ATWT - Fanfic: Right With the World, Pt. 1
Luke stood outside the door to Reid and Katie’s place, his hand poised to knock. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say when Reid opened the door. The last time he was here, Reid threw him out.
Because you are an idiot, Mr. Snyder. He muttered sarcastically to himself, shaking his head at the door.
He started to turn and leave, shook his head again, turned back. He knocked three times quickly, shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, and pretty much stared at his feet, waiting for a response. After a few seconds the door opened and Katie stood there, beaming at him in that perpetually blonde, bubbly way she had.
“Luke!” She sounded genuinely happy to see him.
“Katie. Hi.”
“Come on in. I just put Jacob down for his afternoon nap. What’s up?”
Luke stepped into the apartment cautiously, like a man turning and facing the firing squad. He looked around quickly, unsure how to reply.
“Oh.” Katie said all-knowingly. “Reid’s still at the hospital.”
“Oh, ok.” Luke replied, without really acknowledging that that was why he was really there. “Thanks. I will just come back another time then.”
“No, don’t go! Sit down and keep me company. Can I get you something to drink?”
Luke shook his head no. Katie was so impossible at times, but it suddenly felt really good to have someone fussing over him.
“Are you sure I am not interrupting anything?” He said as he followed her to the sofa.
“Absolutely not. I have the whole blessed afternoon off. Can you believe it? Nothing to do but be home." But the way she said it made it sound like a little less than a blessing. Somewhere nearer a curse.
“So, are you going to tell me why you look like someone just punched you in the stomach?”
Luke laughed at that. “That obvious, huh?”
“Only to a highly trained observer such as myself.”
Luke sighed heavily. How much should he tell her? She was, after all, Reid’s best friend in this town. She wouldn’t take kindly to how he was treating him.
“Noah and I broke up.”
“I’m sorry. But I thought you two broke up weeks ago.”
“Well, yeah. But this was…permanent.”
“I see.”
“And, well, I didn’t handle it so well…with Reid.”
“Ah.” Katie angled her body on the sofa towards him, with that knowing look in her eyes. “That explains a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“Reid was beyond cranky last night. He went so far as to lock himself in his room, and he didn’t even come out to say goodnight to Jacob. Then he showered and left this morning before we even got up. No note or anything.”
Luke didn’t know what to make of this information. He stared at his hands for a few seconds before he looked up at Katie’s face. “I didn’t know what do after the fight with Noah. I came here because things are just so crazy at my house right now, with Gabriel living there, my mother on some kind of crusade with Craig….”
“Don’t even get me started on my brother. As far as I am concerned, he made his bed…”
“Have you met Gabriel?” Luke saw an opportunity to change the subject, away from his behavior with Reid.
“No. Margo doesn’t think he’s ready for the whole family gathering bit. I don’t think I’m ready for the whole family gathering bit.” She grimaced. “So, you want to talk about it? What happened with you and Noah and Reid?”
Luke shrugged. “I don’t know what good talking about it is going to do.”
“Sometimes talking to a friend is the best medicine there is, for a broken heart anyway.”
Luke smiled. Friends were few and far between in his life right now. But sitting there with Katie, he felt less alone than he had felt in months. “I don’t even know where to begin. It’s like my life is made up of all these disjointed puzzle pieces. Nothing seems to fit.”
“I know what you mean.” Katie said. And she really did. “When things that have been the same for so long change so quickly, life kind of becomes a chaotic whirlwind of emotions that seem to hit you from every direction at once.”
Jesus, Luke thought. That’s exactly how I feel. And suddenly he felt the need to talk. To talk about anything and everything.
“When Noah first broke up with me, it was all I could think about. But that made me miserable 24 hours a day.” He cocked his head to one side before he continued. “So instead of thinking about the break-up constantly, I forced myself to think about happy times between us. I thought, like, if I could just hold on to happy memories of us before the accident it would somehow fill the giant hole I felt inside myself. But then that only made things worse, because….I couldn’t remember the last time Noah and were truly happy together, you know? It’s like, how could I love someone so much and not see how much hurt there still was between us? “
Katie nodded sympathetically. “When we are in love, we only see what we want to see.”
