Bulletproof (10/52)
Title: Bulletproof
Author: blasthisass
Rating: PG-13 to NC-17
Summary: AU- when Luke is shot by Colonel Mayer, his condition quickly deteriorates. In order to save his life, Bob calls in a young, hotshot doctor from Texas, brilliant and already making a name for himself.
Disclaimers: All characters and such property of ATWT, CBS and anyone else who can legally take credit for them. If they were mine, I would take infinitely better care of them.
Title from the song by La Roux. There is dialogue from both the time in which the story takes place as well as the LuRe storyline.
A/N: This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine.
Comments much appreciated . . . I love them like Reid loves Luke.
Previous parts: prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
***
Luke groaned, setting his Gameboy down on his lap and flashed a gaze of annoyance to the man to his right. “Seriously, don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
Reid didn’t reply at first. He was sitting in a chair in the corner of Luke’s room, his feet propped up on another and his laptop on his lap. His long fingers were flying over the keyboard at rapid speed and he looked vaguely displeased at whatever email he was answering. Luke observed him with narrowed eyes, wanting nothing less than to be left alone to sulk, but his doctor’s annoying persistence deserved to be applauded.
“Dr. Oliver!”
Reid crinkled his noise and made a shushing noise before glancing up at Luke. “Mr. Snyder, I am not deaf and I don’t appreciate being treated as such. Besides, this is a hospital. You should keep the yelling to a minimum. It tends to scare the bleeding people.”
Luke rolled his eyes, feeling childish and petty as a result of his crabby mood. “Whatever.”
Reid guffawed, not even looking up from his computer this time. “Nice comeback. Very mature. And to answer your question, no, I have no where else I have to be, especially considering that the one reason I’m here in the first place is to oversee your care.”
Luke rolled his eyes, flopping himself back onto his pillows and turning up the volume on his Gameboy, if only because it looked like Dr. Oliver preferred quiet when he was working and his presence was driving Luke up the wall. He couldn’t quite figure out whether it was because he was just in this hopeless mood where he wanted to fling his breakfast tray at anyone who even spoke to him or if it was because whenever Dr. Oliver spoke his words got Luke uncharacteristically riled up and the wavelengths of his voice still held that indiscernible familiarity. Or maybe it was because Luke was, more often than not, finding himself caught in the line of Dr. Oliver’s intense stare and he couldn’t quite figure out whether he liked it or not. Every time it happened, it took Luke several minutes afterward to realize that he’d stopped thinking about Noah, about which he also wasn’t quite sure how he felt.
Reid’s jaw clenched as the theme music from whatever game Luke was playing filled the room, overpowering even the beeping of the heart monitor. His hands tightened slightly over the keys. “I’m also here in the hopes that my genius will rub off on you and you’ll stop being an idiot.”
Luke was saved the necessity of having to think up a witty response when the door opened and a rather sturdy looking man in a white uniform entered the room, followed shortly by his parents. If Luke had been in a better mood and didn’t have Noah to think about, he might have indulged in the fact that he was eighteen, going on nineteen, years old and he would have given the man a hungry once over. As it was, he barely looked up from his game. Perhaps if he had, he might have caught his doctor’s look of mild interest in regards to the addition to their party before it transposed itself back into his usual expression. As it was, Luke Snyder was, for the moment, ignorant of his doctor’s interest. Or, lack thereof.
The physical therapist raised his eyebrow at the teenager’s surly response as the latter pretended not to notice that the number of people in the room had increased exponentially. He leaned over and picked up the physical therapy exercises that Luke had received earlier that week, which lay ripped and crumpled by the foot of the bed. He looked as though he didn’t quite know what to make of that particular fact, but decided to ignore it for the time being.
“Hello, I’m Burt,” he introduced himself, smiling warmly at the two males that had already been in the room. When neither made any motion to break away from their activities, Burt spoke to the teenager again. “And you’re Luke.” He stated this in a very factual way, as though daring Luke to challenge him on the matter.
Luke rolled his eyes, wondering what the point of all this was if no one truly believed that it would do him any good. Luke wasn’t normally extremely pessimistic, but he was growing tired of the cards he would continually be dealt and was just about ready to throw away his hand. “I guess,” he muttered sullenly, sinking further into his pillow.
Reid snorted at this, muttering, “Never expected him to be bright, but this is a new low,” under his breath.
Burt frowned at the doctor, deeming his presence and negative attitude to not be in the least bit helpful. He glanced about the room and said authoritatively, “I’d like a few minutes alone with Luke.”
