to love a beast - as the world turns - luke snyder/dr. reid oliver
The ride through the forest takes so short a time that Luke would question how long the distance truly is, if he didn’t have other things taking up the front of his brain. They crash through the last of the bracken and come into the field, streaking past the tree and up the hill. He has to get up the stairs to Faith’s room, before it’s too late. He tears into the bedroom, panting, and his mother looks as though she’s seen a ghost. Faith actually looks like a ghost against the bedclothes, her skin is sickly and lifeless, waxy like a doll crafted to look like Luke’s sister.
“Luke, What-“
Luke shakes his head, still out of breath.
“Not now, I have- I have the antidote.”
He sits on the side of the bed, unstopping the bottle with shaking fingers and tilting Faith’s head up, encouraging her to take a sip.
It’s astonishing how quick the effect takes place; color returns to her face, and the labored breathing barely leaking from her chapped lips evens out into the slow and steady breathing of a peaceful sleep. Luke strokes back her hair gently. He can feel his mother’s eyes on him.
“He let me go,” he says before she can ask. “He has a way to…view people, from far away. I saw Faith, and everyone here, and you were all hurting so much, and-and he let me go.”
Luke realizes he is babbling, and to his dismay his eyes are welling up with tears. Thankfully his mother mistakes them for tears of relief, embracing him with a sob. He leans into her and thinks, ‘I’m home, I’m finally home.’ The twisting in his stomach does not subside.
Dinner that night is brimming over with happiness, and Luke has completely forgotten how loud everyone could be, seated around their gigantic supper table. Several toasts are made in his honor, including one by Faith, propped up on a chaise lounge not far from the group. Ethan insists on sitting right next to him, and Luke is finally able to relax, to enjoy being with his family after so long. The only thing that feels out of place is Noah, who is conspicuously absent, but Luke feels so out of sorts and overwhelmed that he barely notes it. There are just so many voices after months of quiet banter.
Luke is almost content when he wanders up to bed, sliding into his own bed clothes with a strange sense of nostalgia. Perhaps it’s the day he had, but he’s instantly dropping into the open arms of deep sleep.
-
Luke is panicking, terror like ice floes cutting through his veins as he runs as fast as his legs can possibly carry him. He feels exhausted, as he had been running without pause for miles. The forest surrounding him is overgrown but bare, branches whipping at his face as he kicks up leaves and detritus.
The voices are shouting at him, and he can’t make heads or tails of them, except he can because they are
hurryhurry runrun toolate toolate
urging him on. The stone in his hands feels as if it should literally be too much to hold, it’s burning his fingers as if he’s clutching a piece of the sun, he can hear his skin sizzling. Luke feels as if his fingers might fall open soon, because he’s lost all sensation. It takes a monumental effort, but he swings his arm up, and holds it to his chest with both hands, and it beats in time with his own heart. At least it does at first, but he can feel it slowing, feel it dying, and this terrifies Luke more than anything else.
-
Luke comes back to conscious and he is screaming. His fists are clenched to the point of pain, and he is screaming the house down. Something monstrous is clicking in his brain, and he can’t see the whole picture but he knows enough to see that something is terribly wrong, and he needs to leave now.
He can hear footsteps pounding up the stairs but by the time his father is groggily bursting through the door, Luke is pulling on pants and toeing on boots.
“Luke, are you okay?”
“Something’s wrong, Reid’s-“ the word ‘dying’ pops to his lips, and he instinctively knows that that is exactly what will happen, and it makes him sick to his stomach. “I have to do something.”
“Luke, who are you talking about?”
Luke realizes that the name means nothing to Holden, and thinks that he should have spent last night talking about his surprisingly contented captivity, but it’s too late and he needs to leave now.
The forest is overgrown and wild, and how can that be possible when Luke just came through less than twenty four hours ago? The trees all look the same and in the span of an hour, Luke is as lost as he was on the first moonlit ride to Reid’s manor.
Dusk is feeding off of Luke’s anxiety, shying away from every shadow and Luke is about to cry, because there is something he is meant to do, he just can’t articulate it. Total realization is still failing him, but he knows with the certainty of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, that if he does not make it to Reid, his beast will die.
Luke is just about to give up hope, about to curl up in the roots of the next gnarled tree, when he and his horse tumble out onto the meadow, not unlike being spat out. He looks with disbelieving eyes at the manor, it’s some strange unidentifiable color, until it hits him; it’s rusting. Luke leaves Dusk to his own devices, taking out a full bodied run of panic.
He crashes through the front door, breath bursting out of him like vomit, great hurking gasps, but he still hasn’t found Reid as he tears through each room, and that makes it worse.
Finally, he is ripping open the door to the library, and Luke almost does vomit when his eyes find the shape, contorted on the floor. There’s a fine layer of dust over everything, and the silence in the room is one made of decades. Luke skids over to him, shaking one great shoulder as violently as he can.
