As the World Turns Fic #4: The One with the Proposal
Title: The One with the Proposal
Author: Myrna1_2_3
Fandom: As the World Turns
Characters/Pairings: Luke/Reid
Rating: R
Summary: This is the one with the proposal
Disclaimer: Not-not-mine
Author's Notes: When there are kids in a soap opera they can be any age regardless of when they were born, right?
Reid Oliver could barely budge the front door of the new home he and his boyfriend had recently bought, and he was mentally composing a blistering letter to the realtor when he gave a hearty kick to the door, and it burst open.
He walked in and realized it wasn’t the door so much as two soccer bags, a soccer ball and two pairs of abandoned cleats and shin guards that had been blocking the way. Ah. Luke’s brother Ethan and a friend, judging by the size of the cleats, had come back to the house with Luke following their soccer game. The new house-or more specifically-the new pool was something of a novelty for Luke’s siblings and most weekends at least one of them was there enjoying it with them.
Reid looked out the back door and saw Luke reading by the pool while Ethan and his buddy were splashing around. Now there’s the life, Reid thought. He changed into a bathing suit and with an irritated huff, picked up the sun screen from the bathroom counter. He nabbed a towel by the back door and walked out to join Luke at the poolside.
Luke looked up from his book and grinned. “Hey, you’re back early. Is that good news or bad?”
“Good,” Reid said, leaning down and kissing him in greeting. “Mr. Sims lives to wear his polyester leisure suits another day.”
“My hero,” Luke said, pulling Reid down for another kiss.
“Who’s that?” the boy in the pool asked Ethan.
“That’s Reid, my brother’s boyfriend.”
“Is he cool?”
“Can they not see me right here?” Reid said to Luke who just waved him off.
“His car’s awesome!” Ethan said, then grew even more animated. “And for his job, he takes the brain from a bad guy and puts it in the head of a good guy and then the bad guy's brain makes the good guy wanna do bad stuff then the good guy’s body tries to stop him!”
Luke slowly panned from his book over to Reid who was fully expecting Luke’s glowering Really? “You try explaining neuroscience to an eight-year old!” Reid said.
Luke shook his head. “Now I know why he asked me if my kidney ever made me do bad things.”
Reid leered at him. “I make you to do bad things,” he said as he handed Luke a bottle of sun screen. “Lotion up, White Boy.”
Luke snatched the bottle with a roll of his eyes. “Says the pasty red-head.”
Reid smiled obsequiously. “Want some help, my darling?”
Luke handed the bottle over, but offered a warning before releasing his hold. “There are children present.”
Reid cocked an innocent brow. “Your point being?”
“If it’s already covered, it doesn’t need sunscreen.”
“Spoilsport,” Reid said. “This Romper Room Central you do every weekend is really starting to cramp my style.”
“Do not even try,” Luke said. “You’re the one who makes it so none of them ever want to leave. Doughnuts for dinner, ice cream for breakfast, strap a lawnmower motor to a skateboard? Why not, what could happen? Slasher film fest -that’s not going to keep anyone awake! Jump off the trampoline into the pool, sounds like fun…”
“I didn’t let them drag the trampoline over by the pool,” Reid corrected.
“Only because there weren’t enough bike helmets to go around.”
“Well, cranial safety comes first with me,” Reid said. “So do we have the kids for the night or what?”
“Max’s mom is picking him up after dinner. I’ll take Ethan home after that. He’s got another soccer game in the morning.”
Reid slowly reclined back on the deck chair. “Hmmm, dinner you say?” He theatrically sniffed the air. “Smell that? That smells like a little competition to me.”
Luke lifted a single brow in challenge. He carefully marked his page in his book and set it to the side. He stretched his arms overhead, cracked his neck and said, “Bring it.”
“Hey guys, come here!” Reid called to the boys in the pool who swam over to the edge and looked at Reid expectantly. “All right, guys, here’s the deal. We’ve got two options for dinner, mine or Luke’s. And the way I see it, we’ve gotta have a cannonball contest to decide it. Biggest cannonball gets to make the dinner.”
Max’s eyes were perfectly round, eyebrows high on his forehead. “At my house, we just do what my mom says,” he said to Ethan.
“I know you guys are going to be fair,” Reid said, voice like a general’s rallying the troops. He stood up and paced in front of the boys. “But you need to know that my dinner is amazing cheeseburgers and fabulous fries. Luke’s is Broccoli Carrot Casserole.”
