Divergence - Chapter 53
Title: Divergence
Author: escapes
Rating: Just to be safe, NC 17
Pairing: Luke/Noah
Spoiler/Warning: Spoilers up through the enlistment story arc and forward
Warnings: M/M , Language
Disclaimer: Characters belong to ATWT, P&G, CBS, etc. I'm not making money from this, don't sue, etc. Author’s Notes: During the whole enlistment arc in Luke and Noah's story is when I realized that the writers of ATWT are on crack. I kept thinking that I could have done so much better with the story. So I thought about it and 30 pages of outline later, I started writing. This is the result. This is Luke and Noah’s storyline from the enlistment arc forward. How I would have liked to see it unfold.
Summary: There are consequences to your actions. Sometimes learning to live with those consequences teaches you things about yourself. Like how strong you really are.
Chapter 53
Luke blinks at Noah going on the offensive right away. "Good morning to you, too."
Noah steps closer, torn between wanting to throttle Luke and wanting to sit him down and figure out what in the hell is going on in his head. He breathes in to rein back the temper that even now makes him cringe with the reminders of the Colonel he can see in his mannerisms. Part of him also knows he's breathing in to see if he can smell alcohol on Luke. "Luke, now is not the time to be cute. Answer the question."
Swallowing around the tightness in his throat that is pressing on his stomach acid raw, overused vocal chords, Luke brings a shaky hand to rub at his forehead, feeling the pounding there start to strike up a god awful techno paced beat in his head. "I was out with a friend."
Seeing Luke rub at his forehead, Noah frowns. A hangover headache? "A friend? All night? This 'friend' know you had a boyfriend sitting in your apartment spending half the night worried that you were dead in a ditch somewhere?"
Luke internally cringes at the clipped tone and gravel in Noah's voice. He's pissed and Luke knows Noah's reaction is restrained compared to what his would be if the situation were reversed. "I’m sorry I didn’t call. I just needed...”
Noah cuts him off, running an agitated hand through his hair. “Needed what? Where were you, Luke? Tell me where the hell you've been all night! And none of this ‘with a friend’ crap!"
Luke shakes his head. "I can't. And it's not like it would make a difference to you at this point. I'm already guilty of whatever scenario you've cooked up in your head."
"You can't? You mean you won't."
Luke shakes his head, "No, I mean I can't."
"And I suppose you can't tell me where you've been when you say you're in meetings and I know damn well you're not!"
"No, I can't."
"So you admit you lied to me?"
Luke sighs. "I was in meetings. I never said they were with Nicole, or about the foundation. You just assumed they were." Luke leans his forehead against his hand and sighs. "Noah, you're going to believe what you want. I'm too tired to continue having accusations hurled at me. I'm going to bed. It's been a long night."
"You can be out all night at a....god knows where, but when it comes to fighting for what we had, you're too tired?!"
"You've already made the decision, Noah. You just said it. What we had. Past tense. You've already had my trial and convicted me, without even giving me the courtesy of being able to defend myself. You're too worked up to just be upset about me not being home last night. So why don't you tell me where you were going to say I was. It's obvious you know more than you're telling me."
Noah narrows his eyes at Luke, thinking about the phone call he’d received the night before. "You were at the Wagon Wheel. You were at a fucking bar, Luke! If that wasn't bad enough, you left with someone!"
Luke closes his eyes and goes still. Quick, he thinks, like a bandaid. He has a feeling that no matter what he does, it's going to hurt like hell. Wrapping his arms around himself, Luke meets Noah's eyes. "Yes, I was there. Yes, I left with someone."
The words hit Noah almost like a physical blow. "Who?"
"I can't tell you. It doesn't matter anyway."
'It sure as hell does! You probably don't even know the name of the person you went home with, do you? Was he worth it? Was it worth everything we have?"
Luke feels his heart throb painfully and mentally braced himself for what he was about to do. “It was worth it, because it was all about me. I was the reason I left with him. The whole night was just about me."
The laugh Noah barks out is anything but amused. It's so harsh and rough, that Luke can physically feel it scratching at him.
"I can just imagine how much the whole night was just about you. You sure as hell weren’t thinking about me last night when you left the bar with that guy. And now, after everything we’ve been through, I get the whole 'it's not you, it's me' speech?"
