The Slow Path
Title: The Slow Path
Author: blasthisass
Rating: R (language)
Word Count: 6008
Summary: In Oakdale, it is common to use the ATWT Supersonic Grieving MethodTM to cope with the death of a loved one. Luke Snyder, however, takes the slow path
Warnings: sad, unfortunately
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. The title was inspired by the Doctor Who episode, "Girl in the Fireplace."
A/N: This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine.
Comments much appreciated. This is me fixing what TPTB screwed up, namely Luke's grieving process.
Denial
It was as though he didn’t even have the strength to pull away from Tom, push past Bob and John. Because there was no need. Because they would fix the flat, continuous beep of the machine that was echoing through the room, amplified by the cold walls, but was barely registering with Luke. It was as though his skin was absorbing the sound before it could even penetrate into his thoughts, before it could penetrate into his heart and utterly shatter it. But then John Dixon made the wrong move. His hands went to the machine that Reid was hooked up to (Oh, God) and Luke didn’t know what it was, what it was for, but he knew what would happen if John laid a hand on that machine.
“No! No, don’t, don’t, don’t!” he cried out, his voice sounding like it was echoing back to him through fog, the same fog that kept the machine silent to his ears. “You can’t do that, you can’t!” Because . . . because . . .
He couldn’t think, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t stop his eyes from hurting or his mouth from staying open. They couldn’t unhook Reid from that machine because it would mean that they thought he was dead. And he wasn’t, he wasn’t. Luke wasn’t a doctor but he sure as hell knew enough to tell them that, to tell them that if they thought such a thing, they should probably go back to medical school and renew their licenses. His breath choked in his lungs as though it knew same as everyone else that that was exactly something Reid would tell them and it couldn’t form the words because they belonged to someone else, someone who could no longer utilize them. But no, no, no. Luke knew better. He could see. He could feel. He couldn’t hear, not through the fog, but that was irrelevant, wasn’t it?
The conversations around him filtered in and out like the sound in a poorly edited classic film.
“Reid had a DNR.”
“I’m not sure that would have mattered.”
Luke shook with disbelief, disbelief that a team of doctors was standing around a failing body, doing nothing, just as they had when Reid had been wheeled in. Nothing. Why was he the only one who cared? Why was he the only one that knew they had to do something, anything, before . . . before . . .
“You don’t know that, you know you don’t!”
Bob sighed, but the action was less-than-remorseful and it cut Luke like a knife. “Luke, Reid is gone.” (No, no, no, no. Don’t you dare lie to me, don’t you dare give me worst case scenarios. Not now, not this time. Lies.) “Everything that made Reid, Reid is gone.”
No, that wasn’t true. He was there, he was right there on the table. His chest was rising, his hands were on the gurney, his hair, matted with blood, was there, his lips, his eyes, his . . . his . . . He wasn’t gone. Luke could see him. That didn’t amount to nothing, that amounted to something.
“Then he’s brain dead?” Tom’s voice cut Luke like a knife, so close, so sharp and cold that Luke almost cried out in pain, his hand almost flying up to his neck to quench the flow of blood. Lies. Complete and utter lies. He knew it, he knew. It was too ironic to be real, far too ironic.
“For all intents and purposes, yes.” No!
“His chest is moving,” Luke pointed out, his voice failing him, falling into that deadly headspace that was part moan, part groan, part uncontrollable sob. He can’t be dead, he’s breathing, his heart . . . Luke could almost hear it beating across the room, the only clear sound that penetrated into his soul.
“The machine keeps the heart beating. The higher brain function has ceased, it’s stopped.”
Luke shook his head, the action threatening to fling his tears across the room. “Don’t touch that,” he whispered, and even his own denial sounded weak.
“Luke, there is no hope that he would be revived from this.”
“Well, if you can’t help him, can you just leave him alone?” Luke cried, desperate. Leave him alone and Luke will fix him. He’ll fix this mistake, this misdiagnosis. He’ll do something. Why aren’t you doing anything?
“You’re putting off the inevitable. There is nothing we can do for him.”
“Except give him peace.”
“I said, leave him alone.” He’s mine, I love him, he loves me, he saved me, I’ll save him, just leave us the fuck alone! If you don’t care, leave us the fuck alone.
All he could hear through the soundproofing of his thoughts was clinical. Clinical words battling with legal, but his mind didn’t want them. His mind rejected him like it did the idea that there was nothing to be done. There was always something, always. When Noah had been blind there was nothing, but he’d found something and when that something refused to transition from nothing, Luke had made it happen, he had fought tooth-and-nail to make it happen and he would do it again, he would do it again. He would . . .
He could barely hear John speaking, but he was standing over Reid’s body, his eyes narrowed at Tom as he continued their argument . . . argument . . . Luke choked back a sob. It was Reid’s heart, Reid’s heart and they were talking about it like it was the last product on aisle five of the local convenience store.
“Wait a minute, Bob, we don’t even know if Reid’s heart is going to be a viable donor organ.” With each word, John stabbed the air, his finger rushing toward Reid and pulling back over and over as though he was trying to finish off the deed, stabbing him in the chest so that he would hurry up and die so that they could ravage him like vultures. Each movement punched Luke in the gut. “Not unless the tissues match, Chris’s body is just going to reject the heart.” Of course it will. It’s not his heart. It’s Reid’s heart, Reid’s heart . . . Luke’s heart. It’s Luke’s to give and he wraps his arms around it, holding it in a vice-like grip to his chest, waiting for it to be absorbed into his body, to beat forever alongside his.
“Then that’s something we need to find out.”
“You guys are all talking about him like he’s not lying here with his own heart beating out of his own chest.”
You guys are talking like it’s his heart to give away. It’s not his, it’s not, because he gave it to me and I can’t let you take it away.
“Luke, he’s not going to wake up.”
Of course he is, how dare you lie to me? It’s Reid, Reid, my Reid, he wouldn’t let me down. He’ll come back with sarcasm and tell me to stop being an idiot and he has never, never let me down and he sure as hell won’t be starting now.
Luke approached the body slowly, his mind only focused on Reid. When he reached him, his hand reached out, stalling before skin on skin contact at the temperature. He took a shuddering breath and he collapsed in half over the man that he loved, his lips coming in contact with his shoulder. And that was when he knew. That was when he couldn’t deny it any longer. “I can’t believe this.”
Anger
Luke could barely bring himself to feel any other emotion. He could feel the tears flowing down his cheeks the entire week. But throughout an entire week of hearing what a hero Reid was, what a noble man, the perfect man, throughout an entire week of waiting, just waiting on the edge of his seat for Chris to wake up and prove to him that the sacrifice hadn’t been a complete waste, the tears that flowed down Luke’s cheeks were infuriated. Angry at the way everything was being handled. Angry at the fact that Chris had been sick for weeks, dying for days, yet was still able to overshadow Reid’s death as his family picked the doctor apart piece by piece, as though Reid were a puzzle and it was opposite day.
