Yule Fic: Wrap Battle
Title: Wrap Battle
Author: moerlin
Rating: PG
Summary: Luke is called away to the farm for last-minute Christmas preparations, leaving Reid at home with a present to wrap. It's not going well.
Word Count: 2850
Written for: The 2015 LuRe Yule Challenge. A huge thank you to tldreamer for pulling this together, and to satine_1984 for the great banner!
Disclaimer: Santa didn't bring me Luke and Reid this year, either, so I guess they're not mine.
Author's notes: This fic is based on an old prompt by flowersforchuck (so old I can't locate the link anymore), thanks for the idea! And thank you to the awesome ladies thefigtree and tldreamer for the read throughs and suggestions!
“Reid?”
A warm hand gently shook his bare shoulder and then trailed down his back before it was suddenly gone again. Reid shivered and grunted his disapproval at the loss as he burrowed into the covers, pulling them up from his waist to his neck.
“Reid?”
More gentle shaking accompanied by the rustling of sheets. Reid rolled over to face away from Luke’s voice interrupting his slumber and curled up into a ball, his knees to his chest.
“Reeeid.”
This time, Luke’s voice was much closer; Reid could feel his breath tickle his ear. Then Luke’s lips softly brushed against that spot right behind his ear, and one of Luke’s hands lightly stroked the other side of Reid’s neck. It was so alluring Reid almost didn’t mind being forced to regain consciousness at what had to be ass o’clock in the morning. There was never a bad time for having Luke’s hands on him.
“Come on, just one minute and I’ll let you get back to sleep,” Luke said, his voice rumbling softly in Reid’s ear.
Reid turned his head and finally blinked open one weary eye. “Mmm? A minute? Don’t underestimate yourself.”
Luke snorted and though Reid couldn’t see it yet, he was pretty sure Luke rolled his eyes in a good-natured way too. “Later,” Luke said. “Wouldn’t want you to fall asleep on me now, would I? And I’m really, really sorry to wake you, but Mom called in a frenzy about all the Christmas preparations. It’ll be much faster if she has another set of hands helping her prepare and I’m up anyway, so I’m heading over there to help.”
“S’okay,” Reid mumbled. He blinked some more and Luke’s face finally swam into focus. Luke gave him a warm smile for his efforts. He was still running his fingers through Reid’s hair, though, and that just made Reid’s eyelids feel heavy all over again.
“I would’ve just left you a note,” Luke said, “but it’s really important that you open the door when Ethan’s gift gets delivered.”
Gift? Didn’t Luke have all of those taken care of weeks ago? “Huh?”
“The PlayBox that Mom and Dad somehow forgot about? They finally got them back in stock yesterday and I had it overnighted, remember?”
Oh, right.
“I tried to have the package rerouted to the farm but it’s too late for that, so don’t play dead to the world when the doorbell rings,” Luke continued, giving Reid’s head an affectionate little shove before disentangling his hand.
Well, that was probably what Reid would have done, but it was still completely unfair. Reid wasn’t playing anything; he had just learned over time that the likelihood of something good happening when he opened the door to strangers-or family members-in Oakdale was very slim. And Reid firmly believed in learning from past mistakes. He was willing to make an exception though, for Luke and Ethan and because it was Christmas and somewhere along the line, he had been sucked into the holiday craziness that counted as normalcy for the Snyders. “’Kay,” he mumbled. “Open door for FedUp guy. Got it.”
“Thank you.” Luke pressed a kiss to Reid’s temple. “I’ll be back early afternoon-ish.”
“Hmm hmm. Go save the day,” Reid murmured, his eyes already drooping shut again.
***
The next time Reid reached consciousness wasn’t nearly as pleasant. For some unfathomable reason, they had been stuck with a doorbell that emitted the most obnoxious, shrill ringing noise he had ever heard; Reid had been meaning to change this sorry situation, but he simply hadn’t gotten around to it yet. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was incompetent as a handyman and too stubborn to pay someone else to do it. And now he was paying the price as the person on the other side of the door didn’t let up.
Reid covered his head with his pillow, but it did nothing to drown out the ringing in his ears. Grumbling, he blinked the sleep out of his eyes and sat up on the edge of the bed, his feet landing on the plush carpet Luke had insisted on getting. It was times like these that he appreciated Luke’s insistence on making their place as homey as possible, because the air hitting all the uncovered parts of his body seemed unreasonably cold and was making him shiver. Just as he had located a discarded sweater on the floor not too far from him, the doorbell rang again. Reid cursed and trudged out of the bedroom, haphazardly pulling on the garment. It wasn’t until he stopped at the top of the stairs, lifted the earpiece of their little-used intercom with the intention of telling the intruder to hold their horses and was instead greeted with a low voice announcing “Delivery for Luke Snyder” just as the static began to crackle that that morning’s events started to come back to him. He called out a “Coming!” that was loud enough to be heard at the front door either way and hurried down the stairs.
