Snyder Scars
Title: Snyder Scars
Author: nancygrew
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Characters belong to atwt
Warning: Lily and Holden bashing. And Allison bashing. And Noah bashing.
Notes: Written for Fun Fic Fridays prompt ‘Scars’ on LURE_ATWT. You do not have to read my other fic in order to understand this one. Takes place in September 2015.
Summary: Reid receives a visit from Faith.
Reid was lying on the couch, idly flipping through a medical journal article that might as well have been written by a red-butted baboon given the asinine conclusions drawn by the author. He was wearing a pair of well-worn jeans and green cotton t-shirt. His bare feet rested on one of the arms of the couch. The shirt belonged to his husband, Luke. Reid had the same exact shirt in blue but he liked to wear Luke’s shirts when Luke was out of town on business. He would be embarrassed by the sheer saccharine-ousity of it if anyone ever found out about the little quirk but it’s not like he was going to tell anyone. Of course, their butler, Ms. Crichton, took care of the laundry so she probably knew. Now that he thought about it, Ms. Crichton often seemed coolly amused by him for no reason that he could ever fathom. Damn it.
About an hour ago, Reid had received an email from Luke who seemed to be burning both ends of the candle during this trip. Reid wished that Casey had accompanied Luke. Whenever Grandbaby Hughes travelled with Luke on Grimaldi Shipping business, he always made sure that Luke took a little time off to relax and to get a solid night’s sleep. When Grandbaby Hughes didn’t accompany Luke on his business trips, then Luke tended to count his habitual ten minute whirlwind through the duty-free shop at the local airport of wherever as his relaxed, sight-seeing time.
During Luke’s rushed shopping safaris through the world’s airport duty-free shops, he usually picked up a gift or three for various loved ones. His Grandma Emma was the recipient of exotic cookbooks. His sisters Faith and Abigail were gifted with jewelry. Sometimes his siblings Ethan and Natalie received books.
Reid, though? For some reason, Luke enjoyed gifting Reid with glitzy, tacky, colorful musical snow-globes. Each more garish than the previous one. Grandbaby Hughes liked to regale Reid with stories about Luke Snyder: Mystical Snow-Globe finder. Apparently, if a gift shop had one single snow-globe, even if it was hidden behind other objet d’arts, i.e., crap, Luke would be able to zero in on it within seconds.
Reid was relatively certain that the snow-globe thing was just Luke randomly deciding that it would be amusing to force Reid into having a collection of tacky souvenirs. But there was a small possibility that Luke felt that the snow-globes held some sort of meaning. The glitter represented the joining of their souls or some such nonsense. Luke could be a weirdo like that. To be on the safe side, Reid was always careful to thank Luke for the snow-globes with sex and to put the ridiculous things on a shelf in his home office. For some inexplicable reason, Reid’s pseudo-nephew, Jacob Snyder, adored the things and would howl with laughter when Reid wound them up.
The only person who seemed to get odder airport duty-free shop gifts was Luke’s grandmother, Lucinda. She’d been the recipient of a boomerang, wooden shoes and an Andean pan-flute at various times. The truly bizarre thing was that Lucinda always seemed charmed by Luke’s random gifts of randomness. Maybe it was a doting grandmother thing. Maybe it was a ‘yes, we share the same goofy sense of humor’ thing.
Reid was wondering if he should start gifting Luke with something silly [Bedpan art? Antique prosthetics?] when his sister-in-law Faith let herself into the front door with her key. He was about to make his usual, casual complaint about the annoyance of people visiting when he noticed Faith’s shaken demeanor. He stood and walked towards her.
Faith’s arms were wrapped around her body.
“Hey,” he began cautiously. “What’s going on?”
Faith sniffled. “Is Luke here?”
“Out of town,” replied Reid. “So your choices regarding who to talk to about what you’re upset about are narrowed down to me or one of your grandmothers.”
“Not one of my parents?” snarked Faith.
“Well, I’m not supposed to say this to you or the other Snyder Sibs but your parents are kind of useless. I’m not sure why I’m not allowed to say that to you guys. It’s hardly a secret to anyone. But Luke gets all pissy when I’m disrespectful about them in front of you guys. Anyway, I’d go with either me or one of your grandmothers. If you need to talk to someone sweet, then that pretty much just narrows it down to Emma.”
