blown up, so I'm not sure we're exactly counting it as a win.”

“Is Morgan okay?”

“Yeah, the doctor said the concussion was mild.”

“That's not what I mean.”

“He's just worried about you,” JJ says, smile full of ease that doesn't reach her eyes.

“Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Chapter Text

“The image that concerns most people is the reflection they see in other people's minds.” - Edward De Bono

With no significant improvement in his recall after another two days, the doctors have ruled out peritraumatic amnesia, and settled on a diagnosis of pure retrograde amnesia, with a deficit limited to the autobiographical events of the past four years, with no apparent loss of self-identity.

Four years is a long time.

Gideon hasn't been to visit him; Reid hasn't asked. He's too afraid of what the answer's going to be, because he's fairly sure if he was around, he wouldn't be absent from Reid for this long.

“My mom,” he says to Hotch, when he's visiting. “Is my mom okay?”

“She's okay, Reid. I believe you still write to her every week.”

It's a lot of waiting around, a lot of trying to convince doctors he's ready to leave, knowing they'll push back.

When the bandages come off and he studies himself in the hospital bathroom mirror, he's shocked how much older he looks. Obviously, he looks older, there's four years between the face he recognises and this one. The hair is – excluding the odd shaved portion on the right to compensate for the wound dressing – kind of pretty. He likes it, at least.

There's a mystery bruise on his neck, yellowed and almost healed.

Garcia put a rush on the request for his full medical records, so he can try fill in the blanks over the last four years. She's also bought him clothes so he doesn't have to wear a hospital gown that doesn't close at the back.

He spreads the papers out over the hospital table, looking at the neat, transcribed text.

He's made it outside the typical six to eight hour window for anterograde amnesia to be evident, and his recollection of events since he woke up is still intact. His cognitive function – aside from the memory loss – doesn't seem to be impaired, still able to read fast and commit the words to new memory.

Morgan enters with two paper cups after he's made the first pass of his file.

“Coffee?” he says, straightening up.

“Don't tell your doctor, you're probably not meant to have caffeine.”

“Thank you,” he says, taking the warm cup. “I'm waiting for them to clear me to leave.”

“You sure that's the right call?”

“I'm medically stable, and being in a familiar surrounding is more likely to help me begin to recover my memory.”

“You remember anything else?”

“No, not yet. But I'm retaining new information, so that's a good sign.”

Morgan settles into the chair next to the hospital bed, and Reid tries not to think about how good he looks. He hasn't aged significantly, but the new lines, the sharper jaw, the even more sculpted physique...

He wonders briefly if he's feeling like this because he's reverted four years, or if the attraction to Morgan he's nursing just never went away.

He realises he's been staring, and Morgan's watching him. He clears his throat, turning back to the files.

“I know, I know, I'm getting old.”

“No, Morgan. Well, obviously, but you look—” He licks his lips. “It's strange, missing seeing all of you change.”

“It'll come back, Reid.”

He really hopes so; he doesn't like not having all the information.

“So, uh,” he says, holding a sheet of paper aloft, covered in black blocks. “I was hospitalised last year, but a lot of this is redacted. Can Garcia do anything to get me the originals?”

“You got infected with anthrax.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. You were in a pretty bad way.”

“Haemorrhaging, aphasia, respiratory distress, it's listed in the redacted files as poisoning, which isn't entirely inaccurate.”

“You, uh,” Morgan says, “you saved me. There was a lab in a house, you locked yourself in so I wouldn't follow you and get infected too.”

It's not logical to infer any meaning from that about his motivation in the last four years; he'd have done the same for any of the team. Still, it's important that it was Morgan.

“And I got shot,” he goes on, finding the next relevant slip of paper.

“Yeah.”

“I saw the healed scar, but I thought the pain was from the explosion.”

“You healed good, Reid. Occasionally you have to use a cane, on bad days.”

It's another way his body is unfamiliar to him, which is an unsettling feeling. But there's something else that's been on his mind, as the team has visited over the past few days.

“Morgan, what's going on with you?”

“What?”

“Everyone keeps looking at you like there's something going on that people don't want to tell me about.”

Morgan leans forward, his forearms on his knees as he looks at Reid levelly; Reid knows the look, it means Morgan is bracing himself to bare some truth of himself, willing, but hard-won. It makes him a little sad that that hasn't changed in four years.

“We were running out of the building. I couldn't get the bomb defused, and we had to get out. If I'd managed it, or if I'd called it sooner, we'd have been outside the blast radius, and you wouldn't have got hurt. You hit the wall so hard, kid.”

“I'm okay,” Reid says, on reflex, to try and stop Morgan's guilt where he knows it's taken root.

“You're not though, are you? Four years is a lot to lose; you look different, but you're the man I knew back then, not the guy I know now. Even the way you move is different again, like you used to.”

“How I move?”

“The stimming.”

Reid blinks at him. It's such specific terminology that he doesn't ever remember talking about to anyone on the team. It's not that he didn't trust them, but the system as it was, it was just easier to have plausible deniability, no official diagnosis. So Morgan's either calling his bluff for no reason that makes sense, or some time in the four year's he's lost, Reid's talked about being autistic with him.

“Can you—?”

“You used to knot your fingers, twist your hands a lot.”

Reid is of course, doing so right at that moment. He places both hands flat on the table.

“These days you've got a few more in your arsenal; you tap and drum your fingers, you twirl your hair. Sometimes you rock. More echolalia.”

“It sounds like I got worse.”

“Nah, man. You stopped masking so much.”

“I don't see an official diagnosis in my records.”

“You've thought about it, but things haven't changed that much in four years. Pros, cons, that kinda stuff. We talk about it, sometimes.”

“What else do we talk about?”

Morgan's body language has relaxed again, leaned back in his chair, still nursing his coffee. Reid wonders if considering what to say to Reid that won't result in a million more questions.

“A lot of things, pretty boy.”

“Like what?”

“You got me into Star Trek.”

“I did?” Reid can feel the smile beaming on his face.

“You wanna guess how?” Morgan says, raising his eyebrows.

“I didn't promise to do a sport so you'd watch, did I?”

“Nah. You Sisko'd me.”

“Deep Space Nine? Of course, I should have thought of that. Well, I guess I did.” Suddenly, he felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. “Oh crap, how much Doctor Who have I missed?”

Morgan laughs, easy and bright. The sound has always been calming, soothing. He hopes that was still true before he forgot.

“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” - Helen Keller

Chapter Text

“What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?” - S.J. Watson

The doctors clear him – there's no physical justification to keeping him in, and the neurologist agrees that he stands a much better chance of recovering his memory in familiar surroundings.

“You're not coming back to work yet,” Hotch says, tone firm, as he gives Reid a lift back to his apartment. “But I'm going to clear it with Strauss for you to be allowed to come into Quantico, if you'd like to review the case files from the last four years.”

“I would. I seem to be retaining information, so if I can familiarise myself with the cases, it'll at least help me manage when I come back.”

“It might trigger more memories, too.”

“That's what I'm hoping.”

“There's something I wanted to tell you, before you review the case files, though.”

“What is it?”

Hotch is watching the road when he speaks. His voice is matter of fact, rote, until it isn't.

“Last year the Boston Reaper resurfaced. He'd made a deal with the detective on the case to stop killing, and he watched his life fall apart. He tried to make the same deal with me, and I didn't take it. He stabbed me. Later, he killed a US Marshall who was guarding Haley and Jack. Foyet...”

“Hotch,” he says, helplessly.

“He killed Haley.”

“Oh my god. Hotch, I'm so sorry. Jack was okay?”

“Yeah.”

He wonders if it hurt as much the first time. He kind of wonders how Hotch survived it.

“The memories will come back,” Hotch says. “But I want you to know that you've been an invaluable member of the team over the last four years. I'm proud of you.”

Reid smiles awkwardly, but does bask in it a little; he's glad to know that he hasn't burdened them like he's about to, with no memory of who he's become.

His apartment looks different, but feels familiar. It's a bit messy, but not unclean, and things seemed to be organised in the ways he likes. Hotch appears to be studying the space as well. There's pictures on the wall in a mismatch of frames which is something new; he remembers it was something he'd always meant to do, get around to making the apartment more of a home.

There's a photo of him as a child with his mom, and one of him at his graduation. There's a photo of the team all crammed into frame around a restaurant table, and another one where Gideon's missing and someone else is there.

“Is that... David Rossi?”

Hotch chuckles.

“He came back to the bureau after Gideon left.”

“He left?”

“Yes.”

Oddly, he's more surprised that Hotch isn't telling him that Gideon killed himself. Later, when he finds the letter Gideon left him, he'll be sad and furious all over again.

There's series of Polaroids in a single frame of him with Garcia, Prentiss and Morgan pulling a lot of silly faces. There's another photo of him with a toddler in his arms.

“Who's that?”

“That's Henry, JJ's son. You're his godfather.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Garcia probably has a lot of photos she can show you, when you're settled. Call me if you need anything.”

Once Hotch has left him to it, he can have a proper catalogue of the place.

His book collection has grown, with two more bookcases than he remembers. There's more CDs than he used to own, and he can spot tastes of Garcia, Morgan, maybe Prentiss in there. His clothing choices have changed a bit too; apparently he's really into waistcoats now. Someone has stocked his fridge with groceries. On his coffee table is a box set of Doctor Who, with a note from Garcia:

Enjoy your catch up, I have kept season 4 because we are watching that one together for emotional support. - PG

Something new that does surprise him, and he's very glad Hotch has left him to it at this point, is a bedside draw well stocked with condoms, lube and sex toys.

He hunches over his non-work phone and taps through his messages. There's nothing immediately apparent to cause concern, but his curiosity is piqued; he definitely texts more than he did four years ago, and was surprised enough to find out he even got into the habit of using a second phone.

Someone surely would have told him if he had a partner, if they knew about it. The condoms are really the only indication of the possibility; there are nobody else's clothes here, only his own toothbrush, no photos. Maybe he's just been exploring things solo. Vaguely he wonders if he's out to the team officially yet.

He texts Garcia about TV shows mostly, and JJ sends pictures of Henry to him at least every week. It looks like he and Prentiss might only text each other during other conversations, because they're all one word insults levelled at each other. He really hopes it's friendly like he's assuming, just banter; they weren't exactly close at the time before the memory loss. The sparse texts between him and Rossi – the David Rossi – appear to be about books. There are very few texts on his personal phone from Hotch. There's a few from Gina and Anderson, mostly about organising trivia nights.

