FIC: On Second Thought (19/37)
A Luke/Reid fic in which Noah is in trouble. (As the World Turns; NC-17)
Title: On Second Thought (19/37)
Author: sleeper6
Rating: NC-17
Characters: Luke/Reid, Noah
Summary: Noah is blind again and needs Luke in L.A. What will Luke and Reid do?
Disclaimer: All belongs to As the World Turns, not me.
Warning: Will contain angst so read only if you don’t mind that.
Notes: Things will get better--please be patient!
Previous: HERE
“Hey, Noah.”
“Luke! What are you doing here? It’s late, isn’t it? Is everything okay?”
Luke, his hands in his pockets, stared at Noah. “I should be asking you that.”
“What? Why? What are you talking about?”
Luke shut the door to the hotel room behind him. He held Noah’s elbow and steered him towards the bed. Both men sat down. “We need to talk.”
Luke wanted to help Noah if he could, as he’d told Reid and Ruth, but he also wanted to berate him for being an idiot.
“Okay,” Noah said questioningly.
“Your aunt came by to see me. She told me about what happened to you,” Luke said quickly.
Noah tensed.
“Look, Noah, it’s not my place to judge but why? Why did you do it?”
Noah shifted his body slightly so that he faced away from Luke.
“Noah?”
“It’s got nothing to do with you if that’s what you’re thinking,” Noah said after a while.
“Why would I think that?”
“To justify you being here. You feel guilty that this is somehow related to you.”
“You think that’s what I’m feeling?” Luke shook his head. “I’m here to give you a piece of my mind, Noah, for being unbelievably stupid.”
“You don’t know-”
Luke interrupted him. “No, I don’t know what you’ve been going through or what you’ve been doing out there, but you need to stop. It’s dangerous if you risk your sight any further and it’s just common sense not to engage in stuff like that.”
“So says the alcoholic,” Noah said bitterly.
Luke flinched. That’s what Noah did to him. He somehow always made Luke seem like he was the one in the wrong, like he was the one who’d messed up, like he was the one who had to apologize for anything and everything. This reminded Luke of why he was no longer with Noah.
“Former alcoholic,” Luke corrected. “At least I’m smart enough to not to drink anymore.” He paused. “And should I feel guilty about something? You wouldn’t have brought that up unless you want me to know about it.”
“No. Like I said, it has nothing to do with you.” Noah stood with his cane. “But it’s so like you, always carrying around the guilt card, waiting to see what else I can make you feel bad about.”
Luke stood too. “With you, there was always something, Noah. And you made sure I knew that it was mostly my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” Noah said, his voice echoing in the quiet room. “Not all the time.” He sat back on the bed. “You were always there and so it was easier to blame you than myself sometimes.” Noah sighed and inclined his head towards the floor. “And you just took it so I kept giving it, you know?”
Luke sat next to Noah. “Yeah, I know,” he uttered quietly. “That was part of your control-you manipulated me.”
Noah turned his head in Luke’s direction. “I don’t know if I’d say that exactly.”
Luke nodded. “I would. My need to please people, to please you, made it so easy for you to exploit me. I don’t think you did it deliberately-not always, anyway. But me being so naïve, I let it happen, not anymore, though, not ever again. However, your aunt seems to know exactly what she’s doing.”
“My aunt?”
“Yeah, she came to my house in tears, begging me to help you, making it almost seem as though you’re doing drugs because of me,” Luke explained. “And she insisted I come see you to get you to stop.”
“I’m not doing coke anymore, Luke. I stopped over a month ago.”
“Denial is always the first thing an addict does-”
“I’m not an addict!” Noah shouted before lowering his voice. “I stopped, Luke, a while back. I did. Honest. You can ask Reid. He’s been ordering drug tests along with all the other exams.”
Luke saw Noah’s face and believed him. “Then can you tell your aunt that?”
“I did!”
“You might want to tell her again, and while you’re at it, tell her to leave me and Reid alone.”
“Why, what’s she done?” Noah asked curiously.
“She apparently thinks me and you are still destined to be together,” Luke said with a smirk.