Lily and Holden nodded and exited the room, but the only movement Reid made was to pick up one of his Dallas case files to check a figure.
“Dr. Oliver-”
“Oh, I’m sorry, was I not clear?” Reid asked, feigning surprise. “Let me try again. The only reason I’m here is because I’m Mr. Snyder’s doctor and I have to oversee his recovery period. So, no, I won’t be leaving.
Luke smirked, satisfied slightly at the look that passed across Burt’s face. As much as his doctor made his blood boil, their current mutual indifference somehow raised his spirits.
Burt recovered fairly quickly, deciding that he might as well focus on the reason he was here, though a change of attitude in the boy might be necessary. He smiled and spoke as though Luke were primed to begin. “Now, Luke, the one thing we don’t want you to do is push yourself too hard, at least right away.”
Luke rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Well, seeing as I can’t move, I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
In his corner, Reid snorted his disbelief once again. Both Luke and Burt turned to look at him, but he didn’t say anything. The look on his face, however, implied that he clearly had much to say on the matter.
“Problem, Dr. Oliver?” Burt prompted, feeling as though they would get nowhere any time soon. It looked as though Dr Oliver and his patient were putting up a united, attitudinal front even though they were clearly warring with each other.
“With what you said? No, you were surprisingly spot on,” Reid answered. “I think what Mr. Snyder meant, however, was, ‘Seeing as I’m a whiny brat insistent on wasting everyone’s time and not even attempting to regain some sort of semblance of a life, I don’t think we have to worry about that,’” Reid corrected, sounding extremely annoyed that he was forced to sit in a room overseeing the therapy of a patient who was constantly acting like a petulant child. He glanced back at Annie Judd’s case file and wondered if there was a way to replace Luke with her, as though through teleportation or some such technology.
Luke was about to retort angrily, any pleasure in the doctor’s previously helpful presence vanishing, but Burt cut him off. “Luke, it is important that you give this therapy some strong effort, even if you feel you’re not making any progress-”
“I’m not going to make any progress,” Luke said, voicing the opinion that, in a strangely roundabout way, was leading to his attitude. “You know that and I know that. Besides, I can’t start now. I’m too tired from the surgery,” he added, resentfully rolling onto his side.
Burt sighed. “All right. I’ll give you a few hours rest, but then I’ll be back.” He tossed the ruined exercises in a wastebasket by the door before leaving the room.
Reid watched him leaving and muttered, “Hmmm . . . that would have been much more effective if he’d used the Terminator voice,” before returning to his computer. He made a disgruntled noise before swinging his feet off the chair, slamming his computer shut and standing up to follow Burt out the door.
“What the hell are you doing?” Luke demanded, having had enough of the doctor’s less-than-welcome presence.
Reid turned, raising an eyebrow at Luke’s tone. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to make a phone call,” he answered. “Surely you can go a couple of minutes without an audience for your ridiculous drama queen antics.”
“I mean, what are you doing here in Oakdale? You’ve made it abundantly clear that you’d rather be anywhere but here, and the fact that you’ve basically fucked up my life doesn’t seem like it would entice you to stick around and clean up your mess.”
“Okay, that’s it,” Reid snarled, whirling around and stuffing his cell phone in his pocket. The Judds would have to wait. “I’m tired of your entire family basically blaming me for the fact that you’re sitting in that bed and not lying dead in a coffin in a ditch somewhere. I’m also tired of sitting around here listening to you whine and complain as though you’re five years old. No, you know what, scratch that. I have a five-year-old patient back in Dallas who is less of a whiny brat than you. And she’s actually dying.”
“Great bedside manner! Really, top notch,” Luke retorted.
“You know, I don’t really care if you think you’ve been dealt a crappy hand. Yeah, I know about your drinking and your kidneys and whatever the hell else you’ve had to go through to get to this point. But for you to sit here and just give up on life is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. And yeah, you’re right. You won’t get better, especially if you’re going to sit around on your ass all day.”
“What’s the point? No one believes I’m going to get better and I sure as hell am not going to lie around being pleased that I’m going to spend the rest of my life stuck in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down and incapable of . . . of . . .” Luke petered off, flushing a slight pink, as though he didn’t want to get into the details with anyone, least of all the doctor that played on his every nerve.