"If that's the way you want to take it." Luke sighs. "It means that it really is about me and nothing I say is going to change your mind about what you think I did. So why even bother?”
Luke feels his heart breaking in his chest. He can see the pain on Noah’s face, the pain he used to hide from everyone and deny was even there. The pain Noah had only recently started to show to him. Luke wants to claw the words back into his throat, but won’t let himself. Instead he dredges up the part of him that will choose words with sharp edges that dig into unprotected skin, the part of him he thought he’d finally shed when he’d accepted who he is. It scares him how quickly he can find that part of him again and shove it to the forefront.
“We’ve been here before, Noah. It's what you do. The minute I'm less than perfect, you're all over me. Between my grandmother, my mother, the rest of my family, Kevin trying to ruin my academic life, piece by piece, and me having to just ignore that, because if I lash out, I’m not the only one that takes a fall, my foundation does too, and now losing the spot on the paper that I’ve worked at getting since I knew I was going to O.U....yeah, I needed a drink. I needed to be away from everything and everyone that looks at me and just waits for me to fail. Just like you’re looking at me right now. Let’s just call a spade a spade, Noah. I’m not perfect and every time you get reminded of that, you leave. So this time, I’m not going to try to stop you. I’m not going to fight you on it. I can't do this any more. I'm exhausted and I've got nothing left."
The shock and disbelief on Noah’s face war for dominance for a second, before Luke watches the shutters come down with a crash and his features take on so much of the Colonel’s that it raises the hair on the back of Luke’s neck.
Noah opens his mouth to say something, before he seems to change his mind and instead reaches down for the duffel bag that he’d packed after the phone call letting him know of Luke’s whereabouts. Slinging the handles over his shoulder, he grabs his backpack as well and turns to face Luke. “You know what? I never expected you to be perfect. I just expected you to be more than a self pitying drunk that has to lose himself in the first available hole offered to him. Go fuck yourself, Luke.”
Luke keeps his eyes fixed on the wall opposite him as the door closes quietly and deliberately, the soft click sounding louder than a gunshot to Luke.
When the thumps of Noah going down the stairs stop and the low rumble of his truck fades into the distance, Luke finally lets himself unclench and drops down on the couch. He flinches when the frame groans in protest and a waft of Noah's scent surrounds him. Dropping his head into his hands, Luke scrubs his palms over his eyes. "Fuck."
Every part of him wants to run after Noah, to tell him what’s really going on and beg his forgiveness, but he can’t. He presses harder, until he sees pressure patterns flashing on his eyelids and the urge for tears to well over has passed. He keeps telling himself that it needed to be done, that there was no other choice. It’s one thing for his head to believe it, but the gaping cavern in his chest is telling him that the rest of his body isn’t buying it for a second.
He sits there until he feels like he’s about to tear out of his own skin. He wants to drink, he wants to crawl in bed and pull the covers over his head and he wants to die all at once. When his mind starts to formulate a plan to make that happen, he knows he needs to get out of the apartment before he does something stupid.
Getting up off the couch, Luke reaches into his bag to find his wallet and his hand brushes against an envelope and he stills. Forgetting the wallet for the moment, he pulls out the folded photocopied pages and before he can even unfold them, his stomach lurches ominously. Resting his forehead on the wall, he closes his eyes, trying to hold back the bile from rising. He throws the papers behind him, hearing them land and scatter on the kitchen table. Refusing to turn around, he stands up straight again and crouches down to his bag, pulling out his wallet and cell phone, switching it on and feeling it vibrate to life as it displays all the missed calls from Noah.
With a few key presses, he erases all of the missed call notifications and voice messages. With another key press, he’s bringing the phone up to his ear as it rings.
“What’s up, Snyder? You didn’t get enough of me last night?”
Luke’s throat closes up and he can’t force his voice past all of the emotion clawing to get out.
The joking tone is gone on the other end of the line. “Shit. You stupid ass. You did it, didn’t you?”
Luke manages to force one word out. “Help.”
“Get your coat and shoes on and go downstairs. I’m coming right now.”