The sight of the delivery van was expected, but the driver’s get-up of an oversized red Santa jacket lined with white, obviously fake fur worn over his uniform, and an accompanying hat that flashed red, star-shaped diodes at him in lightning fast intervals was a bit much, in Reid’s opinion - his own boxers-sweater combo be damned. Still, the man had been waiting a long time even though he likely had more than enough parcels to deliver that day, and Reid knew that not everyone worked the holidays by choice. He was feeling...grateful. After signing for the package, Reid grabbed his wallet off the table by the door and handed the driver a twenty before sending him on his way with a “Merry Christmas.” If the blinding smile and genuine, profuse thanks were an indication, Reid’s instinct had been a good one.
Reid shuffled the package inside and made to close the door when his gaze landed on a neon pink Post-It attached to it, facing the outside. The message -“Frank, Merry Christmas! Beware of the sleepy surgeon! Permission to wake him up - important delivery today. Thank you, Luke”-made Reid chuckle and roll his eyes at the same time. Of course Luke was on a first-name basis with the FedUp guy.
Reid deposited the package on the couch table for the time being, glancing at the clock on the TV. 11:17 AM blinked at him in green letters. That amounted to six hours of sleep, then. Reid figured it was as good a time as any to get up. He headed for the shower, threw on some scrub pants and a soft t-shirt, and then made himself a festive breakfast-if only in quantity-only to discover the dining room table was occupied with all sorts of superfluous crap; there was wrapping paper, self-adhesive bows in an assortment of colors, ribbons, cards, pine cones, fake snow, and even some sprigs of a tree Reid didn’t recognize.
He pushed the junk aside with an elbow to shuffle the two plates he was holding onto the table and went back for his coffee and a bowl of fruit-a concession to Luke-before dropping into his chair. He threw another glance at the chaos at the other end of the table. Was there something he was missing? Did Luke tell him to wrap the console, too? Reid had told Luke on more than one occasion that if he wanted there to be any chance of their middle-of-the-night conversations to be remembered, he’d have to be keep Reid awake for at least five minutes; otherwise, there wasn’t even a tiny chance of the information making it to his obviously excellent short-term memory. Unfortunately, Luke seemed to think this was all a ploy to get more blowjobs out of him. Reid’s lips curved into a grin. As if Reid needed to trick him into that. The point remained that he couldn’t be sure whether there were any additional instructions besides making sure the package arrived. He decided to postpone his final verdict on that.
Half an hour later, Reid sat on the couch, his eyes directed toward the TV but unfocused. Some reporter with a vaguely familiar face was droning on and on about a new traffic light they were installing in Old Town and how it would change their lives. Reid groaned. Only in Oakdale would this useless, manmade interruption of traffic flow constitute news. He hit the power button on the remote with a little more force than was warranted, grabbed the package that was still sitting on the couch table, and carried it to the dining room where it was soon to be united with the wrapping paper Luke had laid out.
Reid wrestled open the oversized cardboard prison that housed Ethan’s gift and put aside the invoice, then laid the console down next to the wrapping paper. The fastest PlayBox ever!, the box claimed. Now with even better graphics! Reid rolled his eyes; as if they’d suddenly start manufacturing electronics that had worse specs than their predecessors, especially when new consoles were only released once every couple of years. Not that Reid had ever had one himself, but he’d spent enough afternoons at Billy Graham’s place playing F-One before he moved in with Angus to know the basics.
Reid eyed the large box. He wasn’t the best judge, but logic told him that the amount of paper on the roll in front of him was barely going to cover all of it. He imagined that people who were more into the gift-giving spirit than he was would know how to deal with this, but Reid’s experience started and ended at handing his gifts to the store clerk and having them wrap it for him. But how hard could it be?
Reid unrolled the wrapping paper, put the box on it and carefully measured twice before cutting it off. Then he folded the paper over the edges, realizing in the process that their Scotch tape was the only item that apparently hadn’t made it from a drawer to the table, so he went off in search for it. Once found, he tried to secure the paper on top of the box, but where it had fit perfectly before, there was now a gap. Reid slapped on the tape on one edge and pulled on the paper a little harder. Just as he was about to tape it to the other end, he heard the tell-tale sound of paper ripping. He glanced down and surveyed the damage; a row of dancing Santas were neatly beheaded, but otherwise the situation looked salvageable. Reid cut off another strip of wrapping paper and taped it onto the rest. It ended up a little crooked, but it would have to do. Reid turned the box sideways and found himself with excess paper. He was sure he’d seen Luke make flaps out of the paper on the sides just the week before, and tried to emulate it. Reid concentrated on making a crisp crease in the paper where edge of the box met the table, folded over the sides, then bent it upwards. He taped it to the top, but it didn’t look nearly as neat as what Luke had produced. For one thing, Luke’s wrapping paper somehow ended up showing perfect triangles on the sides, whereas Reid’s was a shape they still needed to invent a name for. For another, the white backside of the wrapping paper was peeking through on two sides. Reid sighed and repeated his actions a little more carefully on the other end of the box. When he went to tape it to the top, however, he found there was only a tiny piece of tape left, and it didn’t hold the paper together. Reid cursed inwardly. He should have just pretended not to have seen the whole get-up on the table and had Luke do it. But now that he had started it, he was going to finish; and it looked like this wrapping job from hell would have to be finished in a unique way.