Reid barely stirs, eyes fluttering open and close again, and Luke tries to take heart in the fact that he moves at all.
“Oh, late as always,” the Beast rasps, and the weak chuckle makes Luke’s throat hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Luke says, and he tries to pull that monstrous head into his lap, even though there’s so damn much of it.
“Shut up, it’s my own damn fault,” Reid argues, well, as best as he can laid prone on the floor with his life running out of him. “…said I had poison in my veins, in my heart, so a little more wouldn’t kill me too quickly,” he gurgles, and Luke has tunnel vision and everything hurts and oh god please no
and then everything snaps together, as if every confusing dream is choosing now to make sense. Luke takes a long low breath.
With the wisdom borne of a spell, Luke calmly reaches out, his hands passing through Reid’s chest as if it were not more substantial than air. However sure Luke’s fingers, his voice is full of shock, and childlike wonder.
“I love you.”
Then he is sure, purposeful.
“I love you.”
His hands close over Reid’s heart. He can feel how weakly it pulses.
slug
slug
slug
but he says no, no you will not
slug
slug
slug
Luke’s fingers find something. Something he wants to recoil away from, something that makes his flesh crawl. Yet still, for spell-logic says he must, he tugs it out gingerly, pulling it free of Reid’s chest. It’s a shard of stone, appearing to be something like obsidian, and the colors swirl sickeningly like oil on water. Just holding it makes Luke feel ill, and he throws it down, watching it shatter on the floor.
Feeling utterly exhausted, Luke sinks down. With his head pillowed on Reid’s chest, mesmerized by his deep breaths, he feels himself slipping away into oblivion. He does not dream.
When Luke awakens sometime later, blunt fingertips are rubbing circles on his temple, and Luke smiles blearily and leans into it for a moment before-
Luke sits up; blinking sleep out of his eyes and staring at the man he has been curled up against. He’s slender, with a long torso, though the outlines of his body are hard to see from the shirt and trousers practically drowning his frame.
The man rises up on his elbows, and his face is intensely masculine and angular, his hair wavy and auburn with a little grey at the temples. His expression is amusement, and he quirks an eyebrow over his bright blue eyes, and Luke knows.
He throws his arms around Reid’s neck with a cry of astonished delight.
“Oh my God! You’re-“
“A stupid human?” Reid finishes, and how much higher his voice is pitched makes Luke laugh, relief making him almost dizzy.
“So I don’t know if you heard me earlier, but I love you,” Luke says solemnly.
“Well I don’t know if you remember, I may have mentioned it before, but I love you too,” Luke quips, and Luke’s laughing and kissing him and laughing. He presses his lips to Reid’s fervently, and his heart pitter-patters with love and want as he feels Reid’s sharp intake of breath, arms circling Luke as if he might vanish. Minutes pass, and then Luke eases back.
“Alright, explain.”
Reid rolls his eyes, and begins.
“Once upon a time, a very capable, intelligent, and devilishly handsome healer,” and here Luke laughs again, “Was assaulted by a sorcerer who seemed to think this healer had poison in his veins, and a heart of stone. He pointed a finger at this healer and called him a beast.”
“Does this healer have a name, perhaps something like Reid?” Luke asks slyly.
“Shh, you’re interrupting my flow. So the finger was pointed, and the healer was turned into a hideous monster. The terms of the enchantment were that if someone could take the stone from his heart, and if someone could love him before the stone poisoned his body, he would be returned to human form.”
“How long did you have to wait?” Luke asks, toying with the collar that now gave the overlarge shirt a deep vee, exposing an inviting amount of skin.
“Something like a hundred years,” Reid says airily, and Luke stares at him. “I’m a very old beast.”
“No,” says Luke, combing his fingers through Reid’s hair, “you’ve always been human.”
FIN.
Epilogue-
Later on, much later on, Luke and his healer went back to Snyder farm, where they first encountered Noah and the messenger who had brought news of Luke’s father in an embrace, high in the oak tree. After Noah nearly fell from the tree, and Luke laughed himself silly, they all went up to the farmhouse.
The situation took much explanation, and though Holden and Reid never did quite see eye to eye, eventually an arrangement was agreed upon.
“They’re ready for you!” Faith sings out, adjusting the rose tucked into her hair. Noah looked vaguely nauseated, and Reid attempted to give him a manly back pat of solidarity.
“I saw him earlier, he looked very happy,” Reid intones. “You know, in that dopey way of his.”
“Hey,” Noah protests weakly, finally finding a smile. He looks thoughtfully at Reid for a moment, before pulling him into an abrupt hug. “Of all the assholes Luke could have picked, I’m glad he picked you.”
“Duly noted,” Reid drawls, hugging back for a moment before moving away. “We should probably get out there before we’re murdered by our fiancées.”
