Rota Fortunae (18/?)
Another update!
Title: Rota Fortunae (18/?)
Author: ladysalieri
Rating: PG-13, but we're getting somewhere!
Warnings: Only the incredibly slow pace of my updating!
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18
=====
Several hours later, Reid was back in his hotel room, carelessly stuffing clothing into a thin canvas duffel bag he’d picked up in Oakdale’s only twenty-four hour convenience store.
Realizing the timer on the mysterious device was still hours away from reaching zero, Katie and Reid had been able to take action without causing a panic. Katie had found a safe place to call her sister Margo while Reid had cleared the wing of its skeleton staff with a bit of deflection and a few barked orders. Shortly after the wing was vacated, Oakdale PD’s dedicated explosives team-and did he even want to know why a town the size of Oakdale had a dedicated explosives team?-had arrived, and while Reid and Katie watched along with the Chief of Police at a suitable distance, the team had proceeded to make short work of dismantling the device.
“Looks like someone took advantage of the small night staff to plant this thing,” the grizzled head of the bomb squad had told Margo, holding up the disconnected digital display, “but it wasn’t set to blow until morning. Pretty nasty piece of work too, professional. Could have brought down this entire section of the building.”
“Dr. Oliver,” Margo had prompted, “your office is….?”
“In another wing, but the new call system is set to be installed this morning.” Reid had shaken his head with a helpless frustration. “Anyone might have guessed I planned to be here.”
That had been the calm before the storm, as inevitably word had leaked through the hospital that another attempt had been made on Reid’s life. It hadn’t been long before a crowd of natives had descended on the small group, some chattering with a mixture of excitement and fear, others gawking openly at Reid as if unsure whether to view him as a victim or a threat. Still others had been more direct-like Chris Hughes, ranting to all who would listen that this was Reid’s fault, and how his presence had put the whole hospital… the whole town… at risk. Katie had silenced her husband with a furious rebuke, but it hadn’t taken Junior Hughes’s grasp of the obvious to help Reid make the necessary decision.
Reid stepped into the room’s tiny bathroom and gathered up his razor and a few other toiletries. He didn’t have a travel case for his toothbrush, but he didn’t want the thing sharing a bag with his dirty socks anyway, so he figured he’d pick up a replacement when he got where he was going.
Reid tossed his unread copy of JNS: Spine into the canvas bag and zipped the bag shut, then pulled his coat from the back of a nearby chair-just as a loud rapping echoed on the door to his hotel room. Reid glanced at the door in surprise; from the open shade on his window, he could clearly see that the sky bore no hint of a rising sun, and the clock on his nightstand confirmed that it was just past 5:00 in the morning.
Reid hesitated for a moment, then dropped his belongings on his unmade bad and moved forward with a mental shrug, to approach and open the door.
It was Luke Snyder, looking every bit as sleepless and distraught and utterly miserable as Reid felt.
“You don’t just get to do that,” the younger man announced, by way of a greeting. He pushed past Reid with a determined stride, entering the room and turning to face Reid with an angry glare. “You don’t just get to kiss me and…”
Reid gave a humorless laugh. “You’ve already made that abundantly clear, Mr. Snyder. Now, if you’ll…”
But Luke continued on as if uninterrupted. “You don’t just get to kiss me and then say we should stay away from each other. You don’t have the right to decide that for both of us! Who do you think you are?”
For a second, Reid leaned his forehead against the side of the open door, his eyes closing for a moment. “Luke,” he began wearily, “I thought I was giving you what you….”
“You see, this is what you always do!” Luke said, cutting off the explanation. “The minute things get a little messy, don’t go the way you expect, you’re so quick to pull back and try to cut me out, like I’m some kind of tumor you can just remove from your life!”