He expects there to be more texts to and from Morgan, but in place of conservation are a series of similar texts often repeated, with timestamps late into the night.

can i call u? Can I call? call me. just getting in, will call in 5. You awake? will call 2moro.

He checks the call logs – these calls are more than once a week, sometimes hours long. So they're friends, and they call each other outside of work a lot. Maybe not too surprising, or maybe he really has been nursing that crush on Morgan all this time, and maybe it's stopped him from pursuing anyone else. He's kind of embarrassed at the possibility.

It doesn't stop him later in the evening, when he sends a text message.

Are you free?

Less than a minute later, Morgan's reply comes:

gimme 5 will call u

It's the longest five minutes of his life. He feels full to bursting with nervous energy, and he wants to know everything: when did this start? What do they talk about for hours?

“Hey, Reid,” Morgan says.

“Hi. Uh—when did we start calling each other?”

“Couple of years.” Morgan doesn't sound surprised by the line of questioning, just a little amused.

“Why?”

“We're friends.”

“What do we talk about?”

“A bunch of things. Star Trek, a lot. Music, books, string theory.”

“Really?” He assumes the last one is a joke, which would fit for what he remembers of their friendship.

“Really. Last time we were talking about manifolds, dimensions and shit.”

“Compactification?”

“That's the one.”

He flops back on the bed, kicking his legs out giddily as he hugs the phone to his ear. Morgan talks to him about complex physics.

“You still there, Reid?”

“Uh, yeah. I'm here.”

He's glad to be unwitnessed in his immaturity as he feels his cheeks colouring. Then he catches himself twirling his hair, and almost stops when he remembers it was one of the new stims Morgan mentioned.

Nah, man. You stopped masking so much.

“Morgan, I'm really glad we're friends, even if I don't remember a lot of it yet.”

“Hey,” Morgan says softly, “I'm still gonna be your friend whether you remember it or not.”

“It was the most uncomfortable feeling to have the knowledge, the muscle memory, the reactions ingrained into him, but to have absolutely no idea why or what from.” - Victoria Lynn

Chapter Text

“Addiction is just a little hiding place where sensitive people can go so we don't have to be touched by love or pain.” - Glennon Doyle Melton

He's expecting to wake up in a cold sweat, craving.

He's been putting off thinking about it, pushing it to the back of his mind every time it comes up. But Garcia calls him, and it's really nice to speak with her, but there's something said that sends him inevitably towards thinking about dilaudid.

“Had to give Morgan the 'calm down they're just doing their jobs' talk before you went in to surgery, he was about to fistfight the doctor when he didn't think they were taking the no-narcotics note on your file seriously.”

The thing is, he remembers the last time he shot up. It was the night before they flew out on the Baltimore case he remembers. He remembers how strung out he felt, riding the tail end and aftermath of the high. He remembers trying not to itch the inside of his elbow. They're some of his last clear memories, but they don't feel fresh, but baked in, somehow old and new at the same time.

He remembers that hydromorphone produces its major effects on the central nervous system. He remembers the pain relief, the drowsiness, the brain fog, the mood swings. He has no physical feeling of craving dilaudid, but he does remember what those cravings felt like.

The track marks are faded, old. There's a three year sobriety chip in his wallet. He makes an educated guess from literature and old calendar entries that he makes occasional trips to Beltway Clean Cops, which seems like something to look into.

As his seats himself amongst the rest of the attendees, he wonders how nervous he was the first time. He wonders if he spoke. There's no real nervousness in him now, beyond the worry of what people are going to think of his situation.

So he doesn't share, because he thinks his story is a bit of a limelight stealer. When a man he recognises approaches him afterwards while the attendees are chatting with similar recognition in his eyes, Reid quickly runs through his pre-rehearsed statements.

“Hey, Spencer, it's been a while.”

“Hello, er, John, right? So this is going to sound weird, but I was injured in the field, I'm suffering from retrograde amnesia, and my last clear memories are back in April of two-thousand and seven.”

John considers him for a moment, an assessing eye he'd expect from a man of his position, who does the work he does.

“C'mon, let's go get some better coffee.”

There's a small all-night diner nearby, with faded linoleum table tops, a friendly server and indeed, better coffee. They slip into a booth, and their server fills their mugs. John is still regarding Reid with curiosity.

“So, you've got some questions? I'll try answer, if I can.”

He's also pre-rehearsed a lot of those.

“Do I come to these meetings a lot?”

“Once a month when you can, but we miss each other some months. Been a few since we last linked up.”

“I found this in my wallet,” Reid says, and produces the 3 year sobriety chip. “Do you know when I started coming?”

“We met the first time you came, spring of two-thousand eight. You'd already given up your habit, you said you had ten months. If you trust that you've been honest with the group, you've never fallen off the wagon.”

He stopped.

“It feels really weird. I can remember what craving feels like, and even though remember how that felt are some of my most recent intact memories, they still feel old. It's likely a phenomenon related to short-term versus long-term memory.”

“You worried it's going to effect your sobriety, your last memories being before you got clean?”

“I'm not sure. It's not caused any new craving yet.”

“That's good. You've got to lean on your support network, though. You did the hardest part without any help, but sustaining it is a different matter.”

“Do I have a sponsor?”

“Not as far as I know.”

That sort of tracks; he remembers how isolated he felt when he was deep into the addiction, how embarrassed he felt that he wasn't coping, that he was having to resort to drugs. He'd grown up in Vegas, and never struggled with gambling, but dilaudid had turned out to be a whole other beast. He's not sure he'd have let anyone help even if they'd offered.

“I'm not sure who I've talked to about it.”

“We don't use names, to try and avoid sharing too much. But you do talk about your friends.”

“I do?”

“You've spoken to the group about not pushing people away, and letting them help you. When you were injured last year there was a guy who seemed to be helping a lot.”

The tone's not accusatory, but it is knowing. Reid tries to keep his face straight even though he can feel the heat rising up his neck, because he'd bet good money that guy is Morgan.

There's a weird guilt to knowing Morgan is so entwined in his life. He's forgotten four years, and somewhere in that time they went from good friends, edging on close friends, to best friends. He tries not to admonish himself with how childish the phrase seems, or how selfish it feels that he wishes four years had resulted in something more than friendship. He feels petty and obsessive, wanting to ask everyone not only what their friendship is, but what have they observed of him and Morgan.

“Are you gonna keep coming to meetings?” John asks, drawing Reid out of his thoughts, settling him with a significant look.

“Yes. I don't want to walk back the progress I made, even if I don't remember it.”

He holds his sobriety chip aloft, turns it between his fingers, considering it.

“The test we must set for ourselves is not to march alone but to march in such a way that others will wish to join us.” - Hubert Humphrey

Chapter Text

“Time moves in one direction, memory another. We are that strange species that constructs artefacts intended to counter the natural flow of forgetting.” - William Gibson

Strauss isn't happy to see him at his desk in the bullpen.

“Are you sure you're ready to be back?”

“I'm not in the field,” Reid says. “But if I can re-acquaint myself with our case history I'll be more prepared when I am cleared for field work.”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” she says curtly, but there's a sense of something that definitely wasn't there four years before; Reid thinks it might be something akin to warmth. He watches her leave while he thinks on it, an aspect of the missing time period he hadn't even considered.

“You doing okay, kiddo?”

Reid doesn't startle, but his fingers do fumble on the case file he's leafing through.

“Agent Rossi?”

“It's just 'Rossi', has been a good while. Dave, when you're trying push your luck,” Rossi says, as he perches himself on the edge of Reid's desk.

If Strauss radiated a strange, subtle warmth, Rossi is ablaze with it. Gideon was never cold, but whatever he gave off was something distinctly lacking in paternity.

“Right, so, uh.” He wonders what kind of impression he made on Rossi the first time.

“How far have you got?” Rossi asks, nodding at the file.

“I've covered up to the end of two-thousand-seven.”

“Sorry about the handwriting,” Rossi says. “My editor was very happy when I switched to a typewriter. You had any trouble memorising these?”

“I've lost a period of my long term memory, but my ability to form new memories that commit to long term hasn't been impacted.”

“It's still a lot. You sure you're doing okay?”

“It's strange,” Reid says, as he hands over the file he's holding to Rossi. “See, take this case.”

Rossi leafs through the file, eyebrow twitching up.

“Jason Battle. He shot Garcia.”

“Everyone's report is very thorough, so I know he was a hero syndrome killer, that he used a thirty-eight Smith & Wesson model thirty-six in all of his murders and he'd call them in so he could get the acclaim for attending the scene. I know he tried to break into Garcia's apartment to kill her, I know he killed officer Flemming and Morgan chased him. I know he came to Quantico and that JJ killed him. I know, logically, this had to have had a huge impact on me, that Morgan must have been out of his mind with worry—”

Rossi chuckles. “You sure you don't remember?”

“That's the thing; I don't remember how any of this made me feel. I can rote recite the case, as long as the details are documented somewhere, I can probably even make my own logical conclusion and inference. But I don't have emotional recall of what it was like to sit and wait in that hospital to find out of Garcia was going to live. I don't remember what I was imply when I wrote 'Agent Morgan was extremely agitated'. I don't remember how it felt to see JJ make her first kill shot.”

“It's not exactly the same, but I think I understand. I'd not been back with the BAU for long, and obviously I cared that Garcia got shot, but I wasn't as close to you all as I am now. So when I look back, there's a certain amount of disconnection too.”

He's not sure it's the same, but he still appreciates the attempt to cross the divide; his situation is rare and hard to conceptualise the unique devastation of, let alone explain it.

“But your memory might come back, right?”

“It hasn't yet. I've been going to psychotherapy and cognitive behavioural therapy to try and regain some of what I've lost. It's not something I'd usually respond to, but given my situation it seemed like a viable option to try. But we've had absolutely no success.”

Rossi hums thoughtfully.

“You might want to try hypnosis. You did it for a case once, you'll come across it sooner or later. It's a doozy, so if you wanna talk about it when you get there, just let me know.”

“What case?”

“You'll know it when you see it.”