Noah flashed back to the odd conversation with Ruth about her wanting to get Luke back for him. “Did she do something?”
“She’s . . . persistent, let’s just say,” Luke replied. “You might want to stay away from her, too.” He glanced at his watch and got up. “I’m gonna go, Noah. Please take care of yourself.”
Noah stood. “My-my surgery is the day after tomorrow, in case you want to know.”
“I’ll be thinking about you,” Luke said softly before kissing Noah’s cheek. “Good luck.”
Luke turned and left.
Luke walked into the bedroom to find a pajama-clad Reid sitting against the headboard, his legs bent on the bed, staring at the wall directly in front of him. He didn’t look at Luke.
“You’re still up,” Luke commented as he removed his shoes.
Reid stared straight ahead. “How is he?”
Luke rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s all right. He says he’s done with all that, and I believe him. So yeah, she was either exaggerating or lying.”
“I’ll go with the latter.”
Luke nodded and walked to the nightstand by his side of the bed. He removed his watch.
“We need to talk.”
Luke glanced at Reid.
“I don’t know how much more I can take of this,” Reid said.
Luke sat on the bed.
“I hate fighting with you, but it seems that’s all we’ve been doing lately.”
“Reid, I came back,” protested Luke.
Reid stared at him. “Until the next time.”
“I know it’s my fault-” began Luke.
“It’s not-”
“No, it is my fault. I’ve been acting like, like . . .”
“Last year?” Reid finished for him.
Luke nodded. “Exactly.”
“I’m gonna have to agree with you there,” Reid said. “It’s just so irritating that a year later, after everything, Luke, after everything, I find myself still competing with him for you-for your time, your attention, your love.”
Luke quickly shook his head. “You’re not.”
“But it feels like I am. You make me feel like runner-up or second choice every time you run to him. And that’s why sometimes I think it’s always going to be Noah over me. And maybe that’s how you want it, but I don’t.”
“Reid.”
“I get that he’s your friend-believe me, I get it, Luke, but I’m . . . you chose me, right? You still want this, you still want us?” Reid asked as he pointed at the space between himself and Luke.
Luke scooted closer to Reid. “Yes! You’re my life, Reid.”
“I don’t want to be your life, Luke. I just want to be an important part of it.”
“You are!”
Reid looked down at the bedspread. “You’d tell me, right, if you had second thoughts about us? I mean, if you didn’t want to be us anymore? Because as much as it’d hurt, I’d let you go, even if I don’t think you can do better than me.”
Luke snickered. “Oh, you don’t?”
“I know I can’t.” He looked sadly at Luke. “And I don’t want to.”
“Reid,” Luke whispered as he reached for Reid’s hand.
Reid pulled it away, running it through his hair instead.
Luke sighed. “I won’t see him again if you don’t want me to.”
“That’s just it, Luke. I don’t want to have to tell you what to do. If you don’t want to see him, then don’t. But if you do, if you still can’t let go, tell me now. This ‘wash, rinse, and repeat’ cycle is becoming too much for me.”
“I know, I know.”
“You know, you know, but you still keep doing it,” Reid said. “It’s like you have us both, and you can’t. You can’t have us both. The question is who you’re going to break up with-Noah or me?”
“I broke up with him tonight,” Luke said. “Seriously.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to fix him. And in some weird, clearly disturbed way, I wanted him to fix me.”
“Explain.”
Luke played with a loose thread on the pillow as he spoke. “He and I were in a broken relationship for a long while, and instead of trying to fix that and fix ourselves, we ended up breaking us, and each other, further and further until there was no more us. And now, even though we’re no longer together, we still feel broken and we depend on that other broken half of ourselves-Noah in my case and me in his-to come and fix us, or to try at least. It’s like ‘you break it, you buy it,’ only here it’s ‘you break it, you fix it.’ That’s the connection he and I have.”
Reid waited for Luke to continue.
