worst trip, best person — morgan (angryginge) x reader
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summary he said he was fine. jakey said he was not fine. she booked the flight.
prompt – tokyo food poisoning, she flies out, role reversal, him being looked after for once warnings – food poisoning, poorly morgan, soft chaos word count – ~2.5k note – jakey being the one who told her the truth is everything 😭 morgan pretending he's fine when he's absolutely not is so him — thank you for this request 🫶 (no proofread)
requests are open :)
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He'd texted her at eleven pm Tokyo time — which was three in the morning for her, which meant her phone buzzing had pulled her out of sleep immediately — and the text had said not feeling great, don't worry about it which were the six most alarming words Morgan had ever sent her.
Don't worry about it was not a Morgan phrase. Morgan didn't say don't worry about itunless there was something to worry about. Morgan said I'm fine and it's nothing and seriously stop fussing — all of which were also alarming but in a different way. Don't worry about it was new, and new was bad.
She'd called immediately.
He'd answered on the fourth ring, which was also wrong — Morgan picked up on the second ring when she called, always — and when he'd said hey his voice had been entirely wrong. Flat. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with time zones.
"What's happening," she said.
"I'm fine—"
"Morgan."
"Seriously it's just—" a pause, a sound she didn't like, "—I think something I ate disagreed with me."
"How bad."
"Not bad—"
"Morgan, how bad."
Another pause. "Fairly bad," he admitted, which from Morgan meant very bad.
She'd lain there in the dark for approximately ninety seconds after she hung up. Then she'd opened her laptop and looked at flights.
She'd texted Jakey at three fifteen in the morning: how bad is he actually
Jakey had replied within two minutes — which meant Jakey was also awake, which meant it was bad enough that he was monitoring it: bad. won't let me call a doctor. been in his room since yesterday evening. genuinely please come he's being so stubborn
She'd booked the flight.
Morgan did not know she was coming.
She'd made Jakey swear on pain of death not to tell him. Jakey had agreed immediately and then sent three separate follow up texts checking she'd actually booked it, which was very Jakey and also reassuring.
The flight was fourteen hours. She spent most of it alternating between sleeping and catastrophising, which was not productive but was what her brain had decided on. She watched one film she couldn't have named afterward and ate a meal she didn't taste and landed in Tokyo at seven in the evening local time feeling simultaneously wired and exhausted.
Jakey had sent her the hotel name. She'd texted him when she landed.
He met her in the lobby, looking relieved in the specific way of someone who had been dealing with a stubborn poorly person alone for two days and had reached the end of his resources.
"How is he," she said, before hello.
"Sleeping right now," Jakey said. "He had a rough night. He kept saying he was fine but he's—" Jakey made a face, "—not fine. At all. He tried to convince me he could film today and then lasted about twenty minutes before he had to go back to bed."
"Has he eaten?"
"Some crackers this morning. He kept the water down which is better than yesterday."
She pressed her lips together. "Room number."
Jakey gave her the key card. "He's going to make a face when he sees you," he said.
"I know."
"Like an embarrassed face. Like he's going to try to send you home."
"He can try."
"Just so you're prepared—"
"Jakey." She looked at him. "I flew fourteen hours. I'm prepared."
She went up.
She knocked quietly in case he was sleeping. Nothing. She let herself in.
The room was dim — curtains mostly closed, the particular organised chaos of a hotel room that had been occupied by an unwell person for a day and a half. Water bottles on the nightstand, crackers, his phone face down beside him.
Morgan was in bed. He was asleep, or had been — the knock had done something because he shifted, and she stood very still in the doorway until he settled again, and she looked at him in the low light and felt something in her chest that was half relief and half the specific tenderness of seeing someone you loved looking smaller than usual.
He always took care of everyone. That was just who he was — the one who checked on people, the one who noticed when something was wrong, the one who showed up. She'd been on the receiving end of it enough times to know exactly what it felt like.
She set her bag down quietly. Got a fresh glass of water from the bathroom. Sat in the chair by the bed.
He opened his eyes about ten minutes later.
Looked at the ceiling.
