Beyond
Beyond…
Author: Scotianova
Beta-fairy: Carol38
Disclaimer: I don't own them and writing about them is just for fun.
Genre/Moods:a view into future
Pairing: Of course this about Luke and Reid
Warning: ridiculous romanticism
Rating: sexual contents
Summary: Reid comes home after a challenging surgery
AN: This could be read as a stand alone but basically it's an epilogue to Sobriety
The day before yesterday you performed a surgery no one has ever risked before. You’ve prepared yourself meticulously; I think there is no scenario you wouldn’t have gone through to anticipate each and every risk and ways to eliminate it. You and Beth Mack have done everything possible to make this surgery a success. And it worked, the little patient is alive and you’re optimistic he is going to have a full recovery.
The two of you stayed in the hospital until the boy finally woke up and seemed okay at least as far as anyone feels okay after having brain surgery.
You got home today at 9 pm, sleep depraved and exhausted in a way I haven’t seen you before but you smiled, you smiled like a boy who won a prize that he has dreamt of but never believed he would get. You weren’t hungry, you rarely are after having long surgeries; you smelled of hospital and antiseptics so I grabbed your hand and dragged you to the bathroom first and ran a bath for us. And you accepted happily my attempt to care for you. It was as if you were in a trance so I got into the tub first and sat back opening my arms for you.
You fit perfectly into them. Placing you between my legs I soaped your body and hair with your special soap that I’ve used several times to make my skin smell like yours but on me it smells different, and unfortunately not the way I like so much on you. So its unique scent seems reserved for you.
You’re so tired and lean back on me while I write hidden messages with my fingertips into the foam on your belly and chest with a gentle but firm pressure.
“God, this is good, Luke. So good!” Yes, there are a few things that evoke those moans of pleasure out of you: sex, good food, hot showers, a thorough head massage and this, when we are close and you can relax leaning into my body, knowing that I am there to catch you - such as right now when you’re drugged with fatigue and your state has me almost trembling with sympathy. It’s not only the whole ordeal of the surgery that’s wearing you out, but the emotional stress and the rush of adrenalin decreasing finally when it’s over. I try to be impossibly gentle while rubbing your back and massaging your scalp with abandon because in this very moment there is nothing more important.
Listening to the obscenely content noises leaving your mouth I smile so that it’s almost over-straining my facial muscles.
There are a few white hairs, maybe 10 in all, that have sneaked in your auburn curls that are darkened from humidity and therefor the white sneakers aren’t obvious at all. The first time I mentioned them you chuckled and answered: “I earned them, every single one.”
You’re not a peacock at all. You’re just you. Sometimes you are hard to read and sometimes you’re an open book to me.
Such as now sighing contently again and slightly turning on your side snuggling your face up to my neck searching the right position and finding it, aspirating another content sound. If you, Reid Oliver could see yourself sometimes …I don’t know what you’d think about yourself. Regarding me you’ve never been in denial - at least that’s what you’ve told me and I believe you.
Your arms and legs, your whole body feels limp and totally relaxed, when it comes to physical display you’re the most uninhibited man I can imagine. Yet you never look exposed - it’s just like I thought the first time I saw you naked: You aren’t naked even when you have no clothes on.
Even when you lie in the tub, your skin crumpled from staying in the water too long there is something about you preventing you from looking stripped. It’s hard to explain, is it natural dignity? Whatever - it’s obviously there.
“The kid will live, Luke! He will live!” is the only thing you’re saying, sniffing at my skin just like the way I do every time I have the chance to. Thankfully inhaling your scent isn’t unhealthy at all, because I am addicted to it.
When I start rubbing your side you moan with pleasure. It’s one of your endearing peculiarities, you almost lose control when I am touching or even massaging your sides.
I know you could stay there with me forever but even after refilling the tub with warm water a few times we have to get out eventually.
So we climb out of the tub and rub each other dry, and then I put some lotion on your scars, the ones that are still pretty prominent. I take special care of the long scar marking your right leg.