“But then tonight when I saw him, and heard what he had to say, and in thinking about everything that’s happened in the last few days, I finally realized-yeah, I know, finally-that we don’t need to fix each other or the relationship we once had. That’s done. Noah needs to fix himself and do things on his own without me, and I’m going to do the same. There is no more us. There is only Noah and then there’s me.” Luke looked at Reid. “Does that make sense?”
Reid shrugged though he understood what Luke meant.
Luke moved even closer. “How about this: I’m an idiot.”
“Of course you are,” Reid said with the smallest of smiles.
“I’m being serious, Reid,” Luke said with a smile of his own. “I only want to be with you.” He blushed slightly. “I think you might be ‘it’ for me.”
Reid felt the familiar tug in his heart that only appeared when Luke Snyder said things like that to him.
“So if Noah grows an extra head tomorrow, you’re not going to run to him?”
Luke laughed and shook his head.
Reid stared at Luke before saying, “His surgery is in two days.”
“He’ll be in my thoughts, but there’s not much I can do for him.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
Luke nodded.
Reid nodded too.
“So, do I get another chance?” Luke asked timidly.
Reid touched Luke’s chin. “Don’t break us, Luke.”
Luke leaned in to kiss him but Reid turned his head away.
“I’m tired,” Reid said, shutting his eyes as he leaned his head back.
Luke reluctantly stood up and went into the bathroom.
Five minutes later, Luke walked out into the semi-dark room and saw Reid slide down the headboard and lay down to sleep. Reid was on his side with his back to Luke.
Luke meant what he had said. He was done with Noah. Now, it would be all about Reid and only about him. He had to make sure Reid believed that.
Luke removed his shirt as he stood by the bed. He then dropped his boxers. Completely naked, he climbed into bed. Reid didn’t stir. Luke lay down, and propping himself on his left elbow, reached down and pulled at his cock. He moaned as the strong sensations reverberated through him. He slowly rubbed his thumb over the wet tip of his cock and began panting in intense pleasure.
Reid, not yet asleep, heard the heavy breathing behind him. He was done talking to Luke for the night, but the sounds emanating from his boyfriend were too loud to ignore. Reid turned around.
“Luke, what are you-”
He stopped as he saw Luke with his hand over his own swollen cock. It was the one thing Luke always refused to do with Reid in bed. Luke was game for anything else, but jerking off in front of Reid had been a no-no from the start. Luke would touch himself when they had sex but he’d never touched himself while Reid only watched.
But now here he was, stroking himself hard and fast like a guilty teenager under the blankets at night. Reid’s lips parted as his gaze traveled from Luke’s damp forehead to his heavy-lidded eyes to his sweaty chest to his hardworking hand pumping his cock. Reid had to control his hand so as not to join in and help bring Luke to orgasm.
Luke’s cherry mouth was wide open as it struggled to form words, sounds, groans, moans and all those incredible noises that were making Reid’s own cock twitch. Reid swallowed hard and bit his lip to keep from moaning along. He glanced at Luke, who was staring at Reid through half-closed eyes, and then down at Luke’s magic hand, which kept stroking and rubbing and pulling in all the right places.
Reid’s heart and cock were pounding equally as Luke, unable to support his weight anymore, fell flat against the bed. He turned his head slightly to the side to keep his focus on Reid. One side of his mouth bit the pillow beneath him as he tried to say Reid’s name. “R-r-r-reid,” he stuttered as his cock fucked his hand.
At the sound of his name, Reid couldn’t stand it any longer and covered Luke’s hand with his, Reid picking up the pace as his own hand spurred Luke’s on even faster. After only a minute, in which Reid and Luke put all mind and effort into forcing Luke’s release, Luke arched back and shouted a cry of relief, spilling all over his and Reid’s hand. Reid moved his soaked hand onto Luke’s stomach as it trembled with the aftershocks of the orgasm.
Luke, his face flushed, smiled at Reid. “I thought you were tired.”
Reid fell on top of Luke and mashed their lips together. He then broke the kiss to sit up and discard all his clothing before falling back.
“Thank you,” Reid whispered, looking at Luke and loving him with all that his eyes allowed.