“I am just so tired of it. Why do Noah and I have to keep hurting each other like this?”
“You hurt each other because you love each other. Luke, the two of you have been through some of the most awful, difficult times of your lives together. And sometimes, when two people have shared so much bad alongside the good, it becomes harder to separate the pain from the love as time goes on. We do the best we can, but we don’t stop growing, and we don’t stop changing. And sometimes, when it’s time to move on, we just aren’t able to take all that love with us. It’s changed us, but at the same time, it isn’t a part of us anymore.”
“But Noah’s all I’ve ever known. He’s the only person that I’ve ever loved. We’ve worked so hard to build a life together here. With each other, with my family. Everyone expects that we will be together forever. And if I can’t make this work…if I can’t fix us…”
“Forget about what everyone else expects! What do you want Luke? What will make you happy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do. When you think about the future, what do you see?”
Luke looked at Katie then, with such a sad, melancholy expression in his eyes that her heart broke for him. For all the crap he had to put up with in too few years.
“I want to not feel empty inside when I wake up in the morning. I want to go to work and come home and feel peace… “
“More.” Katie prompted when she saw he was about to falter.
“I want to be with someone who wants to be with me for who I am, flaws and all. Someone who supports me and challenges me and makes me a stronger, better person. Who makes me laugh, and makes me feel safe.”
Katie smiled quietly. “Sounds like you might already have someone in mind.”
“Reid.” It was more of a statement, than a question, and it pained Luke to say it out loud. “Reid doesn’t want me. I am a mess. What could he possibly see in me?”
“Maybe he sees you.” Katie replied, wistfully. “Maybe you make him happy.”
Luke shook his head emphatically from side to side. “I’ve done nothing but trample all over him for weeks. I’ve used him to make myself feel better. Hell, I even told him to his face that I was in love with Noah. That I wanted Noah. I don’t even know why I said those things to him!”
“Because you were scared. Everybody gets scared when they are facing an unknown future. We do really stupid things that we think are going to make us feel better, to stop our world from spinning out of control.” Katie lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Every day without Brad terrifies me.”
“Katie…” Luke gasped, suddenly without words. “I can’t believe I am sitting here dumping all my problems on you after what you have been through this past year. I’m sorry. I feel like such an ass.”
Katie laughed then. “Don’t apologize.”
“How do you do this? How do you live with all the fear and uncertainty?”
“I miss Brad so much. He’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about at night. But lately…”
Her voice caught in her throat, and she looked away. It was as if she could see some distant, bright spot outside of them that was meant only for her eyes. Her past or her future hanging in the balance somewhere out there, away from Luke and the present conversation.
“But lately…?” Luke prompted softly.
With a sharp intake of breath, Katie began again. “When Brad was first gone, I thought about him 24/7. All day, every night. Everything reminded me of him and nothing could take my mind off of my grief. But then Reid came. And his just being here, it made everything feel so much lighter and easier to deal with. I owe you, for bringing him here, by the way. He hasn’t just helped Noah.
But lately…lately I will be right in the middle of some project at work, or with Jacob at the park, or at the grocery store, and suddenly I realize that I haven’t thought about Brad in hours. Or worse yet, I realize I have been thinking about something---someone else entirely.”
Katie’s voice was high and tight, and tears began to fill her eyes. “And I’m so scared that one morning I am going to wake up and go through an entire day without remembering Brad once.”
Luke reached out and took her hand in his. “Katie…No one could ever take Brad’s place. You know that. And what’s more, there is nothing that could ever happen to make you forget him. You have to know that.”
“I do. I do!” Katie smiled at him weakly.
Luke continued, “You have the right to let yourself be happy, Katie.”
“So do you.”
Silence fell like a stones between them, hitting the floor and reverberating without sound around their two bodies.
“You know,” Katie continued, her voice stronger than before. “I’ve learned this much from Reid. All we can do is take it one day at time.”
At just that moment the front door opened, and Reid walked in. Taken by surprise, he looked first at Luke, then at Katie who was smiling brightly and wiping a tear from her face, and then back to Luke, before he raised one eyebrow and asked, “What the hell is going on here?”
