Now and Again (28/??)
Title: Now and Again
Author: alissablue
Rating: PG-13/R, will be NC-17 eventually.
Characters/Pairings: Luke/Reid, Noah, other Oakdale characters and an OC here or there.
Category: Fix it-fic, AU
Summary: “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”- W.I. Thomas
Warnings: Angsty Angst, some mindfuckery
Disclaimer: Do not own. Wish I did, though. I could make them do all sorts of kinky stuff.
A/N: Keywords for this fic are ‘patience’ and ‘payoff’. Title credit goes to my epically awesome beta slayerkitty, who deserves a round of applause for sitting through my long rants, freak outs, smut-related giggles and posting hesitation.
A/N: Me + comments is like... Reid + Sandwiches<3.
Prologue / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 /
21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 /
Chapter 28: I broke his heart and I broke him
By the time he got to what he assumed was the Snyder farm, it was dark and quiet and cold and Reid inwardly cursed at himself for caring so much. It had been a week, just seven or eight days since he’d met Luke Snyder and here he was, chasing the guy all over town.
He stepped onto the large porch, every step causing the wood to crack and a cricket to make its presence known and the thought crossed Reid’s mind that this really was the last place he’d ever look for Luke, even if Katie had told him Luke had spend a great deal of his childhood at the place.
Before he got to the door, it swung open and revealed a young woman standing in the doorway, hands rested on her hips, as if she could easily stop anyone who even dared to walk through the door without her permission.
“You’re a little late, the wedding was a few hours ago.”
“I’m not here for any kind of shindig… I’m looking for Luke Snyder.”
“Oh. Well, hi, I’m Abigail, Luke’s sister. And you are? Reid, by any chance?”
Reid raised his eyebrows and nodded. “Yes, Dr. Reid Oliver.” He held out his hand and Abigail shook it with a polite smile. “I was told I’d be able to find Luke here?”
“Yes, please, come in.” Abigail stepped aside and Reid walked past her into the kitchen and dining room and as he took in the heavily decorated space, he was reminded of his conversation with the lady in the coffee shop that morning, who, by the looks of things, had decided to give forever a try.
“I’ll go get him for you, doctor.” Abigail looked at him with a knowing look and an amused twinkle in her eyes that reminded Reid of Katie. “Would you like something to drink?”
“No, I’m good. Thank you.”
“Luke! There’s someone here to see you!”
Reid heard the steps in the other room, one step, two steps, three, more and more and so many more until Luke walked into the room and Reid lost count at the sight of him. He’d been a surgeon for years now, had talked to numerous loved ones and the words usually came pouring out of his mouth with ease, standardized script of medical terms and words of reassurance, grim, meaningless words they never wanted to hear or wanted to hear more than anything.
When it came to Luke Snyder, absolutely nothing happened with ease. Oxygen got stuck in his lungs, words got stuck in his throat, on his tongue, until he felt like he couldn’t breathe.
And Luke made it so difficult for him to fucking breathe.
“I’ll just leave the two of you alone.” Abigail said, as she walked away, but neither Reid nor Luke heard it, their eyes on each other, as if nothing else in the world mattered but the two of them in that room and the quest to find masked truths in each other’s eyes. There was a distance between them that neither one of them attempted to close, a void they didn’t even dare to fill and an invisible wall built by the look in Reid’s eyes that Luke sensed meant something that would change everything.
“Never pegged you for a farm boy.”
Luke’s eyes widened in surprise and he smiled at him, his eyes still hopeful as though Reid wasn’t about to utter words that could crush him. “What can I say, Dr. Oliver? Hidden depths. But what are you doing here?” His dark eyes darted to Reid’s lips for a second, lingering as his mind drifted back to the memory of those lips on his own, before he looked back up at Reid through his eyelashes.
“You came here for seconds? That could be arranged.” Luke teased, tilting his head to the side and smirking at Reid.
“If only…” He swallowed and Luke’s expression changed instantly, the flicker of hope in his eyes fading steadily. “No, I have to talk to you about something… Katie told me you’d be here and I wanted you to hear it from me.”
“Hear what? Something’s wrong, am I right? Are you leaving town? Right after we… Are you?”
“It’s about Noah.”
“Noah? Wait- What are you talking about? Why would you come here to talk to me about Noah? You said he was released two days ago.”
“He was. They thought he was fine. But… He was the patient I got paged about earlier.” Luke’s eyes grew wide and he took a gasping breath, as Reid went on. “When they brought him in, he was unconscious and we had to rush him to an OR and as it turns out, there was a blood vessel in his brain that had torn and it-”
“Was it a result of his surgery? Was it Dr. Channing?”