Faith walked up to Reid and laid her head upon his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her. He vaguely remembered the first time Faith had ever done this. She had been annoyed that she had to explain to him that he was supposed to wrap his arms around her. Hugging wasn’t exactly something that came naturally to Dr. Reid Oliver but he’d eventually learned that when someone was upset and put their head on your shoulder, you were supposed to wrap your arms around them.
He decided to give Faith a little time to calm down before starting the interrogation. The questioning. Not an interrogation. He tried to hum something soothing and zen-like. When she leaned back and raised her eyebrow at him, he realized that he was humming the theme from “Bonanza”. Yeah, he wasn’t really good with the zen thing.
Faith took Reid’s hand and led him to the couch. She pushed him down and plopped down beside her.
“Here’s the thing,” she sighed. “I don’t want to be my Mom. I don’t want to live those highs and lows that she does. To be addicted to drama the way she is. To let my heart be broken into bits on a semi-annual basis.”
“You’re nothing like your mom,” said a confused Reid.
“See Lily develop an eating disorder. See Faith develop an eating disorder. See Lily become a junkie. See Faith become a junkie. I’m exactly like my Mom,” said Faith as she laid her head on Reid’s shoulder.
“You’re your own person, you nitwit,” soothed Reid. “You’re mom is this sort of passive damsel in distress that allows herself to be buffeted about by life, by men. You’re much more pro-active in your life. And you see people more clearly that she does. You recognize people’s motivations. Your mom just wonders if they think she’s pretty. And if Luke ever asks about this conversation, lie and tell him that I also pointed out some good qualities of your mom.”
“I don’t want to be destroyed by love,” sniffled Faith.
Reid frowned. “I’m not saying that you and Luke don’t have your fair share of scars resulting from your being raised by Romeo the Stable Boy and Juliet the Indecisive, but being sad when you’ve had a fight with your romantic partner doesn’t make you weak or pitiful. Hell, you would not believe what a dork I was when Luke and I were first starting out.”
“Tell me a ‘Love made Reid a dork’ story,” demanded Faith.
“I knew from the very beginning that the manipulative blackmailer who seemed hell-bent on destroying my life was in love with another man. And I started falling for him anyway. Like the second or third time I saw him.”
Faith gave a wet giggle.
“One time, before we started dating, I surreptitiously took a picture of him riding a mechanical bull. Long story. Then I put it on my cell phone as the wallpaper like some lovelorn, mix-tape-making teenybopper. Later, I deleted it in a fit of pique because he wasn’t throwing himself at me like any reasonable person would.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Even after we ‘officially’ became a couple, Oakdale’s handsomest couple, by the way, I wasn’t my customary suave and confident self. It took me a while to trust the relationship. At the beginning, I kept assuming that he was gonna dump my ass every time we had a disagreement. And the thought of losing Luke really freaked me out.”
“I love that the two of you are so solid,” said Faith.
“Regardless of whatever fight the two of you just had, I think that you and Grandbaby Hughes are pretty solid. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t believe that a guy that immature got through lawschool---”
“He is immature. All of Casey’s underwear are Superhero underwear,” muttered Faith.
Reid squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Why? Why would you tell me that?”
“He refuses to wear Wolverine underwear though because he doesn’t like the idea of having the image of metal claws near his johnson.”
Reid manfully refrained from crossing his legs at the image of metal claws near any man’s johnson. “You know, he’s really proud of you being his girlfriend. He brags about how smart you are and how pretty you are. Sometimes, when he’s talking about you, I just want to gnaw off my arm in order to escape the adorableness of it.”
“I came back from Northwestern a day earlier than planned for the weekend,” said Faith. “And I walked in on Casey and his ex, Allison the former not very successful porn performer. She must be visiting Oakdale from New Zealand.”
“And they were doing something? That really doesn’t sound like the Grandbaby,” frowned Reid.
“Well, no. Allison was smiling at him and touching his arm. I got pissed and ran off.”
Reid snorted. “You’re an idiot.”
“It was a lascivious smile,” defended Faith. “One might even call it a lascivious leer.”
“An idiot,” sang Reid. He refrained from bringing up the time that he saw Luke and the barista talking and he stormed off pissed. The two situations were totally different.
Faith smacked Reid’s arm. “I’m not an idiot. Casey and Allison have that whole history together.”
“Yeah, history like where she boinked a guy the night before she was supposed to marry the Grandbaby. She didn’t even boink someone cool. She boinked some nutjob who thought he was the reincarnation of the master criminal mind James Stenbeck. I love the word boink.”
