Bulletproof (35/52)
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 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34
***
Luke was sitting in Java, drinking coffee and perusing a book he was reading for his English class. He frowned, underlining half a paragraph of thought and jotting down a counter-thought in the margin before settling back, deciding that the action sufficed as adequate pretend-studying. In truth, he was busy thinking about Dr. Oliver and the look he’d received from him just before he disappeared out of Margo Hughes’s yard.
“Look, you can be content with your boyfriend playing these mind games with you. But I don’t play games. I’m not that guy. And I want out of this thing. I mean it, Snyder.”
Luke had no doubt about the fact that Reid was being completely honest. Not only about not playing games, but also about wanting nothing more to do with the situation. And a while ago, Luke would have supposed it was because the doctor resented him, blamed him about being (initially) stuck in the one-horse town that was Oakdale. But somehow, there was something about Dr. Oliver’s words that rang false. False when he said them. False because, when he’d looked at Luke right before walking away, he almost looked like he didn’t mean them. Not really. Looked like he truly wanted out of the situation, but not . . . not out of the situation if it meant breaking up, even fictionally, with Luke.
And Luke wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Because the feeling when he got when he was around Reid or thinking about Reid or even when he would realize that he’d started thinking of Reid by his first name as opposed to Dr. Oliver, it was unnerving. It was somehow all too real and it made him feel like none of his crushes or obsessions ever had, and so he was therefore reluctant to define it, even after talking to Maddie and considering what it could be. What it almost undeniably had to be. But if it wasn’t returned, if it was just something that seeped into his thoughts without his permission, it was okay. It was safe. He could live with that. If Reid was anything but indifferent to him, Luke didn’t know what meaning to find in that. And hadn’t the doctor showed him, in a moment of weakness, when he thought he wouldn’t have another chance, that he wasn’t wholly indifferent?
Luke groaned aloud and pushed his novel off the table into his backpack. He had to stop thinking about Re-Dr. Oliver. Yes, he had dragged him into this mess that was the Noah/Ameera/Luke triangle (if it could be classified as such) and yes, during that time he’d become not only grateful of his presence, but even welcoming of it, but if he was going to continue to develop feelings for someone other than his boyfriend, then Re-Dr. Oliver was right. This had to stop. Only . . . he didn’t want it to. Something had to stop, but it wasn’t this.
He swung his backpack over his shoulder and was nearly out the door, leaving behind the fact that he was in the café to meet Noah, whom he had to talk to, and Ameera, who of course was tagging along, when he was practically bowled over by whoever was trying to get into the coffee shop.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed, hissing slightly as the force of the collision caused him to stumble backwards and his coffee to go flying out of his cup and onto his jacket. His eyes flashed indignantly at the causation of this accident, mouth and brain ready to call him out on it.
His brain and mouth came to a screeching halt when he realized that the man that he’d effectively crashed into was the very man he’d just been contemplating. And while this would normally have not been enough to stop his rant, the look on Reid’s face did the trick.
He’d never seen that type of look grazing anyone’s face before, let alone that of the stone-cold, emotionally impenetrable Dr. Reid Oliver. But it was there. It was a sort of empty brokenness, a devastation that couldn’t be fully expressed, as though it hadn’t been fully realized. As though Reid hadn’t fully been able to process it.
Luke swallowed and he could barely stop his heart from flying out of his chest to Reid. “Reid?” he murmured tentatively, eyes sinking into compassion. The name came out naturally, with no thought of it being as part of a cover-up, no thought of the possibility of even using the doctor’s surname.
Reid’s face looked exactly like one of those African masks Luke had once seen in a museum. Not comical, by any means, but stiff and wooden and, somehow, dead, like the life had gone out of it. His eyes narrowed but he didn’t leave, as though he were too focused on controlling his breathing and keeping it steady to move his feet.
“Reid, is everything okay?” Luke asked quietly, full of concern, when the doctor didn’t reprimand him for his lack of respect or even say anything at all. He took a step forward, arm stretching forward tentatively to lay a comforting touch on the doctor’s skin.
Reid moved away swiftly, dodging past Luke with a cold snarl of, “I’m fine.” He was about to shove past Luke and disappear into Java when he felt warm fingers wrapping tightly around his wrist and pulling him back.