He hadn’t gone home. He’d waited at the hospital, waited until he was sure Reid was all right. He didn’t care about Chris. He couldn’t care less if Chris lived, except that if Chris lived, Reid lived. He hated it. He hated that the reason that Reid was dead was the very reason that he would live. When he’d found out, after three days, that Chris had woken up, he left. That’s all he’d wanted to hear.
The next several days came in snippets, like a storyline in a soap opera that had been put on the backburner, playing for five seconds at a time, infused within the others to make it look like it mattered.
***
“Are you next of kin?”
“No, but I’ m the closest thing to. I have his power of attorney. His parents are dead and he was an only child.”
“I’m sorry, but without authorization from Mr. Oliver’s family-”
“Doctor Oliver,” Luke spat out, his disgust and his fury funneling into his clenched fists and his voice and the fire in his eyes that threatened to set the entire building on fire.
“Mr. Snyder-”
“Is this a gay thing? Because I really don’t have the energy right now, okay?” He hated the funeral director, hated his mother for looking at him with pained concern, as though her pain had suddenly increased exponentially, his father for not saying a word, his anger for turning him against himself. He couldn’t even bring himself to be satisfied when his mother furiously threw the man out.
***
“Hey, it’s a freaking miracle, huh? Where’s your boyfriend, huh? It’s okay. I’m still going to beat him out for that chief of staff job. He didn’t want to win when he was the last man standing, that’s why he got me this heart. I’m not going to take it easy on him out of thankfulness. No, seriously. Can you get Reid to come and see me?”
Luke hated him. Every muscle in his body, every nerve he possessed loathed Chris Hughes with a passion. Idiot. Arrogant son of a bitch. You ungrateful bastard. He didn’t even care that Chris didn’t know. He should have. He should have felt the heart beating in his chest and known it was Reid’s. Who else’s heart would beat like that? Who else would give a flying fuck about you, enough to get himself killed over you? You ungrateful son of a bitch.
“I can just see Reid going into that hospital. ‘Give me that heart or else!’ Seriously, why hasn’t he come to see me yet, to crow about his victory. I can just see him now, that smug jackass.”
It took all of Luke’s will power not to act. Not to punch Chris with all his might in the face. Not to stab him hard in the chest and rip that heart right out of him and transplant it back into its owner, back into the man that deserved it above all else. Not to swipe the pillow out from under his head and apply pressure, so much pressure, until Chris stopped moving and the machine that was tracking the beat of Reid’s heart stopped. But every move he almost made, every vow he almost broke would suddenly stab him with a knife bloody with guilt and he wanted to hurt himself for even thinking it. Because the minute he went to make a move he didn’t see Chris. He saw Reid. Reid lying on the hospital bed, bitching about being tied down rather than doing his job. Reid just fucking being Reid. And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill Reid. And so he fled, his anger turning into anguish turning into flight.
***
“I’ll tell you what a hero is. A hero is someone who shows the rest of us the right way to do things. He leads the way. That’s the opposite of Reid.”
He couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t take the heroism bullshit, the self-praise, the nobility. You all hated him. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you remember? Why can’t you understand that this doesn’t change anything? He’s not a hero. Maybe he was but not because of this. He is not a hero because of this.
“Luke. . . .” Noah. Why couldn’t he understand? Why did it have to be him standing there, trying to be familiar. He was a stranger. For so many months, nothing but a stranger. A stranger that had no right to tell him anything about Reid. No right to repeat Reid’s words back to him. “You knew him, Luke. You knew the important parts.” You take that back. Take those words and give them back to me because they’d already been said. He’d already heard them.
“Reid was an arrogant, reckless jackass, just ask any of the nurses. Everyone thinks he was this brilliant brain surgeon, this amazing brain surgeon, but he was so stupid when it really counted. What good is being smart when you can’t see the difference between safety and danger? I mean, he must’ve seen those flashing lights and he thought, ‘No, I can beat it, I can beat that train.’ He was so damn smart, he got himself killed! A real hero would’ve gone to Bay City and got that heart and come back to me alive! A real hero would’ve-”
The remainder of Luke’s words were swallowed by the plaid of Noah’s shirt, the rocking of Noah’s body as though he were trying to put a child to sleep. The beating of Luke’s fists against Noah’s chest in angry agony was crushed by Luke’s body colliding with them. Nowhere to go. Luke sobbed.
The last person he’d been angry with was Reid. The first person he wanted to hate for the rest of his life was himself.
Bargaining
He was Luke Snyder. He was Luciano Eduardo fucking Grimaldi Snyder. His father was Damian fucking Grimaldi. Maltese mafia extraordinaire. His grandmother was Lucinda fucking Walsh. Reckless, fiery, connected to the mob. He should be able to fix this. He should be able to pool in all his resources, the mob, the mafia, the cunning, the ploys and overturn what had happened. He should be able to march the bad guys to the gates of heaven, break them down, and reverse the flow of time, reverse the flow of events. You don’t mess with Luciano Eduardo Grimaldi Snyder and get away with it.
He can’t do it. He can’t bring himself to be angry. All he wants is Reid. Reid back, sitting on his doorstep, smiling at him, calling him an idiot, embracing him and pulling him into a knee shaking kiss that never failed to make Luke feel like that Victorian romance heroine that Reid had compared him to. And he would do anything, anything to make that happen. He would trade anything. His fortune, his health, his family, his town, his state, his country, his continent, his planet, his universe. Anything that was his to give, everything that wasn’t he would give, give up for the chance to piece Reid back together. To take the one broken thing that Reid hadn’t been able to fix and remedy the situation.
Luke Snyder didn’t know whether or not he could believe in God. If he did believe, he didn’t understand what came of it. It was easier not to, easier to believe that there was no divine plan, no fate, to master puppeteer in the sky controlling his life. It was easier because it hurt less. It hurt less to think that all the bad in his life was purely circumstance. It hurt less than thinking it was all part of some plan.
Luke Snyder didn’t know whether or not he could believe in God. But he prayed and bartered and begged God to put things right. Swore that he would fix whatever he was doing wrong, whatever he had done to bring this about, if only, if only Reid would come back. Not even to him, just back.
Two weeks after Reid’s death, after a week of begging and pleading to no avail, Luke Snyder disappeared, losing himself to the town, losing himself to a downward spiral into an abyss that had nothing, nothing at all. Luke Snyder was gone.
Depression
Lily lingered outside the doorway of Luke’s room at the Lakeview, key hanging loosely in her hand. Maybe she should be doing this, maybe she should just leave, give him his space, but it had been almost a fortnight since Reid had . . . since Reid had passed, almost that same amount of time since she’d even seen her son. A month. God, a month.
