Darling deception- a criminal minds fanfic

Pretending

This cannot be happening, there's no way, this cannot be happening-

Morgan paced back and forth in his apartment trying not to think about his revelation that he had a week before.

You are not in love with her, you can't be- Jesus Christ she's your best friend, get it together! 

He shook his head at himself to get the thoughts out of his head- but it just made too much sense, it felt too right in a terrifying way.

"You're so stupid" he stared at himself in the mirror, "how the hell did this even happen?"

But he knew how it happened, it was just by meeting her that it happened, of course he had fallen in love with Darling Dawson.

"How did you not realise this sooner? What did you think your feelings for her were- just friendship? That's ridiculous Derek" his older sister, Desiree, laughed down the phone when he called her asking her how true her teasings she gave him when they were younger about him 'having a crush' on Darling that he thought were just ridiculous older sister teasings since he and Darling were clearly just friends.

"I don't know! But I certainly didn't think that I had been in love with her this whole time- what the hell Desiree, you knew?" He shook his head and slumped down on his sofa, dragging a hand over his still bruised face from the last case with the prison- Hotch having thankfully given the team a week of to let them recover from it.

"Of course I knew, we all see the way you look at her you idiot- you've been in denial that's what you've been feeling" she chuckled, "even when you brought girls home from college to meet us, you never looked at them the same way you looked at Darling when she would come round."

"But that's just because we're good friends" he shook his head, trying to convince himself although he knew it wasn't true.

It had been a week of going through something similar to the 5 stages of grief after realising that he was in fact in love with his best friend and then trying to convince himself he wasn't once again to no avail- the only stage he couldn't quite let himself get to was acceptance.

Because if he accepted it instead of denying it like he had apparently been doing for years, then what would happen?

What would he do next?

He couldn't tell her, that wasn't an option- what would he even say?

'Hey Darling, so you know how we have years and years of friendship built on trust and supposed communication? Yeah well I've apparently been head over heels in love with you the entire time and now you're going to think that I've just been friends with you to try to date you which isn't true at all but I am in love with you and it makes me feel physically sick to think about dealing with this so this is your problem now, okay bye forever.'

No, she was his best friend, he wouldn't mess that up all because he had spent years repressing his obvious feelings for her.

"Good friends don't look at each other the way you two do" Desiree said knowingly down the phone.

"I know but- wait did you say like both of us do? What do you mean-" Morgan quizzed before the doorbell went off, walking over with confusion given it was 10:30 at night on a Sunday and he wasn't expecting anyone.

"-Anyway, what am I meant to do? I've tried pushing it down and forgetting about it but I can't seem to go back to doing that and I certainly can't tell- Darling?" Morgan rambled down the phone before opening the door and staring down at the very person he was just talking about.