Noah laughs, yanking open the front door of the farmhouse, the sunlight temporarily blinding them both as they trot toward the large crowd of people assembled on the lawn. The only thing that might rival the sun for brightness is the smiles on their future husbands’ faces.
“Luke, What-“
Luke shakes his head, still out of breath.
“Not now, I have- I have the antidote.”
He sits on the side of the bed, unstopping the bottle with shaking fingers and tilting Faith’s head up, encouraging her to take a sip.
It’s astonishing how quick the effect takes place; color returns to her face, and the labored breathing barely leaking from her chapped lips evens out into the slow and steady breathing of a peaceful sleep. Luke strokes back her hair gently. He can feel his mother’s eyes on him.
“He let me go,” he says before she can ask. “He has a way to…view people, from far away. I saw Faith, and everyone here, and you were all hurting so much, and-and he let me go.”
Luke realizes he is babbling, and to his dismay his eyes are welling up with tears. Thankfully his mother mistakes them for tears of relief, embracing him with a sob. He leans into her and thinks, ‘I’m home, I’m finally home.’ The twisting in his stomach does not subside.
Dinner that night is brimming over with happiness, and Luke has completely forgotten how loud everyone could be, seated around their gigantic supper table. Several toasts are made in his honor, including one by Faith, propped up on a chaise lounge not far from the group. Ethan insists on sitting right next to him, and Luke is finally able to relax, to enjoy being with his family after so long. The only thing that feels out of place is Noah, who is conspicuously absent, but Luke feels so out of sorts and overwhelmed that he barely notes it. There are just so many voices after months of quiet banter.
Luke is almost content when he wanders up to bed, sliding into his own bed clothes with a strange sense of nostalgia. Perhaps it’s the day he had, but he’s instantly dropping into the open arms of deep sleep.
-
Luke is panicking, terror like ice floes cutting through his veins as he runs as fast as his legs can possibly carry him. He feels exhausted, as he had been running without pause for miles. The forest surrounding him is overgrown but bare, branches whipping at his face as he kicks up leaves and detritus.
The voices are shouting at him, and he can’t make heads or tails of them, except he can because they are
hurryhurry runrun toolate toolate
urging him on. The stone in his hands feels as if it should literally be too much to hold, it’s burning his fingers as if he’s clutching a piece of the sun, he can hear his skin sizzling. Luke feels as if his fingers might fall open soon, because he’s lost all sensation. It takes a monumental effort, but he swings his arm up, and holds it to his chest with both hands, and it beats in time with his own heart. At least it does at first, but he can feel it slowing, feel it dying, and this terrifies Luke more than anything else.
-
Luke comes back to conscious and he is screaming. His fists are clenched to the point of pain, and he is screaming the house down. Something monstrous is clicking in his brain, and he can’t see the whole picture but he knows enough to see that something is terribly wrong, and he needs to leave now.
He can hear footsteps pounding up the stairs but by the time his father is groggily bursting through the door, Luke is pulling on pants and toeing on boots.
“Luke, are you okay?”
“Something’s wrong, Reid’s-“ the word ‘dying’ pops to his lips, and he instinctively knows that that is exactly what will happen, and it makes him sick to his stomach. “I have to do something.”
“Luke, who are you talking about?”
Luke realizes that the name means nothing to Holden, and thinks that he should have spent last night talking about his surprisingly contented captivity, but it’s too late and he needs to leave now.
The forest is overgrown and wild, and how can that be possible when Luke just came through less than twenty four hours ago? The trees all look the same and in the span of an hour, Luke is as lost as he was on the first moonlit ride to Reid’s manor.
Dusk is feeding off of Luke’s anxiety, shying away from every shadow and Luke is about to cry, because there is something he is meant to do, he just can’t articulate it. Total realization is still failing him, but he knows with the certainty of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, that if he does not make it to Reid, his beast will die.
Luke is just about to give up hope, about to curl up in the roots of the next gnarled tree, when he and his horse tumble out onto the meadow, not unlike being spat out. He looks with disbelieving eyes at the manor, it’s some strange unidentifiable color, until it hits him; it’s rusting. Luke leaves Dusk to his own devices, taking out a full bodied run of panic.
He crashes through the front door, breath bursting out of him like vomit, great hurking gasps, but he still hasn’t found Reid as he tears through each room, and that makes it worse.
Finally, he is ripping open the door to the library, and Luke almost does vomit when his eyes find the shape, contorted on the floor. There’s a fine layer of dust over everything, and the silence in the room is one made of decades. Luke skids over to him, shaking one great shoulder as violently as he can.
Reid barely stirs, eyes fluttering open and close again, and Luke tries to take heart in the fact that he moves at all.
“Oh, late as always,” the Beast rasps, and the weak chuckle makes Luke’s throat hurt.