Now it was Reid’s turn to be livid. He slammed the hotel door shut, not caring how many neighbors he might be jarring from their sleep. “Now, there’s where you’re mistaken,” he shot back, pointing an accusatory finger at Luke. “I don’t always do anything when it comes to you, and you’d know that too, if you could just get it through your head that I have nothing to do with the goddamn Reid Oliver you’re still in love with.”
“I know you don’t!” Luke fired back.
“Like hell,” Reid snapped, turning away to snatch up the handles of his loosely stuffed duffel bag.
When he turned back around, Luke was looking around the empty hotel room in dismay. “You’re… you’re leaving?!” he cried out. “Right now?!”
“Right now,” Reid confirmed. “Believe me, I’ve stayed well past my welcome here.” He picked up his coat and patted its pockets in search of his wallet, before eyeing a corner of it in the folds of the bed sheets.
“But you can’t!” Luke said, his voice growing sharper with agitation. “You-you've got a life here, friends, people who care about you! You can’t just run away from us like…”
“I’m not running away from anyone!” Reid snapped, shoving his wallet in a back pocket and picking his coat up in his free hand.
“Really? Because that’s not how it looks to…”
“Someone planted a bomb in the neuro wing!” Reid cried.
Luke stared at him blankly for a moment, blinking rapidly as if his mind was having trouble assimilating the unexpected turn in the conversation. “W-what?” he stammered finally, rushing toward Reid with concern. “A bomb? Are you okay? W-was anyone hurt?”
Reid waved him off. “No, but the point is, someone could have been. There could have been dozens of people in the area when it exploded. Katie could have been hurt, you could have been hurt. As long as I’m here in this town, I put all of you in danger.”
“B-but what about you? You can’t just assume they’ll stop, just because you’ve left Oakdale.”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take,” Reid said flatly. “Anyway, they’ll have to find me first, and that will be quite a feat, since even I don’t even know where I’m going yet.”
The shake of Luke’s head from side to side seemed more instinctive than intentional. “No,” he said finally, reaching out to tug at the bag in Reid’s hands. “No, I won’t let you leave; I’m not going to lose you like this.”
“Lose what?” Reid snapped, pulling his bag from Luke’s grip. "I'm not your friend, I'm not your family, and I'm sure as hell not your lover. What exactly do you think you're going to lose?"
Luke gave Reid a befuddled look. “You’re… we're… I have feelings for you!” he blurted out awkwardly. “I-I don’t know what we are; you confuse me-but we’re something, and I don’t want you to lose you before we have the chance to…”
Reid cut him off with a moan of frustration. “How can you have feelings for me when you don’t even see me?” he roared. “You’re just…" Reid took a shuddering breath to calm himself, then went on with a quiet intensity. "All I am to you is a substitute for your Reid. I look like him, and I sound like him, and maybe you see things in me that you loved about him, but Luke, those parts of him are never going to be enough for you, all right? I don’t have his memories, I don’t have his history with you, and I’m not the same person-not really. There’s always going to be some difference, some situation where I’ll react differently or say something he wouldn’t, and it’ll remind you all over again that the man you loved is gone. I’m not him, Luke; I’m not the one you want-and the sooner I leave, the sooner you can move on before we both forget who we are.”
Reid’s eyes made one final sweep of the room, avoiding Luke’s gaze as the older man sought to confirm that none of his meager possessions had escaped attention in his headlong rush to pack. None detected, Reid snatched up the canvas bag again and turned blindly towards the door to make his escape.
“You tap your left hand against your leg,” Luke called after him suddenly.
Reid turned his head to look back at Luke, his eyebrow furrowing in confusion at the apparent non sequitur.
Luke hastened to explain. “You have this nervous habit that gives you away when you’re feeling uncomfortable,” he said, “but you tap your hand against your thigh and he used to twitch his wrist or drum his fingers on his thumb.” He dropped his left hand to give a visual demonstration of the motion. “And he hated that shirt you’re wearing right now. It was a gift from Katie,” he went on anxiously, “so he held onto it, but he wouldn’t even try it on for her. He said he didn’t care how crazy the rest of this town was, there was no way he was going to walk around dressed like a giant leprechaun.”