Max looked appropriately horrified at the idea of Luke’s dinner, but Ethan was a little more dubious. He knew Reid well enough to suspect they might not be getting the full story. “And after you have a plateful of Broccoli Carrot Casserole, dessert is going to be Cauliflower Cookies or Lettuce Cakes. Now I don’t have to tell you guys what to do. You know how to judge a cannonball contest, I’m just saying…”
Reid was aware of movement from the corner of his eye as the exact moment that Max and Ethan pushed themselves toward the sides of the pool. With a kamikaze shout, Luke tackled him from behind into the pool.
“The winner!” Luke shouted victoriously, jumping up in the water.
“That does not count!” Reid sputtered as he came up for air.
Max and Ethan nodded their agreement. “It wasn’t fair,” Max said. “It really wasn’t.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “You guys are so lame! There’s no way he can make a splash bigger than that one!”
“But it wasn’t really a cannonball,” Ethan said. “And Reid said it was a cannonball contest.”
“Yeah, I did,” Reid said. “I said it was.”
“Fine,” Luke said. “We’ll go again.”
Both Reid and Luke gave it their best shot, but there was very little debate as to whose splash was bigger.
“It was Reid! It was Reid!” Max shouted, jumping up and down in delight.
“It was, Luke,” Ethan said, Snyder sincerity oozing from ever pore. “His splash was bigger. Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Luke said. “He won fair and square. We’ll just have the Broccoli Carrot casserole for dinner tomorrow night.” He smiled sweetly at Reid who smiled back just as sweetly.
Ethan and Max scrambled out of the pool and wrapped up in their towels. “Reid says anything you can put on a burger is a vegetable so we get to count cheese as the vegetable!” Ethan said as they sprinted toward the house.
“Cool!” Max said, running along after.
“It’s one day,” Reid said, not even turning around to see the look on Luke’s face.
“For them,” Luke said. “It’s every day for you. Your cholesterol should be through the roof.”
“One eighty-nine, baby, read it and weep,” Reid gloated.
Luke made the hamburgers and got the grill ready while Reid assembled the condiments. “All right, boys,” Reid said, aware of a teaching moment when he saw one. “Seconds is for wimps. We are going to build the biggest, baddest burgers in the land and eat every last bite the first time through, who’s with me?”
Ethan and Max excitedly raised their hands.
“And hope to hell Max’s mom picks him up before he starts puking,” Luke mumbled on his way out to the grill.
They ate out on the patio, Reid having supervised the building of Max and Ethan’s burgers. He told them the best order to stack the condiments, then showed them how to stand at the table and lean their body weight onto the burger to make it flat enough to take a bite out of.
“How many brains have you put in to people?” Max asked watching with wide-eyes as Reid nearly unhinged his jaw to take a bite of his burger.
Reid slowly chewed as he thought. “Thousand,” he guessed. “Maybe two.”
Luke shook his head. “Guys, he doesn’t exactly move brains from one head to another. He operates on the brains that are already in people’s head.”
“Can you put people under your control and make ‘em do stuff?” Max asked.
Reid slid his eyes over to Luke and smiled lecherously. “I can,” he said as he and Luke traded silly grins with each other.
When dinner was over, Luke stacked up the plates as Max continued to interrogate Reid. “Could you operate on my brain and make me better at Lego Star Wars?”
“Well, yeah,” Reid said. “But to make you really good at Star Wars, I have to make you bad at math and soccer, so it’s probably not the best idea.”
“Maybe someone should be doing experiments to make it so you can be good at Star Wars and math and soccer.”
“Someone probably should,” Reid said.
“Max, your mom’s here,” Luke called from the kitchen.
Luke let Max’s mom in while Max was packing up his soccer bag. “It’s Karen, right?” Luke was saying. He ushered her in to the kitchen, and Reid recognized her face from the hospital. “Karen, this is my boyfriend, Reid Oliver, Reid, this is Karen Bowers.”
Reid offered his hand and said, “Nice to meet you.” They shook hands as Reid squinted at her. “Do you work at Memorial?” he asked
“Yes, I’m an ob/gyn. We’ve actually met,” Karen said, then added sardonically, “Several times.”
“Max didn’t say you were a doctor,” Luke said.
Max shrugged. “She just helps people have babies.”
Reid nodded in understanding. “Well, someone has to do the regular old everyday doctoring,” he said.
Karen pursed her lips but Luke smiled winningly and said, “Boy, Max sure had a great game today. He’s something else out there.”
Karen smiled and nodded her thanks. “Come on Max, thank Ethan and his brother and let’s go.”
Max said his thank you's, and they were almost out the door when Max said, “Mom, can Reid and Luke come to my birthday party? Please?”