“Luke and I were just visiting.”
“And he made you cry?” Reid replied sharply, aware that Luke’s very presence in the room sent pinpricks down the back of his neck.
“No, don’t be silly. I’m not crying.”
Luke stood up quickly then. He could barely look at Reid for the pounding in his chest and the tight knot that had formed in his stomach. “I should go.”
“No. Stay.” Katie jumped up to meet him. “Stay. We’ll all make dinner together. It’ll be fun!”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Luke said, looking at Reid for the first time.
“I think it’s a great idea. Reid?”
Reid, who was still standing frozen near the doorway, unsure what to make of this development, was about to second Luke. But then his eyes met Luke’s. He didn’t mean to, didn’t want to. But that’s were his eyes invariably went. Straight to Luke’s face, all earnestness and hopefulness and god damned vulnerability. He couldn’t have said no if he had wanted to.
“Dinner. Fine. Whatever.” He shrugged.
“See,” Katie exclaimed. “I knew you wouldn’t turn down food even if you are in a bad mood.” And then she clapped her hands together and laughed as if to say now that that was settled all was right with the world. She marched over to Reid with a mock-stern expression on her face, and placed two hands on his shoulders and shoved him off in the direction of the bedrooms.
“Now go say hello to Jacob and then come back out here and help me and Luke raid the fridge.”
Reid rolled his eyes at her because that was all he could do when it came to Katie. As he walked past the sofa where Luke was still standing their eyes met for a second time. Luke thought he saw a slight upturn at the corner of Reid’s mouth and a twinkle in his eye that made Luke sigh inwardly. The tension that he had been feeling since Reid came home began to vanish.
Reid disappeared into the bedroom, and Katie turned to Luke. She pulled him into her arms and hugged him fiercely.
“Thank you.”
Luke hugged her back. “For what?”
“For listening.” She couldn’t help but feel giddy thinking about Jacob and Reid and Luke and this crazy odd-ball family she was creating without Brad. She kissed his cheek then, and Luke couldn’t help but feel that all was right with the world.
Or at least for this night it would be.
Because you are an idiot, Mr. Snyder. He muttered sarcastically to himself, shaking his head at the door.
He started to turn and leave, shook his head again, turned back. He knocked three times quickly, shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, and pretty much stared at his feet, waiting for a response. After a few seconds the door opened and Katie stood there, beaming at him in that perpetually blonde, bubbly way she had.
“Luke!” She sounded genuinely happy to see him.
“Katie. Hi.”
“Come on in. I just put Jacob down for his afternoon nap. What’s up?”
Luke stepped into the apartment cautiously, like a man turning and facing the firing squad. He looked around quickly, unsure how to reply.
“Oh.” Katie said all-knowingly. “Reid’s still at the hospital.”
“Oh, ok.” Luke replied, without really acknowledging that that was why he was really there. “Thanks. I will just come back another time then.”
“No, don’t go! Sit down and keep me company. Can I get you something to drink?”
Luke shook his head no. Katie was so impossible at times, but it suddenly felt really good to have someone fussing over him.
“Are you sure I am not interrupting anything?” He said as he followed her to the sofa.
“Absolutely not. I have the whole blessed afternoon off. Can you believe it? Nothing to do but be home." But the way she said it made it sound like a little less than a blessing. Somewhere nearer a curse.
“So, are you going to tell me why you look like someone just punched you in the stomach?”
Luke laughed at that. “That obvious, huh?”
“Only to a highly trained observer such as myself.”
Luke sighed heavily. How much should he tell her? She was, after all, Reid’s best friend in this town. She wouldn’t take kindly to how he was treating him.
“Noah and I broke up.”
“I’m sorry. But I thought you two broke up weeks ago.”
“Well, yeah. But this was…permanent.”
“I see.”
“And, well, I didn’t handle it so well…with Reid.”
“Ah.” Katie angled her body on the sofa towards him, with that knowing look in her eyes. “That explains a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“Reid was beyond cranky last night. He went so far as to lock himself in his room, and he didn’t even come out to say goodnight to Jacob. Then he showered and left this morning before we even got up. No note or anything.”
