Blink, Chapter 3: Two Years & Three Months
Title: Blink, Chapter 3: Two Years & Three Months
Author: dolce_amore93
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own LuRe or any other ATWT characters.
Genre: Fluff, with a little bit of drama mentioned.
Characters: Reid/Luke, Faith, others mentioned
Summary: Reid gets his hair cut at Faith's new salon. Takes place in October 2012.
Author's Note: Again, thank you guys so much for the awesome response to this series. It means SO much to me. :) I initially said there would be about 10 chapters to this, but at the moment, I don't see how I'll be able to tell the story of the span of time I'm aiming for in just 10 chapters (being that this is chapter 3 and we're just into the second year of their relationship, lol). So how long will this series be? I don't know! :D And that's kind of fun. Comments = love.
----
October 2012
Reid’s expression softened as he turned around to see one Luke Snyder standing in the hospital corridor. “Hey,” he said gently. “I didn’t know you were venturing out today.”
Luke shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on it. Then I decided that I felt good enough to get some fresh air. I figured the best place to ‘get out’ to would be the hospital, in case I start feeling weird.”
“Are you? Feeling weird?” Reid asked worriedly, bringing a hand to stroke Luke’s cheek. He looked at Luke up and down. “The new kidney still being nice to you?”
Luke smiled. “It is. Who knew a kidney that came from you would be nice?” he laughed.
“It’s a bit disturbing, I know,” Reid replied with a smirk. “Any reason that you’re here other than the fact that you were afraid to go anywhere else?”
“Here to see you, actually.”
Reid raised an eyebrow. “That so?”
“Yup. I need to ask you a favor.”
“I like how you’re setting this up,” Reid whispered seductively.
Luke just laughed. “I don’t mean a sexual favor, Reid.”
“Damn. What do you need, then?”
“I need you to swing by Cutz today and let Faith cut your hair.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.”
“I just got my hair cut before coming back to work last week.”
“Your hair grows back quickly,” Luke reasoned.
“Faith is a hairstylist, not a barber.”
“Your hair can’t be that difficult to cut, Reid. I think she’ll manage.”
Reid groaned, and Luke pouted. “We need to be supportive of her. She’s worked really hard for this, and…”
“Worked really hard? When? The only reason she went to beauty school was so she could drop out of high school. She didn’t graduate from beauty school until the third time she tried. And what did she get for graduating? An entire salon courtesy of mommy dearest. At what point did she work hard?”
Luke thought for a moment. “Well, she didn’t give up on beauty school. She stuck it out even after she failed her exams.”
Reid rolled his eyes. “You know what I got for graduating med school the first time I attempted it? This watch,” he said, holding up his wrist and by extension, the file he was holding in his hand.
“I never knew that you got that for your graduation from med school,” Luke replied. “Who gave it to you?”
“I did.”
“Oh,” Luke’s expression fell. “If I were there, I would’ve gotten you a big present,” he said warmly.
Reid smiled. “I know you would have. You have a fetish for gift giving,” he said, brushing his hand against Luke’s. “Among other things,” he added.
Luke sighed. “Don’t think I can’t see that you’re deflecting.”
Reid groaned. “I don’t want her to cut my hair. She doesn’t like me.”
“If you only went places where people liked you, you’d just be stuck at home all the time.”
Reid furrowed his brow. “I’ll take that as some weird way of you telling me you love me. Anyway - I think I have a legitimate reason to be more worried about her than the other people in town who don’t like me. She’s the only person in town that wields a sharp object… well, legally.”
“Please, Reid?” Luke asked, eyes in full puppy dog mode. “I just had a kidney transplant and you said you’d do anything I needed.”
“Well, I only have one kidney and you said you’d do anything I needed,” Reid countered.
“You’re impossible,” Luke huffed.
“You like it,” Reid replied confidently.
Luke couldn’t help but smirk. “Maybe. Still, Reid - this salon is really important to Faith. And Faith is really important to me.”
Reid really wished sometimes that he could fault Luke for loving his crazy family so much, but he couldn’t do it. Luke not loving his family would be like a sandwich without lettuce. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where is the salon again?”
Luke squealed. “Just outside of Old Town. If you’re driving from the hospital you can’t miss it. Thank you!”