Reid let out a laugh of utter disbelief. Unfortunately for Luke, this signified that Reid knew exactly what was being hinted at. And he already knew that Reid was not one for sugarcoating or beating around the bush. “You can’t possibly serious! When faced with the possibility of permanent paralysis, you think of your diminished sexual life? Kid, screw your head on straight. If you don’t stop this self-destructive behavior and actually do something to regain the use of your legs, you sure has hell won’t have any semblance of a sexual life! What the hell will it take to ram into your thick skull that you’re bringing about that which you’re trying to prevent by not doing anything to fix the situation?”
“But-”
“And as for the people who don’t believe you’re going to get better: fuck them. I’ve been telling them and you time and time again that this is temporary and since my IQ is probably higher than that of this entire town put together, you should have the sense to listen to me than to people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
Luke didn’t say anything, his mouth open was though the muscles and bones he used to keep it shut had given up on the action from sheer shock. There was something in the fierceness in Reid’s expression that he’d never seen before, not even when the doctor was sitting in the corner muttering sarcasms for the entire room to hear. His eyes were narrowed in utter annoyance, but it wasn’t simply the annoyance of a doctor who wanted his patient to do the right thing or a parent who couldn’t get their child to do the right thing. Luke was desperately trying to place it, as maybe its categorization would explain the intense pounding of his heart that came as a result of the icy blue stare.
Reid seemed to be waiting for a response, but when none came he pulled his cell phone back out of his pocket. “Well, since it appears you need a minute to process the sheer genius thrown at you, I’ll go make that phone call now. I trust when I return you’ll have a satisfyingly witty response ready?”
He cocked an eyebrow at Luke before exiting the room, dialing a phone number from memory. When he left, the room suddenly seemed empty, as though he had taken some sort of warmth and emotion with him. Luke sighed, flopping back against his pillows, mind racing, going over each word that Dr. Oliver had said and trying not to focus on the expression on his face when he’d been saying them. Perhaps a witty response was expected, but the more he focused on logic he couldn’t think of one. Because, in his heart, he knew that the doctor was right. That he was being childish and petty and thinking of Noah and a relationship with Noah as opposed to himself. Reid didn’t have to say it for Luke to realize that it was true and that it had to stop.
When the door opened again moments later, Luke had not a retort, but rather a question ready, one that had been bothering him slightly since he’d thought of it.
“Why the hell do you care so-Oh,” he broke off, the person not in the door the one he was expecting.
“Hey, Luke.”
Chapter 11-->
Author: blasthisass
Rating: PG-13 to NC-17
Summary: AU- when Luke is shot by Colonel Mayer, his condition quickly deteriorates. In order to save his life, Bob calls in a young, hotshot doctor from Texas, brilliant and already making a name for himself.
Disclaimers: All characters and such property of ATWT, CBS and anyone else who can legally take credit for them. If they were mine, I would take infinitely better care of them.
Title from the song by La Roux. There is dialogue from both the time in which the story takes place as well as the LuRe storyline.
A/N: This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine.
Comments much appreciated . . . I love them like Reid loves Luke.
Previous parts: prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
***
Luke groaned, setting his Gameboy down on his lap and flashed a gaze of annoyance to the man to his right. “Seriously, don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
Reid didn’t reply at first. He was sitting in a chair in the corner of Luke’s room, his feet propped up on another and his laptop on his lap. His long fingers were flying over the keyboard at rapid speed and he looked vaguely displeased at whatever email he was answering. Luke observed him with narrowed eyes, wanting nothing less than to be left alone to sulk, but his doctor’s annoying persistence deserved to be applauded.
“Dr. Oliver!”
Reid crinkled his noise and made a shushing noise before glancing up at Luke. “Mr. Snyder, I am not deaf and I don’t appreciate being treated as such. Besides, this is a hospital. You should keep the yelling to a minimum. It tends to scare the bleeding people.”
Luke rolled his eyes, feeling childish and petty as a result of his crabby mood. “Whatever.”
Reid guffawed, not even looking up from his computer this time. “Nice comeback. Very mature. And to answer your question, no, I have no where else I have to be, especially considering that the one reason I’m here in the first place is to oversee your care.”
Luke rolled his eyes, flopping himself back onto his pillows and turning up the volume on his Gameboy, if only because it looked like Dr. Oliver preferred quiet when he was working and his presence was driving Luke up the wall. He couldn’t quite figure out whether it was because he was just in this hopeless mood where he wanted to fling his breakfast tray at anyone who even spoke to him or if it was because whenever Dr. Oliver spoke his words got Luke uncharacteristically riled up and the wavelengths of his voice still held that indiscernible familiarity. Or maybe it was because Luke was, more often than not, finding himself caught in the line of Dr. Oliver’s intense stare and he couldn’t quite figure out whether he liked it or not. Every time it happened, it took Luke several minutes afterward to realize that he’d stopped thinking about Noah, about which he also wasn’t quite sure how he felt.