“No, you’re not,” Luke whispered, gazing at Reid’s face with the utmost intensity. He wanted desperately to look into his eyes, but Reid hardened them and looked at the ground just behind Luke. Luke took a mini step closer and lifted his free hand to Reid’s chin, tilting it until Reid’s eyes were forced to meet his and he began to feel his heart pounding in his chest as though he’d just run a marathon. “You were fine yesterday. Reid,” he murmured, loving the way the name just fell of his tongue, “What happened?”
Reid Oliver didn’t talk. He didn’t do feelings, he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, and he certainly didn’t do public displays of affection. So he had to wonder why he was still there, with Luke’s fingers holding his chin up, with his other hand weightlessly sliding down from Reid’s wrist to his hand, fingers almost intertwining. The motion was so light that it must have been unconscious. Reid felt like this should be uncomfortable, like he should pull away and be a complete jackass and do whatever he did whenever he felt quite this way.
The thing was, he’d never felt this way. And Luke Snyder seemed to have the marvelous ability of taking all his resolutions about practically everything he believed and completely turning them head over heels. He almost wanted to sway further into the intimacy of the moment, to stop and pretend that this pretend relationship was more than real.
“I don’t . . . want to talk about it,” he answered, wondering if he truly didn’t want to talk about it or if he should add a necessary ‘here’ to the end of the sentence.
Luke smiled sympathetically, as though their argument the other day hadn’t even occurred and pulled lightly at Reid’s hand as he lost contact with Reid’s chin. Reid couldn’t even remember when the palms of their hands had slipped together or when his fingers had curled in between Luke’s. “C’mon then,” Luke smiled as he walked backwards out of Java.
“I don’t-”
“C’mon,” Luke repeated, his eyes deep, and Reid wondered when he’d lost all the willpower he’d had upon coming to Oakhell. His shoulders slumped and he allowed himself to be pulled into Old Towne and past a lingering Iraqi girl who cast them a narrowed glance that neither of them caught, as they somehow couldn’t break away from each other’s eyes.
***
“Just make yourself at home,” Luke said as he pushed open the door to his grandmother’s guesthouse. He glanced around, eyes narrowing at the signs of Noah and Ameera’s pseudo-domesticity. He didn’t like being there, but it was perhaps better than taking Reid back to his mother’s house. “I’m just going to go change my shirt, seeing as you ruined it,” he joked, making his way past the couch and toward Noah’s bedroom.
He paused in the doorway, leaning against it as he turned to look at Reid, who hadn’t moved since he’d been released from Luke’s closeness. “And don’t even think about running off, Dr. Oliver,” Luke reprimanded, wagging his finger jokingly before disappearing inside the room.
Reid didn’t answer, taking a soft step into the room, trying to figure out whether or not he should bolt and just seethe in private. He walked over to the couch and picked up a photo of Noah and Ameera from their ‘wedding,’ frowning in dissatisfaction at it.
“What do you want to drink? Coffee? Tea? I’d offer you something stronger, but I don’t think there’s anything here.”
Reid looked up to tell Luke that he didn’t want anything, but his breath got caught in his throat. Luke was standing uncertainly halfway between the kitchen. He looked like he was midway through the process of changing. He’d removed his striped T-shirt and donned a collared button-down, which looked like it belonged to Noah. Its vertical stripes traced the outline of Luke’s body carefully, as though wary of error, before swooping down to the buttonholes. Reid gulped as his stomach lurched-the shirt wasn’t fully buttoned. Luke’s fingers lingered on the third button from the bottom and the gap above the shirt revealed slim, athletic abs and a sprinkling of light blonde hair over his chest. Each breath Luke took moved his chest defiantly and seemed to brush the cloth of the shirt to the side temporarily. Reid was finding it difficult to breathe and he was sure the beats his heart was intent on skipping were going straight to his groin.
“Reid?”
Reid shook his head and his hands automatically went to rub his eyes, as though to rid himself of the image. “Nothing,” he replied, his voice robotic. “I’m going to-”
“No,” Luke commanded, his fingers leaving the buttons, but leaving a substantial amount of them undone (Noah was slimmer than Luke and the shirt seemed to be fitting rather tightly across Luke’s shoulders). He turned to walk over to the adjacent kitchen, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll make you tea. It seems better suited for your disposition.” There was a light joke on his breath that Reid appreciated. “And then you’re going to stay and I’m going to fake comfort you about whatever happened like the amazing fake boyfriend that I am. Take advantage, my friend.”
