The Big Picute; Chapter 9
Chapter 8
http://community.livejournal.com/lure_atwt/1536160.html
A/N1: Just a bit of fluff with a dash of Angus angst thrown in at the end. I made some references that may need explaining. Check at the end of the chapter if there is something you find wonky.
Chapter Nine
“Do it!”
“No. I’m not gonna bend on this, Luke.”
“Please. Just once. I’ll never ask you again. I promise.” Luke bounced on his knees, hands folded beneath his chin.
Shaking his head, Reid relented. “Enjoy this Mr. Snyder. It will never happen again.” He cleared his throat. Reid held his breath, but one look at Luke’s face and he burst out into laughter. “I can’t do it. Not while you’re staring at me.”
“I’ll close my eyes.”
“That doesn’t do anything about that cheesy-ass grin of yours.” Placing his hand over Luke’s face, Reid took another deep breath. “Pahk ya cah in Hahvad Yahd.”
Luke tackled Reid to the bed. “Oh, yeah, baby! I love that Boston accent. Tell me how the Sox are wicked awesome.”
“Your ass is wicked awesome.” Reid reached up for a kiss, but Luke turned his head.
“Gimme a sec.” Luke struggled against Reid’s strong grip.
“Give me a kiss.”
“No! I have morning breath.” Luke blushed and bit his lips together tightly.
Reid brushed back Luke’s hair and let his fingers fall along his face. “And I have the ability to overlook it.”
Someday, none too soon he hoped, Luke would be able to kiss Reid without losing his breath. As their lips formed a perfect union, he sighed softly through his nose. Luke was like putty in Reid’s hands as they slid slowly down his back.
Floating gently back to Earth, Luke laid his head on Reid’s chest and listened to the soothing rhythm of his heartbeat. “Our first day without filming. What do you want to do?”
“Feel like living dangerously?” Reid waggled his eyebrows. “I was thinking you could show me around Elmdale.”
“Oakdale.”
“Oakhell?”
Luke laughed and snuggled along Reid’s side. “You are such a Costal Snob! If it’s between New York and LA, you think it’s full of hillbillies sleeping with their sisters.”
“So, there are no kissing cousins in your family tree?”
Before thinking, Luke blurted out. “None blood related.”
Reid sat up straight as though electrically charged. “Oh my god! I was kidding! When we’re out today, if I hear that music from Deliverance, it’s every man for himself.”
Luke gasped in mock horror. “You’d leave me?”
“I’d knock you down if I had to.”
Flopping on his back, Luke held the back of his hand to his forehead like a swooning damsel. “Chivalry is dead.”
“My appetite is not. Come on.” Reid hopped off the bed and patted Luke’s thigh. “Get dressed, brush your teeth and call Jack. Tell him to bring his gun.”
Reid thoroughly enjoyed the ride into Olde Town. Jack regaled him with plenty of stories involving the misadventures of a young Luke Snyder. He stored them away for future teasing.
“Shut up, Jack! So, I peed my pants. I was seven and you scared the shit out of me.”
“Um, piss.” Reid looked completely serious. “He scared the piss out of you, if we’re being accurate.”
Luke tried to fight the smile threatening to break across his face. Jack had begun another embarrassing tale. Luke felt it was safe to whisper. “Oh, you’re so gonna get it tonight.”
Tonguing the corner of his mouth, Reid let his eyes slide down, then back up, Luke’s body. “I’m counting on it.”
Jack parked in front of Al‘s Diner. He exited the car with a fierce look and his hand on his holster. “Okay, guys. You can get out. Perimeter is safe.”
Luke slapped his shoulder. “You can relax. I think we’ll be fine.”
“Then, why did you want me to bring the gun?”
Reid called back over his shoulder as he held the door open for Luke. “Banjo players.”
Breakfast took three hours. Once Luke began with questions on his quest to discover the real Reid Oliver, there was no end in sight. To his surprise, Reid answered them all.
“Are you close with your parents?”
“No.” Reid shoveled scrambled eggs into his mouth, not sounding upset at all. “We had a bit of a falling out over the money I made when I was a kid.”
“You were in your first movie at sixteen.”
Reid smirked. Luke made it easy to forget, but he wasn’t just some guy Reid knew. He was also a fan. “Yeah, but I did commercials, local theater, stuff like that since I was ten.”
“What got you started?”
“My Uncle Angus teaches an acting class in the basement of a learning annex in New York. The summer after my tenth birthday, my parents shipped me off to stay with him.”
Luke’s head fell to this side as he smiled. “Did you want to be just like him?”
“My uncle is a drunken bastard with a terrible mean streak. This one time, he wanted us to audition together for some cereal commercial with a father and son. We were running lines after his class and I had to look down at the script. He ripped it from my hand. Sliced me open pretty good.” Reid held up his palm for Luke to inspect. “You can still see the scar.”
Rubbing his thumb across the streak of faded pink marring Reid’s life line, Luke wondered what other scars, visible or not, he carried. “I’m so sorry.”
Reid shrugged. “It made me stronger. I realized he’s only a man with dreams far greater than his talent. I told myself that I had to be an actor and, if I was going to do it, I was determined to be the best anyone had ever seen. Needless to say, I got the part. He didn’t.”
“So, that’s how it started.”
“Yep.” Reid finished the coffee in his cup. “About a year later, my parents moved us to LA. I had my first job by the end of the week and the rest is history.”
Luke glanced at his phone and was shocked by the time. “We’ve been here awhile. We’d better go. What to you want to do next?”
“Would you be terribly upset if we went back to the house?”
“Had enough of the common folk for one day?”
“Now who’s the snob?” Reid wadded up a napkin and sent it sailing at Luke’s head. “No, it’s nothing like that. I was thinking we could finish our talk.”
“Really?”
“I don’t do things half-way, Luke. You want to know me, you know it all. Besides, I’d like to hear some more about you. As long as it doesn’t involve urine.”
A/N2: ‘Park your car in Harvard Yard.’ is a favorite, at least among Midwesterners, to have people from Boston say to really accentuate their accent. It doesn’t look as pretty phonetically, but still makes me chuckle. Deliverance was a freaky little flick that probably did irreparable damage to the rafting industry in the south. Long story short, guys are kidnapped by some backwoods locals. Accompanied by twangy banjo music, said locals have their way with poor Ned Beatty. I think that about covers it.