Her mind went back to the conversation she’d had with Holden, the one she’d had with Angus after he’d again re-booked his flight when Holden had insisted that they wait with the wake, wait until Luke came to them and was ready to face Reid’s death. Back to how she had, devastated, with tears in her eyes, demanded of them to tell her how much time they were expected to wait, had told them that it was unhealthy to lock oneself away for so long, to be grieving for so long. She hadn’t meant to get into an argument with him, but somehow, that’s what had happened. But despite the reluctance in his eyes he’d agreed to move forward with the wake, because the town needed closure, because the neuro-wing was almost finished and people needed to pay their respects. Because Angus had a life that he needed to get back to (he insisted that it wasn’t the case, that he could stay until the man his nephew had fallen in love with was ready to pay his respects). And so there she was, after hours of trying to track Luke down, outside a Lakeview hotel room, key to said room in one hand, garment bag with a suit draped over the other.
Taking a deep breath, she eased the keycard into the slot and withdrew it quickly before easing the door open, ignoring the Do Not Disturb sign hanging loosely around the handle.
“Oh, Luke,” she murmured softly, casting her gaze around the room. It was dark, the curtains drawn, blocking out the early morning sunshine as though its presence threatened to burn unwanted happiness into Luke’s very skin. There were room service trays scattered around the floor, leading from the door to the bed, continuously added, as though the person who’d brought them had felt the need to feed her son, but had been too heartbroken to take them away uneaten.
“Luke, baby,” Lily whispered, dropping the garment bag on a chair and sitting down on the bed. Her hand rose instinctively to thread into his unwashed hair and, he stiffened at the touch, as though it was a reminder of someone else that used to touch him in that manner, someone would could no longer raise a finger to do so. But he didn’t move away, as though he lacked the energy to do so, as though he thought it was all for nothing anyway. It pained Lily to see her son like this, just as his inability to even fight the funeral director when they’d first met with him had cut through her reality like a knife and made her really see the extent of the damage that had been done.
“Come on, honey. Get up.”
Luke didn’t answer. The only movement he made was in an attempt to curl his knees even further into his chest. The action stabbed Lily in the heart. This wasn’t her son, this empty shell, this form of emotionless depression, looking like he wished that he could close his eyes forever.
“C’mon, baby. It’s time.” She took him gently by the arm and pulled him into a sitting position, wrapping her arms around him. He went with her, weightlessly, as though his muscles didn’t have the energy to resist. Her motherly instincts to do right took over, ignoring whether what he was doing was the right thing, ignoring the fact that everyone grieves differently, that she should have waited for Luke to come back to her, but she didn’t. Maybe someday he would forgive her for it, long before she’d forgiven herself, but at the moment it was what she had to do. She pulled him up out of the bed and, supporting his weight, took him into the bathroom. It was time. She thought it was time.
***
Angus followed Luke out onto the porch, watching as his legs gave out from under him and he collapsed on to the step. Angus understood him, somehow, and wondered why no one else did. Wondered how they could even consider the fact that Luke might like to say a few words about Reid. Couldn’t they see that he was broken? Couldn’t they see that he was shattered? He didn’t understand how he didn’t even know the boy, and yet he understood him better than they did.
He wondered why they thought that what the boy needed was to hear how wonderful Reid was, how his death had been worthwhile. No death is worthwhile, no matter the outcome. Angus knows this. He’d suffered through his fair share of deaths. Despite himself, despite his nature, Angus’s heart throbbed as he sat down next to Luke. He didn’t even look at him, didn’t expose himself to the ghost of a man, to the demons living in the eyes of a man that had barely battled his way out of his teen years. His hand reached into his pocket and he pulled out a marble chess piece, a black knight.
“See this?” he asked, holding it flat in his hand and allowing his muscles to adjust to the weight. He couldn’t tell if Luke was looking, if he was even listening, but he kept talking anyway. “This is the knight my nephew was about to move at that last tournament, just before he walked away. Back when Reid was . . . I don’t know, eight, maybe nine, he made this stupid, boneheaded move that cost him a game.”
Luke swallowed. He knew. He knew of those stupid, boneheaded moves Reid had tended to make, knew how they could cost him the game. Tears flowed from his eyes as he remembered that the last bonehead move Reid had made had not only cost him his game, but Luke’s.
“He wasn’t paying attention. Really made me angry,” Angus continued, his voice soft, half amused, half regretful, all reminiscent. “I pressed it into his sweaty palm, hard, until he yelped and I said, ‘This is what it feels like to lose. It’s sharp, and it stings, and sometimes it leaves a mark that doesn’t go away fast.’” He paused, laughing softly to himself, the sound infused with the same kind of half-heartedness that one could infuse into a sad laugh, only to make loved ones think their attempts at happiness were working. “He won the next forty-five matches. You know, years later, long after he quit chess, I got this in the mail from him along with a note that said . . . it said, ‘I graduated from medical school. Checkmate.’”
Luke couldn’t help but smile. “Sounds just like Reid.” They were the first words he’d uttered in at least a month.
Angus smiled at his success. “I’ve kept this in my pocket ever since, to remind me what it feels like to fail. Here,” he murmured, taking Luke’s left hand in his own and pressing the piece gently into it and curling Luke’s fingers around it.
Luke shook his head, but he didn’t release the chess piece. “I’ve had plenty of reminders of in my life of how painful failure is. I don’t need another.” His voice was thick, broken, as though taken over with sobs that refused to let it go.
Angus shook his head, for the first time in the conversation turning to look straight at Luke. “Not for that. It’s a reminder of Reid that, in the end, he didn’t fail at all, did he?”
“No . . . he didn’t.”
Angus rested a hand gently on Luke’s shoulder and the latter didn’t stiffen, didn’t pull away. “It’s your move now, kid. Use it wisely.”
Luke sniffed, his grip on the chess piece increasing until his knuckles were white. “I loved him. I love him.”
“I know.”
“It’s just so unfair. We’d finally . . . we’d finally worked things out and he loved me and I loved him and he was mine and I was-” Luke cut off, his voice stopping sharply as his eyes widened. “He was . . .” his hand, the one holding the black knight, rose to his chest and he pressed it hard over his heart, marble absorbing the vibrations of the muscle. “He is . . .”
Without warning he stood up, cutting off Angus’s inquiry of concern and practically flew into the farmhouse, knocking over anyone that got into his way until he found who he was looking for. He ignored the doctors, family, everyone crowding around him and focused on the subjects of his quest.
“Katie. Chris. I need a favor.”
Acceptance
Luke didn’t know why he hadn’t just gone home. He walked past Katie into her empty apartment, the apartment that she used to share with the man that he loved and that she now shared with the man she loved. He couldn’t even muster up the energy to think of how wrong that was. He just walked straight past the couch, guided by instinct as though he could see Reid standing in the doorway of his former bedroom, beckoning to him.
You need a bed and some privacy? Screw your head on straight, Snyder, and look around you. We’ve got all the privacy in the world as Katie will be too busy cooing over whatever the hell they have at those preschool things to even think of coming back here for hours. And, contrary to popular belief, I am not some evil, vampire-like being that sleeps in a coffin. Believe it or not, I own a bed.
Reid. Why hadn’t he said that? Why had he chosen that very moment to stop being an asshole?