Karen’s smile was a little wicked, and Reid was hardly surprised when instead of the polite, “Of course, honey, but I bet they have something else to do,” she said, “Can they? I insist! It’s next Sunday, two o’clock. I won’t take no for an answer!”
As Luke was closing the door, he heard Max say, “Hey, Mom? Do you ever take babies out of bad ladies and put ‘em into good ladies?”
Luke paused by the door and gave Reid a dirty look, but Reid just grabbed the stack of files he’d brought home for dictation notes. He kissed Luke’s cheek as he walked by, ruffled Ethan’s hair and headed back his office. Ethan climbed up on one of the kitchen stools to watch Luke clean up the rest of the dinner dishes. Reid started to close his office door, but left it ajar when he heard Ethan ask, “When are you going to get another boyfriend?”
Luke turned the faucet off. “One’s just about too many for me,” he said, guessing Reid could hear. “I don’t want another one.”
“No, I mean, when are you going to have a different boyfriend from Reid?”
“I’m not,” Luke said.
“Faith switches boyfriends all the time,” Ethan pointed out.
“Yeah, but, not me. Reid and I are for keeps.”
“Did you promise?”
“Yeah, I guess we did,” Luke said.
“How do you know you’re going to keep it?” Ethan asked.
Reid was always impressed with Luke’s patience. He would have started smarting off at this point in the conversation, but not Luke. “Some things you just know, I guess.”
“Shouldn’t you be married then?” Ethan asked. “Wouldn’t that make it an even bigger promise?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said thoughtfully. “What if I made you promise, and I mean promise, to eat a piece of Grandma’s chocolate cake every time she made one. Would you make that promise?”
“Yeah!” Ethan said, clearly indicating that was a no-brainer.
“Could you keep it?”
“Totally!” Ethan said.
“How do you know?” Luke asked.
Ethan thought about it for a beat before answering. “Well, ‘cause I always want Grandma’s cake so even if I didn’t promise to have some, I would.”
“Right,” said Luke. “That’s the kind of promise Reid and I made. Like, totally the easiest promise ever.”
“If everybody who got married had that kind of promise no one would get divorced, right?” Ethan said.
“You’re probably right,” Luke said. “Maybe when some people make that promise it’s more like when you promise Mom and Dad you’re going to do your math homework every night without them having to remind you.” Luke gave a little chuckle, and Reid figured Ethan had made a face about the math. “You mean it when you’re promising, but you kind of already know you’re not going to keep it.”
Reid heard the dishwasher snap shut, then Luke said, “Come on, get your stuff, Buddy and I’ll take you home.”
“Can Max and I spend the night next week?” Ethan asked.
“I don’t know what’s going on yet,” Luke said. “Call me later this week and we’ll see.”
“Can Reid make dinner?”
“You know, it’s not like I’m over here shoving lima beans and fish guts down your throat!” Luke said with a laugh.
“Yeah, but his dinners are still better.”
“If he’s not at the hospital, he’ll make dinner,” Luke said.
That seemed to remind Ethan of something else he wanted to ask. “If I ask him, do you think Reid would bring a brain in a jar to Max’s party so we can look at it?”
Reid grinned, wishing he could see Luke’s face. “I don’t think he’s allowed to take them out of the hospital,” Luke said.
“Oh.” Ethan sounded disappointed, but then perked up. “Could he take us to the hospital so we could look at ‘em there?”
“Hospitals are pretty strict about who can come in and see stuff like that,” Luke said and Reid could picture Ethan glumly nodding in understanding.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Ethan said. “If I was havin’ some bad guy’s brain put in my head I probably wouldn’t want everyone to know either.”
+++++++
Reid thought it interesting that whenever he really, really wanted some random stranger to require emergency brain surgery, they never came through for him. You give and give to the universe, but sometimes the universe just takes and takes.
So it was that everyone in the greater Oakdale vicinity enjoyed a rare day of good neural health, and Reid and Luke found themselves enduring Max Bowers’ birthday party. As they walked in the door afterword, even Reid had to concede that Luke had been on the short end of that stick. He’d had a cup of punch unceremoniously spilled down the front of his shirt, suffered a run-in with a cake-covered kid and spent the majority of the day fumbling over the advances of Max’s very persistent Aunt Helen. No wonder he looked a little shell-shocked as they made their way to the kitchen. Lucky for Reid. Reid had never realized how closely Luke was paying attention until he discovered how much he could get away with when Luke wasn’t. He set the box he’d carried from the car on the kitchen counter and paused for a beat to decide if he wanted to take a shower before watching the Cubs game. Maybe just a quick dip in the pool.
“What’s that?” Luke said, nodding at the box.