Reid looked down at his sweater-which was warm and comfortable and obviously well-made, yet undoubtedly a rather vivid shade of kelly green-and shrugged at the comparison. “Luke…”
“And another thing, you style your hair differently. Your hair’s so short, it’s not very noticeable, but you keep your sideburns cut differently and your hair’s a little longer at the neck." Luke took a step closer. "You drink more coffee in one morning than he did in a week, and… and you don’t put crackers on your chili, and you never, ever leave your lab coat unbuttoned, no matter how stuffy it gets inside.”
“All you're doing is proving my point, Mr. Snyder,” Reid said, his voice thick with hurt.
But Luke shook his head in denial. “You said I see him in you, and you’re right-I do see him,” he agreed. “I see his genius, I see his temper, and now I see his willingness to protect the people he cares about, even if means putting himself at risk. I’m just trying to show you that’s not all I see in you. You aren’t the same person, I know that-and it’s not just the little stuff, either. You-you’re not as arrogant as he was, for one thing.” Luke gave a slightly strained chuckle at Reid’s look of patent disbelief. “Don’t get me wrong; when it comes to medicine, you’re both convinced you’re the greatest thing going. But Reid was so used to the special treatment he got because of his abilities, he never even seemed to notice how much others did to assist him. The other day, Gretchen Saub stopped me in the hall to tell me you’d thanked her for bringing you a prep kit from the supply cabinet, like it was some kind of miracle… and to her, maybe it was: the great Reid Oliver, paying a bit of attention to a lowly nurse.”
Reid couldn’t help but give a sniff of contempt. “When that idiot actually gets something right, it’s worth a bit of attention. I only thanked her because I didn’t have time to schedule a parade.”
Luke smiled ruefully. “Okay, so maybe you’re still a long way from having any normal social interaction,” he noted. “But you seem so much more aware that there are actual people out there, not just brains to be fixed and hands to be put to good use. And… and maybe it’s because of what happened to you where you came from, but you seem more willing to reach out to the people around you, try to connect with them. There were a few people in Oakdale Reid cared about, but even with them he never had the patience for small talk, and he could never spare much time just to be with them. In the short time you’ve been here, you already know more about Katie’s old boyfriends and… and Bob’s hopes for Memorial than Reid ever knew.”
Luke moved even closer and reached out to lay an imploring hand on Reid’s arm. “What I’m trying to say is-you’re him but you’re you, you know? There’s… I see so much about you that I lo-… so much that’s the same and different about you, and I want the chance to learn all of those things; I do. I know it’s not… it’s too soon, I’m still hurting, and I can’t… it’s not fair for me to ask when I’m not ready to… when I can’t make any promises, but I…” Luke took a deep breath, as if taking a moment to focus in on the essence of his somewhat inarticulate explanation. “I just don’t want you to leave, okay? Please don’t leave, Reid. Please.”
Reid dropped his belongings on the floor and turned to face Luke again, his heart racing with fear. “How can… I can’t… you can’t ask me to do that!” he exclaimed. “I have my work, my career; I… There must be a million different reasons why it’s stupid for me to even think about staying here, and I don’t make stupid decisions, so how can you ask me to make one when I don’t even… I don’t….”
He broke off suddenly, feeling the ache of too many unexpressed emotions tightening in his throat. He could feel himself shaking from the opposing forces at work in him: despair and hope, faith and pessimism, the urge to flee and the equally powerful desire never to tear his eyes away from the sight of Luke's expressive face.
Luke raised his hand from Reid’s arm to cup his cheek, his brown eyes liquid with feeling. “Don’t what, Reid?” he prompted softly. “Don’t what?”
Reid’s voice escaped in a harsh whisper. “I don’t know if I can be what you want,” he confessed.
