Chapter Text
Morgie was showered and in clean clothes within ten minutes but he’d given Hook a half hour so he tried to begin a sketch of a dragon, in an effort to avoid thinking about everything that had happened thus far that evening, and everything that might still happen.
That Hook might decide to run after all, regardless of detention or Mali; that whatever he’d been keeping from Morgie might very well completely destroy the sorcerer.
If it was what Morgie thought it must be - that he’d been with someone over the summer - he didn’t know if he could get past that. The idea of another pair of arms around Hook, another set of lips kissing him, another person possibly doing far more than that with him, made Morgie want to throw up. He shaded in a dragon wing, knowing this picture was going to be crap and not caring a bit.
After twenty minutes, he closed his sketchbook and glanced over at his roommate, who seemed absorbed in his studying. Morgie almost laughed to himself, it occurring to him that Roger was the sort of roommate he’d rather been hoping to have at the very beginning of his first year here. Studious and quiet, they could have been bookish nerds together and may even have been friends.
Instead a fiery, outspoken pirate had hit him in the chin with a door and changed his life. And was now probably about to completely ruin it.
Morgie stood in a spot he knew would be out of Roger’s periphery and shifted. He’d made a small hole in the baseboard by his bed some time ago so he could get into the walls and onto the heating pipes easier.
Hook was alone in his room, sitting at his desk and polishing the hook when Morgie poked his scaled nose out of the crack in the wall. He took a moment to admire him, his hair damp from the shower, in more casual clothes, the sad, faraway look in his eyes that had returned.
The sorcerer took a deep breath. He hadn’t tried this before, but he didn’t want to completely scare the daylights out of Hook by just flinging himself onto the bed.
“Hey.”
Hook immediately looked around, suspicious and confused. It had worked! Morgie had mastered talking while in animal form!
“Up here. In the corner,” he said, and watched Hook find his location. He still looked quite suspicious and now he pointed his hook at the talking snake. Maybe this hadn’t been the brightest idea. But this way Morgie could not be caught in the halls, so he wasn't totally breaking Merlin’s request to stay put, sort of.
And now that the others had seen it, he wanted to show Hook. He’d wanted to show him since he’d pulled off his first shift, and he still did, regardless of how the rest of this night went.
“It’s me, Morgie,” he said, pride blatantly coloring his tone. Hook’s face relaxed and he lowered the hook, though now he stared in amazement.
“This…must be the snake thing,” he realized, and Morgie smiled at him, or well, he would have if snakes could smile.
“Do you mind just moving back a little?” Morgie asked, to which Hook obliged. The sorcerer then launched himself from the wall onto Hook’s bed so he had a soft landing, which was how he got down from the pipes in his own room.
Shifting back into human, Morgie sprung up from the bed in the blink of an eye, sorely aware he did not at all belong in such a personal area of Hook’s like that any longer. He looked over to see a completely stupified pirate outright gaping at him. Another trickle of pride crept along his skin.
“How long have you been able to do this?” Hook asked, his pupils wide.
“Since summer,” Morgie rasped. “I wanted to tell you, almost as soon as I saw you, but…”
There it was, the hole in his heart cutting off his breath that he’d managed to half forget about in his excitement at Hook finally seeing his achievement. The tension leaked back in between them, in between the weeks of not talking to each other, hardly even looking at each other, and now.
Hook heaved a sigh that seemed to fill the whole room. Morgie studied him, sick of always looking away, of feeling like he had to avoid him as much as possible. The boy was pale, and there was a hauntedness to his eyes that was scaring Morgie to death, but he was finally here and he was not going anywhere until he got some answers.
“Morgie. I am sorry.” Hook met his gaze, not entirely looking like he wanted to, but doing it anyway, steadily and with what Morgie could tell from experience was a mustered courage. Hook went back to his desk chair and spun it around so he could straddle it and rest his arms on the back of it.
Morgie tentatively perched on the foot of Hook’s bed, briefly remembering a time when Hook’s chair couldn't be sat in for the accessories that covered it. A resulting study session, and fingers touching…
“You did save me life tonight,” Hook’s quiet accent broke Morgie’s escapist reminiscing. “You didn’t have to.”
