Vacation Planning - a fanfic
Title: Vacation Planning
Author: nancygrew
Rated: PG [a curse word or two]
Disclaimer: The characters belong to ATWT
Notes: Futurefic. AU after Reid drives off to Bay City to get Doogie a heart. Takes place ~late September 2011. Takes place after my fic Tiime Management but you don't have to read my other fic in order to understand this one. Luke/Reid, Katie. Mentions of other characters.
Summary: Luke comes home to a surprise.
It was close to midnight when Luke entered the cottage that he shared with his lover whom Luke had recently started referring to as ‘Dr. Reid Oliver: Surprisingly Beloved Chief of Staff’. He had attended a recent meeting between the Oakdale Memorial Hospital Board and the union representatives and was so proud that Reid had managed to win so many people over. "Good morning, Dr. Reid Oliver: Surprisingly Beloved Chief of Staff, do you feel like pancakes this morning?" he had asked this morning. "Dr. Reid Oliver: Surprisingly Beloved Chief of Staff, would you pass the salt?" he had asked at dinner the previous night.
The lights were not on in the living room so Luke assumed that Reid had gone off to bed. He placed his laptop and briefcase atop the entry table and went into the bedroom. One of the lamps was still lit. Luke was surprised to see Reid entwined in bed with his former roommate, Katie Hughes. They were asleep. Katie lay with her head on his chest and with one arm hooked around his waist. Luke walked quietly towards Reid’s side of the bed. When he got there, he gave his lover a gentle kiss on his forward.
Reid awoke. He appeared confused. Then his eyes widened in what would have appeared to be panic in a lesser man. "Luke, this isn’t what it looks like!" he said quietly but insistently.
Luke rolled his eyes. He kept his voice as quiet as Reid had kept his. "The two of you are fully dressed. You’re on top of the duvet and she is underneath it. She has mascara smeared all across her face. It looks like Katie come to see you because she was upset about something, you asked her to stay the night, you tucked her in, held her as she cried and then both of you fell asleep. Am I close?"
"You’re not bad at deduction, Sherlock," said a relieved Reid.
"Is it something serious?" asked Luke. "Nothing has happened to Jacob, has it?"
"Jacob’s fine," said Reid. "I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say anything about what happened though. It might be one of those things that she expects me to keep confidential, even though she didn’t specifically state that she was telling me in confidence."
"Ah, the yeast infection incident," remembered Luke. "I thought she was going to punch you in the face for that one."
"Women!" Reid said shaking his head in confusion.
"If she wants me to know whatever is going on, she can tell me herself in the morning. Since she has her fingers hooked onto to your belt loops and I don’t want to wake her, I’ll go crash on the couch," advised Luke.
Reid narrowed his eyes. "I think that I’m perturbed that you don’t have a problem with me sleeping with someone else."
"If I caught you cuddling my brother Aaron to comfort him, I’d have a problem," Luke reassured Reid.
Katie opened her eyes. Luke winced. "I’m so sorry for waking you up, go back to sleep," he said.
"It’s alright," said Katie. She turned over onto her back. When Reid moved to get off the bed, she tugged him back down. As he lay next to her, she entwined the fingers of one of her hands with the fingers of one of his hands. Reid used his free hand to reach over his own body to pat her awkwardly on her shoulder.
Luke walked around the bed and sat down upon it next to Katie. "If you want to tell me what’s wrong, I can listen sympathetically and say, ‘there, there,’ while soothing your aching brow. But you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to. Can you I get you anything? Some cocoa, maybe? Or expensive jewelry?"
"No, thank you," Katie said as she seemingly scooted even closer to Reid. "Here, lay down with us."
Luke smiled. "That’s alright. We’ll all be more comfortable with me on the couch."
"I had a really tough day," advised Katie. "Everyone should just do what I tell them to do."
"Well, okay then," said Luke. "Why don’t you scoot over to this edge and I’ll go lay on the other side of Reid."
"Did I mention that I had a tough day?" Katie glared. "I should totally get the middle."
Luke paused. "Uh, I don’t think that’s really . . .appropriate. It seems menage a trois-y, like Etta Place trying to come between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
Reid frowned. "I’m not a movie buff but I’m pretty sure that Butch and Sundance weren’t a romantic couple torn asunder by another. And even if they were, which one of us is Etta in this scenario?"