Luke brought his other hand up to rest against Reid’s cheek, his brown eyes searching Reid’s intently. For a few breathless heartbeats, he lingered there, the warmth of his finger pads radiating along Reid’s skin, before the younger man’s eyes grew heavy and he leaned forward.
Slow as the movement was, the lingering brush of Luke’s lips against his sent a shudder of surprise through Reid’s body. He pulled back with a gasp, and Luke flashed a searing look up at Reid’s eyes before pressing forward again. Luke’s hands slid around the base of Reid’s neck, holding the older man still, while Luke’s lips and teeth teased at Reid’s bottom lip. As Reid opened his mouth yet further, Luke’s tongue slipped inside to slide languorously against Reid’s, and a battery of taste and sensation exploded in Reid’s senses.
Reid’s body was at war with his mind. The utter euphoria of Luke’s solid body against him, the feel of lips and breath and closeness he’d been craving for what seemed like eternity hammered the remote corner of his mind that still begged Reid to remember that this was no less of a bad idea than it had been five minutes, five days, five weeks ago.
As if sensing the lingering uncertainty in Reid’s kiss, Luke’s hands fell from Reid’s face to land on his collar, clenching in the collar of Reid’s sweater and undershirt as if to hold him there with all his might. His tongue nudged Reid’s coyly, in a mute encouragement for Reid to join him in the moment, to meet passion with passion. It was all Reid’s mind needed to signal its surrender.
With a growl of aggression that wouldn’t have seemed misplaced on a starving bear, Reid surged to take control of the kiss, grasping Luke’s head between his hands and carding his fingers roughly through Luke’s luxuriously thick hair. His tongue chased after Luke’s, following it back to sample the moist cavern of his mouth.
God, this was exactly what he wanted-had wanted since the day Luke Snyder had stepped into that hospital conference room and skewered him with a look of utter revulsion. Reid had fought the need, denied it, mislabeled it as a detached interest in establishing his identity-but the truth was, he’d seen a glimmer of the heaven some other Reid Oliver had found in Luke’s embrace and he had ached to experience it for himself.
As one hand held Luke’s head at the perfect angle, Reid’s other hand slid down the younger man’s chest to lift the hem of his shirt and feel the warm skin beneath. At the same time, Reid shifted his weight forward, guiding Luke back into the room in a mindless search of a more welcoming surface to explore this incredible new connection.
But as the edge of Reid’s bed brushed the back of Luke’s knees, the younger man went suddenly stiff. Tearing himself from the kiss with a small murmur of pain, Luke leaned forward to rest his cheek against Reid’s, his chest rising and falling with swift gasps for air.
The sound called Reid sharply back to his own senses, and he felt a stab of guilt at moving too fast-pushing for more than the younger man was ready to give. Shaking his head at his uncharacteristic loss of control, Reid lowered his hands to rest in a more neutral place at Luke’s waist and angled his lower body away to provide a few inches of distance between them. “Too much?” Reid asked gruffly, willing his body to just calm down.
His face still pressed up alongside Reid’s, Luke gave a silent nod.
Reid nodded his understanding, closing his eyes again to focus on his breathing, to cool the blood pounding in his veins and replace the burning desire for more with a quiet enjoyment of the moment-the tickle of Luke’s hair against his jaw, the clean smell of his skin, and the warmth of a tenderness he’d never felt for another creature… not in this universe or any other.
“It’s okay,” Reid said softly, “we can take as much time as you need.” He sighed, then with the measured tone of someone speaking with complete, unwavering certainty: “I’m not going anywhere.”
Luke seemed not so much to step forward but to flow, sliding his hands around Reid’s waist and up in a liquid motion to clutch at Reid’s shoulder blades, pulling the older man tightly against him. “Good,” he whispered into Reid’s hair.
Reid closed his own arms around Luke, completing the full body hug, and lowered his head to the younger man’s shoulder, turning slightly to bury a smile of true happiness in the curve of Luke Snyder’s neck.