“Now there really is nothing between us,” Luke said.
Reid smiled and kissed him.
Next
Title: On Second Thought (19/37)
Author: sleeper6
Rating: NC-17
Characters: Luke/Reid, Noah
Summary: Noah is blind again and needs Luke in L.A. What will Luke and Reid do?
Disclaimer: All belongs to As the World Turns, not me.
Warning: Will contain angst so read only if you don’t mind that.
Notes: Things will get better--please be patient!
Previous: HERE
“Hey, Noah.”
“Luke! What are you doing here? It’s late, isn’t it? Is everything okay?”
Luke, his hands in his pockets, stared at Noah. “I should be asking you that.”
“What? Why? What are you talking about?”
Luke shut the door to the hotel room behind him. He held Noah’s elbow and steered him towards the bed. Both men sat down. “We need to talk.”
Luke wanted to help Noah if he could, as he’d told Reid and Ruth, but he also wanted to berate him for being an idiot.
“Okay,” Noah said questioningly.
“Your aunt came by to see me. She told me about what happened to you,” Luke said quickly.
Noah tensed.
“Look, Noah, it’s not my place to judge but why? Why did you do it?”
Noah shifted his body slightly so that he faced away from Luke.
“Noah?”
“It’s got nothing to do with you if that’s what you’re thinking,” Noah said after a while.
“Why would I think that?”
“To justify you being here. You feel guilty that this is somehow related to you.”
“You think that’s what I’m feeling?” Luke shook his head. “I’m here to give you a piece of my mind, Noah, for being unbelievably stupid.”
“You don’t know-”
Luke interrupted him. “No, I don’t know what you’ve been going through or what you’ve been doing out there, but you need to stop. It’s dangerous if you risk your sight any further and it’s just common sense not to engage in stuff like that.”
“So says the alcoholic,” Noah said bitterly.
Luke flinched. That’s what Noah did to him. He somehow always made Luke seem like he was the one in the wrong, like he was the one who’d messed up, like he was the one who had to apologize for anything and everything. This reminded Luke of why he was no longer with Noah.
“Former alcoholic,” Luke corrected. “At least I’m smart enough to not to drink anymore.” He paused. “And should I feel guilty about something? You wouldn’t have brought that up unless you want me to know about it.”
“No. Like I said, it has nothing to do with you.” Noah stood with his cane. “But it’s so like you, always carrying around the guilt card, waiting to see what else I can make you feel bad about.”
Luke stood too. “With you, there was always something, Noah. And you made sure I knew that it was mostly my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” Noah said, his voice echoing in the quiet room. “Not all the time.” He sat back on the bed. “You were always there and so it was easier to blame you than myself sometimes.” Noah sighed and inclined his head towards the floor. “And you just took it so I kept giving it, you know?”
Luke sat next to Noah. “Yeah, I know,” he uttered quietly. “That was part of your control-you manipulated me.”
Noah turned his head in Luke’s direction. “I don’t know if I’d say that exactly.”
Luke nodded. “I would. My need to please people, to please you, made it so easy for you to exploit me. I don’t think you did it deliberately-not always, anyway. But me being so naïve, I let it happen, not anymore, though, not ever again. However, your aunt seems to know exactly what she’s doing.”
“My aunt?”
“Yeah, she came to my house in tears, begging me to help you, making it almost seem as though you’re doing drugs because of me,” Luke explained. “And she insisted I come see you to get you to stop.”
“I’m not doing coke anymore, Luke. I stopped over a month ago.”
“Denial is always the first thing an addict does-”
“I’m not an addict!” Noah shouted before lowering his voice. “I stopped, Luke, a while back. I did. Honest. You can ask Reid. He’s been ordering drug tests along with all the other exams.”
Luke saw Noah’s face and believed him. “Then can you tell your aunt that?”
“I did!”
“You might want to tell her again, and while you’re at it, tell her to leave me and Reid alone.”
“Why, what’s she done?” Noah asked curiously.
“She apparently thinks me and you are still destined to be together,” Luke said with a smirk.