It is a doozy. Nightmares, resurfaced memories, and Morgan and Rossi's reports pull no punches in how impacted Reid had been for the case, and how doggedly he'd pursued his father. He's considering going to Rossi's office to ask him about it when Morgan and Prentiss arrive in the bullpen.

“Hey, Reid,” Morgan says, as he hands over a coffee. He lifts the lid to peer at it; he doesn't remember taking milk in his coffee unless he was planning to suffer.

“Did we find a cure for lactose intolerance in the last four years?”

“As if that's ever stopped you eating dairy,” Prentiss says, as she settles in at the next desk over. Morgan wheels a chair over to join them.

“It's oat milk with hazelnut. It's your same drink right now.”

“My what drink?”

“Same drink, like 'same food', right? That's an autistic thing, yeah? You've been on these for two weeks.”

He knows of the concept, but once again he's surprised at the ease with which Morgan knows it. He glances at Prentiss, who also doesn't seem surprised by the term. She meets his eye briefly, and smiles.

“How's the case backlog going?”

“Well, I just found out that I wrongly suspected my father of being a paedophile and child murderer, so on balance I'd say not great.”

Prentiss splutters into her coffee, and Morgan laughs; Reid definitely thinks it's a better response than them suddenly looking worried. Maybe it means it's well-trodden ground, that he's talked to his friends about his feelings.

“If you've got any questions, just ask,” Prentiss says.

“What's your cat's name? All my texts from you are either extremely creative insults, or pictures of a void with eyes.”

“That's Sergio. The insults are friendly, I promise.”

“I assumed, but all I can remember is...”

He remembers being so mean to Prentiss, while he was in withdrawal. Snapping at her for her voicing completely valid concerns, being distant and snippy. He doesn't remember apologising. He can feel the weight of both Prentiss and Morgan's gaze on him as he worries his bottom lip with his teeth.

He doesn't know Prentiss, doesn't really know any of them in the way that feels worthy of the four years he's forgotten. His therapist had repeatedly told him how normal and expected that was, given his circumstances, but that doesn't help him in any practical way. He just feels like at any given time he's just a single moment of overthinking away from crying his eyes out.

“Hey, Reid,” Prentiss says gently, bringing him back to reality. Morgan is watching them over his coffee. “You'll remember.”

“What if I don't?”

“Well,” she says, lifting her foot to playfully poke at his calf, “then I have four years worth of creative insults I can reuse.”

“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.” - William Faulkner

Chapter Text

“I had problems a therapist couldn't solve; grief that no man in a room could ameliorate.” - Cheryl Strayed

An eidetic memory is an interesting thing. For one, it's a term used interchangeable with the concept of a 'photographic memory', which is a phenomenon that hasn't actually been proved to exist. Beyond that, the two are different functions of memory recall. 'Photographic memory' encompasses perfect recall of specific text, numbers and other observed matter. An eidetic memory recall feels like an exterior projection of an image, as if the thing he's trying to remember is right there. Distinct from a hallucination, though Reid would be pressed to explain why it's different, it simply is. It's how his brain has always functioned.

Which is what makes it so frustrating to have so many pieces of information in his mind that have no memory, no projection that go along with them, like they're just trivia. The exact amount of stop signs in the greater Washington DC area is something he learned, so he just remembers it. The first time his mother responded to a letter after he'd had her put into full-time care is a memory, and he can recall the colour, the shape, the weight of the envelope, how he felt opening it, the way his body shook to read it, with perfect clarity.

He knows years ago he took off his kevlar and walked out onto a West Bune street to talk down a teenage unsub set on dying in a shoot out. But because it's in his lost memory period, it isn't a memory, it's just a piece of trivia he knows about himself. He doesn't remember the reasoning for the decision, if he was scared, how his team reacted, the relief when he was talked down. It's just a thing that happened to him, that might as well have happened for someone else for all that it feels like it doesn't belong to him any more.

“That's a normal experience for people with memory loss,” his therapist says, for the eighteenth time across their sessions, and for the second time in this one alone.

Her name is Monica, and she's not a very good therapist. She's FBI-approved and clearly has minimal experience with memory loss outside of trauma-informed disassociation. She also either hasn't clocked or doesn't care that Reid is doing the bare minimum to get the sign off as fit to be in the field.

“It's frustrating,” he says, imbuing it with just the right amount of emotion to make her nod sympathetically.

“Okay, and how is that frustration serving you?”

The thing about cognitive behavioural therapy, is that the aim is to create ways to cope with memory loss, not actively to recover any memories. He's coping fine, with no impairment to function, new memory creation or recall. So he tells her exactly what she wants to hear, pretends it's helpful, and agrees a time for their next session.

He shows up at Morgan’s house with a certain amount of familiarity. It’s not a memory, he can’t remember ever having been there, but when he settles into the couch and is fussing Morgan’s dog Clooney, he realises there was a certain amount of automation to his arrival, to how he didn’t even think about navigating what should be an unfamiliar layout, about how best to placate an excited dog.

“So, Clooney knows me,” Reid says, as Morgan comes through with a bottle of wine. “Wait, not beer?”

“You don’t like beer,” Morgan says. “You like wine. I like wine. What was that about Clooney?”

“He knows me.” Reid continues to fuss and scratch Clooney. “I’m not a practical expert on dog behaviour, but he’s showing certain levels of familiarity with me.”

Morgan sits down on the opposite end of the couch, leaning forward to the coffee table to pour out wine for them.

“You’re around here a bit.”

“I am?”

“We’re friends, Reid. We hang out.”

“At your house?”

“Or your apartment. How do you think you got me into Star Trek? Marathons with wine and takeout, that’s how.”

He hands off a glass to Reid, and he feels very silly about it, but the incidental brush of their hands makes the breath catch in his chest. He’s already accepted that he’s developed some feelings decidedly beyond platonic for Morgan, and the most logical conclusion is that this has persisted from before his memory loss.

It’s a little sad, to think that he’s harboured this for years and never done anything about it. If he really wanted a conclusion to this, Morgan is sitting right there, relaxed and beautiful, the shape of his wrist where he’s holding the wine glass loosely in one hand, the line of his shoulders, his soft, dark eyes, one leg folded on the couch so Reid can see the distinct bulge in his jeans.

But then it would be over; Morgan would let him down gently, it’d be awkward for a while and Reid might never recover from the heartbreak. Never knowing for sure might be better. He thinks it quite likely he came to the same conclusion sometime in the four years of memory he’s lost.

“What’re you thinking, pretty boy?” Morgan asks softly. Reid drinks from his wine to try and cover the heat he can feel rising in his cheeks. He considers the question, and while he’s not about to answer ‘I was trying to imagine what your penis looks like’, luckily for Reid his mind goes a mile a minute, and there’s a large selections of things to answer with that aren’t lies.

“I’m wondering what about our friendship you’re doing over, since I can’t remember a lot if it.”

Morgan doesn’t laugh, doesn’t assume it’s a joke. He watches Reid, considering.

“It’s the logical thing to do, right?” Reid asks, when Morgan doesn’t answer, trying to justify the question, worried he’s upset him. “I’m not implying an ulterior motive, but there’s a whole four years of a friendship you could change, I suppose you could streamline it, things you could say differently or not say at all.”

“There are things I’ve told you that I’ve never told another person,” Morgan says softly. “You’ve done the same. We will again, I think, but I’m not gonna force it. I’m not gonna try replicate what you can’t remember, I’m not trying to trick you; but it has to be natural, it has to be real. Is that okay, Reid?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“But I wouldn’t change anything, kid. I wouldn’t change anything about getting to know you, about seeing who you’ve become, about our friendship.”

Hearing Morgan call it a friendship shouldn’t sting, there’s no reason for that to be a disappointment. It was never disappointing in the early days, when Morgan had quickly dispelled any fear that Reid had that he wasn’t sincere about liking him, about wanting to be his friend. He doesn’t know why the sentiment makes him so happy and so heartbroken, that the declaration feels like a knife inside him, why he can feel the tears beginning to spill down his cheeks.

“Hey, Reid, hey,” Morgan says, moving to put down his wine on the coffee table, and take Reid’s from him too, then extends his arm to him. “Come here.”

Despite knowing that Morgan isn’t offering what he wants, he still goes, straddling Morgan’s leg to fold himself against his body, burying his face in his shoulder as he tries to stifle a sob. Morgan wraps his arms around him, and rests his cheek against the top of Reid’s head.

“I know it’s been hard, man. I got you. I’m always gonna be your friend.”

The way Morgan’s holding him, letting Reid crowd him, he wants to believe it’s too intimate for a friendship. But and he knows Morgan is just good and kind, and it isn’t meant to mean anything more. Reid decides maybe he can be a little selfish just for a moment, as he breathes in Morgan’s comforting smell and tries to parse why even that feels familiar.

“Love without conditions, restrictions, or the expectation of being loved in return.” - Kamand Kojouri

Chapter Text

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” - Albert Einstein

The last time that Reid was at a gun range was before the LDSK case last year. No, nearly five years ago, adjusting for his memory loss. He remembers how badly he’d done then, how awful he’d felt, but he also remembers the rest of the case, and how it had felt to shoot a man dead between the eyes.

Hotch is looking at him levelly, quite possibly knowing exactly what he’s thinking. Hotch is like that sometimes, and he can’t imagine that’s stopped being the case in the time he’s lost.

“You haven’t needed remedial gun certification since two-thousand five,” he says. “What do the studies say in relation to memory loss and muscle memory?”

“There’s some indication that ‘muscle memory’ might be stored partially in different parts of the brain to long term memory. There have even been people who have lost their entire long term memory, who can’t remember their own name, who still know how to play an instrument. Though that’s not exactly surprising that memory works in a strange way, long-term memory loss is often encountered clinically without major deficits to speech. The brain does it’s best to compensate when it’s damaged.”

“So, it’s going to be fine,” Hotch says kindly. “If you can clear this and the remainder of the training refreshers, I can sign you off to be in the field again.”

The certification is with a standard Glock, and it does feel familiar as he loads it, looking between the clip as he bumps it into place, and the paper target down the range.

“When did I switch to a revolver?”

“Couple of years ago.”

“Don’t suppose you know why?” he asks, as he lifts the gun and lines up his shot. He doesn’t feel nervous about it, it seems pointless; he’s either going to have retained his skill set, or he’s going to have to re-learn.

