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Two days. Forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours and 15 minutes. That was how long had passed since his boy had left. Thinking about Noah out there in the cold streets or drinking in a cheap motel busted Morgan up inside, ripped him apart, intestines open and bleeding until he could puke up everything inside. Feelings, heart, soul.
Forty-eight hours and 16 minutes now.
The fight had been stupid, the kind that blew out of nowhere and got bigger and bigger, a hurricane, a storm, a monsoon. Heavy weather. But it came after a bad day, both of them shaking with adrenaline from missions, strung out, angry, too angry to back down. The climax hit like an orgasm, a freight train, hell on wheels. Noah threatened to leave and Morgan had agreed instead of shaking his head no, being firm. Instead of being a barrier in stone, setting boundaries, standing firm. Like Noah had secretly needed him to.
Noah had packed a small bag, trying not to cry, looking smaller like a disappearing shadow, like a dream slipping away when you were trying not to wake up, and then he'd walked out of Morgan's life. They'd still work together, still see each other every day, of course they would. It wouldn't matter. Seeing his boy at work would just hollow Morgan out, turn his lungs to empty parts, shrivel his heart up into scrunched burnt paper. A torn love letter where his heart should be, needed to be.
Forty-eight hours and 20 minutes now.
Apologize? Morgan didn't apologize - he directed and Noah, after token resistance, after foot-stomping and pouting, went along with it. He denied it, crossed his arms, stuck out his lower lip and sneered, but he loved it when Morgan took charge. The fight had shattered too much, the pattern had fallen apart, fallen to pieces. Broken now. Some of the things that Noah had said, that Morgan had said back....
Forty-eight hours and 25 minutes.
It was the job that would save things, Morgan knew. It was a dangerous work, deadly as dancing in a pit of snakes, like being a sword swallower, like being an acrobat on a high wire that started to fray apart. Sooner or later, Noah would get hurt in the field, ripped up, a broken doll, a damaged toy soldier. He'd cry inside for Morgan to step in, to stop him from doing more missions with a body like fractured china, a nervous system overloading, joints collapsing like dry sticks. If that didn't happen...if that didn't happen, Noah would burn too hot, a phoenix dying in flames, a firework exploding, a bonfire eating itself up, only ashes left. Ashes and ashes and ashes. Morgan had to be there to gather the ashes, to blow on the embers and bring back the flames, to breathe life and sparks back into Noah's eyes. Noah could never do it without him.
Morgan could wait, even though it killed him inside, gutted him out, made him a hollow man.
"He just needs to remember how much he needs me," Morgan spoke to the empty four walls of the hollow apartment, the lost shell of lost love. "And then he'll come home."