Luke mechanically slides his wallet in his pocket, picks up his jacket and looks around to see where his shoes are, careful not to raise his eyes off the carpet and anywhere near the table. It’s only when he shifts his focus from the carpet to his feet that he realizes he’s still wearing his shoes. He hadn’t even had a chance to take off his shoes before...he stops that train of thought. It can only lead to a darker place than he already is. Setting the alarm, he pulls the door closed behind him. Letting go of the doorknob, he looks at it. This was the last thing Noah touched before he left. He reaches out and runs his fingertip around the rounded edges of the knob and imagines he can still feel the warmth of Noah’s touch on it.
That thought is enough for him to snatch his fingers away like they’ve been shocked and stumble down the stairs, his body wanting to shut down and push all of this as far away as he can. Like the bottom of a bottle.
He pushes out of the door and the coolness of the early morning air makes him suck in a breath. It seems like the world should have stopped, gone dark, something to reflect the fact that he’d just gutted himself and his life. He wants to scream at the beginnings of a sunny fall day that it’s not allowed to continue, that the least the universe could do is give him rain, or hail, or even better, a tsunami to drag him under and let this all mercifully end.
He’s so lost in his thoughts that when a vehicle creeps into his peripheral vision, he nearly jumps out of his skin. For a second, his heart both soars and falls at the same time at the thought that it could be Noah. Turning his head, he sees that it’s a car instead of a pickup and that a familiar set of worried eyes are looking at him.
Attempting a smile that fools no one, Luke lets himself into the car and clicks his seatbelt without a word.
“Before I go on duty, I just want to say one thing.” Luke feels a smack on the back of his head that causes him to flinch before the driver continues, “You stupid idiot! Why didn’t you tell him what was going on, instead of being a martyr?”
Luke closes his eyes and rubs his temple, the headache reaching an almost unbearable level now. “And if what was in that envelope....if they follow through? Then what? You saw it. Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
He doesn’t feel comforted that silence is his only answer.
Noah paces in front of the door, the cold morning air finally burning off under the fall sun. He knows Luke is home. His car is still parked in the lot and he can still see the faintest bit of the light from the lamp he’d left on in the living room of the apartment coming out of the window.
He’d driven back to the dorm in a haze of red that had taken him an hour of beating the heavy bag at the gym to finally calm down enough to think about all of this. He’s feeling a lot more calm now. Jittery from coffee on an empty stomach and too little sleep, but somewhere around minute thirty on the bag, the haze had cleared enough to provide some clarity and distance. He knew Luke didn’t take sex lightly. He also knew the demons that drove him to drinking were always there, just under the surface. He thought about everything that’s happened lately and the call he’d received last night. He’s still not sure who it was, just that it had led him down a garden path to thinking the worst of Luke. He also thought about what Luke had said, the fact that he’d given up so easily at Noah leaving and the words Luke had chosen to make sure Noah’s anger only got worse and clouded his thinking even more.
He runs a hand over the back of his head as he paces some more. He hadn't concentrated on the information that Luke was in the Wagon Wheel to begin with, the bar that was notorious for not bothering with I.D. and serving minors pretty much from the day they’d opened their doors. No, instead he’d done exactly what the maker of that phone call had intended and fixated on the fact that Luke left with someone, not that the someone took Luke out of a bar. He sighs and thinks that someone could have very well been helping him not self-destruct.
Shaking his head to clear it, Noah straightens his shoulders and walks with purpose towards the door, putting his key in and going up the stairs. He knows now, without a doubt, that something is going on with Luke. He pauses for a second at the top of the stairs, curling his fingers around the doorknob and listens to hear if there is any noise on the other side of it. He can hear the low murmur of the tv, but beyond that, there is nothing. Turning the key in the lock, he twists the knob and opens the door, keying in the alarm code when it starts beeping at him. “Luke?”
He heads back for the bedroom, seeing the bed still made up and turns to the bathroom, finding it empty as well. Returning to the living room, he clicks off the light and the tv, wondering where Luke has gone without his car. He looks over at the kitchen and sees Luke’s bag sitting where he’d dropped it when he’d come in that morning. Walking over to it, he sees his laptop and notebooks are inside, his ipod and the book he’d been reading are tucked beside them, but there is no sign of his wallet or phone. He puts his hand down on the table top as he stands back up, to steady himself, and paper crinkles under his grasp. He looks at the papers fanned out across the surface and gathers them together, his eyebrows furrowing and then rising in alarm as he realizes what he’s looking at.
Grasping blindly at a chair, he nearly falls into it as he stares at the papers in his hands. “Oh, Luke. Oh my god.”