Luke didn’t know what to make of this information. He stared at his hands for a few seconds before he looked up at Katie’s face. “I didn’t know what do after the fight with Noah. I came here because things are just so crazy at my house right now, with Gabriel living there, my mother on some kind of crusade with Craig….”
“Don’t even get me started on my brother. As far as I am concerned, he made his bed…”
“Have you met Gabriel?” Luke saw an opportunity to change the subject, away from his behavior with Reid.
“No. Margo doesn’t think he’s ready for the whole family gathering bit. I don’t think I’m ready for the whole family gathering bit.” She grimaced. “So, you want to talk about it? What happened with you and Noah and Reid?”
Luke shrugged. “I don’t know what good talking about it is going to do.”
“Sometimes talking to a friend is the best medicine there is, for a broken heart anyway.”
Luke smiled. Friends were few and far between in his life right now. But sitting there with Katie, he felt less alone than he had felt in months. “I don’t even know where to begin. It’s like my life is made up of all these disjointed puzzle pieces. Nothing seems to fit.”
“I know what you mean.” Katie said. And she really did. “When things that have been the same for so long change so quickly, life kind of becomes a chaotic whirlwind of emotions that seem to hit you from every direction at once.”
Jesus, Luke thought. That’s exactly how I feel. And suddenly he felt the need to talk. To talk about anything and everything.
“When Noah first broke up with me, it was all I could think about. But that made me miserable 24 hours a day.” He cocked his head to one side before he continued. “So instead of thinking about the break-up constantly, I forced myself to think about happy times between us. I thought, like, if I could just hold on to happy memories of us before the accident it would somehow fill the giant hole I felt inside myself. But then that only made things worse, because….I couldn’t remember the last time Noah and were truly happy together, you know? It’s like, how could I love someone so much and not see how much hurt there still was between us? “
Katie nodded sympathetically. “When we are in love, we only see what we want to see.”
“I am just so tired of it. Why do Noah and I have to keep hurting each other like this?”
“You hurt each other because you love each other. Luke, the two of you have been through some of the most awful, difficult times of your lives together. And sometimes, when two people have shared so much bad alongside the good, it becomes harder to separate the pain from the love as time goes on. We do the best we can, but we don’t stop growing, and we don’t stop changing. And sometimes, when it’s time to move on, we just aren’t able to take all that love with us. It’s changed us, but at the same time, it isn’t a part of us anymore.”
“But Noah’s all I’ve ever known. He’s the only person that I’ve ever loved. We’ve worked so hard to build a life together here. With each other, with my family. Everyone expects that we will be together forever. And if I can’t make this work…if I can’t fix us…”
“Forget about what everyone else expects! What do you want Luke? What will make you happy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes you do. When you think about the future, what do you see?”
Luke looked at Katie then, with such a sad, melancholy expression in his eyes that her heart broke for him. For all the crap he had to put up with in too few years.
“I want to not feel empty inside when I wake up in the morning. I want to go to work and come home and feel peace… “
“More.” Katie prompted when she saw he was about to falter.
“I want to be with someone who wants to be with me for who I am, flaws and all. Someone who supports me and challenges me and makes me a stronger, better person. Who makes me laugh, and makes me feel safe.”
Katie smiled quietly. “Sounds like you might already have someone in mind.”
“Reid.” It was more of a statement, than a question, and it pained Luke to say it out loud. “Reid doesn’t want me. I am a mess. What could he possibly see in me?”
“Maybe he sees you.” Katie replied, wistfully. “Maybe you make him happy.”
Luke shook his head emphatically from side to side. “I’ve done nothing but trample all over him for weeks. I’ve used him to make myself feel better. Hell, I even told him to his face that I was in love with Noah. That I wanted Noah. I don’t even know why I said those things to him!”
“Because you were scared. Everybody gets scared when they are facing an unknown future. We do really stupid things that we think are going to make us feel better, to stop our world from spinning out of control.” Katie lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Every day without Brad terrifies me.”