“What?!” Morgie couldn’t have heard that right. “Of course I had to! What else was I going to do?” Hook licked his lips and Morgie had to glance away. He wasn’t used to fully experiencing the pirate’s attractiveness anymore, and this could be dangerous if he let himself get too distracted.
“A lot of people wouldn't have tried as hard as you did,” Hook said, “Not after how I’ve been treating you.”
“I couldn’t let you just…” Morgie swallowed, again not able to finish his sentence. His heart felt like it was being held in a vice grip, just waiting for Hook to give it the final squeeze that would stop its beating.
“Even when I was dangling there,” Hook’s voice echoed the hauntedness filling his eyes, “Not even able to help myself and grab a fucking lifeline.” He wasn’t looking at Morgie anymore, rather at the wall or what appeared to be something Morgie couldn’t see, and his last words were as jagged as a saw blade.
“It’s okay,” Morgie tried, closer to tears much earlier than he thought he might be in this conversation. “We made it. You made it. Everything turned out okay.”
“No! It’s not okay!” As he nearly yelled this, Hook sprung up, causing the chair to tip over, and went to pacing the length of floor between his bed and Eric’s, holding his left arm and his hook out stiffly.
Morgie flinched reflexively but adjusted his posture so that he could continue facing the pirate as Hook seemed to be working himself into a fit. Morgie didn’t know what to do, he wanted to be able to calm him down, to soothe him, but he wasn’t sure how.
Eventually, Hook’s steps slowed. Eventually, he looked at Morgie once more. To the sorcerer’s shock, his fathomless dark eyes were shiny with moisture.
“Do you know why I couldn’t grab the vine?” he croaked. “Do you know why I would have died if you hadn’t been able to use your magic to save me?” Morgie shook his head, thoroughly unable to utter a sound at the moment.
“Because -” Hook’s voice caught, he had to swallow, and then he went on with what was clearly a monumental effort, “Because this doesn’t come off like that anymore. There’s no hand underneath it anymore.”
He flung his left wrist to the side, as if to demonstrate something, but Morgie couldn’t see any difference. The words were not computing in his brain. What didn’t come off of what?
Then, as he watched Hook shake his arm forcibly and saw the pure anguish on the boy’s face, it slowly, incrementally, began to dawn on him.
“I. Can’t.”
The franticness.
The sheer terror.
The way he hadn’t even tried to grab the vine.
A chill engulfed Morgie’s body, and he shivered involuntarily.
“I know. I’m disgusting.” At this, Morgie met Hook’s eyes again, or attempted to. The pirate was staring a hole in the hardwood floor, and his torso was folded in on itself, as if he could disappear if he only shrank small enough.
“What are you talking about?” Morgie asked breathlessly, “You’re not - disgusting.” It took effort to say the word in relation to Hook. Uli’s tentacles - those were disgusting. Bridget’s desperation to be liked - that was disgusting. James Hook? Disgusting? Never; never in a million years.
Hook rolled his sleeve up and began fiddling with the base of his hook. Morgie realized he hadn’t seen him without the golden accessory yet this school term, but since they hadn’t been around each other outside of in-public group situations, when he always used to keep ahold of the hook anyway, this hadn’t seemed out of the ordinary.
Now, it became clear as Hook lifted the silver, domed base away from his wrist, it was no longer a mere accessory that he had the option of setting down so as to use his hand whenever he wanted. Four thin leather straps that must be extending from some point further up Hook’s arm protruded from the sleeve of his shirt, ending in buckles that must attach to the base. A strip of linen was wrapped tightly around his wrist itself, and there was a metal hook-and-latch type of mechanism where Hook’s hand should be.
“That part’s been anchored into me bone,” Hook said hoarsely before he swiftly attached everything again in obviously practiced movements. He then stared at the replaced hook with contempt, looking like he wanted to drop to his knees in misery. Morgie wished he would just sit down on the bed.
“Can I - can I see it?” the sorcerer asked, reaching a hand out towards Hook.
“I don’t think I want you to.”
Morgie exhaled, working on taking all of this in. On seeing cocky, boisterous, showoff Hook morphed into this huddled, unsure, nearly crying soul.