Author: escapes
Rating: Just to be safe, NC 17
Pairing: Luke/Noah
Spoiler/Warning: Spoilers up through the enlistment story arc and forward
Warnings: M/M , Language
Disclaimer: Characters belong to ATWT, P&G, CBS, etc. I'm not making money from this, don't sue, etc. Author’s Notes: During the whole enlistment arc in Luke and Noah's story is when I realized that the writers of ATWT are on crack. I kept thinking that I could have done so much better with the story. So I thought about it and 30 pages of outline later, I started writing. This is the result. This is Luke and Noah’s storyline from the enlistment arc forward. How I would have liked to see it unfold.
Summary: There are consequences to your actions. Sometimes learning to live with those consequences teaches you things about yourself. Like how strong you really are.
Chapter 53
Luke blinks at Noah going on the offensive right away. "Good morning to you, too."
Noah steps closer, torn between wanting to throttle Luke and wanting to sit him down and figure out what in the hell is going on in his head. He breathes in to rein back the temper that even now makes him cringe with the reminders of the Colonel he can see in his mannerisms. Part of him also knows he's breathing in to see if he can smell alcohol on Luke. "Luke, now is not the time to be cute. Answer the question."
Swallowing around the tightness in his throat that is pressing on his stomach acid raw, overused vocal chords, Luke brings a shaky hand to rub at his forehead, feeling the pounding there start to strike up a god awful techno paced beat in his head. "I was out with a friend."
Seeing Luke rub at his forehead, Noah frowns. A hangover headache? "A friend? All night? This 'friend' know you had a boyfriend sitting in your apartment spending half the night worried that you were dead in a ditch somewhere?"
Luke internally cringes at the clipped tone and gravel in Noah's voice. He's pissed and Luke knows Noah's reaction is restrained compared to what his would be if the situation were reversed. "I’m sorry I didn’t call. I just needed...”
Noah cuts him off, running an agitated hand through his hair. “Needed what? Where were you, Luke? Tell me where the hell you've been all night! And none of this ‘with a friend’ crap!"
Luke shakes his head. "I can't. And it's not like it would make a difference to you at this point. I'm already guilty of whatever scenario you've cooked up in your head."
"You can't? You mean you won't."
Luke shakes his head, "No, I mean I can't."
"And I suppose you can't tell me where you've been when you say you're in meetings and I know damn well you're not!"
"No, I can't."
"So you admit you lied to me?"
Luke sighs. "I was in meetings. I never said they were with Nicole, or about the foundation. You just assumed they were." Luke leans his forehead against his hand and sighs. "Noah, you're going to believe what you want. I'm too tired to continue having accusations hurled at me. I'm going to bed. It's been a long night."
"You can be out all night at a....god knows where, but when it comes to fighting for what we had, you're too tired?!"
"You've already made the decision, Noah. You just said it. What we had. Past tense. You've already had my trial and convicted me, without even giving me the courtesy of being able to defend myself. You're too worked up to just be upset about me not being home last night. So why don't you tell me where you were going to say I was. It's obvious you know more than you're telling me."
Noah narrows his eyes at Luke, thinking about the phone call he’d received the night before. "You were at the Wagon Wheel. You were at a fucking bar, Luke! If that wasn't bad enough, you left with someone!"
Luke closes his eyes and goes still. Quick, he thinks, like a bandaid. He has a feeling that no matter what he does, it's going to hurt like hell. Wrapping his arms around himself, Luke meets Noah's eyes. "Yes, I was there. Yes, I left with someone."
The words hit Noah almost like a physical blow. "Who?"
"I can't tell you. It doesn't matter anyway."
'It sure as hell does! You probably don't even know the name of the person you went home with, do you? Was he worth it? Was it worth everything we have?"
Luke feels his heart throb painfully and mentally braced himself for what he was about to do. “It was worth it, because it was all about me. I was the reason I left with him. The whole night was just about me."
The laugh Noah barks out is anything but amused. It's so harsh and rough, that Luke can physically feel it scratching at him.
"I can just imagine how much the whole night was just about you. You sure as hell weren’t thinking about me last night when you left the bar with that guy. And now, after everything we’ve been through, I get the whole 'it's not you, it's me' speech?"