“No… Those things don’t always show up on scans and maybe everything was still fine when he had the surgery. Luke, I went in and I did what I could and I have every reason to believe he’s going to be fine. Like after his first surgery, we’re keeping him sedated for a day or two, to give his brain a chance to heal and when he wakes up, we’ll know for sure, but-”
“God…" His lips quivered, his eyes watered and his hands started to shake. "I should have noticed.”
“What?”
“How couldn’t I have seen this coming? I knew, Reid, I knew something wasn’t right and if he doesn’t wake up…”
“What are you saying?”
“I should have noticed. I- I should’ve known- He wanted space, but I shouldn’t have let him. I should have noticed…” Reid barely heard him speak, as Luke paced back and forth and his voice sounded as soft as whispers, but Reid knew exactly what Luke was saying.
“You couldn’t possibly have seen this coming. Luke, you have nothing to do with this.”
“You’re wrong… I have everything to do with this. Noah blames me and he’s right. It’s my fault he lost his sight, that he might- he might never recover from this, that he doesn’t get to live his life…” Reid shook his head, expressing a silent denial before he knew it. He didn’t know much about this, nothing more than Katie’s short version and the scribbled notes in Mr. Mayer’s file on the events that had caused him to go blind, but he did know that the young man in front of him was beating himself up for something that wasn’t his fault. He felt the urge to find his patient and cut into his skin with his favorite scalpel until the scar would be big enough to match the one he’d caused.
Luke’s voice made the urge go away.
“I’m the one who brought Dr. Channing to town, instead of you. It should have been you… And I made it worse… I told Noah I’m not in love with him anymore and I broke his heart and I- I broke him and all because I was so wrapped up in-” Luke caught himself and he stared at Reid for a second, holding his stare until Reid broke the spell. He got it, knew what Luke had been too wrapped up in. He understood better than anyone else ever would. “I should have been more focused on him, just him and- This all happened, because I distracted him. I distracted him and-”
“He shouldn’t have been messing with fireworks in the first place-”
“But, I-”
“No, it was an accident, accidents happen. They’re not always somebody’s fault.”
“But this...” He’d said he was done apologizing before, but this one had stuck, this one he hadn’t been able to let go of just yet. And now, he found himself unable to go on, to form the syllables or speak or say or utter the words.
Reid heard the cracks in Luke’s voice as Luke stood in the center of the room, his gaze directed toward the floor as silence overtook him. Reid watched Luke as he stood there, unmoving and breaking and he felt his resolve fading away, every thought he’d used as ammunition to keep Luke at bay, to protect himself from slipping and drowning and sinking.
Luke took another gasping breath as he felt the prickling of tears in his chocolate brown eyes, stinging as they stained his vision and his knees shook a little, the new stealth in his legs taking over and he realized that, soon, he wouldn’t be able to take it anymore, wouldn’t be able to stand on his own two feet as everything from the guilt to the dreams to the hunger oozing from his pores and veins, flesh, muscles, skin or bones, struck him.
********
Moving toward Luke felt like a free fall.
Moving toward him, approaching him and closing the distance felt like a free fall from the edge of a skyscraper and for once, the fear didn’t paralyze him or dictate his every move. Before he knew it, his arms were enveloping Luke, as Luke trembled in his arms, exhausted and overwhelmed and he eventually settled into Reid’s strong hold. Luke rested his face in the crook of Reid’s neck, breathing heavily, releasing shaky breaths and sniffling, as he felt Reid’s arms around him tightly, as if he wasn’t about to or couldn’t let him go.
Reid whispered over and over again that it wasn’t his fault and Luke softly answered each time, telling him to stop saying that. Because it hurt, so much, too much, it fucking hurt, both burned like acid and soothed like water and he didn’t think he deserved it.
Luke’s heart was racing and Reid could feel it against his own chest, beating and pounding and thumping, blending with the beats of his own until Reid was unable to distinguish where Luke’s heart stopped and his began. He tried to pretend Luke was the only one holding on, the one out of the both of them who needed the touch, the contact, but he closed his eyes anyway, inhaling the scent of the tangled mess of Luke’s hair. Luke’s arms moved around him until his hands rested against the small of Reid’s back, clutching to the fabric of his dark blue scrubs, grasping and tugging slightly, as Reid warmth surrounded him.