Reid rolled his eyes and flopped down on the couch, not feeling in the mood to argue with Luke, who could be just as persistent as him at times, or even point out that he had fake broken up with him just the other night. Moments later, Luke came over and handed him a steaming mug of tea.
Reid eyed the flowery cup. “What the hell is that?”
“Tea,” Luke grinned, waiting until Reid had taken the cup before falling gently back onto the couch. His shoes were off and he turned sideways on the cushions until his back as leaning against the armrest and his legs were childishly crossed in front of him. “Talk.”
Reid chuckled half-heartedly at the instructions. “I’m not you. I don’t go spilling my guts all over everyone who seems to be in range.”
Luke shrugged. “So let’s switch roles. You be me and I’ll be you.”
Reid frowned at his mug, as though Luke’s proximity made it all too dangerous to look at him at the moment. He took a tentative sip of the hot liquid, clearing his throat as it went down and it’s heat transferred from his throat to the rest of his body. “I . . . I lost a patient.” His eyes were tear-filled and his voice had the thickness of molasses.
Luke’s eyebrows fell into a sympathetic smile. “Re-I’m so sorry. Was . . . was it the first time?”
Reid sat, unmoving, eyes narrowed and focused straight ahead as though, for the first time in his life, he wanted to cry but he was trying to prevent it. Luke barely caught the nod in the affirmative as a tear eased itself out of the corner of Reid’s eye and snaked it’s way down around his cheekbone.
“I never thought you’d react like this,” Luke murmured, watching as Reid noticed the liquid and furiously wiped it away. “Not what I suggested when you pretend to be me,” Luke joked softly.
“Shut up.”
“That’s more like it. ‘No more now, Menelaus. How long must you weep? / Withering tears, what good can come from tears? / None, I know of,’” Luke murmured, smiled lightly when Reid turned to look at him incredulously.
“Did you seriously just recite a passage from The Odyssey at me?”
“I can’t believe you know that’s from The Odyssey!”
“I can’t believe you think I would do that if I was comforting someone,” Reid replied, something in his face softening. “I can’t believe you think I would take the time to comfort someone.”
Luke scrunched up his face into a thoughtful pose and leaned back, hugging one knee to his chest as his other leg fell to the ground and his toes played with the fringes of the carpet. “Okay. How about . . . Tears don’t help. They just cause your eyes to swell and your skin to blotch.”
Reid let out a light laugh, slightly more humor-filled this time. “You’d know, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah. But . . . it happens you know. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. You’re not über doctor or anything.”
Reid contemplated this, some of the tension leaking out of his shoulders. He leaned back further into the cushions and took a deeper sip of his tea, trying to ignore the fact that the toes of Luke’s bent foot were pressed lightly into his thigh. “I am, actually, but only on alternate Wednesdays.”
Luke chortled softly, gazing affectionately at Reid. “I always thought that if the great Dr. Oliver ever lost a patient, he’d get infuriated and just be himself. I never thought you would take it so hard. But then I realized that I know you better than I thought I did. You feel as if you’ve failed and you can’t handle that, even if there was nothing that could be done. I mean . . . people think that you’re a brilliant doctor because you’re fearless. They don’t know it’s because you care so much. So . . . I don’t know,” he chuckled, running his hand through his hair awkwardly when Reid just continued to watch him intensely. “I mean, I guess any advice I could give you, you probably know already. But . . . Your patients, the ones you lose, the ones that make you want to cry . . . Save them. In your memory, in your heart, in picture form in your wallet, whatever. You couldn’t save them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use them to save someone else.”
Reid smiled, genuinely, for the first time since Luke saw him that afternoon. But he never stopped looking at Luke as though Luke was the very last thing he ever wanted to see and remember. “Says the kid who gave up on himself because of a minor setback,” he commented, smirking slightly.
Luke shook his head. “You and me, we’re different-Please, don’t give me the completely called-for, ‘Duh,’ just listen. This is your first patient that you’ve lost. And it’s a shock, it’s understandable. But you’ll just brush it off and kick ass for your next hundred surgeries. You’ll rarely have setbacks. Me . . . I just get tired of being the guy that seems to always draw the short stick. I mean, my parents love each other, but they just can’t seem to get their shit together ever. My drinking, my kidneys. My first crush being on a homophobic jackass, my father being a homophobic jackass. My . . . and here’s the thing, I just keep looking around and seeing things that aren’t mine and just seeing how bad I have it by comparison.”