“To compliment your terrible John Wayne impression, I think.”

Reid smiles, appreciative of Hotch’s perfect deadpan comic timing. He fires off five rounds, aiming for the centre of the paper target. Four are within the intended range, one is borderline. It doesn’t inspire a rush of memory, but the process does feel familiar, like he’s drawing on some experience somewhere.

“Do you know why Morgan’s not doing a single one of my refresher sessions?” he asks, aiming for nonchalance as he adjusts his aim. He doesn’t look at Hotch for a reaction.

“He took on extra duties in the last couple of years, assisting with the team’s workload, after he was stand-in unit chief.”

“I know, that’s why he’s got an office. But I know from my training record that he usually does my hand to hand recert.”

“Who’s doing it this time?”

“Nelson,” Reid says, and fires off four more shots.

“Nelson’s good.”

Morgan’s better, he thinks, and fires the rest of his clip instead of saying it aloud. Hotch hits the switch to draw the target up closer for inspection.

“Good job,” he says. “Make the next one a headshot, and I’ll clear you.”

Later in the week, his gun certification passed, Reid shows up to the training room expecting to find Doug Nelson waiting for him, and instead finds Derek Morgan, in sweats and a t-shirt, stretching his left arm across his chest.

“I was expecting Nelson,” Reid says.

He’s dressed similarly, and he had noted when he packed for this, that all the options he had for athletic wear were considerably less baggy than he remembers being comfortable in. The shirt and sweats are still loose, but they’re not swamping him. He also generally feels stronger than he remembers; still tall, still skinny, but he definitely has more defined muscles than before. His arms are likely because of the time he spent on crutches, but the rest must just be age, maturity, having passed out of his overlarge bird-man phase even though he can’t remember the transition.

“I tagged in. I always do your re-cert for hand to hand. Do it for all you guys, the team.”

He wonders briefly if this has anything to do with him bringing it up with Hotch at his gun certification, but decides not to ask.

“Let’s warm up,” Morgan says, “then we’ll see how much that body remembers.”

A fair amount, it would seem. The first time Morgan tries to grab him, Reid’s body reacts with the right move to try and avoid being grappled, but he’s a little slow and Morgan manages to twist his arm behind his back.

“You read my notes on your annual reviews?” he asks. His mouth is so close to Reid’s ear, and he has to suppress a shiver running through him. “You’ve usually got this one down. It’s still in there, pretty boy.” He releases his hold on Reid’s arm. “Let’s go again.”

The thing that surprises him the most about his sparring session with Morgan is that it’s fun. The undercurrent of eroticism doesn’t surprise him, nor does the way he almost wants to throw the whole thing so Morgan will overpower him, hold him close, full of goading encouragement and praise. But it feels good to learn about the capability of a body he’s not familiar with, a body where he has no memory of the process of it changing.

Morgan goes through a series of moves to test Reid’s capabilities, and they’re breathless and sweating as they spar and wrestle. Morgan is stronger, a better fighter, but the training is about techniques to avoid getting grappled, to escape from holds. Morgan tries to grab him from behind and Reid twists his leg behind Morgan’s, ducking forward so Morgan overbalances, and topples over Reid. He goes for the follow-through, straddling Morgan as he turns on the floor, pinning both of Morgan’s wrists beside his head.

As Morgan gazes up at him, surprised and impressed and something else, Reid wants to kiss him. He wants to shift his hips and press their groins together, he wants to ride him.

“Good job, kid,” Morgan says. “Seems the stuff I taught you stuck, even if you can’t remember it.”

Reid releases Morgan’s wrist and clambers off him before he can do something unwise to his friend.

“There’s some indication that ‘muscle memory’ might be stored partially in different…” Reid gives up on the rote knowledge, panting where he sits on the training mat. “This sucks, man.”

“Sorry,” Morgan says, as he gets up.

“Not the training,” Reid says quickly. Morgan returns with two bottles of water, and sits down next to Reid. “This just proves that I’ve retained information, but I still can’t remember four years of my life. It sucks.”

“It’ll come back.”

“Everyone keeps saying that,” Reid says, and then takes a long drink of water, as if that can temper the bitterness he’s feeling. “But nothing is working. I’m just stuck, Morgan, stuck as a person none of you know any more. I know you all care about me, but it feels so bad to not be the person you care about, just some—some echo of it.”

“You’re not an echo, Reid. I liked the person you can remember being, I liked the person you don’t remember, and I like the person you are now. I know it sucks that you’re still missing out on all that time, it’s not fair, but you’ve been trying, you’ll keep trying, and it’s all you can do. We’re all gonna be here, whatever happens.”

He is glad of the reassurance that his friends still care about him, that they will even if he’s never normal again, but he still wants to, but doesn’t dare to ask, what aren’t you telling me?

Instead he drinks deeply from his water again, and nudges Morgan with his elbow.

“I passed?”

“Flying colours, pretty boy.”

“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds– but I think of you always in those intervals.” - Salvador Plascencia

Chapter Text

“Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions.” - Miriam Toews

The hotel room is clean, softly lit, thick walls and windows blocking out most of the club music from across the street. Rossi sits on one bed with his laptop, most likely working on his next book, and Reid sits on the other, thumbing through a dog-eared copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night.

He’s reading it incredibly slowly, savouring it. While he can read at lightning pace, that’s best for quickly taking in information, and not much good for reading for enjoyment. The reason he’s savouring it, beyond it being an incredibly good piece of fiction, is that he’s pretty sure the book is Morgan’s.

He found it when he was sorting books in his apartment, and its age had stood out to him; a nineteen sixty-two first edition, signed by the author. Unless he tracked it down in the past four years, Reid doesn’t remember owning it. But there is a space he noticed on one of Morgan’s bookshelves at his house between The Sirens of Titan and Cat’s Cradle, where Mother Night should be when organising by published date.

As he thumbs through the old pages, he wonders what meaning he can take from being trusted with such an undoubtedly precious thing.

He resists the very real urge to lift the book and sniff it. If Rossi noticed, he could probably just pass it off as a book thing, but it’s precisely not for book reasons that he feels the desire, and has the good sense to feel a little embarrassed about it.

“Why doesn’t Morgan want to share a room with me?” Reid asks instead of thinking on it further.

Rossi looks up from his laptop, over the top of his glasses. It’s a look that starts as ‘why are you interrupting me?’, but quickly softens. It’s still strange, to see the obvious indicators that David Rossi has some degree of affection for him, that whatever search for a paternal figure he’s sidestepped in every therapy session he’s ever had has culminated in one of his greatest idols being a better father than his own ever was.

“I chose to bunk with you, remember?” he says. “Morgan didn’t have anything to do with the decision. Him and Hotch will be fine.”

“But me and Morgan always used to double up when we couldn’t have single rooms. You said you like sharing a room with Hotch, that he’s quiet.”

Rossi closes his laptop, still looking at him softly.

“When did I say that?”

Reid frowns. “I don’t know.”

“We already established your memory loss is before I came back to the bureau, so unless someone else is talking about my rooming habits, you’re remembering something.”

The memory had come unbidden, and now when he tries to focus on it there’s nothing clear, just shades of vision, but there’s something there that wasn’t before.

“We were talking about... snoring. It was hot, I don’t know where we were. Morgan snores sometimes. I think – I think he was joking with you about swapping rooms, and you said you like sharing with Hotch, because he’s quiet. There was a joke, something else… you said ‘he’s quiet, he sleeps like the dead. Getting a room with a coffin is always a crapshoot’.”

Rossi huffs a laugh.

“And then Morgan said—”

“He said, ‘an Italian and a vampire, that’s a sitcom I’d watch’. I agreed.”

Rossi begins to laugh properly and, Reid laughs too; that’s when he realises he’s crying. He wipes at his eyes with the backs of his hands, sniffing back tears. Rossi gets off of his bed and shuffles over to sit on Reid’s bed with him, reaching out to pat his knee.

“This your first recovered memory, kiddo?”

“I think so.”

“I know remembering a pretty bad joke isn’t as good as a big deal memory that fits everything into place, but this is progress, kid.”

“There have been documented cases of memory flooding, people suddenly being able to recall lost periods in their entirety. I was just hoping for a statistical anomaly.”

“You can only get so many of those in one person, I think.”

“I know that, but instead all I’ve got is a stupid joke and a fluoxetine prescription.” Reid looks away, embarrassed for the slip.

“Reid, we’ve all had a Prozac script in our time. Standard for the job. Standard considering if you weren’t depressed about what you’re going through, I’d be a lot more worried. But you gotta have hope. You remembered something, without straining your brain! That means it’s coming back.”

“What if that’s all I get?”

He looks at the book in his hands again, at the well-worn spine and the well-read pages. There’s so much story here, about what it means to Morgan, what it meant for him to give it to Reid. Did he promise to return it? How long has he had it? Did he ask for it, or did Morgan offer it? He might never know the minutiae of it, the importance of the gesture might forever be lost to him. It’s an unbearably frustrating and sad thought that he might only ever have the rote recall of four whole years of his life, of friendships, of feelings, of bonds and trials and conversations late at night in strange hotels. It’s frightening, it’s maddening, it’s unfair.

Rossi offers him a handkerchief, with DSR monogrammed in fine embroidery on one corner. Reid blows his nose loudly, smiling apologetically as he tucks the handkerchief into the pocket of his pyjama shirt.

“Then you make new memories. You’re not dying, kiddo, you’re alive. And there’s gonna come a point where waiting to remember is going to waste the time you have to do new things that are worth remembering. Don’t make me turn this into an old man lecturing you about wasting your youth, because I will.”

He knows Rossi is right, but he also knows he’s always felt lost if he doesn’t have all the information about a situation. Even if someone could give him a minute by minute rundown of the four years he’s lost, it still wouldn’t be enough, because he could only memorise it, he wouldn’t remember it or any of the emotions connected it it, any of the substance that makes any of it meaningful.

His life, reduced to data; there’s a terribly morose story in there somewhere worthy of Vonnegut himself.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” - Kurt Vonnegut

Chapter Text

“It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know.” - David Foster Wallace

Reid is only a little surprised to find out that in the time he’s forgotten that Morgan got his own office. Morgan has always been a team player, but also someone people naturally want to follow. Despite the context, he’s not surprised it was Morgan who had to step up to fill in for Hotch.

