Bulletproof (24/52)
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 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23
***
Luke’s eyes lit up slightly as one of the turns in his dance with Noah took him to a position in which he was facing the bar and he spotted Reid sitting there. Some part of him was not only surprised, but pleased to see Reid in the club that night. While he like to think of Reid as the constant science nerd, sitting in his living room reading while everyone else was partying, it also made him happy to see the doctor out and about like a normal person.
As the song continued, he found himself moving closer to Noah, but not so much for the purpose that he hoped. He rested his chin on Noah’s shoulder, but felt his eyes drifting over toward the bar as often as he could manage. As the song ended, he finally managed to catch Reid’s eye. He smiled softly as the doctor’s face softened momentarily, but before he could wave the hand that was resting on Noah’s shoulder, Reid’s eyes hardened and he turned away, muttering something to Katie and leaving the room with his beer.
“So, I’m more than willing to dance to this,” Noah muttered as a high beat song came on, “But I feel like you won’t get much action with it.”
“What?” Luke muttered, his eyes still resting on the door through which Reid had exited.
Noah chuckled, pulling away and smiling at Luke, who tried to recover from being lost in his own thoughts. “What do you say we get out of here?”
Luke opened his mouth to answer, but his phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out, frowning at the Missed Call that flashed on his screen. “My dad, called,” he muttered. “I’m going to go try and call him back. How about you wait here? It’s almost midnight, so we can stick around for the countdown and then leave, okay?” He muttered, patting Noah on the shoulder after the latter nodded and tried to ease his way out of the room while dialing Holden’s number.
***
Reid glanced up at the noise from the club, suddenly heightened when the door opened. He glanced over his shoulder and his hand tightened instinctively around his beer when he caught sight of Luke emerging from the crowded rooms, walking carefully to make sure he didn’t slip on the ice.
“What’re you doing out here, gimpy?” Reid asked, his voice casual and annoyed at the interruption to his solitude.
“My dad called,” Luke muttered, unplugging the ear that wasn’t covered by the cell phone now that he was out of the noisy club and could concentrate on it.
Reid nodded and took a swing of his alcohol. “Everything okay?”
“I guess,” Luke shrugged, looking at his phone and flipping it shut. “I tried calling back, but all the lines are busy,” he murmured to himself, dropping into a seated position on the brick wall beside Reid. “I’ll try again in a little bit.”
Reid nodded. The temperature outside nipped lightly at his nose and he could smell the foreshadowing of snow floating lightly on the air. And yet the heat radiating from Luke’s body seemed to be overcoming the chill of the weather. It unnerved him and made the muscles of his legs, the ones that responded well to flight, tingle.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” At this rate, his beer wouldn’t last one tenth of the conversation.
“Noah?” Luke murmured, his stomach tingling and his voice half reluctant and half affectionate. He looked at the snow that coated the tips of his leather shoes as he swung his legs back and forth like a child.
“Didn’t know you had others.”
Luke laughed. “I don’t. I’m just . . . I don’t know, getting used to the idea that I actually have one.” He paused, choosing to focus the smoke-like ringlets the heat of his voice made in the air, rather than the warmth radiating from Reid’s shoulder. His brow furrowed and he glanced at the doctor, lips curling up. “What’re you doing here, anyway?”
“Not my scene in there,” Reid shrugged, running his finger lightly around the rim of his bottle. “Too many people being jolly. It’s sickening.”
“Yeah, I realized that. I figured it wasn’t your scene. I meant why are you here at Metro on New Year’s Eve?” Luke clarified. His legs kept swinging, kicking away his restless energy. He felt he should be going on back inside to find Noah, but . . . he had to call his dad back . . . Make sure everything is okay.
Reid glanced at Luke out of the corner of his eye, watching his legs go back and forth and his knuckles looking white and cold wrapped around his cane. “Katie dragged me here.”
Luke’s nose curled in surprise and he looked over at Reid as though seeing his face would make the statement more believable. “I didn’t know you such close friends with Katie.”
“Neither did I.”
Luke snorted, glancing back into his lap where his fingers lay curled around his cane. “Wow. The aloof Dr. Oliver has friends. Never would have fathomed it.”
“Don’t have friends.”
“What!” Luke exclaimed, his sharp burst of laughter muffling the music coming from Metro. “You just said you’re friends with Katie!”
Reid snorted. “What? Did I fall asleep during that part of the conversation?”