I kneel down and knead your hard calf muscle and you groan loudly, the hot water earlier has already eased the pain and me adding the thorough massage does one last thing and you whisper huskily: “Luke...” and bury your hands in my hair.
“Luke”.
Sometimes my name leaving your lips is so much more than just saying it. I haven’t known that anyone could express so much in just calling me. Usually this kind of bath-ceremony leads into fine, and sometimes kinky sex-sessions - but not tonight. Tonight there is only holding, caressing and exchanging a few tender and lazy kisses - at least that’s what we intended in the beginning.
Given that it’s only September it’s cold outside, so I pull the blanket up to your shoulders since you insist on sleeping with the window wide open. Well, you have some principles you won’t give up.
You’re sound asleep for an hour or so but I am wide-awake. However, when I cautiously try to get up and leave for the living room to read there to not disturb your sleep, you prevent me from leaving - whispering: “Don’t go Luke - I need you here with me tonight.”
With just a simple request you make me feel ‘honored’, blessed, needed and happy. How could I leave then? So I stay and watch over your sleep. Sometimes I can’t help comparing us with Noah and me. Noah would have found it creepy - me watching over his sleep.
“At least in their sleep people deserve to have some privacy”, he’d grumbled once finding me watching him sleep.
But it’s not bothering you - to the contrary, you also love to watch me sleeping. You’ve told me I make soft noises and sniff at your skin sometimes in my sleep and that this is something that makes you love me even more.
It’s you now making soft, unintelligible sounds and I can’t hold back and have to kiss you, only lightly, tenderly so that you won’t wake up.
I still feel you inside of me; I still feel the slow, steady and almost lazy rhythm of our earlier lovemaking reverberating in my body, it’s echoing in my whole body just like a melody I’ve heard and can’t get out of my mind. It happens quite often that there is something you do or say and it won’t leave me all day long. And that’s exactly what I need to feel connected with you even if you are somewhere else. Such as when you are at the university or the clinic - I feel as if you are still with me sometimes. And it isn’t creepy at all; no, it feels nice and comforting.
Sometimes I still sneak into the auditorium pretending to be one of your students, just like I did in the days before I contacted you because of Noah.
Nowadays you mostly detect my presence, even if I try to hide in the last rows. Then there is this nanosecond-smile gracing your lips, objectively unnoticeable - yet I notice it and knowing it’s for me only - what can I say? It makes me feel privileged in a way I never felt before even though I’m aware I’ve been a very privileged person my entire life. Watching you teaching, sharing your knowledge and wisdom (yes wisdom, there is no better word for what the darkest years of your life have taught you) combined with your dry sense of humor and knowing that you are with me makes me fall for you all over again - each and every time.
God, Professor Reid Oliver, what have you done to that spoiled brat of mine?
Meeting you, learning to know you has changed me, the love you give me changes me.
I should have insisted on you instantly getting some sleep tonight but I have to be as close as possible. Witnessing you being exhausted, almost on the edge freaks me out - every time. I want to protect you then, to do something good for you. That urge is even bigger than it was regarding Noah. I guess I try to make it up to you that I ignored the signs that I refused to acknowledge that you were in love with me back then. Whatever!
Tonight I had to feel you in me.
While moving inside of me you closed your eyes so I could watch your concentrated expression shamelessly. I love that, I love the way your lips are slightly open and you sharply inhale now and then and when you’re close you furrow your brow and grunt a little and all the time I can’t get close enough so I press my heels into your ass and wrap my arms almost impossibly tight around you. It’s not about increasing the friction it’s about trying to still an everlasting hunger that has never left me since we shared this kind of closeness for the first time. You know I could eat you all day and all night long yet would still hunger for you anyway.
I want to believe I know every inch of you, every pore, and especially your scars. They turn red after sex when your skin is rosy and well supplied with blood. You told me they would be itchy sometimes and I love to softly rub them then to sooth the itch. Sometimes you purr like a content cat then.
I can’t help myself tonight and have to stare down at you incessantly. It’s hard to not bend down again and kiss those slightly open lips that you moisten with the tip of our tongue without waking up.