“Luke! Luke, hold on!” Katie called after him, power walking after him as fast as her heels would allow her and coming to a crashing halt behind him as he froze in the doorway.
The room was all but empty. There was a dresser, drawers closed, but Luke could tell just by looking at it that it contained nothing. Maybe some clothes or spare things that couldn’t be fit anywhere else around the house, but none of that stuff was his. The bed was made, the plain sheets folded so that a penny could practically bounce off of them, but it hadn’t been slept in in weeks. And Reid . . . Reid, perfectionist he was and major OCD complex that he had, wouldn’t have made up the bed like that. He would have found time to satisfy his OCD complexes, but a bed, made like that, screamed Katie at Luke rather than Reid. There was a desk in the corner, but it didn’t have the pens the Reid liked, all arranged in perfect order, or the science magazines where he had so furiously scribbled idiot and you graduated from college HOW? in the margins.
“Luke-”
“Where is it?”
“What?”
“His stuff, all his stuff.” His voice couldn’t even infuse the proper amount of anger into its monotony, as though it had also been picked up and scattered across the waters of Snyder Pond.
“He didn’t have any stuff-” Katie started gently.
“He had stuff. He was here for months. He didn’t have stuff when he came, but he had stuff when he . . . Where is his stuff?”
She sighed, biting her lip until it hurt when he shrugged her hand off his shoulder. “There are some boxes behind the bed.”
“Great.” He didn’t mean it. “Can you go?”
“Luke-”
“Please, Katie, can you just go into the kitchen or something and just leave me alone, please? I just . . . I need to be alone right now.”
And suddenly he was. Completely alone in an empty room. He took several steps in until he could see the tops of the cardboard boxes behind the bed. He sat down in the desk chair and fingered the flaps of the box nearest to him before opening it. It was filled with books and medical journals, with legal pads and pens thrown in on top haphazardly, as though they were worth nothing now that their owner could make no use of them. Luke pulled one out at was about to flip though, hoping the notes would give him some clue as to what he was supposed to do with his life now that it was over, when something caught his eye. He sniffed, brushing unnoticed tears off the bridge of his nose, before reaching in to remove it not only for observation, but because it looked like it didn’t belong and Reid . . . Reid would have hated that.
He fingered the black watch, marveling at how heavy it was, yet Reid had worn it as though it were nothing. He swallowed the lump in his throat and his hand went to the pocket of his jacket. The marble chess piece had this unexplainable, grounding weight that Luke just had to feel, to make sure that what he was thinking was right. He pulled it out of his pocket and set it on the desk beside the watch, his lips curling up softly at how right they looked together.
“Reid,” he whispered and his mind flooded, so much so that he didn’t have enough voice to perfectly formulate what he wanted to say. His fingers twitched helpfully and, before he knew it, words were spilling out, from hand to ink to paper and whether they were discernable and legible through the tearstains, he didn’t bother to check. Reid would know what it said.
***
“I don’t want to kick him out, but he’s been there for hours and I’m worried that-Luke!” Katie exclaimed in relief when the door to Reid’s bedroom opened and revealed a Luke that looked serenely calm, despite the tear stained cheeks. “Can I get you anything to eat, drink?”
He shook his head, though his eyes remained where they had landed, connected with Chris’s. The latter smiled nervously, unhinged by the power of the brown eyes that wouldn’t leave his. “You sure, Luke?” Chris offered. “Nothing you want?”
“Oh, no, there’s something I want,” Luke answered, voice calm and stronger than either Chris or Katie had ever heard it. Luke approached the kitchen table and stopped right in front of Chris, his eyes burning holes through Chris’s skin, as though Luke wished to physically see the very last remnants of the man he’d fallen in love with. He took a deep breath and his jaw unclenched slightly as he put the item in his right hand, an envelope, on the table, before drawing Chris’s attention to the item in his left. It was a stethoscope, must have been Reid’s, must have been tossed in one of the boxes in the bedroom.
Chris raised an eyebrow and moved his gaze back up to Luke’s face as Luke spoke. “I want to hear it.”
“What?”
“Reid’s heart. I want to hear it.”
Katie frowned and her heart flew to her nephew. “Luke, I’m not so sure-”
“I am,” he simply replied. “Chris, please.”
Chris hesitated, but, to Luke’s relief, it was only momentary. His hands rose to his shirt buttons and he removed the first couple from their button holes, enough to sufficiently maneuver the end of the stethoscope where it needed to go. He motioned to Luke, who crouched down on the floor in front of him. Chris took the end of the stethoscope from Luke and breathed on it softly, breath fogging up the metal and warming it, as though he not only wanted to protect himself from the cold, but the idea of Reid from it as well. His eyes never left Luke’s as he expertly moved the end piece closer and applied it to his chest.
Luke inhaled sharply as the dulled silence of the stethoscope suddenly came to life. He bit his lip and his eyes closed but every nerve end was suddenly focused on one thing. The sound was steady, like the beating of a drum, the perfect ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum of blood being induced with air and life and opportunity and the hopes that all that would not go to waste. It was poetry and music and words that brought tears to Luke’s soul, but a smile to his heart. Because he had heard enough to know he’d been right. Because he could feel his own heart pounding in his chest in anticipation and it was the same beat, the same sound, the same feeling. He’d been right. He had Reid’s heart. Reid had given away his heart, but he hadn’t given it to Chris. He’d given it to Luke Snyder. And that was all Luke had needed to know. Without another word he dropped his end of the stethoscope, stood up, grabbed the envelope from the table, and walked out of the apartment.
***
Luke didn’t know how long he’d been sitting, cross-legged on the ground beside Snyder Pond. It was as though time had the tendency to stop there. He sat with Reid’s urn in the space created by the way his legs were folded and he watched as the envelope and papers he’d brought finally finished burning and blended with the ashes within the urn until he couldn’t discern which were his words and which were Reid. He smiled. He felt as though that was the way it ought to be.
“I’m sorry I never brought you here,” he murmured, hand hovering over the ashes before fingering them softly and picking up a handful. He held his palm open and allowed the wind to scatter them toward the water. “But stay here, Reid. I want you to stay here, at my pond, with me. Just with me.”
He stood up, scattering the remainder of the ashes and watching them dance across the water. He turned around when the water had swallowed them whole, brought them down to a safe place where no one could touch them, no one could hurt them. He was about to leave when he stopped and turned back to the water, as though he’d had a second thought. “This isn’t goodbye. I know people would tell me that it should be, that I should let you go, that I should accept this. I have, Reid. I have accepted it. But I can’t say goodbye because as long as I have your love, your heart, I’ll have you. Until you come and physically take it away from me, I’ll have it. Forever.”
With that he turned and walked away, eyes wet, heart full, but soul content. He wasn’t done, wasn’t done loving, wasn’t done crying, wasn’t done grieving. He hadn’t lost those things. He had, however, a fortnight after the fact, gained courage. The courage to turn and finally walk back to his house, his family, his life because he knew, no matter what, he would always still have Reid. Reid would be his home, residing in his heart. His heart. His and Reid’s.