=====
Title: Rota Fortunae (18/?)
Author: ladysalieri
Rating: PG-13, but we're getting somewhere!
Warnings: Only the incredibly slow pace of my updating!
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18
=====
Several hours later, Reid was back in his hotel room, carelessly stuffing clothing into a thin canvas duffel bag he’d picked up in Oakdale’s only twenty-four hour convenience store.
Realizing the timer on the mysterious device was still hours away from reaching zero, Katie and Reid had been able to take action without causing a panic. Katie had found a safe place to call her sister Margo while Reid had cleared the wing of its skeleton staff with a bit of deflection and a few barked orders. Shortly after the wing was vacated, Oakdale PD’s dedicated explosives team-and did he even want to know why a town the size of Oakdale had a dedicated explosives team?-had arrived, and while Reid and Katie watched along with the Chief of Police at a suitable distance, the team had proceeded to make short work of dismantling the device.
“Looks like someone took advantage of the small night staff to plant this thing,” the grizzled head of the bomb squad had told Margo, holding up the disconnected digital display, “but it wasn’t set to blow until morning. Pretty nasty piece of work too, professional. Could have brought down this entire section of the building.”
“Dr. Oliver,” Margo had prompted, “your office is….?”
“In another wing, but the new call system is set to be installed this morning.” Reid had shaken his head with a helpless frustration. “Anyone might have guessed I planned to be here.”
That had been the calm before the storm, as inevitably word had leaked through the hospital that another attempt had been made on Reid’s life. It hadn’t been long before a crowd of natives had descended on the small group, some chattering with a mixture of excitement and fear, others gawking openly at Reid as if unsure whether to view him as a victim or a threat. Still others had been more direct-like Chris Hughes, ranting to all who would listen that this was Reid’s fault, and how his presence had put the whole hospital… the whole town… at risk. Katie had silenced her husband with a furious rebuke, but it hadn’t taken Junior Hughes’s grasp of the obvious to help Reid make the necessary decision.
Reid stepped into the room’s tiny bathroom and gathered up his razor and a few other toiletries. He didn’t have a travel case for his toothbrush, but he didn’t want the thing sharing a bag with his dirty socks anyway, so he figured he’d pick up a replacement when he got where he was going.
Reid tossed his unread copy of JNS: Spine into the canvas bag and zipped the bag shut, then pulled his coat from the back of a nearby chair-just as a loud rapping echoed on the door to his hotel room. Reid glanced at the door in surprise; from the open shade on his window, he could clearly see that the sky bore no hint of a rising sun, and the clock on his nightstand confirmed that it was just past 5:00 in the morning.
Reid hesitated for a moment, then dropped his belongings on his unmade bad and moved forward with a mental shrug, to approach and open the door.
It was Luke Snyder, looking every bit as sleepless and distraught and utterly miserable as Reid felt.
“You don’t just get to do that,” the younger man announced, by way of a greeting. He pushed past Reid with a determined stride, entering the room and turning to face Reid with an angry glare. “You don’t just get to kiss me and…”
Reid gave a humorless laugh. “You’ve already made that abundantly clear, Mr. Snyder. Now, if you’ll…”
But Luke continued on as if uninterrupted. “You don’t just get to kiss me and then say we should stay away from each other. You don’t have the right to decide that for both of us! Who do you think you are?”
For a second, Reid leaned his forehead against the side of the open door, his eyes closing for a moment. “Luke,” he began wearily, “I thought I was giving you what you….”
“You see, this is what you always do!” Luke said, cutting off the explanation. “The minute things get a little messy, don’t go the way you expect, you’re so quick to pull back and try to cut me out, like I’m some kind of tumor you can just remove from your life!”
Now it was Reid’s turn to be livid. He slammed the hotel door shut, not caring how many neighbors he might be jarring from their sleep. “Now, there’s where you’re mistaken,” he shot back, pointing an accusatory finger at Luke. “I don’t always do anything when it comes to you, and you’d know that too, if you could just get it through your head that I have nothing to do with the goddamn Reid Oliver you’re still in love with.”