I want us to never leave the warm, soft and safe shelter of our bed. Our bed. Your former home has become mine too. It wasn’t easy for me to leave Oakdale, but it wasn’t too hard either. I’ve loved your house from the very first time I set foot in it. It’s small and unpretentious. I like especially your somewhat office-winter garden - loggia where you sleep sometimes when you stay up late and don’t want to disturb me but when I wake up and you are missing I sneak into the room, into your arms in the mornings and you welcome me - always. And that unique scent of sleep, light sweat and remaining soap envelops us then and I can’t imagine a better fragrance at all.
Right now I gently drape the cover around your naked shoulders again and you sigh in your sleep- what is going on in this overactive mind of yours? Are you re-performing the surgery again? Then you’re suddenly smacking softly and say my name and I just melt away: Luke.
You’re dreaming of me and given the soft expression and tender smile playing upon your lips it’s a good dream. You know that, don’t you? You, Reid Oliver make me almost crack sometimes.
There are those moments when I think that all the love I feel for you is too much, too huge, too Luke-consuming and I want to squeeze the hell out of you and then - of course - there are moments I don’t feel that overwhelming kind of love at all.
I try to suppress a chuckle thinking of the way you drive me nuts sometimes. It’s your calmness that drives me to insanity in those moments, because in my opinion there are things in life that demand un-calmness, unease and disturbance; at least it’s the only way I can deal with them. And then you look at me as if my entire agitation is beyond your comprehension or as if it’s wasting energy.
And I could strangle you then.
But then there are times I know my “drama-esque-ness” makes you feel like crawling out of your skin. The first time you mentioned that term “the dramaesqueness of Luke Snyder” I could have hit you, although I usually love your tendency to create neologisms. However it’s impossible to play Scrabble with you. The first times we tried we got lost in endless discussions about the terms you ‘invented’. So you called it an “undoable game for Snyderish inch pinchers”. I was not amused then, but when you called me the most deliciously-indigestible-tidbit an hour later I softened -only inwardly though.
You are something else, my Reid!
One day I asked you why you place a dot behind your signature and you smiled and said in return - smirking knowingly: “And you put an exclamation mark behind yours - back then, when you wrote that epic letter.”
We’d never really talked about that letter but I was so happy that you mentioned it then and that you had noticed my message that I wasn’t going to back down, that I was finally going to be me.
“I am very happy that you aren’t a living question mark anymore, Luuke!”
You’d chuckled then but you’d exactly expressed how I felt in former times, like a question mark. You understand a lot without me telling you and that’s one of many reasons why I love you.
So, when you are babbling about semantics and the moment you realize it this special Reid smile spreads across your beautiful face and it’s then that I melt and melt and transform into something I still can’t analyze just feel- it’s then that I want to lose myself and merge in you, join with you - forever.
Abandoning myself, losing myself into you - what a way to transition into a new form of entity, thereness, hereness, of “the Sein”. You, my love, make me philosophical, you know that?
The first time I told you I wanted to die in your arms- someday - you got upset and snarked that’s a creepy idea, when I realized that it was what happened to Milo that he died in your arms. I was so ashamed and felt helpless then but you finally looked me in the eye and whispered:
“Sorry…I know what you mean. Since we all have to go someday we want our beloved ones to be there with us. But I don’t want to do this twice, Luke. So you have to be careful, watch your health, watch every single step, watch every single second of your life so I’m never going to lose you! You hear me?”
I heard you and what followed was the most tender-passionate night we ever shared.
We have our issues though, and we definitely aren’t what people would call a perfect match. And we wouldn’t call us a perfect couple either. At least in the beginning after finally getting together there was a lot of stuff to figure out. You were used to living on your own terms and we both entered the relationship with a lot of baggage. On my side there was my past with Noah and of course my family went haywire when I announced I was moving to Boston. But neither of us wanted to have a long-distance relationship anymore and Oakdale is no place for you. I knew that from the start, if I wanted to be with you I had to be willing to leave my home and move to Boston, that wasn’t negotiable and I didn’t even try. Why would I? It was the right thing to move here, to live with you.
