Love equals pain. He'd learned that early on. This thing with Luke? It was a lapse in reason. He wouldn't make that mistake again.
Of course they still run into each other now and then, but their conversations are awkward. Strained. Stilted. Reid always avoids his eyes, and he'll look away if Luke offers a smile. Occasioanlly he'll think about the one and only time he held Luke's hand, and his fingers will tingle. And then he'll shake his head and tell himself to stop being such a fucking girl. Or a loser. Or a girly fucking loser. A few weeks after they'd split, he'd tried to go out and get laid. That would work, right? Get Luke out of his head. Yeah, right. He'd ended up in the back room of a gay dive outside of town, working his belt buckle loose when the hot guy in front of him had grabbed his face and kissed him. He'd instantly remembered the softness of Luke's lips, how Luke's tongue felt, the way his mouth had tasted. Reid had pushed the guy off of him, mumbled his apologies, and gone outside and thrown up. What the hell had happened to him? Since when had Reid Oliver not been able to follow through on a hot hook up? In the months since then he'd put in extra hours every week at the hospital. The neuro wing was developing and needed his expertise. And he didn't need a private life. Alone was good.
"Luke Snyder," Reid says to the nurse at the station in the ER. "Where is he? What bay?"
"Four...but...."
Reid doesn't wait for her to finish her sentence. Around the corner and seven long strides, and Reid is pulling back the curtain without warning and coming face- to- face with the man who holds his heart hostage. His eyes lock with Luke's for a second before quickly accessing the situation. Luke is not bleeding or unconscious. He has an IV and is hooked up to a vitals monitor, which is not uncommon in the ER. Luke looks tired but alert. Reid glances quickly around at Luke's parents, at Noah. Nobody is crying or seems upset. "Dr. Ol............Reid...." Lily begins, but trails off when Reid looks back at Luke. " Reid nods awkwardly. He can hear his own rapid heartbeat in his ears. "Okay, good," he says, turning and stepping away. "Okay," he repeats, barely more than a whisper. He retreats just as quickly as he'd arrived, ignoring Noah Mayer's voice behind him. "Dr. Oliver..."
Reid walks more quickly, heading for the stairs.. "C'mon, Dr. Oliver, wait," Noah says, jogging to catch up with him.
Reid pushes the door to the stairwell open more forcefully than he intended. "Reid!" Noah follows him into the stairwell, and Reid slams his own back and shoulders against the wall, growling out, "What?! What do you want?"
Noah notices Reid's clenched jaw, his bull- like breathing, and his watery eyes. " He's ok, man. It's just an infection."
" His kidney," Reid states with certainty, without looking at Noah, biting the inside of his cheek. He's not going to show anyone, least of all Noah Mayer, emotion.
" Yeah. His doctor is admitting him so that they can keep him on IV antibiotics for a couple of days. Hes been on oral ones, but his fever spiked around noon, and he's weak from not eating, so his parents insisted he come in." Reid didn't say anything. " He wants to talk to you. Why don't you go back in there?"
" Yeah, I don't think that's a good idea."
"Can you not be a dick for once? C'mon, man... He's asking for you. You were the one he asked for when he got here. They notified you upstairs, right? But then you were in there for all of 15 seconds and bolted. For a badass, you don't fight very hard. " Reid puts his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. "We're not together," Noah adds softly. Reid opens his eyes and looks at him suspiciously. Noah sighs. " Why would I lie to you about that?"
"Why are you telling me this?" Reid asks.
" Because I want him to be happy."
"What's that got to do with me?" Reid asks desperately, wanting the conversation to end. He doesn't want to be here. He doesn't want to deal with Luke being sick and wawtching from the outside. He can't do this. He can't.
"It has everything to do with you. Don't you get it? He loves you. I've tried, Reid. I've tried to win him back, but things don't work between us. It took a long time for me to accept that, but now that I have, Luke and I are in a good place. As friends. He loves you, Dr. Oliver, so if you love him too and have half a brain cell in your head, then, please, put your pride aside and go to him. He's physically weak, and he's scared, and he needs you. Damn it, Reid, we all saw it when you walked into that bay. You both still have it bad for each other, and anyone can see that, just in the few seconds you were in there. Don't squander what you can have with him over something ridiculous that happened months ago. I'm telling you, you have a chance with him if you want it."