Luke shook his head in amusement and turned his body slightly, curling his left leg under his right so that he could comfortably face Reid. “I just said that I didn’t know you were friends with Katie. You said, and I quote, ‘Neither did I,’ thereby implying that, though you didn’t know it, you and Katie are friends.”
“And this wondrous logic is why you attend Oakdale University rather than Harvard,” Reid pointed out, smiling at Luke’s deductive skills.
Luke pursed his lips into a thoughtful pout, extenuating just how naturally full his lips were. Reid gulped. It was the only motion he could make to compensate for the beat that his heart skipped at the action.
Luke didn’t seem aware of the effect this seemingly tiny motion had on Reid. He stroked his chin thoughtfully as he contemplated his next statement. “So, you’re not friends. Then, what, you have a thing for her?”
Reid grunted at this. “Why does everyone seem intent on discussing my love life today?”
“Love life, huh? No denial there,” Luke mused, ignoring the sinking feeling in his stomach that this bout of teasing was eliciting.
“Jeez, I never thought you’d be more annoying than when you were whining about life in a wheelchair,” Reid muttered. “But now that you can walk, it’s awful. I might have to knock those legs right out from under you.”
“Please. I could take you, Grandpa,” Luke smirked, his teeth as white as the snow. He nudged Reid playfully.
“Grandpa? Mr. Snyder, may I point out that I’m not the one with a cane,” Reid shrugged, trying hard not to smile, wondering why Luke and Katie seemed so incredibly in synch that night.
Luke shook his head, forcing himself to think of Noah to quench the butterflies in his stomach and continued the conversation. “I mean, that’s cool, I guess. A bit cliché of you, though, isn’t it? I mean, having the blonde, blue-eyed girl as your type. I expected more from you, Dr. Oliver,” Luke reprimanded, snapping a lid onto his babbling.
Reid glanced at Luke, who flushed as though he realized his words were coming out faster than he could think them. He didn’t even feel it necessary to point out the fact that Katie had, in fact, green eyes. “Katie Peretti is not my type,” he said softly, the words lingering in steam of his breath. He wondered if Luke could read any meaning in the glittery particles hanging on the wintry air.
“Oh, c’mon, Dr. Oliver, there’s no use denying it. Everyone loves Katie. She’s everyone’s default type.”
“You’re gay.”
Luke started at the matter of fact way that Reid said this. “What does that matter?”
“How would you know what a lesbian’s or a straight man’s default type is?” Reid asked, smirking. He grinned in satisfaction when he saw how nervous Luke was. Damn that Katie Peretti for being, dare he say, right.
“I have eyes,” Luke muttered, avoiding the question.
“They don’t work very well,” Reid said, smiling softly. He held up his hand to stop Luke from speaking. He didn’t understand why it suddenly felt so important to get this point across. “Katie Peretti is not my type.”
In the silence that passed between them, in the time that they were caught looking at each other as though nothing else was important, the sounds of unified shouting passed through the thin walls of Metro.
“That’s the countdown,” Luke whispered, wondering why he wasn’t absolutely freezing. “I should . . . I should probably be getting inside. I . . . errm,” he muttered, scratching the back of his neck. “I have to find, errm, Noah. You know . . . first time I actually have someone to kiss at midnight, so I, errm . . .”
“Might as well take advantage of it,” Reid supplied, his eyes oddly dark, his voice dangerously low, addictive like the alcohol that he’d just finished.
Luke bit his lip, fingers flexing lightly before curling tighter around his cane. His nerves tingled and he felt that, if he talked, his voice would come out an octave lower, soft and holding a pitch that he wouldn’t be able to take back.
“Yeah,” he whispered, so softly that even he wasn’t sure that he’d actually said it aloud. “Might as well . . .”
He swayed slightly closer, as though the heat of Reid’s eyes had snagged at his torso and was now reeling him in, until they were barely inches apart.
“. . . take . . . advantage . . .”
His eyes darted down to Reid’s lips before meeting Reid’s darkened blue eyes again.
“. . . of . . . it . . .”
He could almost taste Reid’s exhalations, their frequency strangely rapid. He wondered which breath of steam between them was his and which was the doctor’s.
“I . . . errm . . . Dr. Oli-Errm . . . R-Reid . . . I just . . .”
In the background, the muffled cheers and exclamations of “Happy New Year!” got lost on their ways to Luke and Reid’s ears as Luke's eyes closed and his head darted forward without thinking, before he could regret it, to capture Reid's lips with his own.