Luke shrugged uncomfortably. "I have no idea." Katie huffed. She pulled Luke down so that he was lying beside her. Luke crossed his arms across his chest and tried to move as close to the edge of the bed as possible. Katie grabbed one of his arms forcibly and entwined it with one of her own.
Katie turned her head and looked into Luke’s eyes. "I came home a day early from visiting my mom," she informed Luke. Luke gave her a questioning look. He had no idea what she was trying to tell him.
Katie continued. "I wanted to surprise Chris, so Margo and Jacob are staying for the whole time of our scheduled visit with Mom but I came home early. He wasn’t expecting me."
"Did he leave the house a mess or something?" asked Luke. He frowned when he heard Reid snort and say, "I’m dating Pollyanna."
"I walked in on Chris having sex with someone else," Katie blurted.
"Bastard!" Luke spit out as he sat up on the bed. "Did you stab him in his undeserved heart?"
Reid snorted. He usually loved it when his cloyingly naïve boyfriend Luke Snyder became his vicious bastard boyfriend Luciano Grimaldi. The times he didn’t love it was when he was the target of the transformation.
Katie gave a sad smile. "I blubbered a little and then ran out of there. I came here because I was worried that Henry wouldn’t be able to act calm and rational about Chris cheating on me."
Luke was fuming. "You should get Margo to put Chris on the national sex offender registry. Nikki Munson is still working in the Foreign Service; maybe she can get Chris added to the terrorist watch list."
Katie yanked Luke back down on the bed. When he was lying next to her she bumped her shoulder against his. "Thanks for the suggestions but I should probably take the high road since I’m trying to set a good example to my son."
"You can at least get Henry to fire the syphilis-ridden tramp," suggested Luke. Reid winced and closed his eyes in anticipation.
"Fire who?" shrieked Katie.
"Crap," said Luke. "No one?"
"Chris is sleeping with multiple women? And people knew?"
Reid probably should have thrown himself on the bullet and tried to help Luke explain. But Katie was scary sometimes. And Luke could take care of himself.
Luke sighed. "As far as I know, he hasn’t been sleeping around. I just assumed that the woman that Chris cheated on you with was that blonde waitress who works in Al’s Diner and flirts with Chris. I apologize for making you think that Chris was having an affair and I was hiding it from you."
"There must have been something more than her flirting with Chris if your first thought upon finding out that Chris is a philanderer was that it must be her."
"It wasn’t anything," said Luke hurriedly.
Katie gave Luke a glare that promised Spanish Inquisition levels of suffering. Luke rushed to explain. "I swear it wasn’t a big deal. Reid and I saw Chris check out her butt a few times. That’s all. Every guy that comes into Al’s Diner checks out her butt though so it’s truly not a big deal."
Katie looked over at Reid. He shrugged and stated, "It’s a very nice butt."
Luke rushed to change the subject. "Did you recognize the woman with Chris as someone you know?"
Katie huffed. "Yes. Alison Stewart."
"Bastard," hissed Luke. "He cheated on his wife with his nephew’s wife. Ah, man, does Casey know?"
"No," said Katie. "As far as I know, he’s still at some seminar at Colombia University until tomorrow. I figured I’d let him enjoy this amazing opportunity before I destroy his life by letting him know about the way his wife and uncle betrayed him."
"What’s Alison even doing in Oakdale?" asked Luke. "The last time I spoke with Case, he said that he and Alison loved living in Carbondale."
Katie snarled. "Alison told Margo that being separated from Casey for two weeks was so difficult for her that she felt that she needed to come back home for a visit with her family."
Although he and Alison had been friends for a long time, Luke was furious at her perfidy. Luke squirmed at the thought that he should probably try to offer some hope to Katie that infidelity doesn’t necessarily mean the end of a marriage. It’s not like his parents had divorced with every instance of infidelity. "You have every single reason to be furious, Katie. But you probably shouldn’t make any decisions until you’ve had the chance-"
Katie interrupted him. "Oh, I am soooo divorcing that moron."
"Okay, then," said Luke.
"Good!" spat Reid. "It’s about time."
"You know what kills me?" Katie asked while she started to cry again.
"What?" asked Reid and Luke together. Due to the gravity of the situation, they forwent calling out ‘no jinx’.
"We’ve been having problems for a long time," she explained. "Even before the wedding. I went through with the wedding because I loved him and believed that we could work out our problems. I can’t believe how stupid I was."