“You got to keep the office, then?” Reid says, peering around the room at the various trinkets and personal items. There’s a couple of signed baseball cards and a catcher’s mitt, a few holiday cards he’s kept, a few fluffy pens and other happy touches from Garcia. There’s a framed art print of a pretty convincing anatomy study of various baseball mascots. On the wall there’s a framed copy of the same strip of Polaroids as on Reid’s wall with the two of them with Garcia and Prentiss. There’s two drawings framed up; one is Jack’s rendition of Morgan and Garcia at his birthday party, and one is Reid’s napkin doodle of Morgan.

It’s an old one, from a time he fully remembers – they were in a diner, discussing a case with Elle. He’d doodled both of them on napkins, something to keep his hands busy while they tried to work out the minutiae of the profile. Something warm and sweet settles in him to know Morgan kept it all these years.

“I help Hotch with the paperwork, I get to keep the office,” Morgan says.

“What was being acting unit chief like?”

“I was only doing it to keep the seat warm for Hotch.”

“Yeah, but what was it like?”

“It sucked,” Morgan says. “This was when Strauss was gunning for him.”

Reid perches himself on the edge of Morgan’s desk, folding his arms loosely over his chest. There’s something Morgan isn’t saying – he wonders if they’ve already spoken about it, and Reid has just forgotten. It must be hard to retread some things. What was it Morgan had said? There are things I’ve told you that I’ve never told another person.

“I was more ready for it now than before, in New York when Joyner decided she hated me,” Morgan says, pensive. “But it’s not how I wanna get into leadership, y’know? I wanted to do good for you guys, for Hotch while he was benched, but not good enough they’d replace him. We need him. That job is his, until he decides it’s time.”

Reid recalls the file, about Kate Joyner’s death, her injuries – and then he remembers fear; he remembers the long moments of not knowing if Morgan was dead. He remembers the local officer who whispered collateral damage; he remembers rage. He remembers going to pick Morgan up from the field where he’d driven the bomb-rigged ambulance to, he remembers crying behind the wheel with relief. He remembers Morgan lifting him clear off the ground in a hug; bruised, alive, heart thundering against Reid’s chest. He remembers wanting to kiss him. He remembers the regret that he didn’t.

“Hey,” Morgan says. Reid looks up, not realising Morgan has gotten so close to him. “You okay?”

“I, um. I was remembering New York.”

“Another memory?” Morgan asks softly. Reid nods.

“You nearly died. I knew that, from the file. But that was just a report. Man, I was terrified. Garcia called me sobbing, and ordered me to go pick you up from that field. I think it must have been the most scared I’ve been. It’s the scariest thing I can remember.”

“I’m still here.”

Morgan lifts a hand and tucks a strand of Reid’s hair behind his ear, and Reid forgets how to breathe. The air between them is electric, until Morgan blinks, and his face morphs into something that makes Reid ache; shame.

“Sorry,” Morgan says, putting distance between them.

“It’s okay. Really, it’s… okay.”

“It’s not, kid. You’ve got a lot of stuff going on.”

“Don’t start handling me like I’m breakable, Morgan,” Reid says, no anger in it. “I think we should talk about this.”

Morgan gives him a sceptical look, still keeping his distance.

“About what?”

“This thing, this thing between us.”

“Reid, we’re friends.”

“Have you ever thought about me as more than just a friend?”

“We’re not doing this,” Morgan says cooly, which to Reid’s surprise isn’t a no. “I’m not doing this with you.”

He’s tired of turning this over inside his own mind; these thoughts needs to meet the air. He wants something in his life he can know a certain answer to, he wants something to happen, he wants to stop having to play catch up on his own life.

“Morgan, I don’t know if it’s new or from before I lost my memory, but I think what I’m feeling for you is something else, something not strictly platonic.”

Morgan’s face is unreadable. They’re all good at concealing their feelings, all have good poker faces, but here it feels so deliberate and calculated it almost hurts to see it.

“Reid,” he says evenly, “it’s transference. We’re friends, better, closer friends than you remember us being. Doesn’t mean anything more than that.”

“Couldn’t it? Why do you get to make that call about how I feel?”

“I’m not doing this,” Morgan says again, voice beginning to strain. “I’m not doing this with the guy who can’t even remember—”

Morgan stops himself, holding up a hand as if to steady his own resolve, and turns to leave.

“Can’t remember what, Morgan? Can’t remember what? Tell me! I have a right to know!”

“You need to go, Reid,” Morgan says, pointing at the door.

“I’m a grown man, Morgan. I can handle it if you don’t feel like I do. You gotta talk to me though.”

“Reid, go,” Morgan says. There is something so close to a plea in it that Reid leaves, letting his feet carry him away from Morgan’s office, through the bullpen to the bathroom as the only place for a modicum of privacy.

Reid rubs at his eyes, willing himself not to cry with sheer frustration. What happened in the time he’d lost that could make Morgan react like that to something like a confession? Morgan isn’t cruel, and the worst case scenario he’d expected was that Morgan would let him down gently. He hadn’t expected Morgan to refuse to talk to him, to leave him feeling like he’d ruined something without knowing quite how fragile it was in the first place.

“So shall you feel the loss, but not the friend which you weep for.” - William Shakespeare

Chapter Text

“Self pity becomes your oxygen. But you learned to breathe it without a gasp. So, nobody even notices you're hurting.” - Paul Monette

Garcia’s office is familiar, and the changes are fun to catalogue, beyond the equipment upgrades since he can last remember spending any time here. There’s more fluffy pens in a cat shaped mug, a fun TETRIS-themed light, a new unicorn mug and lots of other tchotchkes decorating what must be a dark, drab space without her touch.

“Who’s this?” Reid says, pointing to a smiling anime figurine wearing a blue and orange gi.

“That’s Goku!” Garcia says, mock-scandalised at his ignorance.

“Morgan has one in the same style, a green alien?”

“That’s Piccolo, who I am reliably informed is invited to the cookout.”

“Is that his boyfriend?”

“No, he’s his son’s boyfriend, actually it’s complicated. But you didn’t just come here for a deep dive on Dragon Ball homoerotic lore, did you Junior G?”

“Not exactly,” Reid says, even though the topic at hand isn’t a million miles from what he does actually want to ask. It’s something he’s been wondering about since the accident, and he’s finally settled on Garcia on the best point of reference for what he needs.

“Am I out?”

“What?”

“Am I out. About being bisexual?”

“Oh, honey,” Garcia says, face softening. “Yeah, you are. You’re kinda on the interchangeably multisexual label train with me, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Bi, pan, queer,” she says, a curious, testing inflection on the last one. There’s a distant hurt to it, memories of being called queer and faggot at school, and a strange comfort to knowing he’s reclaimed it. “We went to pride last year.”

“Did we?”

“Yeah!” she turns to peruse her desk, and then finds what she was looking for – a strip of Polaroids with the pair of them, along with Prentiss and Morgan. The same strip of Polaroids he has on his wall in his apartment, that Morgan has in his office.

“These are from pride?”

“Uh-huh.”

Morgan went to pride, and there’s no reason that he can’t still be straight and go to pride, there’s no reason him potentially not being straight means anything more, and yet Reid realises his heart rate has increased and he’s unwittingly holding his breath.

“We’ll go again this year,” she says brightly, like a beacon to drag him away from wherever his mind’s going. “We need to start making new memories to fill up your empty brain space. We still have so many shows to catch up on again.”

“You know you’re the only one who doesn’t keep telling me my memories are going to come back.”

“Hey, maybe the team needs a lesson on toxic positivity, but they mean well.”

“I know.”

“I know you know, but I figure life is short, why waste it worrying?”

Rossi had given him much the same pep talk, but it had been alongside assurances that his memories would return. It’s refreshing and deeply validating that Garcia has skipped the latter and gone right to the path of action. Maybe that’s what recovery looks like for him, moving on and trying to make peace with what he’s lost, to stop scrambling to remember things he may never retrieve and focus on a way forward.

He holds onto that mantra for the best part of five hours.

Morgan’s been avoiding him since their confrontation in his office. He’s polite, not combative in any way, friendly, even – but it’s not the same. The whiplash of discovering the depth their friendship had reached in the time he can’t remember for it to then backside to something it never even was; rote, boring, civil is truly devastating.

He knows there’s stuff being kept from him, that there are things that Morgan specifically isn’t telling him, and he feels a little bit crazy as he theorises about it, fighting a very real temptation to make up his own case board about it to try and hypothesise better.

Morgan is kind, and loves people before he trusts them, and has and will suffer to make the people around him feel better, taking on burdens rather than sharing them. He has to wonder if that plays into this, that there’s something Morgan is trying to protect him from.

So he wonders if the conversation they had in his office is a second-pass at the same thing; if Reid has already told him he has feelings, and Morgan has already told him he doesn’t feel the same way. Which, admittedly he didn’t actually categorically say, but it felt like it was heavily implied. Maybe Morgan is bearing the burden of Reid being unwell, if amnesia can be classed as such, and knowing he’s having to visit the hurt and heartbreak on Reid again. Maybe it strained their friendship before like it has now.

Maybe their friendship recovered, and now Reid has brought his feeling up again Morgan feels like Reid lied about being over it, that every interaction has felt like Reid just biding his time to wear Morgan down, to wait him out out an endurance predator and give in to loving him. It makes him feel sick to know it’s not outside the realm of possibility, even if the memory loss impacts how responsible he is regarding context for his actions.

Whatever the answer, it doesn’t prepare him for coming into the office early to find Hotch already there, speaking to one of the building custodians in front of Morgan’s office, where the window that looks out onto the bullpen is smashed into thousands of pieces.

As Hotch finishes up he sees Reid, and gives him an unreadable sort of look, but doesn’t stop him coming to survey the damage. Morgan’s office is in shambles, the desk clear of everything on it in some sick parody of the aftermath of a semi-regular erotic fantasy Reid’s had about Morgan sweeping the desk clean and then fucking him on it. The office chair is overturned, and so is a bookcase, the contents in a sad pile under it. From the pattern of the breakage, the window was smashed from the inside, and amongst the shards of glass littering the couch that’s under the window, is a heavy-looking glass paperweight.