***
Author: blasthisass
Rating: R (language)
Word Count: 6008
Summary: In Oakdale, it is common to use the ATWT Supersonic Grieving MethodTM to cope with the death of a loved one. Luke Snyder, however, takes the slow path
Warnings: sad, unfortunately
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. The title was inspired by the Doctor Who episode, "Girl in the Fireplace."
A/N: This is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are mine.
Comments much appreciated. This is me fixing what TPTB screwed up, namely Luke's grieving process.
Denial
It was as though he didn’t even have the strength to pull away from Tom, push past Bob and John. Because there was no need. Because they would fix the flat, continuous beep of the machine that was echoing through the room, amplified by the cold walls, but was barely registering with Luke. It was as though his skin was absorbing the sound before it could even penetrate into his thoughts, before it could penetrate into his heart and utterly shatter it. But then John Dixon made the wrong move. His hands went to the machine that Reid was hooked up to (Oh, God) and Luke didn’t know what it was, what it was for, but he knew what would happen if John laid a hand on that machine.
“No! No, don’t, don’t, don’t!” he cried out, his voice sounding like it was echoing back to him through fog, the same fog that kept the machine silent to his ears. “You can’t do that, you can’t!” Because . . . because . . .
He couldn’t think, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t stop his eyes from hurting or his mouth from staying open. They couldn’t unhook Reid from that machine because it would mean that they thought he was dead. And he wasn’t, he wasn’t. Luke wasn’t a doctor but he sure as hell knew enough to tell them that, to tell them that if they thought such a thing, they should probably go back to medical school and renew their licenses. His breath choked in his lungs as though it knew same as everyone else that that was exactly something Reid would tell them and it couldn’t form the words because they belonged to someone else, someone who could no longer utilize them. But no, no, no. Luke knew better. He could see. He could feel. He couldn’t hear, not through the fog, but that was irrelevant, wasn’t it?
The conversations around him filtered in and out like the sound in a poorly edited classic film.
“Reid had a DNR.”
“I’m not sure that would have mattered.”
Luke shook with disbelief, disbelief that a team of doctors was standing around a failing body, doing nothing, just as they had when Reid had been wheeled in. Nothing. Why was he the only one who cared? Why was he the only one that knew they had to do something, anything, before . . . before . . .
“You don’t know that, you know you don’t!”
Bob sighed, but the action was less-than-remorseful and it cut Luke like a knife. “Luke, Reid is gone.” (No, no, no, no. Don’t you dare lie to me, don’t you dare give me worst case scenarios. Not now, not this time. Lies.) “Everything that made Reid, Reid is gone.”
No, that wasn’t true. He was there, he was right there on the table. His chest was rising, his hands were on the gurney, his hair, matted with blood, was there, his lips, his eyes, his . . . his . . . He wasn’t gone. Luke could see him. That didn’t amount to nothing, that amounted to something.
“Then he’s brain dead?” Tom’s voice cut Luke like a knife, so close, so sharp and cold that Luke almost cried out in pain, his hand almost flying up to his neck to quench the flow of blood. Lies. Complete and utter lies. He knew it, he knew. It was too ironic to be real, far too ironic.
“For all intents and purposes, yes.” No!
“His chest is moving,” Luke pointed out, his voice failing him, falling into that deadly headspace that was part moan, part groan, part uncontrollable sob. He can’t be dead, he’s breathing, his heart . . . Luke could almost hear it beating across the room, the only clear sound that penetrated into his soul.
“The machine keeps the heart beating. The higher brain function has ceased, it’s stopped.”
Luke shook his head, the action threatening to fling his tears across the room. “Don’t touch that,” he whispered, and even his own denial sounded weak.
“Luke, there is no hope that he would be revived from this.”
“Well, if you can’t help him, can you just leave him alone?” Luke cried, desperate. Leave him alone and Luke will fix him. He’ll fix this mistake, this misdiagnosis. He’ll do something. Why aren’t you doing anything?
“You’re putting off the inevitable. There is nothing we can do for him.”
“Except give him peace.”
“I said, leave him alone.” He’s mine, I love him, he loves me, he saved me, I’ll save him, just leave us the fuck alone! If you don’t care, leave us the fuck alone.
All he could hear through the soundproofing of his thoughts was clinical. Clinical words battling with legal, but his mind didn’t want them. His mind rejected him like it did the idea that there was nothing to be done. There was always something, always. When Noah had been blind there was nothing, but he’d found something and when that something refused to transition from nothing, Luke had made it happen, he had fought tooth-and-nail to make it happen and he would do it again, he would do it again. He would . . .
He could barely hear John speaking, but he was standing over Reid’s body, his eyes narrowed at Tom as he continued their argument . . . argument . . . Luke choked back a sob. It was Reid’s heart, Reid’s heart and they were talking about it like it was the last product on aisle five of the local convenience store.
“Wait a minute, Bob, we don’t even know if Reid’s heart is going to be a viable donor organ.” With each word, John stabbed the air, his finger rushing toward Reid and pulling back over and over as though he was trying to finish off the deed, stabbing him in the chest so that he would hurry up and die so that they could ravage him like vultures. Each movement punched Luke in the gut. “Not unless the tissues match, Chris’s body is just going to reject the heart.” Of course it will. It’s not his heart. It’s Reid’s heart, Reid’s heart . . . Luke’s heart. It’s Luke’s to give and he wraps his arms around it, holding it in a vice-like grip to his chest, waiting for it to be absorbed into his body, to beat forever alongside his.
“Then that’s something we need to find out.”
“You guys are all talking about him like he’s not lying here with his own heart beating out of his own chest.”
You guys are talking like it’s his heart to give away. It’s not his, it’s not, because he gave it to me and I can’t let you take it away.
“Luke, he’s not going to wake up.”
Of course he is, how dare you lie to me? It’s Reid, Reid, my Reid, he wouldn’t let me down. He’ll come back with sarcasm and tell me to stop being an idiot and he has never, never let me down and he sure as hell won’t be starting now.
Luke approached the body slowly, his mind only focused on Reid. When he reached him, his hand reached out, stalling before skin on skin contact at the temperature. He took a shuddering breath and he collapsed in half over the man that he loved, his lips coming in contact with his shoulder. And that was when he knew. That was when he couldn’t deny it any longer. “I can’t believe this.”
Anger
Luke could barely bring himself to feel any other emotion. He could feel the tears flowing down his cheeks the entire week. But throughout an entire week of hearing what a hero Reid was, what a noble man, the perfect man, throughout an entire week of waiting, just waiting on the edge of his seat for Chris to wake up and prove to him that the sacrifice hadn’t been a complete waste, the tears that flowed down Luke’s cheeks were infuriated. Angry at the way everything was being handled. Angry at the fact that Chris had been sick for weeks, dying for days, yet was still able to overshadow Reid’s death as his family picked the doctor apart piece by piece, as though Reid were a puzzle and it was opposite day.