“What…happened?” Morgie asked quietly, close to a whisper in fact, nervous he would scare Hook off with anything louder. The pirate’s shoulders heaved, not with sobs, but with another leaden sigh.
“Never Never Land,” he got out, then was silent. Morgie waited a good several beats.
“Hook? Why don’t you sit down?” the sorcerer invited, thinking of one of the beds. Hook sat down. Right on the floor where he’d just been standing, not quite sinking to his knees, but not far off either.
Without a thought, Morgie slid off the end of the bed and joined him, sensing that it was best not to get too close but wanting to at least be on Hook’s level, to show him that he wasn’t alone, or didn’t have to be.
“Tell me about Never Never Land,” Morgie breathed, scared to speak any louder with the way Hook was once more staring off into the distance at something only he could see.
“It was beautiful,” the beloved accent came. “Paradise. At first. Fairies. Mermaids. Then. Wild children. And a flying little boy. He crowed. I’d never heard a person crow before. He could fly. Like a sparrow. Like a dart.” Hook’s eyes, under Morgie’s watchful attention, came back into focus.
“Little bastard cut me damn hand off. He was too quick for even me father. Peter. His name is Peter Pan.”
Morgie struggled to take all of this in - the impossibility of a flying boy; the reality that Hook’s left hand truly was gone; the fact that anyone had bested both Killian and James Hook.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” the pirate mused, “That I joked about this with you last year, thinking it ludicrous?”
The memory came back to Morgie with a crushing bittersweetness.
“James…” Morgie reached a slow hand out towards the pirate, going on instinct.
“Don’t.”
Morgie’s chest felt like it caved in at the word. He’d now come to his breaking point and his face scrunched up, the tears hot as they flooded his vision.
“Why not?” he begged in a creaky voice. Hook scrubbed at his own face with his right hand, clearing it of as much wetness as he easily could. He sighed yet again. Then, more composed, he finally answered Morgie, sort of.
“This is exactly what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to hurt you. I didn’t want you to see me like this. I didn’t want any of this. But I couldn’t stop it after all.”
The two boys sat together, yet so far apart, there on the floor of dorm room number twelve for a long while, both just breathing, absorbing, adjusting.
“Why couldn’t you just tell me?” Morgie finally broke the silence. “What happened to ‘no silent treatment’?”
“I’m sorry,” Hook said, “I really am.” He paused and continued, “I had rather a freak out. Me parents didn’t even want me to come back to school, and who knows, that may have been for the best.”
As much as Morgie wanted to break in at this point and tell him how horrible of an idea that would have been, he held himself in check, knowing Hook needed to expunge more.
“But I told them I needed to be around as much stability as I could after that. Routine, friends. You. And I told you I would come back. And now I’ve been a complete arse to you. Damn it all to hell, I really am sorry.”
The tip of Morgie’s tongue twitched with the words ‘it’s okay’ right there, but he couldn’t quite say it. The last few weeks had been utter torture, and while he was beginning to understand the motives, the pain that continuously seared his heart would not be salved so readily.
“If this was all it was, you could have told me,” he said instead. “I still don’t really get it.”
“All it was? All it was?” Hook’s eyes widened at him even more than they already had. “I lost me bloody hand! Literally!”
“I don’t mean like that!” The pirate wasn’t the only one that was allowed to yell here. “I mean, what made it so you couldn’t tell me? Like, the second you got back? I was -” and here Morgie’s breath gave out again.
Your pup.
Your sexy eyes.
Your pretty little sorcerer boy.
That one hurt the worst.
“I was left out to dry like I was nothing to you,” Morgie found his words again, though they were ragged, torn. Hook leaned forward at this, almost grabbing Morgie’s hand. But not quite.
“You’ve never been nothing to me,” he declared with a note of desperation. Which was nice, but…
“Oh? What about all the flirting?” Morgie flung at him. “With guys and girls? What about that Chloe? What the hell was that?!”
Hook averted his eyes now, and though it pained Morgie, he knew he wasn’t in the wrong to bring this up. Hook could not declare he’d cared about him when he’d been entertaining others like he had been.