“Is Morgan okay?” he asks, mouth dry.

“He’s unhurt,” Hotch says. “He’s taking some time off.”

“I’m sorry,” Reid says, twisting his hands together.

“What for?”

“I think this is my fault.”

“How is it your fault?”

“I ambushed him about something last week.”

Hotch is giving him a patented stare, expectant of elaboration. Reid turns away from the office and settles against the walkway railing, crossing his arms over his chest.

“What are guys not telling me about me and Morgan?”

“What do you mean?”

“I lost my memory, but I’m still a profiler. So are you, you must have noticed something. Were we—” he swallows, and steels himself for his most outlandish theory. “Were we involved, romantically?”

Hotch betrays a little surprise, but it doesn’t seem like it’s in the vein of someone caught in the lie of withheld information.

“You want to know if I thought you two were sleeping together?”

“Yes.”

“I think,” he says, measured, careful, “that it would be a fair assessment to say there was some kind of sexual tension between you, a friendship that an outsider might have interpreted as there being more going on. But I would make a similar assessment of Morgan and Garcia’s dynamic, and in both instances I don’t actually know if there was anything that was acknowledged or acted on. Only you and Morgan know that.”

“Only Morgan,” Reid corrects. He glances back at the wrecked office, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Yes, I suppose so. But it’s not your fault, whatever was happening or not happening with you two before your memory loss. He’s an adult, he knows this was out of line.”

Confirmation then, that Morgan did this himself, and there’s not some wild stalker unsub that got into the BAU; weirdly, Reid feels crushed by the reality of it.

“We have an audit next week, other teams are going to be covering active cases. If you want to take a few days, you should.”

“I’m fine,” Reid says quickly. “You don’t have to bench me.”

“Whether that’s true or not, the days are there for you. It’s not a reflection of your competency, Reid, you’ve more than proven you’re capable of being back at work. Have you been to see your mother since the accident?”

Reid gives Hotch the most insubordinate look his thinks he can get away with, and skulks off to find coffee. Hotch is right though, he hasn’t been to see his mother. He still writes every week, but—

He still writes to her every week, like he has, undoubtedly through the time he’s lost, and she keeps all his letters. He can’t remember what’s happened to him, but maybe some kind of answer is in Vegas with his mother.

“Heartbreak could be lived with if it weren't accompanied by regret.” - Laura Kasischke

Chapter Text

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

His mother’s doctors have been sharing their notes with him for years, as he’s his mother’s medical proxy. It means he’s able to refresh his memory, and it’s heartening to know she’s still having more good days than bad. There’s the spectre of inevitability about memory issues compounding the confusion of schizophrenia, but it’s not a bridge that needs to be crossed yet. He scans the notes slower as he waits out the clock before he needs to leave for the airport, distracted.

There’s been a lingering sense of something being amiss in his apartment for months, and maybe it’s because the seasonal light has changed, but in the last few days he’s noticed something: on the wall where the photos have been hung, there’s a void space where there an almost imperceivable difference in the shades of paint; like something was there before that isn’t any longer. He’d searched the whole apartment and not found a missing frame in the right size, so it remains another frustrating mystery of his memory loss.

Las Vegas is hot and dry, with a breeze on the evening he lands that cuts through the worst of the heat. He wonders how many times he’s had a case in Nevada over the last four years and not visited his mother. She understands, when she’s cognizant to feel any which way about it, but it’s an ever-present guilt that festers in him.

On the walk from the hotel to his mom’s facility Reid’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and he’s somewhat surprised to see a text from Morgan.

You free?

Reid knows it’s a summons; he remembers how excited he’s gotten when he realised these sort of texts were a prelude to them talking for hours on the phone. He wants to make sure Morgan’s okay, not having seen him since before the incident with his office, but there’s also something that stays his hand; he doesn’t answer.

“Spencer!” his mother says warmly, beaming at him as she sets her book aside and stands ready to embrace him. Reid slips into her embrace, tucking his face into her neck, somewhat to hide the relief that he’s caught her on a good day.

“Hey mom.”

“Let me look at you,” she says, holding him at an arm’s length to give him a once-over. “Still so skinny, I thought that boyfriend of yours was going to feed you up? He did promise me.”

“What?” Reid says, blind-sided. He was sure he was going to have to dig through letters, to question his mother carefully to get any kind of answer, and now a minute into his visit he’s already been knocked for six.

Diana looks at him carefully, narrowing her eyes as if she’s cataloguing his reaction.

“Derek. Your boyfriend.” A beat, as she works something out. “Oh, dear. Sit down, Spencer.”

He does as bid, the pair of them settling into chairs next to a bright window, the breeze and smell of the star jasmine that grows about the grounds wafting in. Trachelospermum jasminoides is not a true jasmine, but it’s popular in the desert valley for it’s hardy—

“He didn’t tell you about the two of you?” she says gently.

“No,” he says softly, and swallows. “I came to look at my letters to you, to see if I could work out what’s been going on in the time I forgot. I know people aren’t telling me everything.”

“By all means,” she says, as she fetches the box she keeps his letters in, “let me be your conduit.”

“When did we… do you know when we, er, became boyfriends.”

“Well, officially I think that was last year, when you came to see me,” she says matter-of-factly, as she rifles through the letters, looking at the dates on the corners for something.

“What do you mean?”

“I had a funny turn, and you both got a connecting flight from Arizona after a case.”

“He came with me?”

“He insisted, I recall you telling me. Anyway, I was fine in the end, and I got to meet him again, and I suppose you hadn’t had a conversation about labels, because I put you on the spot a bit calling him your boyfriend. I didn’t mean to embarrass you honey, I was just happy for you. I still am. Ah, here!”

She pulls out a letter, and scans the contents.

“This was after you were in the hospital with poisoning,” she says, a knowing inflection on the thing. “You wrote that he stayed by your bedside, he looked after you as you recovered. You stayed at his house, and at some point—well, here.”

She hands the letter to him, and he’s faced with his own familiar handwriting, but words he can’t ever recall putting to paper.

Morgan has hydrangeas that are growing rather massive in his garden, and it’s balmy warm today as I sit out, beholden to resting. This morning he brought me coffee and a copy of The Once and Future King from his own collection – I remember you reading the work it’s based on to me as a child. He kissed me, like it was the most simple thing in the world.

He remembers the hydrangeas. It’s just one of a jumble of memories, fragments he hasn’t been able to place. It connects something here, re-conceptualises, links the image to Morgan’s home, to his scant memories of them together. Together, though, he hadn’t really dared to let the idea be more than a possibility.

Silently, his mother passes the box into his waiting hands, and gets the attention of a nurse to request tea for them as Reid dives into the contents, recommitting the words he wrote to memory. He writes about their romance in poetic, secretive terms, and is able to glean that whatever they have, it’s not something they’re open about to the team. He suspects now that at least Prentiss and Garcia know for sure, given their pride affiliations, and the anger that this whole time they haven’t deigned to clue him into such a huge fact blazes hot in his chest.

“Why didn’t he tell me we were together?” he asks, knowing his mother can’t actually answer the question.

“I don’t know, honey,” she says gently. “I’m sure he’s got his reasons, and I don’t think any of those are meant to hurt you.”

“Too late.”

“Spencer.”

“I’m not allowed to be hurt at being lied to?”

“Of course you are,” she says. “But look at how you’ve written about how he loves you, this man thinks the sun revolves around you. Do you really think this is a plot to hurt you, or a maybe misguided plan to spare you from harm?”

“It doesn’t matter what the intention is!” he snaps, his temper flaring. “It’s been so hard to try and get better, and knowing I’m not being given the truth has been killing me. Why would he treat me like this?”

“You know what I’m going to say, Spencer.”

He leans back in his chair, and lets go of the anger. It’s not fair to subject his mother to it, he doesn’t want to be the cause of a bad day by losing his temper. It’s happened before, when he’s lost his patience; he’s a better son than that.

“That I should talk to him.”

“I raised a smart kid.”

His mother doesn’t deserve his ire, but someone surely does. He puts it to the back of his mind so he can have a nice visit with his mom, but he knows as soon as he’s on the way home, he’ll be ready to stew in his upset and anger. Before he leaves for the night, he texts Morgan back:

In Vegas. I will talk to you when I get back.

Then he turns his phone off for the rest of his trip.

“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.” - J.M. Barrie

Chapter Text

“Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands? If you love me, you don’t love me in a way I understand.” - Richard Siken

He doesn’t take his car out much, but Morgan’s place is in the suburbs and he values the privacy and meditative nature of driving himself. It gives him time to stew on things; the anger has blazed white hot over the last day, and he can feel it building anew as he parks up. It’s finally time for the answers he deserves.

Morgan doesn’t look surprised to see him when he answers the door, and lets him across the threshold without saying anything. Reid steps into the house, and Morgan intercepts Clooney before he can make a fuss. He takes him off into the kitchen and into the back garden, while Reid waits, smoothing his hands over his cardigan.

When he comes back, he comes to stand a few feet from Reid, and stops.

“You were in Vegas?” Morgan says.

Reid nods. “Yeah.”

“Is your mom okay?”

He doesn’t want to do small talk, he doesn’t want to have to politely lead into the reason he’s here, it feels like another way for the truth to be obscured and kept from him.

“She was okay enough to tell me that you’re my boyfriend.”

He expects Morgan to at least look a little shame-faced about the lie he’s been caught in finally being exposed, except instead Morgan’s mouth tightens in a faintly familiar way, and he closes his eyes for a few seconds.

“I’m not your boyfriend.”

“No, because you’ve been lying to me! Did you really think you could keep me in the dark about this forever? Was it really so bad being with me that you wanted a do-over?”

“She told you about when we flew in from Arizona, right? That was the time she called me your boyfriend. She was so happy for you.”

It’s infuriating that Morgan is acting upset, and not like the coward he is, that he doesn’t have his tail between his legs for being caught out.

“I don’t even get to be happy for myself because you never told me any of this! All the things I wrote to my mother about, you didn’t tell me any of it.”

Morgan shifts his weight. “Well, I’m guessing you don’t remember what happened after that visit with your mom, and you didn’t tell her either, so maybe you wanna slow your roll on tearing my head off.”

“Don’t patronise me! You can’t treat me like this, I’ve had enough of it!”