He hadn’t gone home. He’d waited at the hospital, waited until he was sure Reid was all right. He didn’t care about Chris. He couldn’t care less if Chris lived, except that if Chris lived, Reid lived. He hated it. He hated that the reason that Reid was dead was the very reason that he would live. When he’d found out, after three days, that Chris had woken up, he left. That’s all he’d wanted to hear.
The next several days came in snippets, like a storyline in a soap opera that had been put on the backburner, playing for five seconds at a time, infused within the others to make it look like it mattered.
***
“Are you next of kin?”
“No, but I’ m the closest thing to. I have his power of attorney. His parents are dead and he was an only child.”
“I’m sorry, but without authorization from Mr. Oliver’s family-”
“Doctor Oliver,” Luke spat out, his disgust and his fury funneling into his clenched fists and his voice and the fire in his eyes that threatened to set the entire building on fire.
“Mr. Snyder-”
“Is this a gay thing? Because I really don’t have the energy right now, okay?” He hated the funeral director, hated his mother for looking at him with pained concern, as though her pain had suddenly increased exponentially, his father for not saying a word, his anger for turning him against himself. He couldn’t even bring himself to be satisfied when his mother furiously threw the man out.
***
“Hey, it’s a freaking miracle, huh? Where’s your boyfriend, huh? It’s okay. I’m still going to beat him out for that chief of staff job. He didn’t want to win when he was the last man standing, that’s why he got me this heart. I’m not going to take it easy on him out of thankfulness. No, seriously. Can you get Reid to come and see me?”
Luke hated him. Every muscle in his body, every nerve he possessed loathed Chris Hughes with a passion. Idiot. Arrogant son of a bitch. You ungrateful bastard. He didn’t even care that Chris didn’t know. He should have. He should have felt the heart beating in his chest and known it was Reid’s. Who else’s heart would beat like that? Who else would give a flying fuck about you, enough to get himself killed over you? You ungrateful son of a bitch.
“I can just see Reid going into that hospital. ‘Give me that heart or else!’ Seriously, why hasn’t he come to see me yet, to crow about his victory. I can just see him now, that smug jackass.”
It took all of Luke’s will power not to act. Not to punch Chris with all his might in the face. Not to stab him hard in the chest and rip that heart right out of him and transplant it back into its owner, back into the man that deserved it above all else. Not to swipe the pillow out from under his head and apply pressure, so much pressure, until Chris stopped moving and the machine that was tracking the beat of Reid’s heart stopped. But every move he almost made, every vow he almost broke would suddenly stab him with a knife bloody with guilt and he wanted to hurt himself for even thinking it. Because the minute he went to make a move he didn’t see Chris. He saw Reid. Reid lying on the hospital bed, bitching about being tied down rather than doing his job. Reid just fucking being Reid. And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill Reid. And so he fled, his anger turning into anguish turning into flight.
***
“I’ll tell you what a hero is. A hero is someone who shows the rest of us the right way to do things. He leads the way. That’s the opposite of Reid.”
He couldn’t take it anymore. He couldn’t take the heroism bullshit, the self-praise, the nobility. You all hated him. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you remember? Why can’t you understand that this doesn’t change anything? He’s not a hero. Maybe he was but not because of this. He is not a hero because of this.
“Luke. . . .” Noah. Why couldn’t he understand? Why did it have to be him standing there, trying to be familiar. He was a stranger. For so many months, nothing but a stranger. A stranger that had no right to tell him anything about Reid. No right to repeat Reid’s words back to him. “You knew him, Luke. You knew the important parts.” You take that back. Take those words and give them back to me because they’d already been said. He’d already heard them.
“Reid was an arrogant, reckless jackass, just ask any of the nurses. Everyone thinks he was this brilliant brain surgeon, this amazing brain surgeon, but he was so stupid when it really counted. What good is being smart when you can’t see the difference between safety and danger? I mean, he must’ve seen those flashing lights and he thought, ‘No, I can beat it, I can beat that train.’ He was so damn smart, he got himself killed! A real hero would’ve gone to Bay City and got that heart and come back to me alive! A real hero would’ve-”
The remainder of Luke’s words were swallowed by the plaid of Noah’s shirt, the rocking of Noah’s body as though he were trying to put a child to sleep. The beating of Luke’s fists against Noah’s chest in angry agony was crushed by Luke’s body colliding with them. Nowhere to go. Luke sobbed.
The last person he’d been angry with was Reid. The first person he wanted to hate for the rest of his life was himself.
Bargaining
He was Luke Snyder. He was Luciano Eduardo fucking Grimaldi Snyder. His father was Damian fucking Grimaldi. Maltese mafia extraordinaire. His grandmother was Lucinda fucking Walsh. Reckless, fiery, connected to the mob. He should be able to fix this. He should be able to pool in all his resources, the mob, the mafia, the cunning, the ploys and overturn what had happened. He should be able to march the bad guys to the gates of heaven, break them down, and reverse the flow of time, reverse the flow of events. You don’t mess with Luciano Eduardo Grimaldi Snyder and get away with it.
He can’t do it. He can’t bring himself to be angry. All he wants is Reid. Reid back, sitting on his doorstep, smiling at him, calling him an idiot, embracing him and pulling him into a knee shaking kiss that never failed to make Luke feel like that Victorian romance heroine that Reid had compared him to. And he would do anything, anything to make that happen. He would trade anything. His fortune, his health, his family, his town, his state, his country, his continent, his planet, his universe. Anything that was his to give, everything that wasn’t he would give, give up for the chance to piece Reid back together. To take the one broken thing that Reid hadn’t been able to fix and remedy the situation.
Luke Snyder didn’t know whether or not he could believe in God. If he did believe, he didn’t understand what came of it. It was easier not to, easier to believe that there was no divine plan, no fate, to master puppeteer in the sky controlling his life. It was easier because it hurt less. It hurt less to think that all the bad in his life was purely circumstance. It hurt less than thinking it was all part of some plan.
Luke Snyder didn’t know whether or not he could believe in God. But he prayed and bartered and begged God to put things right. Swore that he would fix whatever he was doing wrong, whatever he had done to bring this about, if only, if only Reid would come back. Not even to him, just back.
Two weeks after Reid’s death, after a week of begging and pleading to no avail, Luke Snyder disappeared, losing himself to the town, losing himself to a downward spiral into an abyss that had nothing, nothing at all. Luke Snyder was gone.
Depression
Lily lingered outside the doorway of Luke’s room at the Lakeview, key hanging loosely in her hand. Maybe she should be doing this, maybe she should just leave, give him his space, but it had been almost a fortnight since Reid had . . . since Reid had passed, almost that same amount of time since she’d even seen her son. A month. God, a month.
