Darling deception- a criminal minds fanfic

Business as usual

//Above is an inspiration for Darling's outfit described later in the chapter//

Today was the day.

No excuses, no cowering out; this was it.

Morgan promised himself that today would be the day that he would talk to Darling and tell her how he truly felt about her... just like he had planned on doing everyday since that kiss two weeks prior that was all he could think about.

Every moment of silence at work, where Darling had been forced to take two weeks off since the kidnapping, was filled with his thoughts of that kiss.

Her lips, the smell of her perfume that close, the feeling of her in his arms.

It was so perfect and intoxicating that how could he not think about it every waking moment?

Althoughit wasn't so much the 'waking' moments that he had to worry about, when he did fall asleep he would be greeted with that kiss again- his subconscious also sometimes taking it to new places that made him wake up in a flustered state wishing he could just talk to her about it to get it out of his mind or at least have things be cleared up.

She hadn't been calling him back or returning his texts, he had even considered going back to her apartment to talk to her about it but he didn't want her to feel pressured to talk or feel like he was expecting anything.

As much as he enjoyed that kiss and would do anything for the opportunity to experience it again, he would never make her feel like she owed him it and would prefer to never kiss her again if it meant she would feel comfortable around him.

So he waited until her first day back to talk about it, but then he was paired off with the new hire who was replacing Ashely for this case as she took a week of on a 'vacation' and Luke Alves had been the only agent available in New York to help cover given this being an important case where Hotch couldn't risk not having enough agents for- especially because he wanted Darling to stay home and rest up for a while longer.

But Monday morning she was back after a long conversation in his office where she begged (and annoyed) him into letting her back to work much to Morgan's surprise and opinion that she shouldn't be back in the field for a while after what happened- of which most of the team agreed with as they left for the Ponoco mountains near New York for the case this week, a missing persons case that turned out to have a trail of bodies possibly connected to it.

Half the team went to New York City first to talk to the officers who were on the case whilst the rest went to the mountains to start the case- Darling being made to go to New York city first because it was the safer of the two options which she didn't like.

She hated how everyone was tip toeing around her, she knew that they only cared but still she just wanted to forget it all happened and ignore it like she dealt with everything- but Hotch's 'are you okay? Is this task too much?' check-ins made it hard to ignore her fear of being back that she was trying to convince herself that she didn't have.

It wasn't until the forth day on the case that she was heading to the mountains with Emily, Rossi and Reid- Morgan telling himself that he would talk to her when she arrived since it would be late and group wouldn't have time to work the case in the actual woods.

"Everything okay?" Luke asked Morgan as he walked over with their coffees in the log cabin the team were staying in.

"What? Yeah of course" Morgan nodded, taking his coffee and thanking him whilst he continued to look through files he had sorted for the case.

"I can't believe you didn't want decaff- it's like 9pm" Luke laughed.

"After the amount of shitty police station coffee I've fuelled myself on for years I think I'm basically immune" Morgan joked, "plus Hotch wants be to de-brief the others when they arrive so that'll eat into the night I assume, Darling always has questions to keep us working for hours."