It felt like home, like a safe haven he never wanted to leave, as Reid resisted the urge to run his fingers through the rather lengthy strands of dirty blond. He felt Luke calming down against him, as if he felt the same safety Reid had just discovered, the same warmth and comfort and fulfillment of a need he’d been consumed by since his dreams had started back in January.
After a while, Luke opened his eyes, his face still buried in the crook of Reid’s neck, and he sighed and as he inhaled Reid’s scent, he suddenly realized what they were doing, that Reid was close to him again, letting him in once more, and that their bodies were so close to each other, fitting perfectly and feeling perfectly, but so perfect, too perfect and it was just too much.
Luke gently tried to release himself from Reid’s grip, but Reid, unusually quiet and with his eyes shut, kept holding on to him, almost desperately, and his hold even tightened to a point where Luke felt every breath he took and every twitch of his muscles and flesh against him. It was scary if anything, the closeness terrifying him like he was moving toward the unknown, toward a black hole he was about to get sucked in without having enough strength or gravity to keep him grounded.
And, most of all, it terrified him because it hurt.
“You can let go, I’m fine… Please.” It hurt, the feel of Reid’s beating heart against his own, Reid’s warm breaths on the nape of his neck, both stinging like prickles or needles or sharp, constant shootings of pain and his heart ached for more and less and all of it, both everything and nothing and all he could feel was a sadness he couldn’t explain.
More tears threatened to form in his eyes, but he rapidly blinked them away. His left hand made its way from the small of Reid’s back to his auburn curls and as he hooked his chin on Reid’s shoulder and threaded his fingers through his curls, Luke’s thumb brushing past the curve of Reid’s ear, he whispered for him to let go in his other ear.
He felt Reid’s grip loosening and Luke pulled back and pulled himself out of his hands, missing the contact instantly. He took a step back and another, until he felt like he could breathe again and the sadness he’d felt seemed like something he could ignore or simply forget about. Luke tried to move even further away from Reid, but Reid reached out and gripped his wrist tightly, as tightly as his arms had been wrapped around Luke moments earlier and as tightly as Luke’s grip had been when he’d asked him to stay in town.
“It’s not your fault, alright? It’s not your fault that any of this happened and I don’t want you to think it is. Do you hear me?”
“Let me go,” Luke demanded, as he looked at their hands, at the point where Reid’s skin met his, Reid’s thumb soothingly brushing past the Luke’s skin over and over again. “Let go, I can’t… Please.”
“Say it. Say it and I will.”
“Reid…”
“Say it, Luke. I know you won’t believe it, not just yet, but you have to start somewhere. Now say it.”
Luke sighed and looked up and brown eyes met blues, the blues unwavering and calm and reassuring. “It’s not- it’s not my fault.”
“That’s right...” Reid let go of Luke’s wrist and Luke felt the dull ache in his chest at the loss. “I have to go and check on him now. Will you be okay?”
“I’ll be fine, I promise. When will I be able to see him?”
“He’s stable now and there’s no reason to believe he’ll crash again, so tomorrow should be fine.”
“Thank you, Reid. I just… Thank you.” Reid nodded and reached out, cupping Luke’s cheek affectionately. Luke leaned into the touch and closed his eyes and he sighed deeply, as he felt Reid’s lips softly planting a kiss on his forehead, feeling as if the contact alone was a relief.
By the time Luke opened his eyes again, Reid was gone and the room instantly felt ten degrees colder.
********
“Please, Reid, you- we haven’t had enough days.”
The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes, was the off white ceiling of his bedroom. He wanted to scream, howl, cry or simply speak, but his throat had never felt this dry, this constricted, leaving him aching to breathe. He couldn’t even fucking breathe. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t grasp or comprehend any of it.
He was shaking, shivering, shivers and droplets of sweat making their way from the nape of his neck to the small of his back, from his forehead down the sides of his face, onto his lips like the remnants of blood he could still taste.
He tasted blood and tears and sweat, salty and coppery, lingering on his lips, like the kiss, that kiss, those lips on his, as eyes closed, hearts stopped and lungs refused.
“We were just getting started, you can’t leave me.”
He felt it coming up, rising from the core of his gut, as the thoughts, the words, the feelings bundled up like a snowball, growing with each tick of the clock in his room. His heart was racing at a rate that terrified him, as he felt it nearing his throat and the back of his tongue. He quickly removed his covers, jumped out of bed and ran, stumbling to the bathroom.
As he emptied his stomach, rid himself of all that consumed him, all Reid saw was Luke Snyder hovering over him, begging him not to leave.
“I love you, you love me. You said you did.”
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