Noah flashed back to the odd conversation with Ruth about her wanting to get Luke back for him. “Did she do something?”
“She’s . . . persistent, let’s just say,” Luke replied. “You might want to stay away from her, too.” He glanced at his watch and got up. “I’m gonna go, Noah. Please take care of yourself.”
Noah stood. “My-my surgery is the day after tomorrow, in case you want to know.”
“I’ll be thinking about you,” Luke said softly before kissing Noah’s cheek. “Good luck.”
Luke turned and left.
Luke walked into the bedroom to find a pajama-clad Reid sitting against the headboard, his legs bent on the bed, staring at the wall directly in front of him. He didn’t look at Luke.
“You’re still up,” Luke commented as he removed his shoes.
Reid stared straight ahead. “How is he?”
Luke rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s all right. He says he’s done with all that, and I believe him. So yeah, she was either exaggerating or lying.”
“I’ll go with the latter.”
Luke nodded and walked to the nightstand by his side of the bed. He removed his watch.
“We need to talk.”
Luke glanced at Reid.
“I don’t know how much more I can take of this,” Reid said.
Luke sat on the bed.
“I hate fighting with you, but it seems that’s all we’ve been doing lately.”
“Reid, I came back,” protested Luke.
Reid stared at him. “Until the next time.”
“I know it’s my fault-” began Luke.
“It’s not-”
“No, it is my fault. I’ve been acting like, like . . .”
“Last year?” Reid finished for him.
Luke nodded. “Exactly.”
“I’m gonna have to agree with you there,” Reid said. “It’s just so irritating that a year later, after everything, Luke, after everything, I find myself still competing with him for you-for your time, your attention, your love.”
Luke quickly shook his head. “You’re not.”
“But it feels like I am. You make me feel like runner-up or second choice every time you run to him. And that’s why sometimes I think it’s always going to be Noah over me. And maybe that’s how you want it, but I don’t.”
“Reid.”
“I get that he’s your friend-believe me, I get it, Luke, but I’m . . . you chose me, right? You still want this, you still want us?” Reid asked as he pointed at the space between himself and Luke.
Luke scooted closer to Reid. “Yes! You’re my life, Reid.”
“I don’t want to be your life, Luke. I just want to be an important part of it.”
“You are!”
Reid looked down at the bedspread. “You’d tell me, right, if you had second thoughts about us? I mean, if you didn’t want to be us anymore? Because as much as it’d hurt, I’d let you go, even if I don’t think you can do better than me.”
Luke snickered. “Oh, you don’t?”
“I know I can’t.” He looked sadly at Luke. “And I don’t want to.”
“Reid,” Luke whispered as he reached for Reid’s hand.
Reid pulled it away, running it through his hair instead.
Luke sighed. “I won’t see him again if you don’t want me to.”
“That’s just it, Luke. I don’t want to have to tell you what to do. If you don’t want to see him, then don’t. But if you do, if you still can’t let go, tell me now. This ‘wash, rinse, and repeat’ cycle is becoming too much for me.”
“I know, I know.”
“You know, you know, but you still keep doing it,” Reid said. “It’s like you have us both, and you can’t. You can’t have us both. The question is who you’re going to break up with-Noah or me?”
“I broke up with him tonight,” Luke said. “Seriously.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to fix him. And in some weird, clearly disturbed way, I wanted him to fix me.”
“Explain.”
Luke played with a loose thread on the pillow as he spoke. “He and I were in a broken relationship for a long while, and instead of trying to fix that and fix ourselves, we ended up breaking us, and each other, further and further until there was no more us. And now, even though we’re no longer together, we still feel broken and we depend on that other broken half of ourselves-Noah in my case and me in his-to come and fix us, or to try at least. It’s like ‘you break it, you buy it,’ only here it’s ‘you break it, you fix it.’ That’s the connection he and I have.”
Reid waited for Luke to continue.
“But then tonight when I saw him, and heard what he had to say, and in thinking about everything that’s happened in the last few days, I finally realized-yeah, I know, finally-that we don’t need to fix each other or the relationship we once had. That’s done. Noah needs to fix himself and do things on his own without me, and I’m going to do the same. There is no more us. There is only Noah and then there’s me.” Luke looked at Reid. “Does that make sense?”