“It’s a good word,” agreed Faith. “Casey forgave Allison all that. Maybe he’ll forgive her for running off with Baboon Heart. Maybe Casey and Allison are my mom and dad and I’m just some random romance road kill like Molly or Damian. Mom and Dad always end up forgiving each other their infidelities. It’s their thing.”
“It’s not normal, you know?” said Reid while he bumped his shoulder against hers.
“What’s not normal?”
“The type of relationship that your mom and dad have. Being raised with that type of relationship as your guide has given you and Luke really twisted romantic worldviews.”
“I’d prefer not to have the word ‘twisted’ applied to me or my big brother,” sniffed Faith.
“You ended up so scared of love that you ended up falling in love with your cousin as your first practice love because he was safe and you knew you could trust him.”
“Parker’s not my cousin,” grunted Faith. Man, Reid was just never going to let that one go.
“And Luke just threw himself into a relationship with the first guy who ever kissed him because he’s been fed that garbage about True Love since he was a tot. And he stayed in that relationship no matter how much pain it caused him because he thought that emotional pain was part of love.”
“It’s not just my mom and dad that have had painfully long, co-dependant relationships,” said Faith. “It’s not that unusual.”
“Yeah, let’s not even start on your Uncle Jack and Aunt Carly.”
“It’s not just Snyders. Look at Casey’s folks. He has just as many illegitimate half-siblings as I do.”
“You and Casey are separate entities from your various parents. You’re not their clones or destined to live their lives. You love Casey and you need to man up and go discuss the situation where you’re a crazed jealous person because his ex-wife is in the same town as him. You can’t solve a problem by running away from it.”
“I’m pretty sure the phrase ‘man up’ has misogynistic overtones,” grumbled Faith.
“I see you’re not disagreeing with my assessment of your craziness,” snarked Reid.
“Perhaps, I overreacted by running away at the sight of Methy McPornstar touching my man,” admitted Faith.
“Yeah, perhaps,” said Reid. He forwent rolling his eyes but only because Faith was being so vulnerable. “You know what one of my favorite things about you is?”
“What?” asked Faith suspiciously.
“Ethan and Natalie.”
“Huh?”
“Have you ever met two kids as emotionally even-keeled and well-adjusted as those two?”
“No. They’re kinda creepy with how psychologically sturdy they are.”
“The reason those two kids aren’t a mess is because of you and Luke. The two of you have given them a sense of safety and security that you and Luke never had. They know that they can rely on the two of you no matter what those slack-jawed idiots you call parents are up to. That’s your proof that you aren’t doomed to be Mini-Lily..”
Faith smiled.
“Maybe I should go and hash it out with Case,” said Faith.
“Maybe. The poor dumb bastard is probably completely unaware of how your relationship was on the verge of imploding before I talked sense into you.”
“Is that Luke’s shirt?” asked Faith.
“No,” lied Reid with no compunction.
Author: nancygrew
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Characters belong to atwt
Warning: Lily and Holden bashing. And Allison bashing. And Noah bashing.
Notes: Written for Fun Fic Fridays prompt ‘Scars’ on LURE_ATWT. You do not have to read my other fic in order to understand this one. Takes place in September 2015.
Summary: Reid receives a visit from Faith.
Reid was lying on the couch, idly flipping through a medical journal article that might as well have been written by a red-butted baboon given the asinine conclusions drawn by the author. He was wearing a pair of well-worn jeans and green cotton t-shirt. His bare feet rested on one of the arms of the couch. The shirt belonged to his husband, Luke. Reid had the same exact shirt in blue but he liked to wear Luke’s shirts when Luke was out of town on business. He would be embarrassed by the sheer saccharine-ousity of it if anyone ever found out about the little quirk but it’s not like he was going to tell anyone. Of course, their butler, Ms. Crichton, took care of the laundry so she probably knew. Now that he thought about it, Ms. Crichton often seemed coolly amused by him for no reason that he could ever fathom. Damn it.
About an hour ago, Reid had received an email from Luke who seemed to be burning both ends of the candle during this trip. Reid wished that Casey had accompanied Luke. Whenever Grandbaby Hughes travelled with Luke on Grimaldi Shipping business, he always made sure that Luke took a little time off to relax and to get a solid night’s sleep. When Grandbaby Hughes didn’t accompany Luke on his business trips, then Luke tended to count his habitual ten minute whirlwind through the duty-free shop at the local airport of wherever as his relaxed, sight-seeing time.