Her mind went back to the conversation she’d had with Holden, the one she’d had with Angus after he’d again re-booked his flight when Holden had insisted that they wait with the wake, wait until Luke came to them and was ready to face Reid’s death. Back to how she had, devastated, with tears in her eyes, demanded of them to tell her how much time they were expected to wait, had told them that it was unhealthy to lock oneself away for so long, to be grieving for so long. She hadn’t meant to get into an argument with him, but somehow, that’s what had happened. But despite the reluctance in his eyes he’d agreed to move forward with the wake, because the town needed closure, because the neuro-wing was almost finished and people needed to pay their respects. Because Angus had a life that he needed to get back to (he insisted that it wasn’t the case, that he could stay until the man his nephew had fallen in love with was ready to pay his respects). And so there she was, after hours of trying to track Luke down, outside a Lakeview hotel room, key to said room in one hand, garment bag with a suit draped over the other.
Taking a deep breath, she eased the keycard into the slot and withdrew it quickly before easing the door open, ignoring the Do Not Disturb sign hanging loosely around the handle.
“Oh, Luke,” she murmured softly, casting her gaze around the room. It was dark, the curtains drawn, blocking out the early morning sunshine as though its presence threatened to burn unwanted happiness into Luke’s very skin. There were room service trays scattered around the floor, leading from the door to the bed, continuously added, as though the person who’d brought them had felt the need to feed her son, but had been too heartbroken to take them away uneaten.
“Luke, baby,” Lily whispered, dropping the garment bag on a chair and sitting down on the bed. Her hand rose instinctively to thread into his unwashed hair and, he stiffened at the touch, as though it was a reminder of someone else that used to touch him in that manner, someone would could no longer raise a finger to do so. But he didn’t move away, as though he lacked the energy to do so, as though he thought it was all for nothing anyway. It pained Lily to see her son like this, just as his inability to even fight the funeral director when they’d first met with him had cut through her reality like a knife and made her really see the extent of the damage that had been done.
“Come on, honey. Get up.”
Luke didn’t answer. The only movement he made was in an attempt to curl his knees even further into his chest. The action stabbed Lily in the heart. This wasn’t her son, this empty shell, this form of emotionless depression, looking like he wished that he could close his eyes forever.
“C’mon, baby. It’s time.” She took him gently by the arm and pulled him into a sitting position, wrapping her arms around him. He went with her, weightlessly, as though his muscles didn’t have the energy to resist. Her motherly instincts to do right took over, ignoring whether what he was doing was the right thing, ignoring the fact that everyone grieves differently, that she should have waited for Luke to come back to her, but she didn’t. Maybe someday he would forgive her for it, long before she’d forgiven herself, but at the moment it was what she had to do. She pulled him up out of the bed and, supporting his weight, took him into the bathroom. It was time. She thought it was time.
***
Angus followed Luke out onto the porch, watching as his legs gave out from under him and he collapsed on to the step. Angus understood him, somehow, and wondered why no one else did. Wondered how they could even consider the fact that Luke might like to say a few words about Reid. Couldn’t they see that he was broken? Couldn’t they see that he was shattered? He didn’t understand how he didn’t even know the boy, and yet he understood him better than they did.
He wondered why they thought that what the boy needed was to hear how wonderful Reid was, how his death had been worthwhile. No death is worthwhile, no matter the outcome. Angus knows this. He’d suffered through his fair share of deaths. Despite himself, despite his nature, Angus’s heart throbbed as he sat down next to Luke. He didn’t even look at him, didn’t expose himself to the ghost of a man, to the demons living in the eyes of a man that had barely battled his way out of his teen years. His hand reached into his pocket and he pulled out a marble chess piece, a black knight.
“See this?” he asked, holding it flat in his hand and allowing his muscles to adjust to the weight. He couldn’t tell if Luke was looking, if he was even listening, but he kept talking anyway. “This is the knight my nephew was about to move at that last tournament, just before he walked away. Back when Reid was . . . I don’t know, eight, maybe nine, he made this stupid, boneheaded move that cost him a game.”
Luke swallowed. He knew. He knew of those stupid, boneheaded moves Reid had tended to make, knew how they could cost him the game. Tears flowed from his eyes as he remembered that the last bonehead move Reid had made had not only cost him his game, but Luke’s.
“He wasn’t paying attention. Really made me angry,” Angus continued, his voice soft, half amused, half regretful, all reminiscent. “I pressed it into his sweaty palm, hard, until he yelped and I said, ‘This is what it feels like to lose. It’s sharp, and it stings, and sometimes it leaves a mark that doesn’t go away fast.’” He paused, laughing softly to himself, the sound infused with the same kind of half-heartedness that one could infuse into a sad laugh, only to make loved ones think their attempts at happiness were working. “He won the next forty-five matches. You know, years later, long after he quit chess, I got this in the mail from him along with a note that said . . . it said, ‘I graduated from medical school. Checkmate.’”
Luke couldn’t help but smile. “Sounds just like Reid.” They were the first words he’d uttered in at least a month.
Angus smiled at his success. “I’ve kept this in my pocket ever since, to remind me what it feels like to fail. Here,” he murmured, taking Luke’s left hand in his own and pressing the piece gently into it and curling Luke’s fingers around it.
Luke shook his head, but he didn’t release the chess piece. “I’ve had plenty of reminders of in my life of how painful failure is. I don’t need another.” His voice was thick, broken, as though taken over with sobs that refused to let it go.
Angus shook his head, for the first time in the conversation turning to look straight at Luke. “Not for that. It’s a reminder of Reid that, in the end, he didn’t fail at all, did he?”
“No . . . he didn’t.”
Angus rested a hand gently on Luke’s shoulder and the latter didn’t stiffen, didn’t pull away. “It’s your move now, kid. Use it wisely.”
Luke sniffed, his grip on the chess piece increasing until his knuckles were white. “I loved him. I love him.”
“I know.”
“It’s just so unfair. We’d finally . . . we’d finally worked things out and he loved me and I loved him and he was mine and I was-” Luke cut off, his voice stopping sharply as his eyes widened. “He was . . .” his hand, the one holding the black knight, rose to his chest and he pressed it hard over his heart, marble absorbing the vibrations of the muscle. “He is . . .”
Without warning he stood up, cutting off Angus’s inquiry of concern and practically flew into the farmhouse, knocking over anyone that got into his way until he found who he was looking for. He ignored the doctors, family, everyone crowding around him and focused on the subjects of his quest.
“Katie. Chris. I need a favor.”
Acceptance
Luke didn’t know why he hadn’t just gone home. He walked past Katie into her empty apartment, the apartment that she used to share with the man that he loved and that she now shared with the man she loved. He couldn’t even muster up the energy to think of how wrong that was. He just walked straight past the couch, guided by instinct as though he could see Reid standing in the doorway of his former bedroom, beckoning to him.
You need a bed and some privacy? Screw your head on straight, Snyder, and look around you. We’ve got all the privacy in the world as Katie will be too busy cooing over whatever the hell they have at those preschool things to even think of coming back here for hours. And, contrary to popular belief, I am not some evil, vampire-like being that sleeps in a coffin. Believe it or not, I own a bed.
Reid. Why hadn’t he said that? Why had he chosen that very moment to stop being an asshole?
“Luke! Luke, hold on!” Katie called after him, power walking after him as fast as her heels would allow her and coming to a crashing halt behind him as he froze in the doorway.