And on your side there isn’t only Milo, who is an angel now and never fails. And believe me it took me quite a while to deal with him and the fact that he can’t fail - ever!
Then there is - of course - Gideon and his brother Michael. You need some Michael time every other year. Initially I had a really hard time accepting your “Michael time”, you leaving for a few weeks to meet him. But then you asked me to come with you so I might get to know him too. Meeting Michael face to face I would have gotten even more jealous though thoughts like “want, desire, lust” just didn’t cross my mind. I was there with you twice, for a few days only, because after a week or so you asked me - politely but unmistakably - to leave for Malta and meet you again in another few weeks.
And that’s a good tradition we have had since then, you have your Michael time while I stay with Damien.
I didn’t need long to see that you need this kind of recurring event to stay stable.
Anyway the first time I met Michael he took me aside, looked me in the eye - for a creepy long time - before he stated:
“So, you’re the man who soothed his pain. Good! Keep it that way - you’re a strong person, I am positive you can do that! ”
Finally I know how it feels to get the placet from your lover’s “father” since it felt as if I had Michael’s consent to plan our wedding that very moment, although you are not into weddings at all. I know that. But this, all this we have together feels like a stable commitment anyway.
Maybe I am going to write a book about “The Mastersons” - Michael, Gideon and their huge, crazy family, neither of them is leading an ordinary life. Both of them are involved in helping people.
Well, Gideon and I - we needed quite some time to accept each other in your life. It was when you tried to do something about it and suggested we spend a week at the seaside together.
So the four of us, Gideon, Jeff, you and I went to Cape Elizabeth.
The third day Gideon lost his patience with you because you sat on your ass all the time and read medical stuff while the rest of us tried to have some fun. He approached you from behind, lifted you up like a child and ran with you - kicking, punching his biceps and screaming - in his arms into the waves. In his arms you looked like a five year old and it was then that I understood what it is that ties the two of you together. And as much as he antagonized me in the beginning he supported us after I moved here.
You and I - we hadn’t an easy start, right?
Please forgive me that I am disturbing the sleep you need so much, I don’t even know what’s wrong with me tonight, but I feel so hypersensitive, vulnerable, semi-person-like. So I have to feel your lips touching mine. Our kisses are the best thing about making love. I can’t get enough of them. I know it’s wrong but I bend down and kiss you anyway and feeling the almost imperceptible shiver going through your body I remember:
“I like kissing, sex without kissing is like masturbation to me, so if you are only interested in an impersonal fuck, I advise you to go to a gay bar with a darkroom and look there since I am not available for that stuff.”
“Is it the fear of losing me, losing us again?” you whisper hoarsely and open your lips to let me in.
You know me so well, so well that it would freak me out if it weren’t you.
“Always, I always am scared of losing you.”
“Then come here and feel me, feel that I am here with you, as long as possible.”
We are very different and I know a few people think we only have a short time thing - that already lasts for some years however. And even looking at us with the rosiest glasses I see that we aren’t perfect together, we both are too difficult, too complex, and multifaceted, and there is an age-difference between us irritating some people. You are that beast of a brilliant neurosurgeon, with widespread interests, loving Mozart (“…most people underrate his complexity regarding the depths of darkness…” - I just love it when you’re teaching me), and then there are your compulsive tendencies whereas I am a dreamer, an aesthete and sloppy.
So living together isn’t a walk in the park all the time. But I can’t imagine a life without you in it that would make me more complete, and happier.
Maybe there are no fitting categories describing us, moving back from our kiss, to have a better look at your face I approach the blue-colored doors of your eyes that are waiting for me to enter and join the miracle waiting there in the temple of your soul.
I don’t say the obvious; I don’t need to right now. I just bend down again and kiss you, feeling your strong but tender tongue eager to circle mine, feeling your strong but smooth arms tightening their grip around me, feeling you opening and spreading your legs - for me.
People who don’t know us might insist that we are not perfect together and maybe they are right - maybe we are beyond usual standards.