During Luke’s rushed shopping safaris through the world’s airport duty-free shops, he usually picked up a gift or three for various loved ones. His Grandma Emma was the recipient of exotic cookbooks. His sisters Faith and Abigail were gifted with jewelry. Sometimes his siblings Ethan and Natalie received books.
Reid, though? For some reason, Luke enjoyed gifting Reid with glitzy, tacky, colorful musical snow-globes. Each more garish than the previous one. Grandbaby Hughes liked to regale Reid with stories about Luke Snyder: Mystical Snow-Globe finder. Apparently, if a gift shop had one single snow-globe, even if it was hidden behind other objet d’arts, i.e., crap, Luke would be able to zero in on it within seconds.
Reid was relatively certain that the snow-globe thing was just Luke randomly deciding that it would be amusing to force Reid into having a collection of tacky souvenirs. But there was a small possibility that Luke felt that the snow-globes held some sort of meaning. The glitter represented the joining of their souls or some such nonsense. Luke could be a weirdo like that. To be on the safe side, Reid was always careful to thank Luke for the snow-globes with sex and to put the ridiculous things on a shelf in his home office. For some inexplicable reason, Reid’s pseudo-nephew, Jacob Snyder, adored the things and would howl with laughter when Reid wound them up.
The only person who seemed to get odder airport duty-free shop gifts was Luke’s grandmother, Lucinda. She’d been the recipient of a boomerang, wooden shoes and an Andean pan-flute at various times. The truly bizarre thing was that Lucinda always seemed charmed by Luke’s random gifts of randomness. Maybe it was a doting grandmother thing. Maybe it was a ‘yes, we share the same goofy sense of humor’ thing.
Reid was wondering if he should start gifting Luke with something silly [Bedpan art? Antique prosthetics?] when his sister-in-law Faith let herself into the front door with her key. He was about to make his usual, casual complaint about the annoyance of people visiting when he noticed Faith’s shaken demeanor. He stood and walked towards her.
Faith’s arms were wrapped around her body.
“Hey,” he began cautiously. “What’s going on?”
Faith sniffled. “Is Luke here?”
“Out of town,” replied Reid. “So your choices regarding who to talk to about what you’re upset about are narrowed down to me or one of your grandmothers.”
“Not one of my parents?” snarked Faith.
“Well, I’m not supposed to say this to you or the other Snyder Sibs but your parents are kind of useless. I’m not sure why I’m not allowed to say that to you guys. It’s hardly a secret to anyone. But Luke gets all pissy when I’m disrespectful about them in front of you guys. Anyway, I’d go with either me or one of your grandmothers. If you need to talk to someone sweet, then that pretty much just narrows it down to Emma.”
Faith walked up to Reid and laid her head upon his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her. He vaguely remembered the first time Faith had ever done this. She had been annoyed that she had to explain to him that he was supposed to wrap his arms around her. Hugging wasn’t exactly something that came naturally to Dr. Reid Oliver but he’d eventually learned that when someone was upset and put their head on your shoulder, you were supposed to wrap your arms around them.
He decided to give Faith a little time to calm down before starting the interrogation. The questioning. Not an interrogation. He tried to hum something soothing and zen-like. When she leaned back and raised her eyebrow at him, he realized that he was humming the theme from “Bonanza”. Yeah, he wasn’t really good with the zen thing.
Faith took Reid’s hand and led him to the couch. She pushed him down and plopped down beside her.
“Here’s the thing,” she sighed. “I don’t want to be my Mom. I don’t want to live those highs and lows that she does. To be addicted to drama the way she is. To let my heart be broken into bits on a semi-annual basis.”
“You’re nothing like your mom,” said a confused Reid.
“See Lily develop an eating disorder. See Faith develop an eating disorder. See Lily become a junkie. See Faith become a junkie. I’m exactly like my Mom,” said Faith as she laid her head on Reid’s shoulder.
“You’re your own person, you nitwit,” soothed Reid. “You’re mom is this sort of passive damsel in distress that allows herself to be buffeted about by life, by men. You’re much more pro-active in your life. And you see people more clearly that she does. You recognize people’s motivations. Your mom just wonders if they think she’s pretty. And if Luke ever asks about this conversation, lie and tell him that I also pointed out some good qualities of your mom.”
“I don’t want to be destroyed by love,” sniffled Faith.