“Katie…” Luke gasped, suddenly without words. “I can’t believe I am sitting here dumping all my problems on you after what you have been through this past year. I’m sorry. I feel like such an ass.”
Katie laughed then. “Don’t apologize.”
“How do you do this? How do you live with all the fear and uncertainty?”
“I miss Brad so much. He’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about at night. But lately…”
Her voice caught in her throat, and she looked away. It was as if she could see some distant, bright spot outside of them that was meant only for her eyes. Her past or her future hanging in the balance somewhere out there, away from Luke and the present conversation.
“But lately…?” Luke prompted softly.
With a sharp intake of breath, Katie began again. “When Brad was first gone, I thought about him 24/7. All day, every night. Everything reminded me of him and nothing could take my mind off of my grief. But then Reid came. And his just being here, it made everything feel so much lighter and easier to deal with. I owe you, for bringing him here, by the way. He hasn’t just helped Noah.
But lately…lately I will be right in the middle of some project at work, or with Jacob at the park, or at the grocery store, and suddenly I realize that I haven’t thought about Brad in hours. Or worse yet, I realize I have been thinking about something---someone else entirely.”
Katie’s voice was high and tight, and tears began to fill her eyes. “And I’m so scared that one morning I am going to wake up and go through an entire day without remembering Brad once.”
Luke reached out and took her hand in his. “Katie…No one could ever take Brad’s place. You know that. And what’s more, there is nothing that could ever happen to make you forget him. You have to know that.”
“I do. I do!” Katie smiled at him weakly.
Luke continued, “You have the right to let yourself be happy, Katie.”
“So do you.”
Silence fell like a stones between them, hitting the floor and reverberating without sound around their two bodies.
“You know,” Katie continued, her voice stronger than before. “I’ve learned this much from Reid. All we can do is take it one day at time.”
At just that moment the front door opened, and Reid walked in. Taken by surprise, he looked first at Luke, then at Katie who was smiling brightly and wiping a tear from her face, and then back to Luke, before he raised one eyebrow and asked, “What the hell is going on here?”
“Luke and I were just visiting.”
“And he made you cry?” Reid replied sharply, aware that Luke’s very presence in the room sent pinpricks down the back of his neck.
“No, don’t be silly. I’m not crying.”
Luke stood up quickly then. He could barely look at Reid for the pounding in his chest and the tight knot that had formed in his stomach. “I should go.”
“No. Stay.” Katie jumped up to meet him. “Stay. We’ll all make dinner together. It’ll be fun!”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Luke said, looking at Reid for the first time.
“I think it’s a great idea. Reid?”
Reid, who was still standing frozen near the doorway, unsure what to make of this development, was about to second Luke. But then his eyes met Luke’s. He didn’t mean to, didn’t want to. But that’s were his eyes invariably went. Straight to Luke’s face, all earnestness and hopefulness and god damned vulnerability. He couldn’t have said no if he had wanted to.
“Dinner. Fine. Whatever.” He shrugged.
“See,” Katie exclaimed. “I knew you wouldn’t turn down food even if you are in a bad mood.” And then she clapped her hands together and laughed as if to say now that that was settled all was right with the world. She marched over to Reid with a mock-stern expression on her face, and placed two hands on his shoulders and shoved him off in the direction of the bedrooms.
“Now go say hello to Jacob and then come back out here and help me and Luke raid the fridge.”
Reid rolled his eyes at her because that was all he could do when it came to Katie. As he walked past the sofa where Luke was still standing their eyes met for a second time. Luke thought he saw a slight upturn at the corner of Reid’s mouth and a twinkle in his eye that made Luke sigh inwardly. The tension that he had been feeling since Reid came home began to vanish.
Reid disappeared into the bedroom, and Katie turned to Luke. She pulled him into her arms and hugged him fiercely.
“Thank you.”
Luke hugged her back. “For what?”
“For listening.” She couldn’t help but feel giddy thinking about Jacob and Reid and Luke and this crazy odd-ball family she was creating without Brad. She kissed his cheek then, and Luke couldn’t help but feel that all was right with the world.
Or at least for this night it would be.