Author: Scotianova
Beta-fairy: Carol38
Disclaimer: I don't own them and writing about them is just for fun.
Genre/Moods:a view into future
Pairing: Of course this about Luke and Reid
Warning: ridiculous romanticism
Rating: sexual contents
Summary: Reid comes home after a challenging surgery
AN: This could be read as a stand alone but basically it's an epilogue to Sobriety
The day before yesterday you performed a surgery no one has ever risked before. You’ve prepared yourself meticulously; I think there is no scenario you wouldn’t have gone through to anticipate each and every risk and ways to eliminate it. You and Beth Mack have done everything possible to make this surgery a success. And it worked, the little patient is alive and you’re optimistic he is going to have a full recovery.
The two of you stayed in the hospital until the boy finally woke up and seemed okay at least as far as anyone feels okay after having brain surgery.
You got home today at 9 pm, sleep depraved and exhausted in a way I haven’t seen you before but you smiled, you smiled like a boy who won a prize that he has dreamt of but never believed he would get. You weren’t hungry, you rarely are after having long surgeries; you smelled of hospital and antiseptics so I grabbed your hand and dragged you to the bathroom first and ran a bath for us. And you accepted happily my attempt to care for you. It was as if you were in a trance so I got into the tub first and sat back opening my arms for you.
You fit perfectly into them. Placing you between my legs I soaped your body and hair with your special soap that I’ve used several times to make my skin smell like yours but on me it smells different, and unfortunately not the way I like so much on you. So its unique scent seems reserved for you.
You’re so tired and lean back on me while I write hidden messages with my fingertips into the foam on your belly and chest with a gentle but firm pressure.
“God, this is good, Luke. So good!” Yes, there are a few things that evoke those moans of pleasure out of you: sex, good food, hot showers, a thorough head massage and this, when we are close and you can relax leaning into my body, knowing that I am there to catch you - such as right now when you’re drugged with fatigue and your state has me almost trembling with sympathy. It’s not only the whole ordeal of the surgery that’s wearing you out, but the emotional stress and the rush of adrenalin decreasing finally when it’s over. I try to be impossibly gentle while rubbing your back and massaging your scalp with abandon because in this very moment there is nothing more important.
Listening to the obscenely content noises leaving your mouth I smile so that it’s almost over-straining my facial muscles.
There are a few white hairs, maybe 10 in all, that have sneaked in your auburn curls that are darkened from humidity and therefor the white sneakers aren’t obvious at all. The first time I mentioned them you chuckled and answered: “I earned them, every single one.”
You’re not a peacock at all. You’re just you. Sometimes you are hard to read and sometimes you’re an open book to me.
Such as now sighing contently again and slightly turning on your side snuggling your face up to my neck searching the right position and finding it, aspirating another content sound. If you, Reid Oliver could see yourself sometimes …I don’t know what you’d think about yourself. Regarding me you’ve never been in denial - at least that’s what you’ve told me and I believe you.
Your arms and legs, your whole body feels limp and totally relaxed, when it comes to physical display you’re the most uninhibited man I can imagine. Yet you never look exposed - it’s just like I thought the first time I saw you naked: You aren’t naked even when you have no clothes on.
Even when you lie in the tub, your skin crumpled from staying in the water too long there is something about you preventing you from looking stripped. It’s hard to explain, is it natural dignity? Whatever - it’s obviously there.
“The kid will live, Luke! He will live!” is the only thing you’re saying, sniffing at my skin just like the way I do every time I have the chance to. Thankfully inhaling your scent isn’t unhealthy at all, because I am addicted to it.
When I start rubbing your side you moan with pleasure. It’s one of your endearing peculiarities, you almost lose control when I am touching or even massaging your sides.
I know you could stay there with me forever but even after refilling the tub with warm water a few times we have to get out eventually.
So we climb out of the tub and rub each other dry, and then I put some lotion on your scars, the ones that are still pretty prominent. I take special care of the long scar marking your right leg.