“Thank me after I make it through the haircut without insulting anyone.”
“Okay! I’ll see you at home!” Luke exclaimed.
“Go back home and rest for a while, okay?”
“I was going to go visit with Maddie and Hunter for a while,” Luke replied.
Reid shot him a look and Luke sighed. “Since you’re doing this for me, I guess I can go home and rest for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Snyder. I can’t have you keeling over on me just yet.”
Luke smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of it. See you at home,” he said just before he kissed Reid goodbye.
--------
Reid walked into the sparkly, pink and purple salon and wasn’t sure if he was feeling ill from his recent surgery or the décor. Faith came bounding up to him, clearly not busy with anyone else, and smiled.
“Reid! What brings you here?” she asked, her disposition sunnier than usual.
“Luke,” Reid grumbled.
“Is he okay?” she asked immediately.
“Oh! Yeah, he’s doing good,” he assured her. She was a bitch, but at least she genuinely cared about Luke. That was more than Reid could say about a lot of Luke’s family.
“And you?” she asked.
Reid shrugged. “I feel pretty good.”
She smiled. “Good.” They stood awkwardly for a moment before she decided to speak again.
“…Are you actually here to get a haircut?” she asked hopefully. He reluctantly nodded, and she clapped. “I have an opening right now, actually!” Reid had a feeling she had a lot of those.
Faith sprayed his hair with a spray bottle with little regard to good aim, getting his scrubs, and even his jeans, somehow wet. From the moment she got her scissors out, Reid tried his best to not look at what she was doing in the mirror. He really, really didn’t want to know. A stuffy silence surrounded them, and Reid bit his lip. Being some random person’s captive audience and being required to make small talk while getting a haircut was bad enough. This was like slow torture.
“So,” Faith started, “What made you decide to donate your kidney to Luke?”
Reid tried his best not to roll his eyes. What the hell kind of question was that?
“Because he needed a new one and I was a match,” he replied simply.
“Oh,” Faith whispered. “That makes sense.”
“…Yes it does.”
Faith snipped at another piece of hair. “Luke is crazy about you, you know. He gets so excited when your name comes up that you’d think you guys just got together. Its pretty cute.”
“The feelings are mutual,” Reid said.
She smiled. “I know. You wouldn’t be here right now if they weren’t mutual.”
Reid opened his mouth, but no words came out. Faith laughed. “Its okay. I’m not an idiot. I know few people who are anxious to come get their hair cut by a girl who took three tries to graduate from beauty school.”
“You probably just need to build a clientele, that’s all,” Reid replied softly, trying his best to pretend what she said wasn’t true.
She let out a laugh. “We’re in Oakdale. This isn’t exactly a bustling area. Everyone knows about the salon. If they haven’t come yet, they’re not going to at all.”
Reid had half a thought of saying that perhaps more people just needed to be guilted into stopping by, but decided against it. “They’ll start coming eventually,” Reid replied, and Faith gave a grateful smile.
“All done,” she said. “You can look in the mirror now, I promise I didn’t give you a mohawk.” The bratty smirk that spread across her face distinctly reminded him of the first Snyder he met in Oakdale. That wasn’t such a bad thing.
He looked in the mirror to happily find that his hair essentially looked the same way it did when he walked in. According to Katie, this was awful (Reid never quite understood why when he told Katie that her hair looked the same after she got it cut as it did before, she was peeved. If her hair looked nice before, he didn’t see how that was a bad thing, but whatever.) Reid liked continuity, though, so this was just fine with him.
“Does it look okay?” Faith asked cautiously.
Reid nodded. “Very good. Nice job,” he said. After paying her and leaving her a tip that was hopefully sizable enough that he wouldn’t need to return for a while, he went home to Luke.
“Hi!” Luke greeted. “You lived! No stab wounds!” he joked. He ran his fingers through Reid’s hair. “Lookin’ good.”
Reid nodded. “She actually didn’t suck.”
“Thank you,” Luke said. “Really. It means a lot to me. And I’m sure it meant a lot to Faith, too.”