Reid shrugged though he understood what Luke meant.
Luke moved even closer. “How about this: I’m an idiot.”
“Of course you are,” Reid said with the smallest of smiles.
“I’m being serious, Reid,” Luke said with a smile of his own. “I only want to be with you.” He blushed slightly. “I think you might be ‘it’ for me.”
Reid felt the familiar tug in his heart that only appeared when Luke Snyder said things like that to him.
“So if Noah grows an extra head tomorrow, you’re not going to run to him?”
Luke laughed and shook his head.
Reid stared at Luke before saying, “His surgery is in two days.”
“He’ll be in my thoughts, but there’s not much I can do for him.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
Luke nodded.
Reid nodded too.
“So, do I get another chance?” Luke asked timidly.
Reid touched Luke’s chin. “Don’t break us, Luke.”
Luke leaned in to kiss him but Reid turned his head away.
“I’m tired,” Reid said, shutting his eyes as he leaned his head back.
Luke reluctantly stood up and went into the bathroom.
Five minutes later, Luke walked out into the semi-dark room and saw Reid slide down the headboard and lay down to sleep. Reid was on his side with his back to Luke.
Luke meant what he had said. He was done with Noah. Now, it would be all about Reid and only about him. He had to make sure Reid believed that.
Luke removed his shirt as he stood by the bed. He then dropped his boxers. Completely naked, he climbed into bed. Reid didn’t stir. Luke lay down, and propping himself on his left elbow, reached down and pulled at his cock. He moaned as the strong sensations reverberated through him. He slowly rubbed his thumb over the wet tip of his cock and began panting in intense pleasure.
Reid, not yet asleep, heard the heavy breathing behind him. He was done talking to Luke for the night, but the sounds emanating from his boyfriend were too loud to ignore. Reid turned around.
“Luke, what are you-”
He stopped as he saw Luke with his hand over his own swollen cock. It was the one thing Luke always refused to do with Reid in bed. Luke was game for anything else, but jerking off in front of Reid had been a no-no from the start. Luke would touch himself when they had sex but he’d never touched himself while Reid only watched.
But now here he was, stroking himself hard and fast like a guilty teenager under the blankets at night. Reid’s lips parted as his gaze traveled from Luke’s damp forehead to his heavy-lidded eyes to his sweaty chest to his hardworking hand pumping his cock. Reid had to control his hand so as not to join in and help bring Luke to orgasm.
Luke’s cherry mouth was wide open as it struggled to form words, sounds, groans, moans and all those incredible noises that were making Reid’s own cock twitch. Reid swallowed hard and bit his lip to keep from moaning along. He glanced at Luke, who was staring at Reid through half-closed eyes, and then down at Luke’s magic hand, which kept stroking and rubbing and pulling in all the right places.
Reid’s heart and cock were pounding equally as Luke, unable to support his weight anymore, fell flat against the bed. He turned his head slightly to the side to keep his focus on Reid. One side of his mouth bit the pillow beneath him as he tried to say Reid’s name. “R-r-r-reid,” he stuttered as his cock fucked his hand.
At the sound of his name, Reid couldn’t stand it any longer and covered Luke’s hand with his, Reid picking up the pace as his own hand spurred Luke’s on even faster. After only a minute, in which Reid and Luke put all mind and effort into forcing Luke’s release, Luke arched back and shouted a cry of relief, spilling all over his and Reid’s hand. Reid moved his soaked hand onto Luke’s stomach as it trembled with the aftershocks of the orgasm.
Luke, his face flushed, smiled at Reid. “I thought you were tired.”
Reid fell on top of Luke and mashed their lips together. He then broke the kiss to sit up and discard all his clothing before falling back.
“Thank you,” Reid whispered, looking at Luke and loving him with all that his eyes allowed.
“Now there really is nothing between us,” Luke said.
Reid smiled and kissed him.
Next