fic repost: Skirmish (one)
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
Authors' Note: As a general rule, neverwiser writes Luke and sixtieshairdo writes Reid. Warnings for angst.
I don’t suppose there’s much point in my writing to you, but I can’t think of anything else to do.
I’m sitting on the porch at the farm. The lake is black and dark and empty and I’m thinking about you. I don’t know if you realise that I think about you every day. Sometimes I think that you do, I think that you must feel it, like pinpricks, like an itch under your skin. Every thought I have of you must press into your flesh and etch itself on your bones.
If you haven’t changed, if you’re still the man I once knew, you’re sighing right now. You’re putting the letter down. You’re thinking I’m melodramatic.
I am. I am melodramatic. You’re right. I’ll start again.
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?)
It’s been many months since we spoke, and that distance is as much of my making as it is of yours. After you left I took your advice. I went back to Noah. We dated. I reformed the happy ending I’ve been building in the sky since I was eighteen years old.
I hope you’re happy. You always used to say that I was too impetuous, too hot-headed: that I had too many mood swings and refused to do what I was told. I’ve done what I was told this time, Doctor Oliver. I’ve followed your rules, taken your medicine and done my exercises, dutifully, morning, noon and night.
You told me to go back to him. You told me that I loved him, that I wanted to be with him. I don’t suppose you expected me to suddenly start doing what I was told. But I did. For you. Because you said it’s what you wanted.
He’s not what I wanted.
He’s gone, Reid. And I’m still in love with you. And I don’t expect you to do anything about it. I don’t expect you to write me back, or call me, or appear on my doorstep in Oakdale and beg for my heart. But if you can feel my thoughts like pinpricks, maybe I’ll let you feel my love as well.
I hope you’re happy.
[The letter is unsigned, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest.]
*
Reid places the letter tenderly onto his table, his damp fingertips leaving imprints on the paper. He presses his thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to unread, to unhear, to unlove.
He is surprised at his own surprise that Luke had tracked him down successfully. He’d upped and left in a fit of desperation, and behaved completely outside of his norm by not having a back-up plan, not having a carefully thought-out strategy. He realized that falling in love with one Luke Snyder required him to be more of a risk-taker, to be more impulsive than he’d ever been.
Hell, committing to a relationship with Luke Snyder was the biggest risk he’d taken in his life.
He had quit his job at Memorial over the phone, adamantly refused to return to Dallas for fear that Luke will find him easily, and started anew elsewhere. He’d thrown away things that remind him of Luke, things that are Luke and every night for 3 months, he’d slept with a fist pressed to his mouth, unwilling to let out loose sobs yet wetting his pillow from tears anyway.
He feels like he’s walking on a minefield, taking into account of his every step; one wrong move would explode the ground from beneath him.
It’s been an obsession of his to erase every detail of himself from Oakdale - his every fingerprint on every coffee cup, the traces of his scent from around the hospital, but most of all, he wants the murmured whispers he’d promised Luke (of painted castles and happy endings) to dissolve into nothingness.
He changed his number, deleted the email accounts Luke knows of, removed himself completely from any semblance of existence on the world wide web. He wants to extricate his presence from Luke’s life, from the lives of people in Oakdale, until he turns into a myth, or a bad memory - like war or famine - that everyone knows existed but noone wants to remember.
His fingertips trail over the penned words, his chest filling up with noxious gunpowder at the hurt within Luke’s words. He was so sure that Luke would be a lot less angry, a lot less broken without his scissoring presence, but it looks like - as always - he’s wrong.
A gunshot punctured his soul, seeing Noah’s name imprinted in the same line as “happy ending” but the wound healed rapidly when he’d read on to realize that Luke wanted him back, not Noah, but him.
A thought strikes his mind suddenly and he picks the letter up, pressing it close to his nose, frightened yet eager to know. He is relieved not to pick up any hints of alcohol but that was one huge worry he had been holding on to each passing moment - if Luke had gone back to drinking. The paper, close to his face, reminds him that Luke had written this, Luke’s words are printed here, that this is the closest thing I have of Luke and it hits him like a ball of sand, shattering into debris around him.
He folds it, heeding by the creases Luke had implemented, before tucking it into the envelope it came in.
His hand shakes violently when he drops it into the bin.
He turns and walks away from it.
*
That night, he tosses and turns in bed, his heart pounding a death march.
He finds himself getting dressed haphazardly, driving frantically through empty roads before reaching his office in the hospital, praying hard that noone had cleared his trash yet.
When he finds the letter, his body very nearly folds over and shatters to the floor.
*
Feverishly, he pens words on paper.
The next morning, before judgement and caution and warning bells start to ring inside his overly analytical head, he posts it.
When it concerns Luke, there is no such thing as second guessing.
It’s do or die.
Reid’s never been more ready to take a bullet.