“Hmm?” said Reid.
“That,” Luke pointed to the box, then walked over to check himself. He turned abruptly back around to face Reid and said incredulously, “You stole cupcakes from a child’s birthday party?”
“What, stole?” Reid said. “I relieved the hosts of the temptation of empty calories.”
“Oh my God! This is why we’re never invited back anywhere!”
Reid smiled in satisfaction. “You’re welcome.” He opened up the cupcake box and observed his ill-gotten gains more closely. “I don’t think you have to worry about being invited back. Dr. Bowers’ sister will make sure your name’s on the next guest list.”
“You are so full of shit,” Luke said with a laugh. “You think any time someone is, like, pleasant, that they’re flirting.”
“No,” Reid said. “But I’m pretty sure when they’re fondling your ass they’re at least moderately interested.”
“She was just trying to help--one of the kids wiped icing on…”
“Your knee.”
Reid took one cupcake out of the box and closed the lid, motioning toward Luke. “I thought you were in charge of the calendar, holiday gift buying and thank you notes, and I’m in charge of cars, menus, and recognizing when people are trying to pick up my boyfriend.”
Luke lifted a dubious brow. “I don’t believe I was in attendance at that staff meeting.”
Reid nodded. “Yeah, sometimes I pass the motions without a vote.”
Luke sighed. “I’m just going to go ahead and agree with you here, because whenever we discuss something as innocuous and almost entirely unsexual as a woman flirting, it inevitably segues into a discussion of your extensive sexual history and how grateful I should be that you selflessly fucked your way through countless hot gay losers so I wouldn’t have to.”
Reid grinned. “And again, for the second time tonight, you’re welcome.”
“We have the oddest conversations around this place,” Luke muttered.
“Here’s how we can quit having this one anyway,” Reid said. He fished the ring he’d been carrying around for the last few days out of his pocket and tossed it on the table just as he shoved the entire cupcake he was holding in his mouth. “Wear that,” he said, tipping his head back to keep the crumbs from falling out of his mouth.
Luke eyed the ring as it skittered around the table and finally came to rest in front of him. He picked it up and held it close for inspection. “Just so I know,” he said slowly. “Is this a proposal or the actual marriage ceremony?”
Reid snorted in amusement. “Hey, I don’t see you coughing up any hardware there, Boyo,” he said thickly, his mouth still full of cupcake.
Luke conceded the point with a shrug, turning the ring this way and that so he could glimpse it from all sides. “I assume you’ve ordered a ring I’m supposed to go pick up somewhere?”
“Why would I wear a ring?” Reid said, then grinned mockingly. “No one ever hits on me.”
“She was not hitting on me!”
“You are so fucking precious I can hardly stand it.”
“Shut up,” Luke laughed. He held the ring on to the tip of his first finger with his thumb and stared at it for a moment. “We haven’t talked about this in a long time,” he said. “Why now?”
Reid shrugged and flopped down on the couch, turning the TV on and thumbing through the channels to find the game. “I don’t know, I heard you taking to Ethan last week, and it just made me think…”
Luke winced, looking embarrassed. “Oh, you don’t think I was hinting or anything, do you? You know I’d say something if I needed…”
Reid sat back on the couch and muted the TV. He shrugged again, like there wasn’t really anything to explain. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “Look, I’m a fairly traditional guy; neither one of us is going anywhere. Husbands is a more accurate description of what we are to each other than boyfriends. I love you, I always will.” He grinned cockily. “God knows you’ll never do any better than me, why not just…”
Luke dove for him and knocked him back on the couch. Reid laughed as Luke covered his face with kisses. “Let’s be married already,” Luke said.
Reid kissed back until Luke leaned up, his face flushed, lips swollen. He was grinning like a loon at Reid, but the grin faded slowly into a softer, infinitely sweeter smile. “I love you,” Luke said. “So much. It’s just…” He shrugged and shook his head and looked vaguely apologetic at his inability to explain. “Everything,” he whispered helplessly. “You’re just…everything.”
They traded grins that suggested Reid most likely shared Luke’s assessment and then Luke blushed and ducked his head for a beat. He shrugged good naturedly at his embarrassment. “Let’s be married already,” he said softly.
Reid smiled, catching Luke’s chin and gently forcing his head up. There was nothing new in Luke’s eyes, nothing revealed that Reid hadn’t already known, but as his thumb gently caressed Luke’s jaw, he knew what Luke meant when he said everything.
Reid gently kiss Luke’s lips. “I was counting on wedding cake,” he teased.
Luke laughed and looked at him with a mischievous grin. “How do contraband cupcakes sound?”