Reid’s jaw clenched as the theme music from whatever game Luke was playing filled the room, overpowering even the beeping of the heart monitor. His hands tightened slightly over the keys. “I’m also here in the hopes that my genius will rub off on you and you’ll stop being an idiot.”
Luke was saved the necessity of having to think up a witty response when the door opened and a rather sturdy looking man in a white uniform entered the room, followed shortly by his parents. If Luke had been in a better mood and didn’t have Noah to think about, he might have indulged in the fact that he was eighteen, going on nineteen, years old and he would have given the man a hungry once over. As it was, he barely looked up from his game. Perhaps if he had, he might have caught his doctor’s look of mild interest in regards to the addition to their party before it transposed itself back into his usual expression. As it was, Luke Snyder was, for the moment, ignorant of his doctor’s interest. Or, lack thereof.
The physical therapist raised his eyebrow at the teenager’s surly response as the latter pretended not to notice that the number of people in the room had increased exponentially. He leaned over and picked up the physical therapy exercises that Luke had received earlier that week, which lay ripped and crumpled by the foot of the bed. He looked as though he didn’t quite know what to make of that particular fact, but decided to ignore it for the time being.
“Hello, I’m Burt,” he introduced himself, smiling warmly at the two males that had already been in the room. When neither made any motion to break away from their activities, Burt spoke to the teenager again. “And you’re Luke.” He stated this in a very factual way, as though daring Luke to challenge him on the matter.
Luke rolled his eyes, wondering what the point of all this was if no one truly believed that it would do him any good. Luke wasn’t normally extremely pessimistic, but he was growing tired of the cards he would continually be dealt and was just about ready to throw away his hand. “I guess,” he muttered sullenly, sinking further into his pillow.
Reid snorted at this, muttering, “Never expected him to be bright, but this is a new low,” under his breath.
Burt frowned at the doctor, deeming his presence and negative attitude to not be in the least bit helpful. He glanced about the room and said authoritatively, “I’d like a few minutes alone with Luke.”
Lily and Holden nodded and exited the room, but the only movement Reid made was to pick up one of his Dallas case files to check a figure.
“Dr. Oliver-”
“Oh, I’m sorry, was I not clear?” Reid asked, feigning surprise. “Let me try again. The only reason I’m here is because I’m Mr. Snyder’s doctor and I have to oversee his recovery period. So, no, I won’t be leaving.
Luke smirked, satisfied slightly at the look that passed across Burt’s face. As much as his doctor made his blood boil, their current mutual indifference somehow raised his spirits.
Burt recovered fairly quickly, deciding that he might as well focus on the reason he was here, though a change of attitude in the boy might be necessary. He smiled and spoke as though Luke were primed to begin. “Now, Luke, the one thing we don’t want you to do is push yourself too hard, at least right away.”
Luke rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Well, seeing as I can’t move, I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
In his corner, Reid snorted his disbelief once again. Both Luke and Burt turned to look at him, but he didn’t say anything. The look on his face, however, implied that he clearly had much to say on the matter.
“Problem, Dr. Oliver?” Burt prompted, feeling as though they would get nowhere any time soon. It looked as though Dr Oliver and his patient were putting up a united, attitudinal front even though they were clearly warring with each other.
“With what you said? No, you were surprisingly spot on,” Reid answered. “I think what Mr. Snyder meant, however, was, ‘Seeing as I’m a whiny brat insistent on wasting everyone’s time and not even attempting to regain some sort of semblance of a life, I don’t think we have to worry about that,’” Reid corrected, sounding extremely annoyed that he was forced to sit in a room overseeing the therapy of a patient who was constantly acting like a petulant child. He glanced back at Annie Judd’s case file and wondered if there was a way to replace Luke with her, as though through teleportation or some such technology.
Luke was about to retort angrily, any pleasure in the doctor’s previously helpful presence vanishing, but Burt cut him off. “Luke, it is important that you give this therapy some strong effort, even if you feel you’re not making any progress-”
“I’m not going to make any progress,” Luke said, voicing the opinion that, in a strangely roundabout way, was leading to his attitude. “You know that and I know that. Besides, I can’t start now. I’m too tired from the surgery,” he added, resentfully rolling onto his side.