“I know you don’t!” Luke fired back.
“Like hell,” Reid snapped, turning away to snatch up the handles of his loosely stuffed duffel bag.
When he turned back around, Luke was looking around the empty hotel room in dismay. “You’re… you’re leaving?!” he cried out. “Right now?!”
“Right now,” Reid confirmed. “Believe me, I’ve stayed well past my welcome here.” He picked up his coat and patted its pockets in search of his wallet, before eyeing a corner of it in the folds of the bed sheets.
“But you can’t!” Luke said, his voice growing sharper with agitation. “You-you've got a life here, friends, people who care about you! You can’t just run away from us like…”
“I’m not running away from anyone!” Reid snapped, shoving his wallet in a back pocket and picking his coat up in his free hand.
“Really? Because that’s not how it looks to…”
“Someone planted a bomb in the neuro wing!” Reid cried.
Luke stared at him blankly for a moment, blinking rapidly as if his mind was having trouble assimilating the unexpected turn in the conversation. “W-what?” he stammered finally, rushing toward Reid with concern. “A bomb? Are you okay? W-was anyone hurt?”
Reid waved him off. “No, but the point is, someone could have been. There could have been dozens of people in the area when it exploded. Katie could have been hurt, you could have been hurt. As long as I’m here in this town, I put all of you in danger.”
“B-but what about you? You can’t just assume they’ll stop, just because you’ve left Oakdale.”
“That’s a chance I’ll have to take,” Reid said flatly. “Anyway, they’ll have to find me first, and that will be quite a feat, since even I don’t even know where I’m going yet.”
The shake of Luke’s head from side to side seemed more instinctive than intentional. “No,” he said finally, reaching out to tug at the bag in Reid’s hands. “No, I won’t let you leave; I’m not going to lose you like this.”
“Lose what?” Reid snapped, pulling his bag from Luke’s grip. "I'm not your friend, I'm not your family, and I'm sure as hell not your lover. What exactly do you think you're going to lose?"
Luke gave Reid a befuddled look. “You’re… we're… I have feelings for you!” he blurted out awkwardly. “I-I don’t know what we are; you confuse me-but we’re something, and I don’t want you to lose you before we have the chance to…”
Reid cut him off with a moan of frustration. “How can you have feelings for me when you don’t even see me?” he roared. “You’re just…" Reid took a shuddering breath to calm himself, then went on with a quiet intensity. "All I am to you is a substitute for your Reid. I look like him, and I sound like him, and maybe you see things in me that you loved about him, but Luke, those parts of him are never going to be enough for you, all right? I don’t have his memories, I don’t have his history with you, and I’m not the same person-not really. There’s always going to be some difference, some situation where I’ll react differently or say something he wouldn’t, and it’ll remind you all over again that the man you loved is gone. I’m not him, Luke; I’m not the one you want-and the sooner I leave, the sooner you can move on before we both forget who we are.”
Reid’s eyes made one final sweep of the room, avoiding Luke’s gaze as the older man sought to confirm that none of his meager possessions had escaped attention in his headlong rush to pack. None detected, Reid snatched up the canvas bag again and turned blindly towards the door to make his escape.
“You tap your left hand against your leg,” Luke called after him suddenly.
Reid turned his head to look back at Luke, his eyebrow furrowing in confusion at the apparent non sequitur.
Luke hastened to explain. “You have this nervous habit that gives you away when you’re feeling uncomfortable,” he said, “but you tap your hand against your thigh and he used to twitch his wrist or drum his fingers on his thumb.” He dropped his left hand to give a visual demonstration of the motion. “And he hated that shirt you’re wearing right now. It was a gift from Katie,” he went on anxiously, “so he held onto it, but he wouldn’t even try it on for her. He said he didn’t care how crazy the rest of this town was, there was no way he was going to walk around dressed like a giant leprechaun.”