“I’m not proud of it, okay?” Now the pirate tried to catch Morgie’s eye, but Morgie had resolutely focused on the farthest wall of the room, a spot above Eric’s desk.
“Maybe I needed the ego boost under the circumstances,” Hook continued anyway, “And maybe I was kind of, sort of, trying to make you hate me.” As these words sunk in, Morgie dragged his gaze back to the boy and the defeat that rested on his tired face.
“Was there anybody else?” He had to know, the question had been the main one clawing at him for too long.
“That I flirted with?” Hook’s brow bent. “I didn’t really keep track. It’s been just more of a falling into an old habit. Again, I’m not exactly proud of it.”
“No,” Morgie said with some exasperation. “Anybody else that…you’ve been with. Like with?”
The flirting hurt like a thorn digging into tender skin. But if he’d actually gone out and been with other people, even one, that would be a knife between the ribs.
“Oh.” Hook sounded like he understood now. He shifted slightly closer to Morgie, ensuring he was looking directly into his eyes.
“No,” he said solemnly. “No. I promised you there wouldn’t be, didn’t I?”
The tears came again, stirred up by memories, or relief, or some sort of different flavor of pain. Morgie wasn’t sure, and he didn’t bother trying to stop them.
“Please don’t cry,” Hook pleaded, “I hate it when you cry.” His voice cracked on the words. Morgie gave a pathetic, indignant snort.
“I’ve kind of been doing a lot of it lately,” he let Hook know as he wiped his cheeks dry, for the moment.
“You thought I cheated on you?” the pirate asked. He had the nerve to sound injured at the idea.
“What else was I supposed to think?” Morgie countered miserably. “You just pushed me away for no reason. And…you wanted me to hate you? Why?”
“I don’t know.” Hook was staring at the floor again. “Cause I thought that might be easier. Than having you…having you look at me like you just did when I told you.”
“Hook - obviously it’s a little bit of a shock, and it’s horrible that it happened,” Morgie rasped. “I didn’t mean to look at you any kind of way in particular, I swear.”
“I guess I would rather you hate me for being an arsehole than reject me for being a cripple,” Hook said quietly.
“What?” Morgie actually couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and his heart was squeezing in an impossibly new way. “You thought I might do that?”
“Maybe I was just scared to take the chance. Morgie, this…this whole thing has really been messing with me,” Hook confessed.
The sorcerer had the urge to reach for him, but the intangible wall between them that had vanished too briefly on the tower in the immediate aftermath of the crisis was back up. Though it did at least seem a little lower.
Morgie, in spite of Hook probably not wanting him to, studied the boy’s dark eyes; they were as beautiful as ever, still reminding Morgie of a mythical, endless sky of stars out at sea, but that melancholic shadow Morgie had only gotten glimpses of as of yet cast a veil over their old spark.
And right now that shadow had taken up a firm residence. Morgie’s heart broke afresh to know the truth, this time for Hook instead of because of him.
He couldn’t fathom losing a part of his body, especially a part as integral as his hand. How would one possibly cope with something like that? Probably not well, and the fact that Hook was even at school, trying to go on with life somewhat normally, was impressive.
It didn’t change the fact that his actions had resulted in bruising and battering Morgie’s every emotion, of course, but the sorcerer guessed he might deserve some leeway. Things were so complicated and confusing now.
“Are you okay?” Morgie asked as gently as he could, words rippling into the silence that had grown in the room. Hook looked at him again, his expression cautious with a squint to one eye.
“Okay how?”
“I don’t know.” Morgie shrugged. He wasn’t sure what he did know anymore.
“With that, I guess for starters.” He gave Hook’s left arm a nod. The pirate’s lips drew themselves into a thin line and he didn’t answer for some time. Morgie felt the tension in the air between them, and he hardly dared to breathe as he willed Hook to bring down a bit more of that wall.
“I’m managing,” he finally said. It wasn’t much of an answer, but it was a start. But then he met Morgie’s eyes, and maybe saw the affection, or the desperation, there, and went on.
“It sucks. Quite a bit,” Hook admitted. “There’s a big difference between using this thing for fun, for the idle challenge of it, and actually having to.”
“Did it hurt a lot?” Morgie asked, and then winced at himself. Of course it had hurt, he was a dumbass.