“Oh, come on-”
“No, seriously!” Luke exclaimed, releasing his knee from his chest and leaning in toward Reid, as though a lack of distance would help convey his point better. Reid could almost count the dark flecks in his eyes. “Take my relationship with Noah. I mean . . . Me and Noah. . . . That just happened so, so fast. Not us getting our shit together and actually becoming a couple. I mean . . . Just the attraction, you know? I never thought I would be one of those lighting strikes you and your life changes-”
“Really?” Reid asked, giving him a frown of mocking concern. “You never pegged yourself as a as a hopeless romantic? Not very perceptive on your part, don’t you think?”
“Oh, ha, ha,” Luke laughed sarcastically. “But, seriously, that’s how it was. And . . . I don’t know, I’m starting to wonder if love really works that way. Because . . . whatever this is supposed to be between Noah and me . . . It doesn’t feel real anymore. It feels so forced. . . .” Luke continued, feeling his cheeks flush pink as he tried to control where his heart was taking this.
Luke took a deep breath, debating quickly with himself before looking at Reid with the sort of emotional intensity that scared Reid to his very core, whether he felt it himself or saw it in someone else. When Luke now spoke, it was almost with a fierce determination. “I don’t really know if I understand it all. I mean, recently, I’ve found my ‘real’ relationship with Noah is just pretend, like a bunch of kids playing house, but really poorly-”
“Well, you have no perspective,” Reid muttered, voice holding a warning, hoping to curtail where he sensed Luke was heading.
“But I do, in a way. I mean . . . For example, this thing with you-”
“Don’t,” Reid warned.
“-Even though it’s technically pretend, it just feels so much more real-”
“Don’t,” Reid repeated, standing and making his way away from the couch.
Luke’s mouth drew into a tight line. “Reid-”
“Just don’t. I told you before, I want no part in this,” Reid said, his voice shaking slightly. He held up his hand, palm pointed flat toward Luke.
Luke stood up and walked toward Reid, who walked backward until his back hit the door and Luke’s chest hit his outstretched hand. “Don’t run away, please. Not because you’re scared.”
Reid shook his head, breaths tight and shaking. “Don’t.”
Chapter 36-->
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 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34
***
Luke was sitting in Java, drinking coffee and perusing a book he was reading for his English class. He frowned, underlining half a paragraph of thought and jotting down a counter-thought in the margin before settling back, deciding that the action sufficed as adequate pretend-studying. In truth, he was busy thinking about Dr. Oliver and the look he’d received from him just before he disappeared out of Margo Hughes’s yard.
“Look, you can be content with your boyfriend playing these mind games with you. But I don’t play games. I’m not that guy. And I want out of this thing. I mean it, Snyder.”
Luke had no doubt about the fact that Reid was being completely honest. Not only about not playing games, but also about wanting nothing more to do with the situation. And a while ago, Luke would have supposed it was because the doctor resented him, blamed him about being (initially) stuck in the one-horse town that was Oakdale. But somehow, there was something about Dr. Oliver’s words that rang false. False when he said them. False because, when he’d looked at Luke right before walking away, he almost looked like he didn’t mean them. Not really. Looked like he truly wanted out of the situation, but not . . . not out of the situation if it meant breaking up, even fictionally, with Luke.
And Luke wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Because the feeling when he got when he was around Reid or thinking about Reid or even when he would realize that he’d started thinking of Reid by his first name as opposed to Dr. Oliver, it was unnerving. It was somehow all too real and it made him feel like none of his crushes or obsessions ever had, and so he was therefore reluctant to define it, even after talking to Maddie and considering what it could be. What it almost undeniably had to be. But if it wasn’t returned, if it was just something that seeped into his thoughts without his permission, it was okay. It was safe. He could live with that. If Reid was anything but indifferent to him, Luke didn’t know what meaning to find in that. And hadn’t the doctor showed him, in a moment of weakness, when he thought he wouldn’t have another chance, that he wasn’t wholly indifferent?
Luke groaned aloud and pushed his novel off the table into his backpack. He had to stop thinking about Re-Dr. Oliver. Yes, he had dragged him into this mess that was the Noah/Ameera/Luke triangle (if it could be classified as such) and yes, during that time he’d become not only grateful of his presence, but even welcoming of it, but if he was going to continue to develop feelings for someone other than his boyfriend, then Re-Dr. Oliver was right. This had to stop. Only . . . he didn’t want it to. Something had to stop, but it wasn’t this.