Luke paused. “Thank you for… everything. I feel like I haven’t told you that very much since the surgery, but… I could never tell you enough how thankful I am to you. For you. You saved my life.” Luke said, gently putting a hand on Reid’s neck and kissing him. Coming from anyone else, it would be ridiculously melodramatic, but it was coming from Luke and that made all the difference. He pulled back and they rested their foreheads against one another. With their hectic schedules, this was one of the few quiet moments that they shared that were so insanely appreciated. “Love you.”
Luke didn’t understand that Reid gave him his kidney just as much for his own life as he did it for Luke's life. “I love you, too.”
----------
The next evening, Reid walked in to find Luke talking animatedly on the phone.
“You can tell your boy toy that his nurse’s have big mouths,” Faith giggled over the phone. “And tell him thank you,” she added.
“Why? What did he do?” Luke asked.
Reid looked up at Luke from the couch and mouthed “Me?” Luke waved him off.
“This morning, I received four calls from new clients. All head nurses at Memorial. All mentioned Reid in some capacity. Not good ways, but they mentioned him nonetheless,” she informed her brother.
“Interesting,” Luke replied. He looked over at Reid, who was now busy eating a cookie that Luke had put on the coffee table to eat himself, and rolled his eyes.
“That was all. Just thought you’d want to hold it over Reid’s head that he’s a big softie,” she snickered.
Luke laughed. “Thanks, Faith. Talk to you later. Bye.”
Luke hung up the phone and smiled at Reid. He plopped down beside him on the couch, nearly falling on top of him.
“Is it a coincidence that Amber Wilson, Mae Anthony, Gretchen Taylor, and Jackie Rue all called and made appointments at Faith’s salon within fifteen minutes of each other?”
“Who are those people, exactly?” Reid asked.
“Head nurses at Memorial,” Luke replied.
“Oh. Nope, don’t know anything about that,” he replied before scratching at his head. He didn’t know he was a crappy liar, but Luke did.
“That’s funny. They all mentioned that you while talking to her.”
“Hmm. Must be because I’m so adorable.” Reid replied, not looking up from the magazine he was now engrossed in.
“You blackmailed them into making appointments with her, didn’t you?”
“That’s your forte, not mine, Mr. Snyder,” Reid said coolly.
Luke grinned. “Whatever you say.”
Author: dolce_amore93
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own LuRe or any other ATWT characters.
Genre: Fluff, with a little bit of drama mentioned.
Characters: Reid/Luke, Faith, others mentioned
Summary: Reid gets his hair cut at Faith's new salon. Takes place in October 2012.
Author's Note: Again, thank you guys so much for the awesome response to this series. It means SO much to me. :) I initially said there would be about 10 chapters to this, but at the moment, I don't see how I'll be able to tell the story of the span of time I'm aiming for in just 10 chapters (being that this is chapter 3 and we're just into the second year of their relationship, lol). So how long will this series be? I don't know! :D And that's kind of fun. Comments = love.
----
October 2012
Reid’s expression softened as he turned around to see one Luke Snyder standing in the hospital corridor. “Hey,” he said gently. “I didn’t know you were venturing out today.”
Luke shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on it. Then I decided that I felt good enough to get some fresh air. I figured the best place to ‘get out’ to would be the hospital, in case I start feeling weird.”
“Are you? Feeling weird?” Reid asked worriedly, bringing a hand to stroke Luke’s cheek. He looked at Luke up and down. “The new kidney still being nice to you?”
Luke smiled. “It is. Who knew a kidney that came from you would be nice?” he laughed.
“It’s a bit disturbing, I know,” Reid replied with a smirk. “Any reason that you’re here other than the fact that you were afraid to go anywhere else?”
“Here to see you, actually.”
Reid raised an eyebrow. “That so?”
“Yup. I need to ask you a favor.”
“I like how you’re setting this up,” Reid whispered seductively.
Luke just laughed. “I don’t mean a sexual favor, Reid.”
“Damn. What do you need, then?”
“I need you to swing by Cutz today and let Faith cut your hair.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“Nope.”
“I just got my hair cut before coming back to work last week.”
“Your hair grows back quickly,” Luke reasoned.
“Faith is a hairstylist, not a barber.”
“Your hair can’t be that difficult to cut, Reid. I think she’ll manage.”