"I didn’t know that the two of you were having problems," said Luke.
"Of course they were having problems," stated Reid matter-of-factly. "Chris is a moron and Katie agreed to marry him after dating him for twelve minutes. That marriage was always doomed to end in tears and misery." Luke wouldn’t have stated the information as bluntly as Reid but he couldn’t disagree with him.
Katie bashed her head against Reid’s shoulder. He gave a satisfactory grunt. "Looking back on the beginning of our relationship, it should have been obvious that we shouldn’t have started dating."
"What do you mean?" asked Luke.
"Well, Chris really pressured me into sex before I felt I was ready for it," said Katie.
"Have you never seen an Afterschool special?" asked Reid incredulously. Katie ignored him.
"Then he was so down about not getting the COS job," said Katie. "I told him that he shouldn’t consider himself a failure for not getting the job. I tried to encourage him by letting him know that I still loved him and had faith that he could become COS in the future if that is what he wanted."
"Did you plan on hitting me with a bus or something so that the Chief Of Staff job would be free for him at some time in the future?" asked Reid with disgust. Katie ignored him.
"Then Reid gave the Chief of Pediatrics job to Duke Kramer instead of to Chris, and he got even more angry and depressed," said Katie. "I tried to get him to not blame Reid for giving the job to Duke. I told Chris that Duke was much better known in the field and that Reid’s decision to bring Duke in wasn’t a reflection on how good a pediatrician Chris was. He thought I wasn’t being supportive enough and we fought about that but we made up."
"Duke has brought a fortune in grants and has a reputation that is priceless to donors," huffed Reid. "You would have looked like an idiot if you had told Chris that he should have been the one to get the job." Once again, Katie ignored her acerbic friend.
"Then he and Duke got off on the wrong foot and Chris felt that Duke was trying to find ways to tear apart his work," said Katie.
"When Chris filed the complaint against Duke for creating a hostile work environment, there wasn’t a member of the board who thought that Chris had a case. Duke might not want to be friendly with Chris but he treated Chris like every other doctor who works in his department. Chris’s problem is that, barring a brief exception, he isn’t used to working for someone who isn’t Daddy or Daddy’s employee," said Luke. Reid smiled approvingly. Katie snorted. Reid was a little annoyed that while he got ignored, Luke got approving snorts.
"Then when Reid found evidence that Chris and I altered medical records and suspended Chris for a month, he just really hit rock bottom. And he was so angry at me for having made him do something like that."
Reid’s Annoyed Level hit 11. "Firstly, you didn’t make him do anything. Secondly, if it were up to me, I would have fired Doogie and had both of you arrested. It was the Board’s decision to slap Doogie on the wrist and to not press charges against either of you. They were worried that the publicity would be detrimental to the hospital’s reputation."
"I still can’t believe you wanted to press charges against me!" Katie said. She had been so mad at Reid when he had been so vicious with her for having done something so unethical and which could have caused damage to his hospital. Katie had apologized to Reid after Luke had told her off and made her cry big sobbing tears. Even after Katie apologized to Reid, he refused to talk to her for weeks. It hadn’t been until Henry and Reid had inadvertently gotten drunk together and discussed the situation that Reid had decided that he was willing to be friends with Katie still. Reid felt that if Henry could remain a friend to Katie after she had betrayed him then Reid could attempt this forgiveness thing that he had heard so much about. However, he did explain that if she ever again involved his hospital in something actionable, Jacob would be visiting his mother at the State Pen.
Reid ignored Katie’s complaint. They’d been through this already.
"After the suspension, Chris wanted us to move out of Oakdale," Katie informed the men. "He was embarrassed and felt like his career was over. We got into huge fights over it. But eventually, he seemed to accept my decision. Everything seemed fine between us for the last few weeks. I don’t know if Chris slept with Alison because he was angry with me about not wanting to move or because he felt that I wasn’t supportive enough regarding him not getting the promotions that he had wanted. We’ve barely seen Alison and Casey since they moved to Carbondale last year so I can’t imagine he’s somehow fallen in love with her again. I don’t know why Alison decided to cheat on Casey."
"Casey told me that he had Alison had had a couple of arguments about Casey not spending enough time with her because of how busy he was in school," said Luke worriedly. "Reid, we’re good, right?
