fic: Skirmish (eleven)
This is it, folks.
This is the end.
Thank you for being the wonderful people that you are; supportive and sticking by this fic all the way through.
(Angel, working with you has been exquisite. I'm humbled by your brilliance. Thank you for being a dream.)
Title: Skirmish
Authors: neverwiser and sixtieshairdo
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Dear Reid (Or perhaps, dear Doctor Oliver. How far into one’s soul does a person have to be before you’re on first name terms?)
Previous chapters: prologue | one | two | three | four| five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten
Authors' Note: As a general rule, neverwiser writes Luke and sixtieshairdo writes Reid. Warnings for angst.
When Luke wakes, he’s too scared to say anything. He listens for a long moment to Reid’s breathing, and a memory so strong he didn’t even know he’d almost lost it tells him that Reid is still asleep.
In a strange and perhaps unhealthy way, he wishes Reid would never wake up. Because here, wrapped in his arms, is the only place in the world Luke’s ever felt safe. And if Reid wakes up, if Luke fucks up, this might be the last time.
But life is a painful and uncontrollable thing, and wars begin even when you try to wish them away.
Luke can feel him stirring.
*
Reid’s awake now, and Luke knows it, but he doesn’t have any words, can’t think of any words, and it’s been too long now for it to be okay that there haven’t been any words. It’s been long enough now that there are no words and that means Luke’s fucked up, and a coil inside him is beginning to snap and he worries that, without warning, he’s going to start crying.
Because waking up with no words is the first step to Reid making leave. To it ending.
Again.
*
When Reid opens his eyes, he is certain that he must still be dreaming. He blinks lazily at the apparition, at ease and at peace for the first time in a long while. When Luke’s ghost stirs gently in his arms, he is amazed by how surreal this feels.
How real this feels.
And like a bullet to the brain, everything that happened last night whizzes back into his memory in a split second, sucking him into a whirlpool of painful realization.
This is real. This is Luke. Right here. Right now.
Reid trembles a little, cold starts seeping through his toes and slides up his spine like a knife.
He swallows deeply, noticing the flecks of green in Luke’s brown eyes.
He mutters something after what feels like forever.
“Hey.”
*
He feels Luke shiver in his arms and because it comes naturally despite having being apart from Luke for months, he holds him tighter, pressing their bodies closer to each other.
He wonders if it’s too much, too near; his head is swimming with images and sounds and Luke, and it’s making him forget how to breathe.
Stupidly, suffocated by the silence, he blurts out.
“So, uh, what do we do now?”
*
In the end, Luke can’t bear it, and he sits up suddenly in bed, dislodging Reid’s warm forearm from where it’s been loosely wrapped around his waist, and the words tumble from his mouth like falling torpedoes.
“What do you want? What do you want me to do?”
The silence after he’s spoken is like the aftermath of a bombing, filled with discomfort and the prickling of tears, and every nerve in his body is on edge, terrified of what might come next.
Eventually, after minutes which feel like hours which seem like years, he feels Reid shift, and hears him sigh, and can see, in his mind’s eye, though Reid’s behind him, because he knows Reid so fucking well, his fingers card awkwardly through his hair.
“I don’t know Luke. I mean, I told you. I told you a million times over. I can’t have you without wanting all of you. I know that’s not fair, Luke. Not fair at all."
Reid voice doesn’t sound like Reid, somehow, and Luke shivers.
He takes a deep breath.
For so long he has been too afraid to let go of the past. Too afraid to let go of what he thought he wanted, and too afraid to advance into a life with Reid, a real life with Reid. Too afraid to let himself be possessed.
He’s ready to advance now. Forward march. One more breath, and the words come.
“What if that’s what I want?”
He turns round and looks into Reid’s face. Blue eyes collide with brown eyes, pulses sync up and their lives suddenly, finally crash back together.
*
It shouldn’t feel right, so right to hear Luke say those words, and for one sickeningly painful moment, Reid resists pulling Luke against him, to have him all for himself, the way Luke had just admitted to wanting.
And then, he hears Luke say it again, those eyes almost challenging him not to take him there and then, the rays of sun playing tricks on Luke’s skin.
“I want that. You, like that. I do.”
He is drawn like a moth to a flame, yes, like that.
He can taste blood on his tongue as his mouth hits Luke’s too hard, but there’s no time, no way to stop.
“You want me? Like that?”
His fingers are already inside Luke, so easy, so ready, so right.
“Fuck, Reid, like that, baby, like that.”
He’s been wanting to say this, all these months, he’s been waiting, been hurting to say to Luke out loud, not in letters or emails or dreams but vocally, with his voice, so Luke can hear him.
“I love you.”
He feels his heart piecing back together when he sees a smirk grow wide on Luke’s beautiful face.
“I know. I’ve always known.”
His mouth is full of Luke when he hears that, and he cannot help the grin on his face as he pulls his lips free. He looks up at that contented smile and mutters loud enough for both of them to acknowledge the change in the air between them.
“Cocky bastard.”
He feels Luke’s fingers run through his hair affectionately before those dark blonde locks fell back against the pillow, those slim hips rising up from the heat in that moment.
“Cocky is right.”
*
Reid wakes up a second time that day, and this time there is no apparition waiting for him.
Just Luke.
He watches the rise and fall of Luke’s chest and he feels his eyes blink back moisture.
He has no idea how he could have been away from Luke this long. His chest feels like it would burst from the sudden rush of emotion; he is and has always been in love with Luke.
And that’s enough reason to stay.
To start over.
He kisses Luke’s shoulder softly, not wanting to wake him, and slides out of bed quietly. His stomach is rumbling hungry for a sandwich.
As he prepares his food, he realizes that the last time he made a sandwich for himself, the last time he wanted a sandwich this badly, was when he was with Luke.
He wipes the wet under his eyes with the back of his hand, and berates himself silently for being such a sap.
*
The room is empty when Reid walks back in, and for a horrifying moment, like the freefall before the parachute, throwing himself behind enemy lines, he thinks Luke’s gone.
You’d deserve it, runs ridiculously through his head.
But he catches sight of a figure on the deck, outside the French windows. Luke is standing there, alone in the cold, wearing no more than his t-shirt and jeans, his warm breath condensing into long soft ribbons of life. Luke is out on Reid’s desk, waiting for Reid to come and save him.
But before Reid can go to him, he catches sight of an envelope on the bed. And he knows why Luke came here. He came, as in some crazed inevitability he was always going to, to give Reid one last letter.
With one last glance through the French windows, he reaches down and picks it up. He rips open the envelope with shaking fingers.
This letter starts with I hate you and ends with I love you.
It is short and brutal. Luke’s written it so many times over the months and years, that he can recreate it without a moment’s thought.
The last letter.
Reid’s eyes fill with tears as they linger over every word. And then he drops the letter on the floor and crashes through their messy, conjoined, broken-glass hearts and opens the French windows and pulls Luke into a kiss which tells him just how much Reid hates him.
Into a kiss that tells him just how much Reid loves him.
And bullets stop raining and blood stops dripping and poppies begin to break through the earth. Reid holds him, just holds him, and he’s safe.
Ceasefire.