"If that's the way you want to take it." Luke sighs. "It means that it really is about me and nothing I say is going to change your mind about what you think I did. So why even bother?”
Luke feels his heart breaking in his chest. He can see the pain on Noah’s face, the pain he used to hide from everyone and deny was even there. The pain Noah had only recently started to show to him. Luke wants to claw the words back into his throat, but won’t let himself. Instead he dredges up the part of him that will choose words with sharp edges that dig into unprotected skin, the part of him he thought he’d finally shed when he’d accepted who he is. It scares him how quickly he can find that part of him again and shove it to the forefront.
“We’ve been here before, Noah. It's what you do. The minute I'm less than perfect, you're all over me. Between my grandmother, my mother, the rest of my family, Kevin trying to ruin my academic life, piece by piece, and me having to just ignore that, because if I lash out, I’m not the only one that takes a fall, my foundation does too, and now losing the spot on the paper that I’ve worked at getting since I knew I was going to O.U....yeah, I needed a drink. I needed to be away from everything and everyone that looks at me and just waits for me to fail. Just like you’re looking at me right now. Let’s just call a spade a spade, Noah. I’m not perfect and every time you get reminded of that, you leave. So this time, I’m not going to try to stop you. I’m not going to fight you on it. I can't do this any more. I'm exhausted and I've got nothing left."
The shock and disbelief on Noah’s face war for dominance for a second, before Luke watches the shutters come down with a crash and his features take on so much of the Colonel’s that it raises the hair on the back of Luke’s neck.
Noah opens his mouth to say something, before he seems to change his mind and instead reaches down for the duffel bag that he’d packed after the phone call letting him know of Luke’s whereabouts. Slinging the handles over his shoulder, he grabs his backpack as well and turns to face Luke. “You know what? I never expected you to be perfect. I just expected you to be more than a self pitying drunk that has to lose himself in the first available hole offered to him. Go fuck yourself, Luke.”
Luke keeps his eyes fixed on the wall opposite him as the door closes quietly and deliberately, the soft click sounding louder than a gunshot to Luke.
When the thumps of Noah going down the stairs stop and the low rumble of his truck fades into the distance, Luke finally lets himself unclench and drops down on the couch. He flinches when the frame groans in protest and a waft of Noah's scent surrounds him. Dropping his head into his hands, Luke scrubs his palms over his eyes. "Fuck."
Every part of him wants to run after Noah, to tell him what’s really going on and beg his forgiveness, but he can’t. He presses harder, until he sees pressure patterns flashing on his eyelids and the urge for tears to well over has passed. He keeps telling himself that it needed to be done, that there was no other choice. It’s one thing for his head to believe it, but the gaping cavern in his chest is telling him that the rest of his body isn’t buying it for a second.
He sits there until he feels like he’s about to tear out of his own skin. He wants to drink, he wants to crawl in bed and pull the covers over his head and he wants to die all at once. When his mind starts to formulate a plan to make that happen, he knows he needs to get out of the apartment before he does something stupid.
Getting up off the couch, Luke reaches into his bag to find his wallet and his hand brushes against an envelope and he stills. Forgetting the wallet for the moment, he pulls out the folded photocopied pages and before he can even unfold them, his stomach lurches ominously. Resting his forehead on the wall, he closes his eyes, trying to hold back the bile from rising. He throws the papers behind him, hearing them land and scatter on the kitchen table. Refusing to turn around, he stands up straight again and crouches down to his bag, pulling out his wallet and cell phone, switching it on and feeling it vibrate to life as it displays all the missed calls from Noah.
With a few key presses, he erases all of the missed call notifications and voice messages. With another key press, he’s bringing the phone up to his ear as it rings.
“What’s up, Snyder? You didn’t get enough of me last night?”
Luke’s throat closes up and he can’t force his voice past all of the emotion clawing to get out.
The joking tone is gone on the other end of the line. “Shit. You stupid ass. You did it, didn’t you?”
Luke manages to force one word out. “Help.”
“Get your coat and shoes on and go downstairs. I’m coming right now.”
Luke mechanically slides his wallet in his pocket, picks up his jacket and looks around to see where his shoes are, careful not to raise his eyes off the carpet and anywhere near the table. It’s only when he shifts his focus from the carpet to his feet that he realizes he’s still wearing his shoes. He hadn’t even had a chance to take off his shoes before...he stops that train of thought. It can only lead to a darker place than he already is. Setting the alarm, he pulls the door closed behind him. Letting go of the doorknob, he looks at it. This was the last thing Noah touched before he left. He reaches out and runs his fingertip around the rounded edges of the knob and imagines he can still feel the warmth of Noah’s touch on it.