Reid grabbed his doctor bag out of his home office and rummaged around in it, procuring a practice suturing kit. He returned to stand at the head of the table and loaded the needle, picked a starting point near the edge where the tape had failed him, and placed a simple suture, putting a surgeon’s knot at the end. He repeated the motion until he had five perfect stitches in a row, then changed angles and put another five. Ten minutes later, the wrapping paper was held together and adorned by sutures in a perfect star shape, and Reid felt decidedly proud.
His spirits lifted, he grasped the green ribbon off the table, wound it around the box once, then tied it into a knot and wound it around the box sideways again. He fixed it on top and reached for the scissors. He took hold of the end of the ribbon, pressed the scissor blade to it tightly and pulled it away from his body. Instead of curling into a pleasant shape like he had expected, however, the ribbon ripped into tiny strips that hung limply off to the side - the ultimate affront. Frustrated, Reid dropped the scissors, not caring that they bore a hole into wrapping paper where it was most noticeable, and snatched an armful of the self-adhesive, decorative bows. They would cover up all his mistakes.
Just as he had peeled the plastic film off a particularly large bow, Reid heard the front door open, and a moment later he heard Luke’s footsteps approach.
“Hey,” Luke called out. “I brought you some Chinese for a pre-dinner snack”. He deposited the take-out containers he was carrying on the countertop before walking over and kissing Reid hello. Then he dropped into the chair next to Reid and surveyed the room and table, a smile forming on his face. “What’s all this?”
“Uh, wrapping Ethan’s present?”
“Aw, thank you, you didn’t have to do that.”
“I really shouldn’t have.” Reid sighed.
“What? Why?” Luke looked a little closer at the box. “Oh, is that-? Did you sew the box closed?” He grinned.
“I ran out of tape.”
Luke broke into laughter and shook his head disbelievingly. “And that was the first solution that sprang to mind? You really are something else.”
“It worked, didn’t it? Unlike taping the edges together, or curling the ribbon, or having enough stupid wrapping paper in the first place.” Reid ranted. “Seriously, why would anyone do this for fun? And why are we forcing retail workers to do this for ten hours a day? Jeez, they deserve higher pay. And it’s all for nothing because tomorrow morning, that paper will be ripped to shreds anyway!”
“Yeah, but it’s part of the fun, wondering what might be inside, isn’t it? Shaking the box, hoping it’s what you’ve wished for. I’ve always loved the excitement of Christmas morning, watching Faith and Nat and Ethan unwrap their presents. It’s so easy to make little kids happy. I wish it still was that way with Faith, you know?”
Reid sighed. Trust Luke to calm him down with a sentimental speech. There really was no easy solution to the mess Faith had gotten herself into, but Luke had gone out of his way to help her, and Reid had it on good authority that she had at least ditched the drugs and was working hard on never touching the stuff again. “You’re helping her every day of the year, Luke, and she does appreciate it. Some things just don’t have an easy fix.” Luke gave him a half-smile. “Unlike this box over here,” Reid continued. “Help me wrap it again?”
“What? No! It’s perfect. You tried your best, that’s all that matters.”
Reid rolled his eyes. “Oh, no, no, no. I won’t have that. There will be no ‘trying hard is all that matters’ in this house, you hear me? I mean, what kind of an example would that set for our kids? Failures are only good for learning from them and-”
“Our kids?” A small smile spread across Luke’s face.
“Just...hypothetical kids. Or kid. Or no kids. Whatever we decide,” Reid rambled, and Luke tried and failed to hide his face-splitting grin. “But not anytime soon, so-”
He was saved by Luke’s phone chirping with an incoming message.
“Aren’t you gonna see who texted you?” Reid clung to his lifeline.
“We are so not done talking about this, Dr. Oliver,” Luke said, but he checked his phone anyway. “It’s Casey. Says we should hook up the PlayBox and update it today so Ethan won’t have to do it tomorrow when there’s extreme server load. Guess that makes sense.”
Reid was already carrying the box over to their TV, ripping the wrapping paper off at the same time. “And then we can re-wrap it the right way.” He clapped his hands.
Luke just shook his head and smiled fondly.
***
The End.
Thank you for reading!