#
Author: Myrna1_2_3
Fandom: As the World Turns
Characters/Pairings: Luke/Reid
Rating: R
Summary: This is the one with the proposal
Disclaimer: Not-not-mine
Author's Notes: When there are kids in a soap opera they can be any age regardless of when they were born, right?
Reid Oliver could barely budge the front door of the new home he and his boyfriend had recently bought, and he was mentally composing a blistering letter to the realtor when he gave a hearty kick to the door, and it burst open.
He walked in and realized it wasn’t the door so much as two soccer bags, a soccer ball and two pairs of abandoned cleats and shin guards that had been blocking the way. Ah. Luke’s brother Ethan and a friend, judging by the size of the cleats, had come back to the house with Luke following their soccer game. The new house-or more specifically-the new pool was something of a novelty for Luke’s siblings and most weekends at least one of them was there enjoying it with them.
Reid looked out the back door and saw Luke reading by the pool while Ethan and his buddy were splashing around. Now there’s the life, Reid thought. He changed into a bathing suit and with an irritated huff, picked up the sun screen from the bathroom counter. He nabbed a towel by the back door and walked out to join Luke at the poolside.
Luke looked up from his book and grinned. “Hey, you’re back early. Is that good news or bad?”
“Good,” Reid said, leaning down and kissing him in greeting. “Mr. Sims lives to wear his polyester leisure suits another day.”
“My hero,” Luke said, pulling Reid down for another kiss.
“Who’s that?” the boy in the pool asked Ethan.
“That’s Reid, my brother’s boyfriend.”
“Is he cool?”
“Can they not see me right here?” Reid said to Luke who just waved him off.
“His car’s awesome!” Ethan said, then grew even more animated. “And for his job, he takes the brain from a bad guy and puts it in the head of a good guy and then the bad guy's brain makes the good guy wanna do bad stuff then the good guy’s body tries to stop him!”
Luke slowly panned from his book over to Reid who was fully expecting Luke’s glowering Really? “You try explaining neuroscience to an eight-year old!” Reid said.
Luke shook his head. “Now I know why he asked me if my kidney ever made me do bad things.”
Reid leered at him. “I make you to do bad things,” he said as he handed Luke a bottle of sun screen. “Lotion up, White Boy.”
Luke snatched the bottle with a roll of his eyes. “Says the pasty red-head.”
Reid smiled obsequiously. “Want some help, my darling?”
Luke handed the bottle over, but offered a warning before releasing his hold. “There are children present.”
Reid cocked an innocent brow. “Your point being?”
“If it’s already covered, it doesn’t need sunscreen.”
“Spoilsport,” Reid said. “This Romper Room Central you do every weekend is really starting to cramp my style.”
“Do not even try,” Luke said. “You’re the one who makes it so none of them ever want to leave. Doughnuts for dinner, ice cream for breakfast, strap a lawnmower motor to a skateboard? Why not, what could happen? Slasher film fest -that’s not going to keep anyone awake! Jump off the trampoline into the pool, sounds like fun…”
“I didn’t let them drag the trampoline over by the pool,” Reid corrected.
“Only because there weren’t enough bike helmets to go around.”
“Well, cranial safety comes first with me,” Reid said. “So do we have the kids for the night or what?”
“Max’s mom is picking him up after dinner. I’ll take Ethan home after that. He’s got another soccer game in the morning.”
Reid slowly reclined back on the deck chair. “Hmmm, dinner you say?” He theatrically sniffed the air. “Smell that? That smells like a little competition to me.”
Luke lifted a single brow in challenge. He carefully marked his page in his book and set it to the side. He stretched his arms overhead, cracked his neck and said, “Bring it.”
“Hey guys, come here!” Reid called to the boys in the pool who swam over to the edge and looked at Reid expectantly. “All right, guys, here’s the deal. We’ve got two options for dinner, mine or Luke’s. And the way I see it, we’ve gotta have a cannonball contest to decide it. Biggest cannonball gets to make the dinner.”
Max’s eyes were perfectly round, eyebrows high on his forehead. “At my house, we just do what my mom says,” he said to Ethan.
“I know you guys are going to be fair,” Reid said, voice like a general’s rallying the troops. He stood up and paced in front of the boys. “But you need to know that my dinner is amazing cheeseburgers and fabulous fries. Luke’s is Broccoli Carrot Casserole.”