Looked at her.
Looked back at the ceiling.
"No," he said.
"Hi," she said.
"You didn't," he said.
"I did."
"I told you not to worry—"
"You said don't worry about it, which is not the same as I'm fine, which is what you say when you're actually fine." She held his gaze. "Jakey told me."
Morgan closed his eyes briefly. "Of course he did."
"He was right to." She leaned forward slightly. "How are you feeling right now, actually."
A pause. The pause of someone deciding whether to maintain the performance or not. "Better than yesterday," he said finally. "Yesterday was—" he stopped. "Bad."
"I know."
"You didn't need to fly here—"
"Morgan." She said it quietly. "Let me do this."
He looked at her. Something moving across his face that was between embarrassed and something else — something that was the specific vulnerability of someone who was used to being the capable one and didn't know quite where to put it when they weren't.
He said nothing for a moment.
"Okay," he said quietly.
She stayed.
That was really the whole of it — she stayed and she took care of him with the same quiet efficiency he'd always brought to taking care of her, and it turned out that the dynamic was different but the feeling was the same. He slept a lot. She sat nearby, working on her laptop when he was asleep, there when he woke up. She got him soup from somewhere — the hotel restaurant, a negotiation conducted entirely through the translation app on her phone — and sat with him while he ate it slowly and carefully, like he was testing whether his body had forgiven him yet.
Jakey knocked on the door on the second morning, checked in briefly, looked at the situation with the expression of a man who was very glad he was no longer the one responsible for it, and left again.
"You're staring," Morgan said, on the second day.
"I'm watching to make sure you finish it."
"I'm going to finish it—"
"You said that about the crackers yesterday and then you ate four."
"Four was finishing it in my condition—"
"Morgan."
He ate the soup. All of it. She took the bowl and he watched her with the particular expression of someone who had been fussed over enough to have stopped fighting it and had arrived somewhere that was almost comfortable.
"You didn't have to come," he said. Again. For approximately the fifth time.
"I know," she said. Again. For approximately the fifth time.
"I would have been fine—"
"You were not fine."
"I would have gotten there—"
"Morgan." She sat back down beside the bed. "You flew fourteen hours for me when I had pneumonia two years ago. You slept on a hospital chair. You brought me four different kinds of soup because you didn't know which one I wanted." She looked at him. "Let me have this."
He was quiet.
"Yeah," he said finally. Soft. "Okay."
She reached over and pushed his hair back from his forehead — the same thing he always did, the gesture she'd memorised on his hands and was now returning — and he closed his eyes and let her.
"Cheers," he said quietly. Into the pillow. Slightly muffled.
"Anytime," she said.
By day three he was well enough to be bored, which was how she knew he was actually recovering. He started commenting on everything she was doing, wanted to be involved in decisions about food, complained about the TV options in a way that was entirely coherent and therefore reassuring.
"You're being annoying," she told him.
"I'm feeling better," he said, like this explained it.
"It does explain it."
"I want actual food."
"You can have actual food when your stomach decides it's ready—"
"My stomach is ready—"
"Your stomach was not ready for the thing that started all of this—"
"That was different—"
"Morgan."
He subsided. Looked at the ceiling. "Can I at least have something that isn't plain rice."
She looked at him. He looked back at her with the expression of a man who had been reasonable for three days and felt he'd earned something.
"Plain rice," she said. "And maybe some bread."
"Bread," he repeated. Like she'd offered him something significant.
"Don't push it."
He smiled — the real one, finally, the full one, the one that had been absent for three days and the return of which did something considerable to her chest.
"You're very bossy," he said.
"You're very poorly."
"I was poorly. I'm better now."
"Mostly better."
"Mostly better," he conceded. He reached over and took her hand where it was resting on the bed beside him, laced his fingers through hers. "Thank you," he said. Simply. No performance.
"Thank you for letting me," she said.
He squeezed her hand.
Outside Tokyo carried on, indifferent and bright, and in a hotel room on the fourteenth floor Morgan was mostly better and she was exactly where she'd flown fourteen hours to be.
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