“You said no, Reid.”

“What do you mean?”

“After your mom called me your boyfriend, after we left for the night I asked if it was true now, if I was your boyfriend. I was joking, because I thought for sure it was true, that she’d finally just said something we’d both been dancing around. You said no, we’re not boyfriends.”

“What?”

“I mean, we were still something. ‘Cause we still went back to the hotel and fucked. But you weren’t ready to be official I guess, and I… well. I dealt with it.”

Morgan shrugs. His knuckles are bruised – Reid noticed it as soon as he opened the door, but he’s been ignoring it since, not wanting to consider the detail it gives to the confusion of context that’s swirling around them. He can feel the crested anger building up again as he speaks again.

“I can’t remember any of that, how am I meant to defend myself or justify my actions? Maybe you misinterpreted what I said, because I wouldn’t have said that, I wouldn’t have just said no. You don’t get to treat me this badly, you don’t get to trick me for months and then act as if I’m the bad guy. You lied blatantly to my face, you made me think I was alone, that I was just some pathetic guy pining over a straight guy, all while you had those photos from when we went to pride together just sitting in your office, when you knew we were together!”

“Do you know what happened after pride last year?”

Something sudden and sharp and cold unfurls in Reid’s stomach in response to the clipped question.

“What?”

“We had a good day, man! I’ve never been to pride before, not properly. It felt amazing, I felt like I wanted to be brave. We were back at your apartment, and I dunno, riding high from the day, I told you I was gonna come out to the team. But instead of being supportive or happy for me, you said if I came out then the team would work out we were together, that only one of us could be out or people would jump to conclusions and risk our jobs.”

Reid knows sometimes he can get overwhelmed and say unkind things, but he truly can’t fathom him being that cruel to anyone, and especially not to Morgan. He doesn’t remember anything about it, and he feels a little like he’s drowning with no sign of land to be told such horrible things he’s done with no possible way to corroborate them.

“You’re lying, I wouldn’t say that!”

“I said I didn’t care if people knew about us, but you cared so much,” Morgan continues, his brows dipped sadly. Morgan has never realised the power his face has, the expressiveness of his pain when he doesn’t mask it. “I even said I’d put in for a transfer if we couldn’t get HR to sign off on us being together, and you told me it was down-low or nothing, plausible deniability.”

“That’s not fair, Morgan, I can’t remember that! I can’t defend myself here. What did I say, what did I say exactly, man?”

“I don’t remember it exactly, but people who don’t have eidetic memories sometimes have to just get the gist of it.”

“Convenient for you and not for me, right?”

“You think? You think it’s been fun for me that you’ve been bounced back to a time when I was pining for you bad, man? When I wasn’t brave enough to do anything except flirt with your clueless ass and pretend it was all just teasing?”

Morgan runs a hand over his head and finally turns away, but not before Reid notices the wetness shimmering at his eyes. The space vacated in Reid’s chest by his anger feels empty, like a chasm or a gaping wound.

“Why didn’t you tell me all of this when I told you I had feelings for you?”

“Afraid, I guess,” Morgan says. He finally looks back at Reid, and tears have begun to run down his face. “Didn’t know what to tell you, didn’t want to admit how much you hurt me. ‘Cause you did. You really god damn hurt me, and I just kept coming back. Because I love you, Spencer. For years, I’ve loved you, and maybe you just never felt the same way.”

“But I do!” Reid says, feeling his voice crack with the strain. “Morgan, I love you.”

“But what if you get your memories back and you don’t?”

Something final seems to break in Morgan, who covers his face with both hands as he begins to sob. Reid can feel tears running down his own face, his chest aching. This whole time has felt as if his pain and his victimisation by circumstance has been the centre of his world, and he doesn’t know how to process finding out the marks that he’s left in a place he can’t reach are so deep and cruel.

“I’m sorry,” Reid says, as he closes the distance between them. “I know it doesn’t fix anything but I’m so sorry.”

He takes Morgan by the wrists to pry his hands away from his face so he can pull him into an embrace.

“Don’t,” Morgan warns, and Reid considers backing off, but he already feels like he’s hurt Morgan enough that he has to do something to care for him. He takes Morgan gently by the shoulders and guides him into a hold; after a few breathless seconds of hesitation, Morgan tucks his face into Reid’s neck and wraps his arms around his middle. It feels right, as much as it feels deeply, devastatingly sad to hold him.

“I hate this,” Morgan sobs into Reid’s neck. “When you woke up without your memory I was planning to tell you I love you, I couldn’t nearly lose you twice and not do something about it. But then it was like you were just gone, and you were still there. So was the man I used to love back then. God, I’m not making sense.”

“I get it,” Reid says, because he does, and because it reflects some of his own more morose feelings trying to process everything. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Morgan whispers.

He cradles the back of Morgan’s head as he makes an attempt to stifle his sobbing. If he’s seen Morgan like this at any point in the time he’s lost, he doesn’t remember it. He’s barely keeping himself in check, his throat tight with fighting his own sobs – and all in a moment wonders why. For however much he feels like he’s to blame, he’s also not the same man he was when that happened, stripped of experience and context. They’re both hurt beyond measure where they find themselves, but they are finally somewhere together. Reid lets the sobs overcome him, and they stand together holding each other, adrift.

“No, it’s not.”

“I don't know how to describe the sound of a world crashing. Maybe there is no sound, just a great emptiness, an enveloping sorrow, a creeping nothingness that coils itself around you like a stiff wire.” - Charles Blow

Chapter Text

“Your memory feels like home to me. So whenever my mind wanders, it always finds it’s way back to you.” - Ranata Suzuki

Reid can’t sleep. He has semi-regular bouts of insomnia, but its been hard over the last couple of days, since he found out some of the truth to things, that the heartbreak he’s been dealing with is mostly of his own making. He’d left Morgan’s home when he’d been asked to, even though he did consider begging to stay. But he’s already caused Morgan so much hurt, and he doesn’t want to do that any more.

But he does miss him, and he doesn’t allow himself time to think it through before he’s sending a text.

You awake?

He doesn’t get an answer, which makes sense; it’s two in the morning, Morgan is probably asleep. He wants to hear is voice, to know he’s still out there and okay, but he chides himself for the desire; from the things Morgan has told him, he’s done a lot of putting his own feelings before Morgan’s already.

He startles when the phone starts to ring, flashing Morgan’s caller ID.

“Hi,” he says dumbly.

“Hey. You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says, which is a lie, but it’s one they’re both complicit in. Neither of them are doing okay, but maybe they’re a bit better than they were days ago. It’s hard to know, when everything surrounding the unanswered question of ‘where do we go from here?’ is still yet to play out.

“Can’t sleep.”

“Yeah. Look, I gotta be honest, part of me wishes I didn’t ask you to leave. But I thought maybe we needed the distance.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, I’m fine, you didn’t have to call to check on me, I didn’t mean to imply I needed—”

“Reid, slow your roll. I wanna talk to you, this is good. I just mean, if you’d have stayed at mine I think I’d have taken you to bed, and maybe that’s not the best thing right now.”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Reid says, and can feel his cheeks heating with the confession.

“I’d have minded,” Morgan says, gently. “Because if I’m gonna take your virginity again, I don’t want it to be like that.”

“Oh. Right. Wow.” The thought hadn’t even occurred to him yet, that Morgan is very likely the only person he’s had penetrative sex with, and he can’t remember it, and as much as virginity is a social construct, Morgan’s not exactly wrong. “So, er, you were my first sexual partner?”

“I mean, no,” Morgan says, sounding amused, “you told me about Ethan. But you said that was all hand stuff, mouth stuff, no butt stuff.”

“Butt stuff.”

“Yeah you didn’t say it exactly like that. But I promise, I didn’t pressure you into it.”

“Morgan, I would never have even thought to consider that you’d have pressured me. I have to conclude that I liked it, if it’s the reason my bedside drawer is so well-stocked.”

Morgan’s laugh on the other side of the line makes Reid’s heart flutter, and, well, he’s trying to ignore the biological reality of how else this line of discussion is making him physically react.

“Oh, man, what were you thinking when you found that, before you found out about us?”

“I don’t know, maybe that I was just a sexual being and I’d found a way to deal with that. Except that at least half of these condoms are significantly larger than I require, so I was also considering that maybe I had a secret boyfriend with a notably large penis.”

“I mean, you were kinda right,” Morgan says. Then he sighs, signifying the shift away from this playful, teasing line of discussion. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“I’m sorry I treated you so badly. I know it maybe doesn’t mean much, not being able to remember what I’m apologising for. But there’s a not-insignificant chance that I might never remember it, and I do know that I value our friendship so much, and that I want – I want more. I want you to be my boyfriend.”

There’s quiet on the line for a few minutes, just the sound of Morgan’s breathing on the other end.

“I’m not saying I don’t,” he says eventually. “Because I do, I just need more time.”

“I understand.”

The silence spreads again, and Reid fights the anxiety that bubbles in him. He’s turned his actions as recounted by Morgan over and over in his mind, trying to make sense of them all evening. Why would he treat Morgan like that, when Garcia confirmed that he was out about his orientation? The way he’s apparently denied Morgan the same opportunity feels uncharacteristic to what he knows about himself, but there’s a four-year blank space in what he knows about the person he’s become. It’s still a terrifying thing to have to consider, and an even more scary thing to potentially have to make peace with.

“You did, by the way,” Morgan says finally.

“I did?”

“Like it.” His voice is husky, low on the phone. “When I fucked you.”

Reid swallows, closing his eyes as blood begins to pool in his groin again.

“Even the first time?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me?”

“God, Reid. It was at your place, after you’d been staying at mine after the anthrax. You asked for it, you said you wanted me inside you.”

“Oh,” Reid says. He rolls over onto his front to stop his free hand wandering, as he holds the phone close to his ear. He presses his hips into the bed, revelling in the delicious friction between his pyjamas and the mattress.

“You’d had my fingers before. I’d made you come like that. You’d had my mouth there, my tongue up your ass.”

“Morgan!” Reid gasps, as his cock throbs.

“But I was kinda hesitant about fucking you. I’m not small, I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“You wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Not unless you asked. Do you know that about yourself, pretty boy? You like getting your hair pulled.”