The room was all but empty. There was a dresser, drawers closed, but Luke could tell just by looking at it that it contained nothing. Maybe some clothes or spare things that couldn’t be fit anywhere else around the house, but none of that stuff was his. The bed was made, the plain sheets folded so that a penny could practically bounce off of them, but it hadn’t been slept in in weeks. And Reid . . . Reid, perfectionist he was and major OCD complex that he had, wouldn’t have made up the bed like that. He would have found time to satisfy his OCD complexes, but a bed, made like that, screamed Katie at Luke rather than Reid. There was a desk in the corner, but it didn’t have the pens the Reid liked, all arranged in perfect order, or the science magazines where he had so furiously scribbled idiot and you graduated from college HOW? in the margins.
“Luke-”
“Where is it?”
“What?”
“His stuff, all his stuff.” His voice couldn’t even infuse the proper amount of anger into its monotony, as though it had also been picked up and scattered across the waters of Snyder Pond.
“He didn’t have any stuff-” Katie started gently.
“He had stuff. He was here for months. He didn’t have stuff when he came, but he had stuff when he . . . Where is his stuff?”
She sighed, biting her lip until it hurt when he shrugged her hand off his shoulder. “There are some boxes behind the bed.”
“Great.” He didn’t mean it. “Can you go?”
“Luke-”
“Please, Katie, can you just go into the kitchen or something and just leave me alone, please? I just . . . I need to be alone right now.”
And suddenly he was. Completely alone in an empty room. He took several steps in until he could see the tops of the cardboard boxes behind the bed. He sat down in the desk chair and fingered the flaps of the box nearest to him before opening it. It was filled with books and medical journals, with legal pads and pens thrown in on top haphazardly, as though they were worth nothing now that their owner could make no use of them. Luke pulled one out at was about to flip though, hoping the notes would give him some clue as to what he was supposed to do with his life now that it was over, when something caught his eye. He sniffed, brushing unnoticed tears off the bridge of his nose, before reaching in to remove it not only for observation, but because it looked like it didn’t belong and Reid . . . Reid would have hated that.
He fingered the black watch, marveling at how heavy it was, yet Reid had worn it as though it were nothing. He swallowed the lump in his throat and his hand went to the pocket of his jacket. The marble chess piece had this unexplainable, grounding weight that Luke just had to feel, to make sure that what he was thinking was right. He pulled it out of his pocket and set it on the desk beside the watch, his lips curling up softly at how right they looked together.
“Reid,” he whispered and his mind flooded, so much so that he didn’t have enough voice to perfectly formulate what he wanted to say. His fingers twitched helpfully and, before he knew it, words were spilling out, from hand to ink to paper and whether they were discernable and legible through the tearstains, he didn’t bother to check. Reid would know what it said.
***
“I don’t want to kick him out, but he’s been there for hours and I’m worried that-Luke!” Katie exclaimed in relief when the door to Reid’s bedroom opened and revealed a Luke that looked serenely calm, despite the tear stained cheeks. “Can I get you anything to eat, drink?”
He shook his head, though his eyes remained where they had landed, connected with Chris’s. The latter smiled nervously, unhinged by the power of the brown eyes that wouldn’t leave his. “You sure, Luke?” Chris offered. “Nothing you want?”
“Oh, no, there’s something I want,” Luke answered, voice calm and stronger than either Chris or Katie had ever heard it. Luke approached the kitchen table and stopped right in front of Chris, his eyes burning holes through Chris’s skin, as though Luke wished to physically see the very last remnants of the man he’d fallen in love with. He took a deep breath and his jaw unclenched slightly as he put the item in his right hand, an envelope, on the table, before drawing Chris’s attention to the item in his left. It was a stethoscope, must have been Reid’s, must have been tossed in one of the boxes in the bedroom.
Chris raised an eyebrow and moved his gaze back up to Luke’s face as Luke spoke. “I want to hear it.”
“What?”
“Reid’s heart. I want to hear it.”
Katie frowned and her heart flew to her nephew. “Luke, I’m not so sure-”
“I am,” he simply replied. “Chris, please.”
Chris hesitated, but, to Luke’s relief, it was only momentary. His hands rose to his shirt buttons and he removed the first couple from their button holes, enough to sufficiently maneuver the end of the stethoscope where it needed to go. He motioned to Luke, who crouched down on the floor in front of him. Chris took the end of the stethoscope from Luke and breathed on it softly, breath fogging up the metal and warming it, as though he not only wanted to protect himself from the cold, but the idea of Reid from it as well. His eyes never left Luke’s as he expertly moved the end piece closer and applied it to his chest.
Luke inhaled sharply as the dulled silence of the stethoscope suddenly came to life. He bit his lip and his eyes closed but every nerve end was suddenly focused on one thing. The sound was steady, like the beating of a drum, the perfect ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum of blood being induced with air and life and opportunity and the hopes that all that would not go to waste. It was poetry and music and words that brought tears to Luke’s soul, but a smile to his heart. Because he had heard enough to know he’d been right. Because he could feel his own heart pounding in his chest in anticipation and it was the same beat, the same sound, the same feeling. He’d been right. He had Reid’s heart. Reid had given away his heart, but he hadn’t given it to Chris. He’d given it to Luke Snyder. And that was all Luke had needed to know. Without another word he dropped his end of the stethoscope, stood up, grabbed the envelope from the table, and walked out of the apartment.
***
Luke didn’t know how long he’d been sitting, cross-legged on the ground beside Snyder Pond. It was as though time had the tendency to stop there. He sat with Reid’s urn in the space created by the way his legs were folded and he watched as the envelope and papers he’d brought finally finished burning and blended with the ashes within the urn until he couldn’t discern which were his words and which were Reid. He smiled. He felt as though that was the way it ought to be.
“I’m sorry I never brought you here,” he murmured, hand hovering over the ashes before fingering them softly and picking up a handful. He held his palm open and allowed the wind to scatter them toward the water. “But stay here, Reid. I want you to stay here, at my pond, with me. Just with me.”
He stood up, scattering the remainder of the ashes and watching them dance across the water. He turned around when the water had swallowed them whole, brought them down to a safe place where no one could touch them, no one could hurt them. He was about to leave when he stopped and turned back to the water, as though he’d had a second thought. “This isn’t goodbye. I know people would tell me that it should be, that I should let you go, that I should accept this. I have, Reid. I have accepted it. But I can’t say goodbye because as long as I have your love, your heart, I’ll have you. Until you come and physically take it away from me, I’ll have it. Forever.”
With that he turned and walked away, eyes wet, heart full, but soul content. He wasn’t done, wasn’t done loving, wasn’t done crying, wasn’t done grieving. He hadn’t lost those things. He had, however, a fortnight after the fact, gained courage. The courage to turn and finally walk back to his house, his family, his life because he knew, no matter what, he would always still have Reid. Reid would be his home, residing in his heart. His heart. His and Reid’s.
***