“I’m sorry,” Luke says, and he tries to pull that monstrous head into his lap, even though there’s so damn much of it.
“Shut up, it’s my own damn fault,” Reid argues, well, as best as he can laid prone on the floor with his life running out of him. “…said I had poison in my veins, in my heart, so a little more wouldn’t kill me too quickly,” he gurgles, and Luke has tunnel vision and everything hurts and oh god please no
and then everything snaps together, as if every confusing dream is choosing now to make sense. Luke takes a long low breath.
With the wisdom borne of a spell, Luke calmly reaches out, his hands passing through Reid’s chest as if it were not more substantial than air. However sure Luke’s fingers, his voice is full of shock, and childlike wonder.
“I love you.”
Then he is sure, purposeful.
“I love you.”
His hands close over Reid’s heart. He can feel how weakly it pulses.
slug
slug
slug
but he says no, no you will not
slug
slug
slug
Luke’s fingers find something. Something he wants to recoil away from, something that makes his flesh crawl. Yet still, for spell-logic says he must, he tugs it out gingerly, pulling it free of Reid’s chest. It’s a shard of stone, appearing to be something like obsidian, and the colors swirl sickeningly like oil on water. Just holding it makes Luke feel ill, and he throws it down, watching it shatter on the floor.
Feeling utterly exhausted, Luke sinks down. With his head pillowed on Reid’s chest, mesmerized by his deep breaths, he feels himself slipping away into oblivion. He does not dream.
When Luke awakens sometime later, blunt fingertips are rubbing circles on his temple, and Luke smiles blearily and leans into it for a moment before-
Luke sits up; blinking sleep out of his eyes and staring at the man he has been curled up against. He’s slender, with a long torso, though the outlines of his body are hard to see from the shirt and trousers practically drowning his frame.
The man rises up on his elbows, and his face is intensely masculine and angular, his hair wavy and auburn with a little grey at the temples. His expression is amusement, and he quirks an eyebrow over his bright blue eyes, and Luke knows.
He throws his arms around Reid’s neck with a cry of astonished delight.
“Oh my God! You’re-“
“A stupid human?” Reid finishes, and how much higher his voice is pitched makes Luke laugh, relief making him almost dizzy.
“So I don’t know if you heard me earlier, but I love you,” Luke says solemnly.
“Well I don’t know if you remember, I may have mentioned it before, but I love you too,” Luke quips, and Luke’s laughing and kissing him and laughing. He presses his lips to Reid’s fervently, and his heart pitter-patters with love and want as he feels Reid’s sharp intake of breath, arms circling Luke as if he might vanish. Minutes pass, and then Luke eases back.
“Alright, explain.”
Reid rolls his eyes, and begins.
“Once upon a time, a very capable, intelligent, and devilishly handsome healer,” and here Luke laughs again, “Was assaulted by a sorcerer who seemed to think this healer had poison in his veins, and a heart of stone. He pointed a finger at this healer and called him a beast.”
“Does this healer have a name, perhaps something like Reid?” Luke asks slyly.
“Shh, you’re interrupting my flow. So the finger was pointed, and the healer was turned into a hideous monster. The terms of the enchantment were that if someone could take the stone from his heart, and if someone could love him before the stone poisoned his body, he would be returned to human form.”
“How long did you have to wait?” Luke asks, toying with the collar that now gave the overlarge shirt a deep vee, exposing an inviting amount of skin.
“Something like a hundred years,” Reid says airily, and Luke stares at him. “I’m a very old beast.”
“No,” says Luke, combing his fingers through Reid’s hair, “you’ve always been human.”
FIN.
Epilogue-
Later on, much later on, Luke and his healer went back to Snyder farm, where they first encountered Noah and the messenger who had brought news of Luke’s father in an embrace, high in the oak tree. After Noah nearly fell from the tree, and Luke laughed himself silly, they all went up to the farmhouse.
The situation took much explanation, and though Holden and Reid never did quite see eye to eye, eventually an arrangement was agreed upon.
“They’re ready for you!” Faith sings out, adjusting the rose tucked into her hair. Noah looked vaguely nauseated, and Reid attempted to give him a manly back pat of solidarity.
“I saw him earlier, he looked very happy,” Reid intones. “You know, in that dopey way of his.”
“Hey,” Noah protests weakly, finally finding a smile. He looks thoughtfully at Reid for a moment, before pulling him into an abrupt hug. “Of all the assholes Luke could have picked, I’m glad he picked you.”
“Duly noted,” Reid drawls, hugging back for a moment before moving away. “We should probably get out there before we’re murdered by our fiancées.”
Noah laughs, yanking open the front door of the farmhouse, the sunlight temporarily blinding them both as they trot toward the large crowd of people assembled on the lawn. The only thing that might rival the sun for brightness is the smiles on their future husbands’ faces.