"I’m not going to cheat on you just because we both have challenging, time-consuming careers," said an insulted Reid.
"Don’t be stupid," demanded Luke. "I know you’d never cheat on me. I just want to make sure that we’re not taking our relationship for granted. You’d tell me if my traveling so much for business was making you feel hurt or something, right?"
"Yes, dear," sighed Reid.
"I don’t know how the two of you manage finding enough time to be together," said Katie. "You’re both so busy all the time."
"Luke makes sure to schedule plenty of sex," shrugged Reid. Katie looked at Luke to see if he was going to be insulted by Reid’s statement. Luke just gave her a solemn look and a nod.
"Okay," moaned Katie. "Let’s talk about something other than infidelity. Luke pick a topic."
Luke thought for a moment. "Do you want to help Reid and me with our negotiations regarding vacations?"
"I didn’t know we were negotiating about vacations," stated Reid.
"Maybe I was waiting until we had a referee," Luke said with a grin. "Okay, the way I see it, the options fall under two categories. We vacation together or we don’t vacation together."
"You’d be willing to take separate vacations?" asked a shocked Katie.
"Well, the only way I imagine us not vacationing together is if Reid decides that he doesn’t want to take time off of work or risk hotel room cooties. My first preference is, of course, for us to vacation together. But I don’t want to force Reid to take a vacation if he’s happier working and would feel miserable being forced into a vacation. I figure if he doesn’t want to take vacations, then maybe I’d take Nat and Ethan with me and we could have some sort of yearly traditional vacation. Something cool but educational. Maybe one year we could go to Egypt and see the pyramids and visit Old Cairo. Then the next year we could go to Athens and visit the Parthenon and the National Archeological Museum."
"Hold your horses," said Reid. "That sounds awesome. Why are those being considered for the category of us not vacationing together instead of the category of us vacationing together?"
"I apologize," said Luke while reaching over Katie in order to pat Reid’s head. "When I was thinking about vacations, I didn’t think of the Cool But Educational vacation options until I started thinking about what I would want to do if you didn’t want to vacation with me. Would you be willing to take time off work for vacations? Maybe one week every six months or two weeks once a year?"
"Yes," Reid advised Luke. "As much as we love our careers, we love each other more and we need time alone together to recharge." Luke looked startled at Reid’s desire to take vacations with him.
"I’m sorry that I never brought it up before," said Luke. "It was dumb of me to just assume that just because you didn’t take vacations before me that you wouldn’t want to take vacations with me."
"Yes. Yes, it was," said Reid.
Katie laughed. "So if your hypothetical vacations with your siblings involved Cool But Educational options, what did your hypothetical vacations with Reid involve?"
"I was thinking of either vacations with a theme or vacations that are experiential," said Luke.
"Please, go on," encouraged Reid.
"Okay, maybe every vacation we took could involve music festivals," suggested Luke. "One year we could go to the World Festival of Sacred Music in Fes and the next year go to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Something like that."
"Oh!," exlaimed Katie. "You could have every vacation involve exotic train journeys. One year you could travel on the Orient Express and see exotic locales like Istanbul and Bucarest. Then the following year you could take the Blue Train and travel across South Africa."
"That sounds cool," agreed Luke. "Or maybe we could use each vacation as an opportunity to learn how to do something. One year, we can go to Belize and learn how to scuba. Another year, we could go to Buenos Aires and learn how to tango."
"Hmmm," muttered Reid. "I assume that science-themed vacations are out of the question?"
"Yes," said Luke and Katie at the same time.
"No jinx," said Luke and Katie at the same time in order to prevent the other from ‘jinxing’ them for saying the same thing at the same time.
"Can we do the Cool But Educational vacations?" asked Reid.
"Sure," Luke said agreeably.
"Should we take Natalie and Ethan with us?" asked Reid. "It would be an excellent opportunity for them to see the things that they’ve been learning about in school."
"If we have kids with us, it’s gonna be difficult to find the time and the privacy for any sex at all during our vacations," Luke informed Reid.
"We could bring Natalie and Ethan back pictures and souvenirs," decided Reid hurriedly. Katie giggled.
The hour was late and the three of them were tired. The next day Katie would have a tough day dealing with the fallout of her broken marriage. The next day Luke and Reid would help Katie deal with the fallout. The three fell asleep quietly discussing whether the cave paintings of Lascaux should be considered Cool But Educational.