That thought is enough for him to snatch his fingers away like they’ve been shocked and stumble down the stairs, his body wanting to shut down and push all of this as far away as he can. Like the bottom of a bottle.
He pushes out of the door and the coolness of the early morning air makes him suck in a breath. It seems like the world should have stopped, gone dark, something to reflect the fact that he’d just gutted himself and his life. He wants to scream at the beginnings of a sunny fall day that it’s not allowed to continue, that the least the universe could do is give him rain, or hail, or even better, a tsunami to drag him under and let this all mercifully end.
He’s so lost in his thoughts that when a vehicle creeps into his peripheral vision, he nearly jumps out of his skin. For a second, his heart both soars and falls at the same time at the thought that it could be Noah. Turning his head, he sees that it’s a car instead of a pickup and that a familiar set of worried eyes are looking at him.
Attempting a smile that fools no one, Luke lets himself into the car and clicks his seatbelt without a word.
“Before I go on duty, I just want to say one thing.” Luke feels a smack on the back of his head that causes him to flinch before the driver continues, “You stupid idiot! Why didn’t you tell him what was going on, instead of being a martyr?”
Luke closes his eyes and rubs his temple, the headache reaching an almost unbearable level now. “And if what was in that envelope....if they follow through? Then what? You saw it. Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing.”
He doesn’t feel comforted that silence is his only answer.
Noah paces in front of the door, the cold morning air finally burning off under the fall sun. He knows Luke is home. His car is still parked in the lot and he can still see the faintest bit of the light from the lamp he’d left on in the living room of the apartment coming out of the window.
He’d driven back to the dorm in a haze of red that had taken him an hour of beating the heavy bag at the gym to finally calm down enough to think about all of this. He’s feeling a lot more calm now. Jittery from coffee on an empty stomach and too little sleep, but somewhere around minute thirty on the bag, the haze had cleared enough to provide some clarity and distance. He knew Luke didn’t take sex lightly. He also knew the demons that drove him to drinking were always there, just under the surface. He thought about everything that’s happened lately and the call he’d received last night. He’s still not sure who it was, just that it had led him down a garden path to thinking the worst of Luke. He also thought about what Luke had said, the fact that he’d given up so easily at Noah leaving and the words Luke had chosen to make sure Noah’s anger only got worse and clouded his thinking even more.
He runs a hand over the back of his head as he paces some more. He hadn't concentrated on the information that Luke was in the Wagon Wheel to begin with, the bar that was notorious for not bothering with I.D. and serving minors pretty much from the day they’d opened their doors. No, instead he’d done exactly what the maker of that phone call had intended and fixated on the fact that Luke left with someone, not that the someone took Luke out of a bar. He sighs and thinks that someone could have very well been helping him not self-destruct.
Shaking his head to clear it, Noah straightens his shoulders and walks with purpose towards the door, putting his key in and going up the stairs. He knows now, without a doubt, that something is going on with Luke. He pauses for a second at the top of the stairs, curling his fingers around the doorknob and listens to hear if there is any noise on the other side of it. He can hear the low murmur of the tv, but beyond that, there is nothing. Turning the key in the lock, he twists the knob and opens the door, keying in the alarm code when it starts beeping at him. “Luke?”
He heads back for the bedroom, seeing the bed still made up and turns to the bathroom, finding it empty as well. Returning to the living room, he clicks off the light and the tv, wondering where Luke has gone without his car. He looks over at the kitchen and sees Luke’s bag sitting where he’d dropped it when he’d come in that morning. Walking over to it, he sees his laptop and notebooks are inside, his ipod and the book he’d been reading are tucked beside them, but there is no sign of his wallet or phone. He puts his hand down on the table top as he stands back up, to steady himself, and paper crinkles under his grasp. He looks at the papers fanned out across the surface and gathers them together, his eyebrows furrowing and then rising in alarm as he realizes what he’s looking at.
Grasping blindly at a chair, he nearly falls into it as he stares at the papers in his hands. “Oh, Luke. Oh my god.”