He didn’t know that, or at least remember that, but the thought of having Morgan’s fingers tangled in his hair, pulling his head back, kissing his throat sends arousal shivering through him.

“I like that,” he murmurs.

“You told me you could take my dick, that you wanted to. You said you used to get off thinking about it.”

“Morgan,” he whines, at the truth of the thing. Even before the memory loss, he can remember wanting Morgan in the most carnal sense.

“You can touch yourself, pretty boy.”

“But you said you needed time.”

“I know I did. But I can hear how worked up you are. I bet you’re humping the bed right now.”

“Morgan.”

“Go on.”

“Are you aroused too?” he asks hopefully, as he turns back over and pushes his pyjama pants down to his knees, freeing his erection. “Will you touch yourself too?”

“Fuck, baby. Yeah, yeah.”

The sound of Morgan’s breathing gone heavy feels familiar, without supplying him with any memory to go with it. He doesn’t have to the capacity to be disappointed about that, as he wraps his hand around his erection, gasping at the contact.

“So, I worked you open on my fingers,” Morgan continues. “For ages. Teased you so much, you got so annoyed.”

“I bet that’s a regular occurrence,” he says, stroking himself leisurely.

Morgan only hums in response. On the other end of the line he can hear the faint wet sound of Morgan stroking himself.

“So you got on top of me.”

“You let me?”

“Of course I did. You looked incredible, your hands unwrapping the condom, putting my dick where you wanted it. Your knee wasn’t messed up yet, I wasn’t gonna stop you riding me.”

Reid tries to imagine the stretch of letting Morgan’s cock inside him, the burn of his thighs as he straddles Morgan, holding himself steady as he pushes down onto him.

“You were so eager, I kept trying to make you slow down. I didn’t want you hurting yourself, and I wanted it to last. So hard not to come, feeling you bounce on my dick, taking more and more.”

“Oh, Morgan,” Reid whines, twisting his hand around the head of his cock, trying to imagine the stretch, the friction of having Morgan inside him.

“Was my first time too,” Morgan says lowly. “With a man. I said so, and you leaned down so your hair was all in my face so I could kiss you stupid. God, I’m gonna – are you close?”

“Morgan, please, tell me, tell me.”

“You were moving your hips, chasing what felt good, maybe cataloguing how different movements felt. God, you were so you even in that moment. I loved you then, watching you move, more clearly than ever. I didn’t tell you, I should have. I grabbed your dick and made you come.”

“I’m, oh,” Reid gasps, feeling his body pulled taught against the mounting pleasure.

“You kept fucking me, kept squeezing me until I was done.”

“Until you ejaculated inside me.”

“Condom, but yeah.”

Reid groans as his hips arch off the bed, splattering his stomach with his release. On the other end of the line he can hear Morgan grunting softly, and as much as instinct and context tells him Morgan is coming too, he wishes he could remember what he sounds like so he could be sure.

He lays in the aftermath, listening to Morgan’s laboured breathing slowly even out.

“Thank you,” Reid says.

“Hey, it was your first time. You deserve to know about it, even if you can’t remember it. You gonna sleep now?”

Reid can already feel it tugging at him, his eyes gone heavy as he cleans up the mess he’s made of himself. He feels warm and sated, maybe enough to ward away most of the sadness.

“I think so.”

“Making you come usually works,” Morgan teases. “Good night, pretty boy.”

“Good night, Morgan. I love you.”

He doesn’t know if Morgan says it back, as he drifts to sleep without even taking the phone away from his ear.

“Don't lock yourself away from those who care about you because you think you'll hurt them or they'll hurt you. What point is there in being human if you don't let yourself feel anything?” - Sabaa Tahir

Chapter Text

“I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.” - Daniel Keyes

Regaining memories is nothing like popular media. Nothing comes back in a rush, there is no perfect moment of flooded clarity, no wellspring of the past that you just have to find through enough narrative sensibility. There is no dawning moment that Reid can hang all his actions on, no MacGuffin that can account for how he’s treated Morgan, specifically.

But they do come back; there’s no strikes of lightning about it, but he’s simply able to recall more and more. One of the team will mention something, and he’ll remember it. Not quite with the same strength he recalls new memories after the accident, but it’s more than he had at first. He’ll be watching Doctor Who with Garcia, and its plot or dialogue will feel familiar, beyond the narrative hallmarks of the show’s own making, some emotional memory unearthed in him.

Something else he does regain in increments, is fear. It’s a strange thing, because it’s a fear with none of the emotional tethers it likely had the first time he lived it, no real context for why looking at Morgan makes him afraid.

“Hey,” Morgan says, putting an over-sugared coffee down in front of him and perching on the edge of his desk. “How goes it?”

“Good,” Reid says, not able to meet his gaze.

It’s not a fear about Morgan, specifically, he knows that much – nothing Morgan has done, or said – but it’s a manifestation of shame. A kind of shame that he doesn’t remember from the period before the memory loss, and he hasn’t found any studies that can help him interrogate an apparent growth of internalised homophobia within a period that he has no clear, linear recollection of.

“You sure?” Morgan asks, leaning his head a little, seeking eye contact. Reid eventually lets it happen, as he takes up the warm coffee cup and drums his fingers on the side.

He doesn’t want shame to have any hold over him any more, even if he can’t truly remember its grasp.

“Did we ever date?”

“I mean,” Morgan starts, looking a little confused.

“I’m operating under the assumption it was all much more, er, situational? If I was reluctant to formalise our relationship, then I can only postulate that things akin to traditional dating may not have been…”

He trails off, cataloguing the micro-expressions that Morgan is doing his best not to show. This line of questioning is evidently painful – another reminder of something Morgan clearly wanted, and denied himself in his endless patience for whatever Reid had going on. The homophobia feels distinctly not internal, knowing that is was a blade he wielded without consideration.

“Can we go on a date?” he says instead, hoping to start all this again. Morgan’s expression does ease, smile soft.

“Are you asking me out?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we gonna go?”

“I’m going to take you to dinner,” Reid says, more confidently than he feels. “Tonight. After work?”

Morgan beams at him. “I better make sure I get through all my paperwork, then.”

The day drags after that, though he knows that’s merely perception, as time dilation as a phenomenon isn’t quantifiable or measurable at the speed of a normal office day. But the paperwork is rote, unchallenging work while his mind turns the potential of the evening over and over in his mind; all the possible places he could take Morgan, their relative distances from Quantico and his apartment, or Morgan’s house, how long it might take to get there and get back, what kind of food would be appropriate for a first date with someone you’ve been having sex with for years but can’t remember….

But eventually, Reid gets to sling his bag over his shoulder, and watch Morgan shut up his office and head over. Prentiss and JJ talk nearby, and slowly the rest of the team congregate. Even Hotch has managed to extract himself at a reasonable time today, ready for the weekend. They’re always on-call, as it were, but they’ve got lucky on case-free weekends before.

“Drinks?” Prentiss says, looking pointedly amongst them. The fear creeps in again, threatening to poison his excitement, as if can sense the unshared thing, a kind of lie. He’s already made his choice about how he wants to live, though, so he shakes his head, as if to shake away the fear.

“I can’t. I have a date,” Reid says, all in a hurry.

He catalogues the things that happen in quick succession; the surprise, the minute shift of focus towards Morgan by the rest of the team to see his reaction, Morgan’s querying eyebrows. Reid nods at him; Morgan deserves this chance, if he wants it, after everything.

“He’s taking me to dinner,” Morgan says, puffing out his chest proudly. Reid can feel his face splitting into a goofy grin, as the elastic tension that was slowly winding through the group snaps.

“God, finally,” Garcia says, to murmured agreement from JJ and Prentiss, and even a knowing look from Hotch.

“Where are you taking him, Spence?” JJ says, not quite covering the tease in her voice.

“Let them have some mystery,” Prentiss says, saving him from a decision he’s still making.

“Give us something to speculate on over drinks, more like,” Garcia says, with a little excited shimmy of her shoulders. “Go on, we won’t cramp your style.”

JJ reaches out to give his arm a little squeeze before he leaves, and Garcia grabs Morgan for a quick kiss on the cheek. He feels the urge to reach out and take Morgan’s hand as they head out through the bullpen, but he resists. Not out of fear this time, but very normal levels of workplace-appropriateness anxiety.

“Have fun fraternising, you two!” Rossi calls, as they push through the glass doors towards the elevators.

They ride the elevator in expectant silence. Every time Reid steals a look at Morgan, he’s smiling, trying to contain his laughter. It’s infectious, and maybe Reid could try harder, last longer, but he lets himself break, laughing as the elevator dings open, stepping out into the sudden cooler air of the parking garage.

“That was a big swing, pretty boy,” Morgan says, as he reaches out and catches Reid’s wrist.

“I know.” Reid stops to let Morgan close the distance, to take the wrist he’s holding and turn it up so he can kiss his palm. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah. I’ve been waiting a long time to go public.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, c’mon, I’m not saying that to hold it over you. I don’t need you to keep saying sorry.”

“I’m probably going to keep saying I’m sorry, though.”

“Yeah,” Morgan chuckles, and kisses Reid’s palm again. “Because of who you are as a person. But I mean with you. Being public with you.”

Reid is going to have to sit with that some time, and process the guilt around it on his own time, rather than on the night of their first proper date.

“I imagine the team probably suspected something, before my announcement.”

“Oh, for years.” They begin to move toward Morgan’s car. “Garcia’s been trying to call me on it for years. Prentiss too. You’ve given them loads of ammo.”

“I know. But whatever happened before, I don’t want you to have to hide.”

“So we’re going on a very public date.”

“Yes. And unless there’s a whole lot more I don’t remember, this might be my first public date. Or date of any kind.”

“I like that you’ve got jokes about it now. But mostly I wanna know where you’re taking me for dinner. Even though I’m driving, but that’s just a technicality.”

“Kin Khao. Thai, casual dining, three point eight stars on Trip Advisor because I remembered the lecture you gave me on ethnic food that white people rate too highly, about midway between here and my apartment.”

Morgan laughs. “Right on the way to your apartment, huh? Like that?”

Reid shrugs as Morgan opens the passenger door for him to get in. “Maybe. But I am really excited about the date part.”

“Me too. Let’s get to the wining and dining.”

“Lovers alone wear sunlight.” - E.E. Cummings