Disclaimer: Borrowed from CBS et al.

Warnings: Slash Reid/Morgan, gore, sex, character death.

Rated T overall, with a later section rated M.

Summary: Five Times Reid and Morgan do not kiss, and the time they do.

Spoilers through S7, takes place a year or two beyond current canon timelines.

Author's Note: This is the first of seven chapters. Mostly, though not completely, written, as I would like to gain feedback as to whether this is worth continuing. I do promise a happy ending. If you would like to see more, please review!

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Prologue: A Time To Mourn

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The church is small, and full of people. Fran Morgan is sitting in one of the front pews, with lace white and stark circling the neck of her black dress. Sarah and Desiree are beside her, each gripping a hand. All three of them are focused on the grey casket, although sometimes Desiree will shift long enough to shoot confused glances at Spencer Reid.

He wonders what his face looks like, to inspire this response in her.

The team sits around him, Hotch at his left, Prentiss at his right. Garcia is, for once, devoid of color, sitting beside Prentiss with a calm that frays each time she looks at Fran. J.J. and Rossi are sitting farther down the pew, and they are both scowling, and Rossi, Rossi is crying. Prentiss is composed but watchful. Hotch is, too, but his eyes are darker and different, worried and sorrowful.

Reid suspects this is because Hotch still believes in the power of true love.

When they are not casting gazes at him, they are, all of them, turning their considerable but hollowed focus towards the same point as Fran Morgan and her daughters, towards the grey casket that dominates the center of this tableau.

The minister steps forward, and his words roll over the assembly inexorable and full of doom. "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens." He is speaking, his clothes are sere unrelieved black, and silence gathers around the edges of his words. Each word is like the click of a revolver over a hollow chamber. They will not stop. Reid shifts and picks at the seam running up the outside of his trousers. Until, finally. "There is a time to love, and a time to hate, a time for war, and a time for peace."

Hotch and Prentiss are urging him to stand, hands light beneath his elbows, as though he cannot remember what he is supposed to do now that the reading is done. Perhaps they are right. But he shakes off their hands, now with the formal receiving over, and the casket is open and he sees Derek's face.

At his shoulder, Hotch is watching, and makes no move to stop Reid when he presses the tips of his fingers against Derek's face. Derek is not here to mutter, or snap, or yell, "Reid!" and so there is no reason to begin a diatribe about the terrible job the mortician did. Derek's lips were never that color. He is simultaneously rigid and somehow shrunken. This is the effect of the embalming, struggling to retain a remnant of what is gone.

If this were a soap opera, or Hamlet, Reid might make some dramatic statement before flinging himself weeping across Derek's chest. If this were a crime drama, he might declare his quest for vengeance and spend hours at the shooting range improving his marksmanship.

If this were a fairy tale, he might bend, once, and brush his lips across Derek's. And Derek would wake, and they would live happily ever after.

But Derek is rigid and shrunken, and this is real, and he falters slightly as he backs away.

Fran Morgan is standing there when he turns, and the team is all around him so there is nowhere to go when she clasps his hand and holds him. "Dr. Reid. Derek spoke very highly of you." Her eyes are fierce and sad, and they hold a difference like the difference in Hotch's.

"He did?" Reid swallows, and lets his hand rest in hers. "He-he saved my life."

"He saved a lot of people." They are surrounded by teenagers, some in black and some wearing sports jerseys, and there are two men Derek's age at the back of the church pierced and tattooed and avoiding the FBI, who are crying as unabashedly as Rossi.

"Mrs. Morgan, I'm so sorry." The words stumble from his lips, utterly inadequate, all he can do is lift his left hand to rest atop hers.

She presses her lips together, eyes too bright, and says, "So am I, Dr. Reid. So am I."

His voice strangles on further niceties. Prentiss and Hotch help him extricate himself, and make his way outside, because while Fran Morgan and Hotch may understand his reaction better than anyone, Desiree is still confused and people are starting to notice.

The cold wraps around him and spills into his lungs in a shock that makes him gasp.

"Reid, it's okay, Reid, breathe." Prentiss is hovering, and Hotch snags his arm and tugs him loosely up and in when the world tilts.

He lets himself fold around Hotch, everything is too much, and he hurts and he is hollow as he chokes out, "Morgan." Winter turns the breathed word opaque before it dissipates.

While he cannot breathe, and he cannot speak, inside he is howling. Derek Derek Derek!

The stars are far away and silent. They cannot answer, and Derek cannot answer, and Reid's eyes are burning and dry.

TBC

Next chapter will be posted Saturday or Sunday.