Reid looked down at his sweater-which was warm and comfortable and obviously well-made, yet undoubtedly a rather vivid shade of kelly green-and shrugged at the comparison. “Luke…”
“And another thing, you style your hair differently. Your hair’s so short, it’s not very noticeable, but you keep your sideburns cut differently and your hair’s a little longer at the neck." Luke took a step closer. "You drink more coffee in one morning than he did in a week, and… and you don’t put crackers on your chili, and you never, ever leave your lab coat unbuttoned, no matter how stuffy it gets inside.”
“All you're doing is proving my point, Mr. Snyder,” Reid said, his voice thick with hurt.
But Luke shook his head in denial. “You said I see him in you, and you’re right-I do see him,” he agreed. “I see his genius, I see his temper, and now I see his willingness to protect the people he cares about, even if means putting himself at risk. I’m just trying to show you that’s not all I see in you. You aren’t the same person, I know that-and it’s not just the little stuff, either. You-you’re not as arrogant as he was, for one thing.” Luke gave a slightly strained chuckle at Reid’s look of patent disbelief. “Don’t get me wrong; when it comes to medicine, you’re both convinced you’re the greatest thing going. But Reid was so used to the special treatment he got because of his abilities, he never even seemed to notice how much others did to assist him. The other day, Gretchen Saub stopped me in the hall to tell me you’d thanked her for bringing you a prep kit from the supply cabinet, like it was some kind of miracle… and to her, maybe it was: the great Reid Oliver, paying a bit of attention to a lowly nurse.”
Reid couldn’t help but give a sniff of contempt. “When that idiot actually gets something right, it’s worth a bit of attention. I only thanked her because I didn’t have time to schedule a parade.”
Luke smiled ruefully. “Okay, so maybe you’re still a long way from having any normal social interaction,” he noted. “But you seem so much more aware that there are actual people out there, not just brains to be fixed and hands to be put to good use. And… and maybe it’s because of what happened to you where you came from, but you seem more willing to reach out to the people around you, try to connect with them. There were a few people in Oakdale Reid cared about, but even with them he never had the patience for small talk, and he could never spare much time just to be with them. In the short time you’ve been here, you already know more about Katie’s old boyfriends and… and Bob’s hopes for Memorial than Reid ever knew.”
Luke moved even closer and reached out to lay an imploring hand on Reid’s arm. “What I’m trying to say is-you’re him but you’re you, you know? There’s… I see so much about you that I lo-… so much that’s the same and different about you, and I want the chance to learn all of those things; I do. I know it’s not… it’s too soon, I’m still hurting, and I can’t… it’s not fair for me to ask when I’m not ready to… when I can’t make any promises, but I…” Luke took a deep breath, as if taking a moment to focus in on the essence of his somewhat inarticulate explanation. “I just don’t want you to leave, okay? Please don’t leave, Reid. Please.”
Reid dropped his belongings on the floor and turned to face Luke again, his heart racing with fear. “How can… I can’t… you can’t ask me to do that!” he exclaimed. “I have my work, my career; I… There must be a million different reasons why it’s stupid for me to even think about staying here, and I don’t make stupid decisions, so how can you ask me to make one when I don’t even… I don’t….”
He broke off suddenly, feeling the ache of too many unexpressed emotions tightening in his throat. He could feel himself shaking from the opposing forces at work in him: despair and hope, faith and pessimism, the urge to flee and the equally powerful desire never to tear his eyes away from the sight of Luke's expressive face.
Luke raised his hand from Reid’s arm to cup his cheek, his brown eyes liquid with feeling. “Don’t what, Reid?” he prompted softly. “Don’t what?”
Reid’s voice escaped in a harsh whisper. “I don’t know if I can be what you want,” he confessed.