Chapter 25-->
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 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23
***
Luke’s eyes lit up slightly as one of the turns in his dance with Noah took him to a position in which he was facing the bar and he spotted Reid sitting there. Some part of him was not only surprised, but pleased to see Reid in the club that night. While he like to think of Reid as the constant science nerd, sitting in his living room reading while everyone else was partying, it also made him happy to see the doctor out and about like a normal person.
As the song continued, he found himself moving closer to Noah, but not so much for the purpose that he hoped. He rested his chin on Noah’s shoulder, but felt his eyes drifting over toward the bar as often as he could manage. As the song ended, he finally managed to catch Reid’s eye. He smiled softly as the doctor’s face softened momentarily, but before he could wave the hand that was resting on Noah’s shoulder, Reid’s eyes hardened and he turned away, muttering something to Katie and leaving the room with his beer.
“So, I’m more than willing to dance to this,” Noah muttered as a high beat song came on, “But I feel like you won’t get much action with it.”
“What?” Luke muttered, his eyes still resting on the door through which Reid had exited.
Noah chuckled, pulling away and smiling at Luke, who tried to recover from being lost in his own thoughts. “What do you say we get out of here?”
Luke opened his mouth to answer, but his phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out, frowning at the Missed Call that flashed on his screen. “My dad, called,” he muttered. “I’m going to go try and call him back. How about you wait here? It’s almost midnight, so we can stick around for the countdown and then leave, okay?” He muttered, patting Noah on the shoulder after the latter nodded and tried to ease his way out of the room while dialing Holden’s number.
***
Reid glanced up at the noise from the club, suddenly heightened when the door opened. He glanced over his shoulder and his hand tightened instinctively around his beer when he caught sight of Luke emerging from the crowded rooms, walking carefully to make sure he didn’t slip on the ice.
“What’re you doing out here, gimpy?” Reid asked, his voice casual and annoyed at the interruption to his solitude.
“My dad called,” Luke muttered, unplugging the ear that wasn’t covered by the cell phone now that he was out of the noisy club and could concentrate on it.
Reid nodded and took a swing of his alcohol. “Everything okay?”
“I guess,” Luke shrugged, looking at his phone and flipping it shut. “I tried calling back, but all the lines are busy,” he murmured to himself, dropping into a seated position on the brick wall beside Reid. “I’ll try again in a little bit.”
Reid nodded. The temperature outside nipped lightly at his nose and he could smell the foreshadowing of snow floating lightly on the air. And yet the heat radiating from Luke’s body seemed to be overcoming the chill of the weather. It unnerved him and made the muscles of his legs, the ones that responded well to flight, tingle.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” At this rate, his beer wouldn’t last one tenth of the conversation.
“Noah?” Luke murmured, his stomach tingling and his voice half reluctant and half affectionate. He looked at the snow that coated the tips of his leather shoes as he swung his legs back and forth like a child.
“Didn’t know you had others.”
Luke laughed. “I don’t. I’m just . . . I don’t know, getting used to the idea that I actually have one.” He paused, choosing to focus the smoke-like ringlets the heat of his voice made in the air, rather than the warmth radiating from Reid’s shoulder. His brow furrowed and he glanced at the doctor, lips curling up. “What’re you doing here, anyway?”
“Not my scene in there,” Reid shrugged, running his finger lightly around the rim of his bottle. “Too many people being jolly. It’s sickening.”
“Yeah, I realized that. I figured it wasn’t your scene. I meant why are you here at Metro on New Year’s Eve?” Luke clarified. His legs kept swinging, kicking away his restless energy. He felt he should be going on back inside to find Noah, but . . . he had to call his dad back . . . Make sure everything is okay.
Reid glanced at Luke out of the corner of his eye, watching his legs go back and forth and his knuckles looking white and cold wrapped around his cane. “Katie dragged me here.”
Luke’s nose curled in surprise and he looked over at Reid as though seeing his face would make the statement more believable. “I didn’t know you such close friends with Katie.”
“Neither did I.”
Luke snorted, glancing back into his lap where his fingers lay curled around his cane. “Wow. The aloof Dr. Oliver has friends. Never would have fathomed it.”
“Don’t have friends.”
“What!” Luke exclaimed, his sharp burst of laughter muffling the music coming from Metro. “You just said you’re friends with Katie!”
Reid snorted. “What? Did I fall asleep during that part of the conversation?”