Reid groaned, and Luke pouted. “We need to be supportive of her. She’s worked really hard for this, and…”
“Worked really hard? When? The only reason she went to beauty school was so she could drop out of high school. She didn’t graduate from beauty school until the third time she tried. And what did she get for graduating? An entire salon courtesy of mommy dearest. At what point did she work hard?”
Luke thought for a moment. “Well, she didn’t give up on beauty school. She stuck it out even after she failed her exams.”
Reid rolled his eyes. “You know what I got for graduating med school the first time I attempted it? This watch,” he said, holding up his wrist and by extension, the file he was holding in his hand.
“I never knew that you got that for your graduation from med school,” Luke replied. “Who gave it to you?”
“I did.”
“Oh,” Luke’s expression fell. “If I were there, I would’ve gotten you a big present,” he said warmly.
Reid smiled. “I know you would have. You have a fetish for gift giving,” he said, brushing his hand against Luke’s. “Among other things,” he added.
Luke sighed. “Don’t think I can’t see that you’re deflecting.”
Reid groaned. “I don’t want her to cut my hair. She doesn’t like me.”
“If you only went places where people liked you, you’d just be stuck at home all the time.”
Reid furrowed his brow. “I’ll take that as some weird way of you telling me you love me. Anyway - I think I have a legitimate reason to be more worried about her than the other people in town who don’t like me. She’s the only person in town that wields a sharp object… well, legally.”
“Please, Reid?” Luke asked, eyes in full puppy dog mode. “I just had a kidney transplant and you said you’d do anything I needed.”
“Well, I only have one kidney and you said you’d do anything I needed,” Reid countered.
“You’re impossible,” Luke huffed.
“You like it,” Reid replied confidently.
Luke couldn’t help but smirk. “Maybe. Still, Reid - this salon is really important to Faith. And Faith is really important to me.”
Reid really wished sometimes that he could fault Luke for loving his crazy family so much, but he couldn’t do it. Luke not loving his family would be like a sandwich without lettuce. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where is the salon again?”
Luke squealed. “Just outside of Old Town. If you’re driving from the hospital you can’t miss it. Thank you!”
“Thank me after I make it through the haircut without insulting anyone.”
“Okay! I’ll see you at home!” Luke exclaimed.
“Go back home and rest for a while, okay?”
“I was going to go visit with Maddie and Hunter for a while,” Luke replied.
Reid shot him a look and Luke sighed. “Since you’re doing this for me, I guess I can go home and rest for you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Snyder. I can’t have you keeling over on me just yet.”
Luke smiled. “I wouldn’t dream of it. See you at home,” he said just before he kissed Reid goodbye.
--------
Reid walked into the sparkly, pink and purple salon and wasn’t sure if he was feeling ill from his recent surgery or the décor. Faith came bounding up to him, clearly not busy with anyone else, and smiled.
“Reid! What brings you here?” she asked, her disposition sunnier than usual.
“Luke,” Reid grumbled.
“Is he okay?” she asked immediately.
“Oh! Yeah, he’s doing good,” he assured her. She was a bitch, but at least she genuinely cared about Luke. That was more than Reid could say about a lot of Luke’s family.
“And you?” she asked.
Reid shrugged. “I feel pretty good.”
She smiled. “Good.” They stood awkwardly for a moment before she decided to speak again.
“…Are you actually here to get a haircut?” she asked hopefully. He reluctantly nodded, and she clapped. “I have an opening right now, actually!” Reid had a feeling she had a lot of those.
Faith sprayed his hair with a spray bottle with little regard to good aim, getting his scrubs, and even his jeans, somehow wet. From the moment she got her scissors out, Reid tried his best to not look at what she was doing in the mirror. He really, really didn’t want to know. A stuffy silence surrounded them, and Reid bit his lip. Being some random person’s captive audience and being required to make small talk while getting a haircut was bad enough. This was like slow torture.
“So,” Faith started, “What made you decide to donate your kidney to Luke?”
Reid tried his best not to roll his eyes. What the hell kind of question was that?
“Because he needed a new one and I was a match,” he replied simply.
“Oh,” Faith whispered. “That makes sense.”
“…Yes it does.”
Faith snipped at another piece of hair. “Luke is crazy about you, you know. He gets so excited when your name comes up that you’d think you guys just got together. Its pretty cute.”