Max looked appropriately horrified at the idea of Luke’s dinner, but Ethan was a little more dubious. He knew Reid well enough to suspect they might not be getting the full story. “And after you have a plateful of Broccoli Carrot Casserole, dessert is going to be Cauliflower Cookies or Lettuce Cakes. Now I don’t have to tell you guys what to do. You know how to judge a cannonball contest, I’m just saying…”
Reid was aware of movement from the corner of his eye as the exact moment that Max and Ethan pushed themselves toward the sides of the pool. With a kamikaze shout, Luke tackled him from behind into the pool.
“The winner!” Luke shouted victoriously, jumping up in the water.
“That does not count!” Reid sputtered as he came up for air.
Max and Ethan nodded their agreement. “It wasn’t fair,” Max said. “It really wasn’t.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “You guys are so lame! There’s no way he can make a splash bigger than that one!”
“But it wasn’t really a cannonball,” Ethan said. “And Reid said it was a cannonball contest.”
“Yeah, I did,” Reid said. “I said it was.”
“Fine,” Luke said. “We’ll go again.”
Both Reid and Luke gave it their best shot, but there was very little debate as to whose splash was bigger.
“It was Reid! It was Reid!” Max shouted, jumping up and down in delight.
“It was, Luke,” Ethan said, Snyder sincerity oozing from ever pore. “His splash was bigger. Sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Luke said. “He won fair and square. We’ll just have the Broccoli Carrot casserole for dinner tomorrow night.” He smiled sweetly at Reid who smiled back just as sweetly.
Ethan and Max scrambled out of the pool and wrapped up in their towels. “Reid says anything you can put on a burger is a vegetable so we get to count cheese as the vegetable!” Ethan said as they sprinted toward the house.
“Cool!” Max said, running along after.
“It’s one day,” Reid said, not even turning around to see the look on Luke’s face.
“For them,” Luke said. “It’s every day for you. Your cholesterol should be through the roof.”
“One eighty-nine, baby, read it and weep,” Reid gloated.
Luke made the hamburgers and got the grill ready while Reid assembled the condiments. “All right, boys,” Reid said, aware of a teaching moment when he saw one. “Seconds is for wimps. We are going to build the biggest, baddest burgers in the land and eat every last bite the first time through, who’s with me?”
Ethan and Max excitedly raised their hands.
“And hope to hell Max’s mom picks him up before he starts puking,” Luke mumbled on his way out to the grill.
They ate out on the patio, Reid having supervised the building of Max and Ethan’s burgers. He told them the best order to stack the condiments, then showed them how to stand at the table and lean their body weight onto the burger to make it flat enough to take a bite out of.
“How many brains have you put in to people?” Max asked watching with wide-eyes as Reid nearly unhinged his jaw to take a bite of his burger.
Reid slowly chewed as he thought. “Thousand,” he guessed. “Maybe two.”
Luke shook his head. “Guys, he doesn’t exactly move brains from one head to another. He operates on the brains that are already in people’s head.”
“Can you put people under your control and make ‘em do stuff?” Max asked.
Reid slid his eyes over to Luke and smiled lecherously. “I can,” he said as he and Luke traded silly grins with each other.
When dinner was over, Luke stacked up the plates as Max continued to interrogate Reid. “Could you operate on my brain and make me better at Lego Star Wars?”
“Well, yeah,” Reid said. “But to make you really good at Star Wars, I have to make you bad at math and soccer, so it’s probably not the best idea.”
“Maybe someone should be doing experiments to make it so you can be good at Star Wars and math and soccer.”
“Someone probably should,” Reid said.
“Max, your mom’s here,” Luke called from the kitchen.
Luke let Max’s mom in while Max was packing up his soccer bag. “It’s Karen, right?” Luke was saying. He ushered her in to the kitchen, and Reid recognized her face from the hospital. “Karen, this is my boyfriend, Reid Oliver, Reid, this is Karen Bowers.”
Reid offered his hand and said, “Nice to meet you.” They shook hands as Reid squinted at her. “Do you work at Memorial?” he asked
“Yes, I’m an ob/gyn. We’ve actually met,” Karen said, then added sardonically, “Several times.”
“Max didn’t say you were a doctor,” Luke said.
Max shrugged. “She just helps people have babies.”
Reid nodded in understanding. “Well, someone has to do the regular old everyday doctoring,” he said.
Karen pursed her lips but Luke smiled winningly and said, “Boy, Max sure had a great game today. He’s something else out there.”
Karen smiled and nodded her thanks. “Come on Max, thank Ethan and his brother and let’s go.”
Max said his thank you's, and they were almost out the door when Max said, “Mom, can Reid and Luke come to my birthday party? Please?”