I kneel down and knead your hard calf muscle and you groan loudly, the hot water earlier has already eased the pain and me adding the thorough massage does one last thing and you whisper huskily: “Luke...” and bury your hands in my hair.
“Luke”.
Sometimes my name leaving your lips is so much more than just saying it. I haven’t known that anyone could express so much in just calling me. Usually this kind of bath-ceremony leads into fine, and sometimes kinky sex-sessions - but not tonight. Tonight there is only holding, caressing and exchanging a few tender and lazy kisses - at least that’s what we intended in the beginning.
Given that it’s only September it’s cold outside, so I pull the blanket up to your shoulders since you insist on sleeping with the window wide open. Well, you have some principles you won’t give up.
You’re sound asleep for an hour or so but I am wide-awake. However, when I cautiously try to get up and leave for the living room to read there to not disturb your sleep, you prevent me from leaving - whispering: “Don’t go Luke - I need you here with me tonight.”
With just a simple request you make me feel ‘honored’, blessed, needed and happy. How could I leave then? So I stay and watch over your sleep. Sometimes I can’t help comparing us with Noah and me. Noah would have found it creepy - me watching over his sleep.
“At least in their sleep people deserve to have some privacy”, he’d grumbled once finding me watching him sleep.
But it’s not bothering you - to the contrary, you also love to watch me sleeping. You’ve told me I make soft noises and sniff at your skin sometimes in my sleep and that this is something that makes you love me even more.
It’s you now making soft, unintelligible sounds and I can’t hold back and have to kiss you, only lightly, tenderly so that you won’t wake up.
I still feel you inside of me; I still feel the slow, steady and almost lazy rhythm of our earlier lovemaking reverberating in my body, it’s echoing in my whole body just like a melody I’ve heard and can’t get out of my mind. It happens quite often that there is something you do or say and it won’t leave me all day long. And that’s exactly what I need to feel connected with you even if you are somewhere else. Such as when you are at the university or the clinic - I feel as if you are still with me sometimes. And it isn’t creepy at all; no, it feels nice and comforting.
Sometimes I still sneak into the auditorium pretending to be one of your students, just like I did in the days before I contacted you because of Noah.
Nowadays you mostly detect my presence, even if I try to hide in the last rows. Then there is this nanosecond-smile gracing your lips, objectively unnoticeable - yet I notice it and knowing it’s for me only - what can I say? It makes me feel privileged in a way I never felt before even though I’m aware I’ve been a very privileged person my entire life. Watching you teaching, sharing your knowledge and wisdom (yes wisdom, there is no better word for what the darkest years of your life have taught you) combined with your dry sense of humor and knowing that you are with me makes me fall for you all over again - each and every time.
God, Professor Reid Oliver, what have you done to that spoiled brat of mine?
Meeting you, learning to know you has changed me, the love you give me changes me.
I should have insisted on you instantly getting some sleep tonight but I have to be as close as possible. Witnessing you being exhausted, almost on the edge freaks me out - every time. I want to protect you then, to do something good for you. That urge is even bigger than it was regarding Noah. I guess I try to make it up to you that I ignored the signs that I refused to acknowledge that you were in love with me back then. Whatever!
Tonight I had to feel you in me.
While moving inside of me you closed your eyes so I could watch your concentrated expression shamelessly. I love that, I love the way your lips are slightly open and you sharply inhale now and then and when you’re close you furrow your brow and grunt a little and all the time I can’t get close enough so I press my heels into your ass and wrap my arms almost impossibly tight around you. It’s not about increasing the friction it’s about trying to still an everlasting hunger that has never left me since we shared this kind of closeness for the first time. You know I could eat you all day and all night long yet would still hunger for you anyway.
I want to believe I know every inch of you, every pore, and especially your scars. They turn red after sex when your skin is rosy and well supplied with blood. You told me they would be itchy sometimes and I love to softly rub them then to sooth the itch. Sometimes you purr like a content cat then.
I can’t help myself tonight and have to stare down at you incessantly. It’s hard to not bend down again and kiss those slightly open lips that you moisten with the tip of our tongue without waking up.