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
Authors' Note: As a general rule, neverwiser writes Luke and sixtieshairdo writes Reid. Warnings for angst.
I don’t suppose there’s much point in my writing to you, but I can’t think of anything else to do.
I’m sitting on the porch at the farm. The lake is black and dark and empty and I’m thinking about you. I don’t know if you realise that I think about you every day. Sometimes I think that you do, I think that you must feel it, like pinpricks, like an itch under your skin. Every thought I have of you must press into your flesh and etch itself on your bones.
If you haven’t changed, if you’re still the man I once knew, you’re sighing right now. You’re putting the letter down. You’re thinking I’m melodramatic.
I am. I am melodramatic. You’re right. I’ll start again.
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?)
It’s been many months since we spoke, and that distance is as much of my making as it is of yours. After you left I took your advice. I went back to Noah. We dated. I reformed the happy ending I’ve been building in the sky since I was eighteen years old.
I hope you’re happy. You always used to say that I was too impetuous, too hot-headed: that I had too many mood swings and refused to do what I was told. I’ve done what I was told this time, Doctor Oliver. I’ve followed your rules, taken your medicine and done my exercises, dutifully, morning, noon and night.
You told me to go back to him. You told me that I loved him, that I wanted to be with him. I don’t suppose you expected me to suddenly start doing what I was told. But I did. For you. Because you said it’s what you wanted.
He’s not what I wanted.
He’s gone, Reid. And I’m still in love with you. And I don’t expect you to do anything about it. I don’t expect you to write me back, or call me, or appear on my doorstep in Oakdale and beg for my heart. But if you can feel my thoughts like pinpricks, maybe I’ll let you feel my love as well.
I hope you’re happy.
[The letter is unsigned, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest.]
*
Reid places the letter tenderly onto his table, his damp fingertips leaving imprints on the paper. He presses his thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to unread, to unhear, to unlove.
He is surprised at his own surprise that Luke had tracked him down successfully. He’d upped and left in a fit of desperation, and behaved completely outside of his norm by not having a back-up plan, not having a carefully thought-out strategy. He realized that falling in love with one Luke Snyder required him to be more of a risk-taker, to be more impulsive than he’d ever been.
Hell, committing to a relationship with Luke Snyder was the biggest risk he’d taken in his life.
He had quit his job at Memorial over the phone, adamantly refused to return to Dallas for fear that Luke will find him easily, and started anew elsewhere. He’d thrown away things that remind him of Luke, things that are Luke and every night for 3 months, he’d slept with a fist pressed to his mouth, unwilling to let out loose sobs yet wetting his pillow from tears anyway.
He feels like he’s walking on a minefield, taking into account of his every step; one wrong move would explode the ground from beneath him.
It’s been an obsession of his to erase every detail of himself from Oakdale - his every fingerprint on every coffee cup, the traces of his scent from around the hospital, but most of all, he wants the murmured whispers he’d promised Luke (of painted castles and happy endings) to dissolve into nothingness.
He changed his number, deleted the email accounts Luke knows of, removed himself completely from any semblance of existence on the world wide web. He wants to extricate his presence from Luke’s life, from the lives of people in Oakdale, until he turns into a myth, or a bad memory - like war or famine - that everyone knows existed but noone wants to remember.
His fingertips trail over the penned words, his chest filling up with noxious gunpowder at the hurt within Luke’s words. He was so sure that Luke would be a lot less angry, a lot less broken without his scissoring presence, but it looks like - as always - he’s wrong.
A gunshot punctured his soul, seeing Noah’s name imprinted in the same line as “happy ending” but the wound healed rapidly when he’d read on to realize that Luke wanted him back, not Noah, but him.
A thought strikes his mind suddenly and he picks the letter up, pressing it close to his nose, frightened yet eager to know. He is relieved not to pick up any hints of alcohol but that was one huge worry he had been holding on to each passing moment - if Luke had gone back to drinking. The paper, close to his face, reminds him that Luke had written this, Luke’s words are printed here, that this is the closest thing I have of Luke and it hits him like a ball of sand, shattering into debris around him.
He folds it, heeding by the creases Luke had implemented, before tucking it into the envelope it came in.
His hand shakes violently when he drops it into the bin.
He turns and walks away from it.
*
That night, he tosses and turns in bed, his heart pounding a death march.
He finds himself getting dressed haphazardly, driving frantically through empty roads before reaching his office in the hospital, praying hard that noone had cleared his trash yet.
When he finds the letter, his body very nearly folds over and shatters to the floor.
*
Feverishly, he pens words on paper.
The next morning, before judgement and caution and warning bells start to ring inside his overly analytical head, he posts it.
When it concerns Luke, there is no such thing as second guessing.
It’s do or die.
Reid’s never been more ready to take a bullet.