Karen’s smile was a little wicked, and Reid was hardly surprised when instead of the polite, “Of course, honey, but I bet they have something else to do,” she said, “Can they? I insist! It’s next Sunday, two o’clock. I won’t take no for an answer!”
As Luke was closing the door, he heard Max say, “Hey, Mom? Do you ever take babies out of bad ladies and put ‘em into good ladies?”
Luke paused by the door and gave Reid a dirty look, but Reid just grabbed the stack of files he’d brought home for dictation notes. He kissed Luke’s cheek as he walked by, ruffled Ethan’s hair and headed back his office. Ethan climbed up on one of the kitchen stools to watch Luke clean up the rest of the dinner dishes. Reid started to close his office door, but left it ajar when he heard Ethan ask, “When are you going to get another boyfriend?”
Luke turned the faucet off. “One’s just about too many for me,” he said, guessing Reid could hear. “I don’t want another one.”
“No, I mean, when are you going to have a different boyfriend from Reid?”
“I’m not,” Luke said.
“Faith switches boyfriends all the time,” Ethan pointed out.
“Yeah, but, not me. Reid and I are for keeps.”
“Did you promise?”
“Yeah, I guess we did,” Luke said.
“How do you know you’re going to keep it?” Ethan asked.
Reid was always impressed with Luke’s patience. He would have started smarting off at this point in the conversation, but not Luke. “Some things you just know, I guess.”
“Shouldn’t you be married then?” Ethan asked. “Wouldn’t that make it an even bigger promise?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said thoughtfully. “What if I made you promise, and I mean promise, to eat a piece of Grandma’s chocolate cake every time she made one. Would you make that promise?”
“Yeah!” Ethan said, clearly indicating that was a no-brainer.
“Could you keep it?”
“Totally!” Ethan said.
“How do you know?” Luke asked.
Ethan thought about it for a beat before answering. “Well, ‘cause I always want Grandma’s cake so even if I didn’t promise to have some, I would.”
“Right,” said Luke. “That’s the kind of promise Reid and I made. Like, totally the easiest promise ever.”
“If everybody who got married had that kind of promise no one would get divorced, right?” Ethan said.
“You’re probably right,” Luke said. “Maybe when some people make that promise it’s more like when you promise Mom and Dad you’re going to do your math homework every night without them having to remind you.” Luke gave a little chuckle, and Reid figured Ethan had made a face about the math. “You mean it when you’re promising, but you kind of already know you’re not going to keep it.”
Reid heard the dishwasher snap shut, then Luke said, “Come on, get your stuff, Buddy and I’ll take you home.”
“Can Max and I spend the night next week?” Ethan asked.
“I don’t know what’s going on yet,” Luke said. “Call me later this week and we’ll see.”
“Can Reid make dinner?”
“You know, it’s not like I’m over here shoving lima beans and fish guts down your throat!” Luke said with a laugh.
“Yeah, but his dinners are still better.”
“If he’s not at the hospital, he’ll make dinner,” Luke said.
That seemed to remind Ethan of something else he wanted to ask. “If I ask him, do you think Reid would bring a brain in a jar to Max’s party so we can look at it?”
Reid grinned, wishing he could see Luke’s face. “I don’t think he’s allowed to take them out of the hospital,” Luke said.
“Oh.” Ethan sounded disappointed, but then perked up. “Could he take us to the hospital so we could look at ‘em there?”
“Hospitals are pretty strict about who can come in and see stuff like that,” Luke said and Reid could picture Ethan glumly nodding in understanding.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Ethan said. “If I was havin’ some bad guy’s brain put in my head I probably wouldn’t want everyone to know either.”
+++++++
Reid thought it interesting that whenever he really, really wanted some random stranger to require emergency brain surgery, they never came through for him. You give and give to the universe, but sometimes the universe just takes and takes.
So it was that everyone in the greater Oakdale vicinity enjoyed a rare day of good neural health, and Reid and Luke found themselves enduring Max Bowers’ birthday party. As they walked in the door afterword, even Reid had to concede that Luke had been on the short end of that stick. He’d had a cup of punch unceremoniously spilled down the front of his shirt, suffered a run-in with a cake-covered kid and spent the majority of the day fumbling over the advances of Max’s very persistent Aunt Helen. No wonder he looked a little shell-shocked as they made their way to the kitchen. Lucky for Reid. Reid had never realized how closely Luke was paying attention until he discovered how much he could get away with when Luke wasn’t. He set the box he’d carried from the car on the kitchen counter and paused for a beat to decide if he wanted to take a shower before watching the Cubs game. Maybe just a quick dip in the pool.
“What’s that?” Luke said, nodding at the box.