“The feelings are mutual,” Reid said.
She smiled. “I know. You wouldn’t be here right now if they weren’t mutual.”
Reid opened his mouth, but no words came out. Faith laughed. “Its okay. I’m not an idiot. I know few people who are anxious to come get their hair cut by a girl who took three tries to graduate from beauty school.”
“You probably just need to build a clientele, that’s all,” Reid replied softly, trying his best to pretend what she said wasn’t true.
She let out a laugh. “We’re in Oakdale. This isn’t exactly a bustling area. Everyone knows about the salon. If they haven’t come yet, they’re not going to at all.”
Reid had half a thought of saying that perhaps more people just needed to be guilted into stopping by, but decided against it. “They’ll start coming eventually,” Reid replied, and Faith gave a grateful smile.
“All done,” she said. “You can look in the mirror now, I promise I didn’t give you a mohawk.” The bratty smirk that spread across her face distinctly reminded him of the first Snyder he met in Oakdale. That wasn’t such a bad thing.
He looked in the mirror to happily find that his hair essentially looked the same way it did when he walked in. According to Katie, this was awful (Reid never quite understood why when he told Katie that her hair looked the same after she got it cut as it did before, she was peeved. If her hair looked nice before, he didn’t see how that was a bad thing, but whatever.) Reid liked continuity, though, so this was just fine with him.
“Does it look okay?” Faith asked cautiously.
Reid nodded. “Very good. Nice job,” he said. After paying her and leaving her a tip that was hopefully sizable enough that he wouldn’t need to return for a while, he went home to Luke.
“Hi!” Luke greeted. “You lived! No stab wounds!” he joked. He ran his fingers through Reid’s hair. “Lookin’ good.”
Reid nodded. “She actually didn’t suck.”
“Thank you,” Luke said. “Really. It means a lot to me. And I’m sure it meant a lot to Faith, too.”
Luke paused. “Thank you for… everything. I feel like I haven’t told you that very much since the surgery, but… I could never tell you enough how thankful I am to you. For you. You saved my life.” Luke said, gently putting a hand on Reid’s neck and kissing him. Coming from anyone else, it would be ridiculously melodramatic, but it was coming from Luke and that made all the difference. He pulled back and they rested their foreheads against one another. With their hectic schedules, this was one of the few quiet moments that they shared that were so insanely appreciated. “Love you.”
Luke didn’t understand that Reid gave him his kidney just as much for his own life as he did it for Luke's life. “I love you, too.”
----------
The next evening, Reid walked in to find Luke talking animatedly on the phone.
“You can tell your boy toy that his nurse’s have big mouths,” Faith giggled over the phone. “And tell him thank you,” she added.
“Why? What did he do?” Luke asked.
Reid looked up at Luke from the couch and mouthed “Me?” Luke waved him off.
“This morning, I received four calls from new clients. All head nurses at Memorial. All mentioned Reid in some capacity. Not good ways, but they mentioned him nonetheless,” she informed her brother.
“Interesting,” Luke replied. He looked over at Reid, who was now busy eating a cookie that Luke had put on the coffee table to eat himself, and rolled his eyes.
“That was all. Just thought you’d want to hold it over Reid’s head that he’s a big softie,” she snickered.
Luke laughed. “Thanks, Faith. Talk to you later. Bye.”
Luke hung up the phone and smiled at Reid. He plopped down beside him on the couch, nearly falling on top of him.
“Is it a coincidence that Amber Wilson, Mae Anthony, Gretchen Taylor, and Jackie Rue all called and made appointments at Faith’s salon within fifteen minutes of each other?”
“Who are those people, exactly?” Reid asked.
“Head nurses at Memorial,” Luke replied.
“Oh. Nope, don’t know anything about that,” he replied before scratching at his head. He didn’t know he was a crappy liar, but Luke did.
“That’s funny. They all mentioned that you while talking to her.”
“Hmm. Must be because I’m so adorable.” Reid replied, not looking up from the magazine he was now engrossed in.
“You blackmailed them into making appointments with her, didn’t you?”
“That’s your forte, not mine, Mr. Snyder,” Reid said coolly.
Luke grinned. “Whatever you say.”