Reid pushes himself off the wall with his foot. "I have to go."
"I know." Noah watches Reid pull the stairwell door open. "Reid!"
Reid turns around, a look of determination on his face. "Be good to him." Reid nods and exits into the hallway. Thirty seconds later, Reid walks into the hospital bay to find Luke alone. His family is gone, and Luke lies quietly in the bed, his eyes closed. Reid approaches the bed. He puts his hand on Luke's forearm, noticing that he's burning up with fever. Luke opens his eyes."
Hey," Reid says softly, resting his hand on Luke's forehead. "
"Hey." Luke replies, closing his eyes at the cool touch of Reid's hand against his fevered forehead. "They said if it gets any higher, they'll need to give me an ice bath."
"Jesus," Reid says, closing his eyes, against the burn he feels in his eyes and his chest at Luke's words. A second later, he opens them and looks at the IV bag and nods slightly. "You'll be okay, Luke. I'm here. I'm not going to let anything happen to you." He walks away for a brief few moments and wets a few washcloths with cold water. He comes back to the bed and says, "This might be cold, but I'm going to put these on your chest and neck. He unties Luke's gown at the shoulder and pulls the material down to expose the upper part of his chest. "Let's see if we can keep this fever stable so that we can avoid ice relief because that's no fun." He spreads the first cloth over Luke's left collar bone area and his neck, causing Luke to jump a little and wince. "I know, I'm sorry." He kisses Luke's shoulder and then continues with the other side.
Luke stays still, his eyes closed. When he feels a cool cloth on his forehead, he opens his eyes to find Reid looking down at him. "I'm sorry, Reid. I'm so sorry. I never should have..." Tears well up in his eyes.
Reid's lips brush his softly. "Shhh. It doesn't matter. None of that matters." He kisses Luke gently again. "We're both here now, and all that matters to me is that you get better." He nudges Luke's shoulder. "Here,.......scoot over." Luke moves over slightly in the bed, and Reid let his lab coat drop to the floor and lays down next to him, leaving enough space between them so as not to trap any additional heat in Luke's body. He puts his head down on the pillow, and for the next few mintues, his right hand cards through Luke's hair while his left hand turns the airconditioned-cooled sides of the washcloths over on Luke's chest, determined to keep him from experiencing the trauma of an ice down. Neither of them hear the curtain being pulled back.
"Oh, whoa....I'm sorry. Um, I'm Greg. I'm from transportation. Your room is ready on six, Mr. Snyder. I have orders to take you up there." He puts Luke's chart in the front pocket of his bed, as Reid sits up and bends over to pick up his lab coat. When he stands fully, Greg's eyebrows shoot up. "Oh, wow. Hey, Dr. Oliver." He chuckles awkwardly and reaches between Reid and the bed to secure the IV lines before moving. "And they say you have no bed side manner." He chuckles again and Reid can't help but smile at his lame attempt at humor. "We're going up to 604. You want to walk with us?" Reid slips his hand into Luke's. "Yeah," he says, his eyes locking with Luke's tired ones. "I'm going all the way. I'm not leaving." Luke smiles weakly. Gregg pulls the bed away from the wall and then moves to the back to push it. "Help me guide it, Doc?" Reid answers "Yeah, of course." As they walk to the elevator, they pass Luke's family and Noah by the nurses' desk. "Bye, baby. I love you. We'll be up there in a few mintues," Lily calls out. Reid slows down and says, "Wait a sec, okay?" in Gregg's direction. He squeezes Luke's hand and walks over to Noah. "Thank you." He puts his hand out. Noah shakes it firmly and nods. "It's not a small thing," Reid says, "What you did earlier, telling me what you did."
"Well neither is the restornation of my eyesight. Truce?"
"Truce," Reid says and gives Noah a quick grin before returning to Luke's side and helping Gregg to trasnport him upstairs.