“Hmm?” said Reid.
“That,” Luke pointed to the box, then walked over to check himself. He turned abruptly back around to face Reid and said incredulously, “You stole cupcakes from a child’s birthday party?”
“What, stole?” Reid said. “I relieved the hosts of the temptation of empty calories.”
“Oh my God! This is why we’re never invited back anywhere!”
Reid smiled in satisfaction. “You’re welcome.” He opened up the cupcake box and observed his ill-gotten gains more closely. “I don’t think you have to worry about being invited back. Dr. Bowers’ sister will make sure your name’s on the next guest list.”
“You are so full of shit,” Luke said with a laugh. “You think any time someone is, like, pleasant, that they’re flirting.”
“No,” Reid said. “But I’m pretty sure when they’re fondling your ass they’re at least moderately interested.”
“She was just trying to help--one of the kids wiped icing on…”
“Your knee.”
Reid took one cupcake out of the box and closed the lid, motioning toward Luke. “I thought you were in charge of the calendar, holiday gift buying and thank you notes, and I’m in charge of cars, menus, and recognizing when people are trying to pick up my boyfriend.”
Luke lifted a dubious brow. “I don’t believe I was in attendance at that staff meeting.”
Reid nodded. “Yeah, sometimes I pass the motions without a vote.”
Luke sighed. “I’m just going to go ahead and agree with you here, because whenever we discuss something as innocuous and almost entirely unsexual as a woman flirting, it inevitably segues into a discussion of your extensive sexual history and how grateful I should be that you selflessly fucked your way through countless hot gay losers so I wouldn’t have to.”
Reid grinned. “And again, for the second time tonight, you’re welcome.”
“We have the oddest conversations around this place,” Luke muttered.
“Here’s how we can quit having this one anyway,” Reid said. He fished the ring he’d been carrying around for the last few days out of his pocket and tossed it on the table just as he shoved the entire cupcake he was holding in his mouth. “Wear that,” he said, tipping his head back to keep the crumbs from falling out of his mouth.
Luke eyed the ring as it skittered around the table and finally came to rest in front of him. He picked it up and held it close for inspection. “Just so I know,” he said slowly. “Is this a proposal or the actual marriage ceremony?”
Reid snorted in amusement. “Hey, I don’t see you coughing up any hardware there, Boyo,” he said thickly, his mouth still full of cupcake.
Luke conceded the point with a shrug, turning the ring this way and that so he could glimpse it from all sides. “I assume you’ve ordered a ring I’m supposed to go pick up somewhere?”
“Why would I wear a ring?” Reid said, then grinned mockingly. “No one ever hits on me.”
“She was not hitting on me!”
“You are so fucking precious I can hardly stand it.”
“Shut up,” Luke laughed. He held the ring on to the tip of his first finger with his thumb and stared at it for a moment. “We haven’t talked about this in a long time,” he said. “Why now?”
Reid shrugged and flopped down on the couch, turning the TV on and thumbing through the channels to find the game. “I don’t know, I heard you taking to Ethan last week, and it just made me think…”
Luke winced, looking embarrassed. “Oh, you don’t think I was hinting or anything, do you? You know I’d say something if I needed…”
Reid sat back on the couch and muted the TV. He shrugged again, like there wasn’t really anything to explain. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “Look, I’m a fairly traditional guy; neither one of us is going anywhere. Husbands is a more accurate description of what we are to each other than boyfriends. I love you, I always will.” He grinned cockily. “God knows you’ll never do any better than me, why not just…”
Luke dove for him and knocked him back on the couch. Reid laughed as Luke covered his face with kisses. “Let’s be married already,” Luke said.
Reid kissed back until Luke leaned up, his face flushed, lips swollen. He was grinning like a loon at Reid, but the grin faded slowly into a softer, infinitely sweeter smile. “I love you,” Luke said. “So much. It’s just…” He shrugged and shook his head and looked vaguely apologetic at his inability to explain. “Everything,” he whispered helplessly. “You’re just…everything.”
They traded grins that suggested Reid most likely shared Luke’s assessment and then Luke blushed and ducked his head for a beat. He shrugged good naturedly at his embarrassment. “Let’s be married already,” he said softly.
Reid smiled, catching Luke’s chin and gently forcing his head up. There was nothing new in Luke’s eyes, nothing revealed that Reid hadn’t already known, but as his thumb gently caressed Luke’s jaw, he knew what Luke meant when he said everything.
Reid gently kiss Luke’s lips. “I was counting on wedding cake,” he teased.
Luke laughed and looked at him with a mischievous grin. “How do contraband cupcakes sound?”
#