He swung his backpack over his shoulder and was nearly out the door, leaving behind the fact that he was in the café to meet Noah, whom he had to talk to, and Ameera, who of course was tagging along, when he was practically bowled over by whoever was trying to get into the coffee shop.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed, hissing slightly as the force of the collision caused him to stumble backwards and his coffee to go flying out of his cup and onto his jacket. His eyes flashed indignantly at the causation of this accident, mouth and brain ready to call him out on it.
His brain and mouth came to a screeching halt when he realized that the man that he’d effectively crashed into was the very man he’d just been contemplating. And while this would normally have not been enough to stop his rant, the look on Reid’s face did the trick.
He’d never seen that type of look grazing anyone’s face before, let alone that of the stone-cold, emotionally impenetrable Dr. Reid Oliver. But it was there. It was a sort of empty brokenness, a devastation that couldn’t be fully expressed, as though it hadn’t been fully realized. As though Reid hadn’t fully been able to process it.
Luke swallowed and he could barely stop his heart from flying out of his chest to Reid. “Reid?” he murmured tentatively, eyes sinking into compassion. The name came out naturally, with no thought of it being as part of a cover-up, no thought of the possibility of even using the doctor’s surname.
Reid’s face looked exactly like one of those African masks Luke had once seen in a museum. Not comical, by any means, but stiff and wooden and, somehow, dead, like the life had gone out of it. His eyes narrowed but he didn’t leave, as though he were too focused on controlling his breathing and keeping it steady to move his feet.
“Reid, is everything okay?” Luke asked quietly, full of concern, when the doctor didn’t reprimand him for his lack of respect or even say anything at all. He took a step forward, arm stretching forward tentatively to lay a comforting touch on the doctor’s skin.
Reid moved away swiftly, dodging past Luke with a cold snarl of, “I’m fine.” He was about to shove past Luke and disappear into Java when he felt warm fingers wrapping tightly around his wrist and pulling him back.
“No, you’re not,” Luke whispered, gazing at Reid’s face with the utmost intensity. He wanted desperately to look into his eyes, but Reid hardened them and looked at the ground just behind Luke. Luke took a mini step closer and lifted his free hand to Reid’s chin, tilting it until Reid’s eyes were forced to meet his and he began to feel his heart pounding in his chest as though he’d just run a marathon. “You were fine yesterday. Reid,” he murmured, loving the way the name just fell of his tongue, “What happened?”
Reid Oliver didn’t talk. He didn’t do feelings, he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve, and he certainly didn’t do public displays of affection. So he had to wonder why he was still there, with Luke’s fingers holding his chin up, with his other hand weightlessly sliding down from Reid’s wrist to his hand, fingers almost intertwining. The motion was so light that it must have been unconscious. Reid felt like this should be uncomfortable, like he should pull away and be a complete jackass and do whatever he did whenever he felt quite this way.
The thing was, he’d never felt this way. And Luke Snyder seemed to have the marvelous ability of taking all his resolutions about practically everything he believed and completely turning them head over heels. He almost wanted to sway further into the intimacy of the moment, to stop and pretend that this pretend relationship was more than real.
“I don’t . . . want to talk about it,” he answered, wondering if he truly didn’t want to talk about it or if he should add a necessary ‘here’ to the end of the sentence.
Luke smiled sympathetically, as though their argument the other day hadn’t even occurred and pulled lightly at Reid’s hand as he lost contact with Reid’s chin. Reid couldn’t even remember when the palms of their hands had slipped together or when his fingers had curled in between Luke’s. “C’mon then,” Luke smiled as he walked backwards out of Java.
“I don’t-”
“C’mon,” Luke repeated, his eyes deep, and Reid wondered when he’d lost all the willpower he’d had upon coming to Oakhell. His shoulders slumped and he allowed himself to be pulled into Old Towne and past a lingering Iraqi girl who cast them a narrowed glance that neither of them caught, as they somehow couldn’t break away from each other’s eyes.
***
“Just make yourself at home,” Luke said as he pushed open the door to his grandmother’s guesthouse. He glanced around, eyes narrowing at the signs of Noah and Ameera’s pseudo-domesticity. He didn’t like being there, but it was perhaps better than taking Reid back to his mother’s house. “I’m just going to go change my shirt, seeing as you ruined it,” he joked, making his way past the couch and toward Noah’s bedroom.