“Like you can’t even imagine,” Hook confirmed. “Not right away, though. Turns out shock is a very real thing. At least his blade was sharp and it was a clean cut.” Morgie’s stomach tightened at this; at the further reality and deeper understanding of the horror that Hook had been through.
He had to be careful, though. While his gentle soul wanted, in part, to recoil, he’d gotten this far and did not want to let on to more discomfort than he could absolutely help. This was simply Hook’s life now and Morgie had already made the determination that no matter how Hook had treated him, he was not going to abandon him. Especially since this stubborn wall was slowly dropping even more.
“Will you tell me the whole thing? Sometime?” Morgie asked carefully. He knew he couldn’t push, and this had already been an extremely long day. Hook searched his eyes once more, and his shoulders lowered in a tentative relaxation. He nodded slowly and Morgie’s heart silently exulted at the tiny victory.
“Morgie,” Hook said then, “Please believe me, I wanted to tell you before this. At first, aye, I needed some space to get used to it all, you know? But I never meant for it to go on this long. And...” Here he heaved a sigh, another piece of the wall crumbling.
“I didn’t want you to stay with me out of pity, or because you felt like you had to. And then I started thinking of the alternative, if you wouldn’t want to be with me anymore because of it. And whichever way I looked at it, it was all just shit.”
Morgie blinked at him with a thick lump in his throat. Hook was less than three feet away but it felt like much, much more. The sorcerer was torn between telling Hook how much the situation had sucked from his side too and declaring his utter, unconditional devotion to him.
He didn’t do the first because he wanted to give Hook some grace and not badger him; he was obviously truly sorry. He didn’t do the latter because it just wasn’t that simple anymore.
“Mali was right though,” Morgie went with, “I deserved to know, and to be able to decide for myself.” Hook, predictably, looked taken aback at this. Morgie wanted to have everything out in the open if he could help it.
“How did you - she didn’t -?”
“No,” Morgie shook his head. “I heard you guys talking. I was in the wall last night, when she gave you the ultimatum.” Hook huffed a barely there laugh. It was good to see the hint of a smile, no matter how faint.
“When did you start spying on me?”
“I didn’t! Never!” Morgie quickly replied, registering that Hook seemed more amused than mad at the possibility.
“It wasn’t like that. I only came over that night to…to see you for a couple of minutes, kind of check on you.” He watched Hook swallow and the pirate’s eyes glazed over with moisture again.
“Why?” His lilt cracked again on the word.
Morgie took a couple of breaths, trying to think, trying to control the flood that wanted to burst forth. Neither worked. The tears leaked out once more as he gave in, voice shaking.
“Because I love you. Because I missed you. Oh my goddess, did I miss you!” He swiped at his eyes with his sleeve, he hadn’t meant this outburst but one could only hold themselves together for so long. He didn’t care that Hook didn’t like to see him cry, he didn’t care what his reaction would be, he didn’t care about any sense of pride. All of this was too big to hold inside any longer.
“I counted down the days from the last day of school till I could see you again. I wrote you letters that I couldn’t send because I was going mad not being able to talk to you. I thought about you and worried about you every second, and then we finally got back here and you wanted nothing to do with me. Do you know how much that’s hurt?” Morgie couldn’t see through the tears now and he rubbed a sleeve across them again.
“It literally hurts,” and his chest ached as he said it, like it had been for weeks, months. “I thought you cheated. I thought you hated me. I thought I did something wrong. I thought I hadn’t done enough. I thought Bridget put a spell on you.” He was sobbing now as he rambled, his words were garbling, and he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to stop.
“Morgie -” Hook tried, but the sorcerer kept going.
“I know, you’re sorry. I can tell you mean it. And I get now why you’d want some space. Sort of. But I had no idea what was going on. Just hoped every day that you’d look at me, that you’d want me again.” His sleeve was getting soaked, and he hated how pathetic he sounded. With a huge effort he drew a deep, deep breath, knowing he had to get himself together.
When his eyes were able to focus, he looked up to see Hook staring at him, stricken and also crying. He was so goddamn beautiful it hurt worse to even look at him.
“You love me?” the pirate whispered.