Luke shook his head in amusement and turned his body slightly, curling his left leg under his right so that he could comfortably face Reid. “I just said that I didn’t know you were friends with Katie. You said, and I quote, ‘Neither did I,’ thereby implying that, though you didn’t know it, you and Katie are friends.”
“And this wondrous logic is why you attend Oakdale University rather than Harvard,” Reid pointed out, smiling at Luke’s deductive skills.
Luke pursed his lips into a thoughtful pout, extenuating just how naturally full his lips were. Reid gulped. It was the only motion he could make to compensate for the beat that his heart skipped at the action.
Luke didn’t seem aware of the effect this seemingly tiny motion had on Reid. He stroked his chin thoughtfully as he contemplated his next statement. “So, you’re not friends. Then, what, you have a thing for her?”
Reid grunted at this. “Why does everyone seem intent on discussing my love life today?”
“Love life, huh? No denial there,” Luke mused, ignoring the sinking feeling in his stomach that this bout of teasing was eliciting.
“Jeez, I never thought you’d be more annoying than when you were whining about life in a wheelchair,” Reid muttered. “But now that you can walk, it’s awful. I might have to knock those legs right out from under you.”
“Please. I could take you, Grandpa,” Luke smirked, his teeth as white as the snow. He nudged Reid playfully.
“Grandpa? Mr. Snyder, may I point out that I’m not the one with a cane,” Reid shrugged, trying hard not to smile, wondering why Luke and Katie seemed so incredibly in synch that night.
Luke shook his head, forcing himself to think of Noah to quench the butterflies in his stomach and continued the conversation. “I mean, that’s cool, I guess. A bit cliché of you, though, isn’t it? I mean, having the blonde, blue-eyed girl as your type. I expected more from you, Dr. Oliver,” Luke reprimanded, snapping a lid onto his babbling.
Reid glanced at Luke, who flushed as though he realized his words were coming out faster than he could think them. He didn’t even feel it necessary to point out the fact that Katie had, in fact, green eyes. “Katie Peretti is not my type,” he said softly, the words lingering in steam of his breath. He wondered if Luke could read any meaning in the glittery particles hanging on the wintry air.
“Oh, c’mon, Dr. Oliver, there’s no use denying it. Everyone loves Katie. She’s everyone’s default type.”
“You’re gay.”
Luke started at the matter of fact way that Reid said this. “What does that matter?”
“How would you know what a lesbian’s or a straight man’s default type is?” Reid asked, smirking. He grinned in satisfaction when he saw how nervous Luke was. Damn that Katie Peretti for being, dare he say, right.
“I have eyes,” Luke muttered, avoiding the question.
“They don’t work very well,” Reid said, smiling softly. He held up his hand to stop Luke from speaking. He didn’t understand why it suddenly felt so important to get this point across. “Katie Peretti is not my type.”
In the silence that passed between them, in the time that they were caught looking at each other as though nothing else was important, the sounds of unified shouting passed through the thin walls of Metro.
“That’s the countdown,” Luke whispered, wondering why he wasn’t absolutely freezing. “I should . . . I should probably be getting inside. I . . . errm,” he muttered, scratching the back of his neck. “I have to find, errm, Noah. You know . . . first time I actually have someone to kiss at midnight, so I, errm . . .”
“Might as well take advantage of it,” Reid supplied, his eyes oddly dark, his voice dangerously low, addictive like the alcohol that he’d just finished.
Luke bit his lip, fingers flexing lightly before curling tighter around his cane. His nerves tingled and he felt that, if he talked, his voice would come out an octave lower, soft and holding a pitch that he wouldn’t be able to take back.
“Yeah,” he whispered, so softly that even he wasn’t sure that he’d actually said it aloud. “Might as well . . .”
He swayed slightly closer, as though the heat of Reid’s eyes had snagged at his torso and was now reeling him in, until they were barely inches apart.
“. . . take . . . advantage . . .”
His eyes darted down to Reid’s lips before meeting Reid’s darkened blue eyes again.
“. . . of . . . it . . .”
He could almost taste Reid’s exhalations, their frequency strangely rapid. He wondered which breath of steam between them was his and which was the doctor’s.
“I . . . errm . . . Dr. Oli-Errm . . . R-Reid . . . I just . . .”
In the background, the muffled cheers and exclamations of “Happy New Year!” got lost on their ways to Luke and Reid’s ears as Luke's eyes closed and his head darted forward without thinking, before he could regret it, to capture Reid's lips with his own.
Chapter 25-->