He paused in the doorway, leaning against it as he turned to look at Reid, who hadn’t moved since he’d been released from Luke’s closeness. “And don’t even think about running off, Dr. Oliver,” Luke reprimanded, wagging his finger jokingly before disappearing inside the room.
Reid didn’t answer, taking a soft step into the room, trying to figure out whether or not he should bolt and just seethe in private. He walked over to the couch and picked up a photo of Noah and Ameera from their ‘wedding,’ frowning in dissatisfaction at it.
“What do you want to drink? Coffee? Tea? I’d offer you something stronger, but I don’t think there’s anything here.”
Reid looked up to tell Luke that he didn’t want anything, but his breath got caught in his throat. Luke was standing uncertainly halfway between the kitchen. He looked like he was midway through the process of changing. He’d removed his striped T-shirt and donned a collared button-down, which looked like it belonged to Noah. Its vertical stripes traced the outline of Luke’s body carefully, as though wary of error, before swooping down to the buttonholes. Reid gulped as his stomach lurched-the shirt wasn’t fully buttoned. Luke’s fingers lingered on the third button from the bottom and the gap above the shirt revealed slim, athletic abs and a sprinkling of light blonde hair over his chest. Each breath Luke took moved his chest defiantly and seemed to brush the cloth of the shirt to the side temporarily. Reid was finding it difficult to breathe and he was sure the beats his heart was intent on skipping were going straight to his groin.
“Reid?”
Reid shook his head and his hands automatically went to rub his eyes, as though to rid himself of the image. “Nothing,” he replied, his voice robotic. “I’m going to-”
“No,” Luke commanded, his fingers leaving the buttons, but leaving a substantial amount of them undone (Noah was slimmer than Luke and the shirt seemed to be fitting rather tightly across Luke’s shoulders). He turned to walk over to the adjacent kitchen, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll make you tea. It seems better suited for your disposition.” There was a light joke on his breath that Reid appreciated. “And then you’re going to stay and I’m going to fake comfort you about whatever happened like the amazing fake boyfriend that I am. Take advantage, my friend.”
Reid rolled his eyes and flopped down on the couch, not feeling in the mood to argue with Luke, who could be just as persistent as him at times, or even point out that he had fake broken up with him just the other night. Moments later, Luke came over and handed him a steaming mug of tea.
Reid eyed the flowery cup. “What the hell is that?”
“Tea,” Luke grinned, waiting until Reid had taken the cup before falling gently back onto the couch. His shoes were off and he turned sideways on the cushions until his back as leaning against the armrest and his legs were childishly crossed in front of him. “Talk.”
Reid chuckled half-heartedly at the instructions. “I’m not you. I don’t go spilling my guts all over everyone who seems to be in range.”
Luke shrugged. “So let’s switch roles. You be me and I’ll be you.”
Reid frowned at his mug, as though Luke’s proximity made it all too dangerous to look at him at the moment. He took a tentative sip of the hot liquid, clearing his throat as it went down and it’s heat transferred from his throat to the rest of his body. “I . . . I lost a patient.” His eyes were tear-filled and his voice had the thickness of molasses.
Luke’s eyebrows fell into a sympathetic smile. “Re-I’m so sorry. Was . . . was it the first time?”
Reid sat, unmoving, eyes narrowed and focused straight ahead as though, for the first time in his life, he wanted to cry but he was trying to prevent it. Luke barely caught the nod in the affirmative as a tear eased itself out of the corner of Reid’s eye and snaked it’s way down around his cheekbone.
“I never thought you’d react like this,” Luke murmured, watching as Reid noticed the liquid and furiously wiped it away. “Not what I suggested when you pretend to be me,” Luke joked softly.
“Shut up.”
“That’s more like it. ‘No more now, Menelaus. How long must you weep? / Withering tears, what good can come from tears? / None, I know of,’” Luke murmured, smiled lightly when Reid turned to look at him incredulously.
“Did you seriously just recite a passage from The Odyssey at me?”
“I can’t believe you know that’s from The Odyssey!”
“I can’t believe you think I would do that if I was comforting someone,” Reid replied, something in his face softening. “I can’t believe you think I would take the time to comfort someone.”