I want us to never leave the warm, soft and safe shelter of our bed. Our bed. Your former home has become mine too. It wasn’t easy for me to leave Oakdale, but it wasn’t too hard either. I’ve loved your house from the very first time I set foot in it. It’s small and unpretentious. I like especially your somewhat office-winter garden - loggia where you sleep sometimes when you stay up late and don’t want to disturb me but when I wake up and you are missing I sneak into the room, into your arms in the mornings and you welcome me - always. And that unique scent of sleep, light sweat and remaining soap envelops us then and I can’t imagine a better fragrance at all.
Right now I gently drape the cover around your naked shoulders again and you sigh in your sleep- what is going on in this overactive mind of yours? Are you re-performing the surgery again? Then you’re suddenly smacking softly and say my name and I just melt away: Luke.
You’re dreaming of me and given the soft expression and tender smile playing upon your lips it’s a good dream. You know that, don’t you? You, Reid Oliver make me almost crack sometimes.
There are those moments when I think that all the love I feel for you is too much, too huge, too Luke-consuming and I want to squeeze the hell out of you and then - of course - there are moments I don’t feel that overwhelming kind of love at all.
I try to suppress a chuckle thinking of the way you drive me nuts sometimes. It’s your calmness that drives me to insanity in those moments, because in my opinion there are things in life that demand un-calmness, unease and disturbance; at least it’s the only way I can deal with them. And then you look at me as if my entire agitation is beyond your comprehension or as if it’s wasting energy.
And I could strangle you then.
But then there are times I know my “drama-esque-ness” makes you feel like crawling out of your skin. The first time you mentioned that term “the dramaesqueness of Luke Snyder” I could have hit you, although I usually love your tendency to create neologisms. However it’s impossible to play Scrabble with you. The first times we tried we got lost in endless discussions about the terms you ‘invented’. So you called it an “undoable game for Snyderish inch pinchers”. I was not amused then, but when you called me the most deliciously-indigestible-tidbit an hour later I softened -only inwardly though.
You are something else, my Reid!
One day I asked you why you place a dot behind your signature and you smiled and said in return - smirking knowingly: “And you put an exclamation mark behind yours - back then, when you wrote that epic letter.”
We’d never really talked about that letter but I was so happy that you mentioned it then and that you had noticed my message that I wasn’t going to back down, that I was finally going to be me.
“I am very happy that you aren’t a living question mark anymore, Luuke!”
You’d chuckled then but you’d exactly expressed how I felt in former times, like a question mark. You understand a lot without me telling you and that’s one of many reasons why I love you.
So, when you are babbling about semantics and the moment you realize it this special Reid smile spreads across your beautiful face and it’s then that I melt and melt and transform into something I still can’t analyze just feel- it’s then that I want to lose myself and merge in you, join with you - forever.
Abandoning myself, losing myself into you - what a way to transition into a new form of entity, thereness, hereness, of “the Sein”. You, my love, make me philosophical, you know that?
The first time I told you I wanted to die in your arms- someday - you got upset and snarked that’s a creepy idea, when I realized that it was what happened to Milo that he died in your arms. I was so ashamed and felt helpless then but you finally looked me in the eye and whispered:
“Sorry…I know what you mean. Since we all have to go someday we want our beloved ones to be there with us. But I don’t want to do this twice, Luke. So you have to be careful, watch your health, watch every single step, watch every single second of your life so I’m never going to lose you! You hear me?”
I heard you and what followed was the most tender-passionate night we ever shared.
We have our issues though, and we definitely aren’t what people would call a perfect match. And we wouldn’t call us a perfect couple either. At least in the beginning after finally getting together there was a lot of stuff to figure out. You were used to living on your own terms and we both entered the relationship with a lot of baggage. On my side there was my past with Noah and of course my family went haywire when I announced I was moving to Boston. But neither of us wanted to have a long-distance relationship anymore and Oakdale is no place for you. I knew that from the start, if I wanted to be with you I had to be willing to leave my home and move to Boston, that wasn’t negotiable and I didn’t even try. Why would I? It was the right thing to move here, to live with you.