Luke brought his other hand up to rest against Reid’s cheek, his brown eyes searching Reid’s intently. For a few breathless heartbeats, he lingered there, the warmth of his finger pads radiating along Reid’s skin, before the younger man’s eyes grew heavy and he leaned forward.
Slow as the movement was, the lingering brush of Luke’s lips against his sent a shudder of surprise through Reid’s body. He pulled back with a gasp, and Luke flashed a searing look up at Reid’s eyes before pressing forward again. Luke’s hands slid around the base of Reid’s neck, holding the older man still, while Luke’s lips and teeth teased at Reid’s bottom lip. As Reid opened his mouth yet further, Luke’s tongue slipped inside to slide languorously against Reid’s, and a battery of taste and sensation exploded in Reid’s senses.
Reid’s body was at war with his mind. The utter euphoria of Luke’s solid body against him, the feel of lips and breath and closeness he’d been craving for what seemed like eternity hammered the remote corner of his mind that still begged Reid to remember that this was no less of a bad idea than it had been five minutes, five days, five weeks ago.
As if sensing the lingering uncertainty in Reid’s kiss, Luke’s hands fell from Reid’s face to land on his collar, clenching in the collar of Reid’s sweater and undershirt as if to hold him there with all his might. His tongue nudged Reid’s coyly, in a mute encouragement for Reid to join him in the moment, to meet passion with passion. It was all Reid’s mind needed to signal its surrender.
With a growl of aggression that wouldn’t have seemed misplaced on a starving bear, Reid surged to take control of the kiss, grasping Luke’s head between his hands and carding his fingers roughly through Luke’s luxuriously thick hair. His tongue chased after Luke’s, following it back to sample the moist cavern of his mouth.
God, this was exactly what he wanted-had wanted since the day Luke Snyder had stepped into that hospital conference room and skewered him with a look of utter revulsion. Reid had fought the need, denied it, mislabeled it as a detached interest in establishing his identity-but the truth was, he’d seen a glimmer of the heaven some other Reid Oliver had found in Luke’s embrace and he had ached to experience it for himself.
As one hand held Luke’s head at the perfect angle, Reid’s other hand slid down the younger man’s chest to lift the hem of his shirt and feel the warm skin beneath. At the same time, Reid shifted his weight forward, guiding Luke back into the room in a mindless search of a more welcoming surface to explore this incredible new connection.
But as the edge of Reid’s bed brushed the back of Luke’s knees, the younger man went suddenly stiff. Tearing himself from the kiss with a small murmur of pain, Luke leaned forward to rest his cheek against Reid’s, his chest rising and falling with swift gasps for air.
The sound called Reid sharply back to his own senses, and he felt a stab of guilt at moving too fast-pushing for more than the younger man was ready to give. Shaking his head at his uncharacteristic loss of control, Reid lowered his hands to rest in a more neutral place at Luke’s waist and angled his lower body away to provide a few inches of distance between them. “Too much?” Reid asked gruffly, willing his body to just calm down.
His face still pressed up alongside Reid’s, Luke gave a silent nod.
Reid nodded his understanding, closing his eyes again to focus on his breathing, to cool the blood pounding in his veins and replace the burning desire for more with a quiet enjoyment of the moment-the tickle of Luke’s hair against his jaw, the clean smell of his skin, and the warmth of a tenderness he’d never felt for another creature… not in this universe or any other.
“It’s okay,” Reid said softly, “we can take as much time as you need.” He sighed, then with the measured tone of someone speaking with complete, unwavering certainty: “I’m not going anywhere.”
Luke seemed not so much to step forward but to flow, sliding his hands around Reid’s waist and up in a liquid motion to clutch at Reid’s shoulder blades, pulling the older man tightly against him. “Good,” he whispered into Reid’s hair.
Reid closed his own arms around Luke, completing the full body hug, and lowered his head to the younger man’s shoulder, turning slightly to bury a smile of true happiness in the curve of Luke Snyder’s neck.
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