Burt sighed. “All right. I’ll give you a few hours rest, but then I’ll be back.” He tossed the ruined exercises in a wastebasket by the door before leaving the room.
Reid watched him leaving and muttered, “Hmmm . . . that would have been much more effective if he’d used the Terminator voice,” before returning to his computer. He made a disgruntled noise before swinging his feet off the chair, slamming his computer shut and standing up to follow Burt out the door.
“What the hell are you doing?” Luke demanded, having had enough of the doctor’s less-than-welcome presence.
Reid turned, raising an eyebrow at Luke’s tone. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to make a phone call,” he answered. “Surely you can go a couple of minutes without an audience for your ridiculous drama queen antics.”
“I mean, what are you doing here in Oakdale? You’ve made it abundantly clear that you’d rather be anywhere but here, and the fact that you’ve basically fucked up my life doesn’t seem like it would entice you to stick around and clean up your mess.”
“Okay, that’s it,” Reid snarled, whirling around and stuffing his cell phone in his pocket. The Judds would have to wait. “I’m tired of your entire family basically blaming me for the fact that you’re sitting in that bed and not lying dead in a coffin in a ditch somewhere. I’m also tired of sitting around here listening to you whine and complain as though you’re five years old. No, you know what, scratch that. I have a five-year-old patient back in Dallas who is less of a whiny brat than you. And she’s actually dying.”
“Great bedside manner! Really, top notch,” Luke retorted.
“You know, I don’t really care if you think you’ve been dealt a crappy hand. Yeah, I know about your drinking and your kidneys and whatever the hell else you’ve had to go through to get to this point. But for you to sit here and just give up on life is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. And yeah, you’re right. You won’t get better, especially if you’re going to sit around on your ass all day.”
“What’s the point? No one believes I’m going to get better and I sure as hell am not going to lie around being pleased that I’m going to spend the rest of my life stuck in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down and incapable of . . . of . . .” Luke petered off, flushing a slight pink, as though he didn’t want to get into the details with anyone, least of all the doctor that played on his every nerve.
Reid let out a laugh of utter disbelief. Unfortunately for Luke, this signified that Reid knew exactly what was being hinted at. And he already knew that Reid was not one for sugarcoating or beating around the bush. “You can’t possibly serious! When faced with the possibility of permanent paralysis, you think of your diminished sexual life? Kid, screw your head on straight. If you don’t stop this self-destructive behavior and actually do something to regain the use of your legs, you sure has hell won’t have any semblance of a sexual life! What the hell will it take to ram into your thick skull that you’re bringing about that which you’re trying to prevent by not doing anything to fix the situation?”
“But-”
“And as for the people who don’t believe you’re going to get better: fuck them. I’ve been telling them and you time and time again that this is temporary and since my IQ is probably higher than that of this entire town put together, you should have the sense to listen to me than to people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
Luke didn’t say anything, his mouth open was though the muscles and bones he used to keep it shut had given up on the action from sheer shock. There was something in the fierceness in Reid’s expression that he’d never seen before, not even when the doctor was sitting in the corner muttering sarcasms for the entire room to hear. His eyes were narrowed in utter annoyance, but it wasn’t simply the annoyance of a doctor who wanted his patient to do the right thing or a parent who couldn’t get their child to do the right thing. Luke was desperately trying to place it, as maybe its categorization would explain the intense pounding of his heart that came as a result of the icy blue stare.
Reid seemed to be waiting for a response, but when none came he pulled his cell phone back out of his pocket. “Well, since it appears you need a minute to process the sheer genius thrown at you, I’ll go make that phone call now. I trust when I return you’ll have a satisfyingly witty response ready?”
He cocked an eyebrow at Luke before exiting the room, dialing a phone number from memory. When he left, the room suddenly seemed empty, as though he had taken some sort of warmth and emotion with him. Luke sighed, flopping back against his pillows, mind racing, going over each word that Dr. Oliver had said and trying not to focus on the expression on his face when he’d been saying them. Perhaps a witty response was expected, but the more he focused on logic he couldn’t think of one. Because, in his heart, he knew that the doctor was right. That he was being childish and petty and thinking of Noah and a relationship with Noah as opposed to himself. Reid didn’t have to say it for Luke to realize that it was true and that it had to stop.
When the door opened again moments later, Luke had not a retort, but rather a question ready, one that had been bothering him slightly since he’d thought of it.
“Why the hell do you care so-Oh,” he broke off, the person not in the door the one he was expecting.
“Hey, Luke.”
Chapter 11-->