And on your side there isn’t only Milo, who is an angel now and never fails. And believe me it took me quite a while to deal with him and the fact that he can’t fail - ever!
Then there is - of course - Gideon and his brother Michael. You need some Michael time every other year. Initially I had a really hard time accepting your “Michael time”, you leaving for a few weeks to meet him. But then you asked me to come with you so I might get to know him too. Meeting Michael face to face I would have gotten even more jealous though thoughts like “want, desire, lust” just didn’t cross my mind. I was there with you twice, for a few days only, because after a week or so you asked me - politely but unmistakably - to leave for Malta and meet you again in another few weeks.
And that’s a good tradition we have had since then, you have your Michael time while I stay with Damien.
I didn’t need long to see that you need this kind of recurring event to stay stable.
Anyway the first time I met Michael he took me aside, looked me in the eye - for a creepy long time - before he stated:
“So, you’re the man who soothed his pain. Good! Keep it that way - you’re a strong person, I am positive you can do that! ”
Finally I know how it feels to get the placet from your lover’s “father” since it felt as if I had Michael’s consent to plan our wedding that very moment, although you are not into weddings at all. I know that. But this, all this we have together feels like a stable commitment anyway.
Maybe I am going to write a book about “The Mastersons” - Michael, Gideon and their huge, crazy family, neither of them is leading an ordinary life. Both of them are involved in helping people.
Well, Gideon and I - we needed quite some time to accept each other in your life. It was when you tried to do something about it and suggested we spend a week at the seaside together.
So the four of us, Gideon, Jeff, you and I went to Cape Elizabeth.
The third day Gideon lost his patience with you because you sat on your ass all the time and read medical stuff while the rest of us tried to have some fun. He approached you from behind, lifted you up like a child and ran with you - kicking, punching his biceps and screaming - in his arms into the waves. In his arms you looked like a five year old and it was then that I understood what it is that ties the two of you together. And as much as he antagonized me in the beginning he supported us after I moved here.
You and I - we hadn’t an easy start, right?
Please forgive me that I am disturbing the sleep you need so much, I don’t even know what’s wrong with me tonight, but I feel so hypersensitive, vulnerable, semi-person-like. So I have to feel your lips touching mine. Our kisses are the best thing about making love. I can’t get enough of them. I know it’s wrong but I bend down and kiss you anyway and feeling the almost imperceptible shiver going through your body I remember:
“I like kissing, sex without kissing is like masturbation to me, so if you are only interested in an impersonal fuck, I advise you to go to a gay bar with a darkroom and look there since I am not available for that stuff.”
“Is it the fear of losing me, losing us again?” you whisper hoarsely and open your lips to let me in.
You know me so well, so well that it would freak me out if it weren’t you.
“Always, I always am scared of losing you.”
“Then come here and feel me, feel that I am here with you, as long as possible.”
We are very different and I know a few people think we only have a short time thing - that already lasts for some years however. And even looking at us with the rosiest glasses I see that we aren’t perfect together, we both are too difficult, too complex, and multifaceted, and there is an age-difference between us irritating some people. You are that beast of a brilliant neurosurgeon, with widespread interests, loving Mozart (“…most people underrate his complexity regarding the depths of darkness…” - I just love it when you’re teaching me), and then there are your compulsive tendencies whereas I am a dreamer, an aesthete and sloppy.
So living together isn’t a walk in the park all the time. But I can’t imagine a life without you in it that would make me more complete, and happier.
Maybe there are no fitting categories describing us, moving back from our kiss, to have a better look at your face I approach the blue-colored doors of your eyes that are waiting for me to enter and join the miracle waiting there in the temple of your soul.
I don’t say the obvious; I don’t need to right now. I just bend down again and kiss you, feeling your strong but tender tongue eager to circle mine, feeling your strong but smooth arms tightening their grip around me, feeling you opening and spreading your legs - for me.
People who don’t know us might insist that we are not perfect together and maybe they are right - maybe we are beyond usual standards.