Luke scrunched up his face into a thoughtful pose and leaned back, hugging one knee to his chest as his other leg fell to the ground and his toes played with the fringes of the carpet. “Okay. How about . . . Tears don’t help. They just cause your eyes to swell and your skin to blotch.”
Reid let out a light laugh, slightly more humor-filled this time. “You’d know, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah. But . . . it happens you know. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. You’re not über doctor or anything.”
Reid contemplated this, some of the tension leaking out of his shoulders. He leaned back further into the cushions and took a deeper sip of his tea, trying to ignore the fact that the toes of Luke’s bent foot were pressed lightly into his thigh. “I am, actually, but only on alternate Wednesdays.”
Luke chortled softly, gazing affectionately at Reid. “I always thought that if the great Dr. Oliver ever lost a patient, he’d get infuriated and just be himself. I never thought you would take it so hard. But then I realized that I know you better than I thought I did. You feel as if you’ve failed and you can’t handle that, even if there was nothing that could be done. I mean . . . people think that you’re a brilliant doctor because you’re fearless. They don’t know it’s because you care so much. So . . . I don’t know,” he chuckled, running his hand through his hair awkwardly when Reid just continued to watch him intensely. “I mean, I guess any advice I could give you, you probably know already. But . . . Your patients, the ones you lose, the ones that make you want to cry . . . Save them. In your memory, in your heart, in picture form in your wallet, whatever. You couldn’t save them, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use them to save someone else.”
Reid smiled, genuinely, for the first time since Luke saw him that afternoon. But he never stopped looking at Luke as though Luke was the very last thing he ever wanted to see and remember. “Says the kid who gave up on himself because of a minor setback,” he commented, smirking slightly.
Luke shook his head. “You and me, we’re different-Please, don’t give me the completely called-for, ‘Duh,’ just listen. This is your first patient that you’ve lost. And it’s a shock, it’s understandable. But you’ll just brush it off and kick ass for your next hundred surgeries. You’ll rarely have setbacks. Me . . . I just get tired of being the guy that seems to always draw the short stick. I mean, my parents love each other, but they just can’t seem to get their shit together ever. My drinking, my kidneys. My first crush being on a homophobic jackass, my father being a homophobic jackass. My . . . and here’s the thing, I just keep looking around and seeing things that aren’t mine and just seeing how bad I have it by comparison.”
“Oh, come on-”
“No, seriously!” Luke exclaimed, releasing his knee from his chest and leaning in toward Reid, as though a lack of distance would help convey his point better. Reid could almost count the dark flecks in his eyes. “Take my relationship with Noah. I mean . . . Me and Noah. . . . That just happened so, so fast. Not us getting our shit together and actually becoming a couple. I mean . . . Just the attraction, you know? I never thought I would be one of those lighting strikes you and your life changes-”
“Really?” Reid asked, giving him a frown of mocking concern. “You never pegged yourself as a as a hopeless romantic? Not very perceptive on your part, don’t you think?”
“Oh, ha, ha,” Luke laughed sarcastically. “But, seriously, that’s how it was. And . . . I don’t know, I’m starting to wonder if love really works that way. Because . . . whatever this is supposed to be between Noah and me . . . It doesn’t feel real anymore. It feels so forced. . . .” Luke continued, feeling his cheeks flush pink as he tried to control where his heart was taking this.
Luke took a deep breath, debating quickly with himself before looking at Reid with the sort of emotional intensity that scared Reid to his very core, whether he felt it himself or saw it in someone else. When Luke now spoke, it was almost with a fierce determination. “I don’t really know if I understand it all. I mean, recently, I’ve found my ‘real’ relationship with Noah is just pretend, like a bunch of kids playing house, but really poorly-”
“Well, you have no perspective,” Reid muttered, voice holding a warning, hoping to curtail where he sensed Luke was heading.
“But I do, in a way. I mean . . . For example, this thing with you-”
“Don’t,” Reid warned.
“-Even though it’s technically pretend, it just feels so much more real-”
“Don’t,” Reid repeated, standing and making his way away from the couch.
Luke’s mouth drew into a tight line. “Reid-”
“Just don’t. I told you before, I want no part in this,” Reid said, his voice shaking slightly. He held up his hand, palm pointed flat toward Luke.
Luke stood up and walked toward Reid, who walked backward until his back hit the door and Luke’s chest hit his outstretched hand. “Don’t run away, please. Not because you’re scared.”
Reid shook his head, breaths tight and shaking. “Don’t.”
Chapter 36-->