Reid frowned. “I’m not saying that you and Luke don’t have your fair share of scars resulting from your being raised by Romeo the Stable Boy and Juliet the Indecisive, but being sad when you’ve had a fight with your romantic partner doesn’t make you weak or pitiful. Hell, you would not believe what a dork I was when Luke and I were first starting out.”
“Tell me a ‘Love made Reid a dork’ story,” demanded Faith.
“I knew from the very beginning that the manipulative blackmailer who seemed hell-bent on destroying my life was in love with another man. And I started falling for him anyway. Like the second or third time I saw him.”
Faith gave a wet giggle.
“One time, before we started dating, I surreptitiously took a picture of him riding a mechanical bull. Long story. Then I put it on my cell phone as the wallpaper like some lovelorn, mix-tape-making teenybopper. Later, I deleted it in a fit of pique because he wasn’t throwing himself at me like any reasonable person would.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Even after we ‘officially’ became a couple, Oakdale’s handsomest couple, by the way, I wasn’t my customary suave and confident self. It took me a while to trust the relationship. At the beginning, I kept assuming that he was gonna dump my ass every time we had a disagreement. And the thought of losing Luke really freaked me out.”
“I love that the two of you are so solid,” said Faith.
“Regardless of whatever fight the two of you just had, I think that you and Grandbaby Hughes are pretty solid. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t believe that a guy that immature got through lawschool---”
“He is immature. All of Casey’s underwear are Superhero underwear,” muttered Faith.
Reid squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “Why? Why would you tell me that?”
“He refuses to wear Wolverine underwear though because he doesn’t like the idea of having the image of metal claws near his johnson.”
Reid manfully refrained from crossing his legs at the image of metal claws near any man’s johnson. “You know, he’s really proud of you being his girlfriend. He brags about how smart you are and how pretty you are. Sometimes, when he’s talking about you, I just want to gnaw off my arm in order to escape the adorableness of it.”
“I came back from Northwestern a day earlier than planned for the weekend,” said Faith. “And I walked in on Casey and his ex, Allison the former not very successful porn performer. She must be visiting Oakdale from New Zealand.”
“And they were doing something? That really doesn’t sound like the Grandbaby,” frowned Reid.
“Well, no. Allison was smiling at him and touching his arm. I got pissed and ran off.”
Reid snorted. “You’re an idiot.”
“It was a lascivious smile,” defended Faith. “One might even call it a lascivious leer.”
“An idiot,” sang Reid. He refrained from bringing up the time that he saw Luke and the barista talking and he stormed off pissed. The two situations were totally different.
Faith smacked Reid’s arm. “I’m not an idiot. Casey and Allison have that whole history together.”
“Yeah, history like where she boinked a guy the night before she was supposed to marry the Grandbaby. She didn’t even boink someone cool. She boinked some nutjob who thought he was the reincarnation of the master criminal mind James Stenbeck. I love the word boink.”
“It’s a good word,” agreed Faith. “Casey forgave Allison all that. Maybe he’ll forgive her for running off with Baboon Heart. Maybe Casey and Allison are my mom and dad and I’m just some random romance road kill like Molly or Damian. Mom and Dad always end up forgiving each other their infidelities. It’s their thing.”
“It’s not normal, you know?” said Reid while he bumped his shoulder against hers.
“What’s not normal?”
“The type of relationship that your mom and dad have. Being raised with that type of relationship as your guide has given you and Luke really twisted romantic worldviews.”
“I’d prefer not to have the word ‘twisted’ applied to me or my big brother,” sniffed Faith.
“You ended up so scared of love that you ended up falling in love with your cousin as your first practice love because he was safe and you knew you could trust him.”
“Parker’s not my cousin,” grunted Faith. Man, Reid was just never going to let that one go.
“And Luke just threw himself into a relationship with the first guy who ever kissed him because he’s been fed that garbage about True Love since he was a tot. And he stayed in that relationship no matter how much pain it caused him because he thought that emotional pain was part of love.”
“It’s not just my mom and dad that have had painfully long, co-dependant relationships,” said Faith. “It’s not that unusual.”
“Yeah, let’s not even start on your Uncle Jack and Aunt Carly.”
“It’s not just Snyders. Look at Casey’s folks. He has just as many illegitimate half-siblings as I do.”
“You and Casey are separate entities from your various parents. You’re not their clones or destined to live their lives. You love Casey and you need to man up and go discuss the situation where you’re a crazed jealous person because his ex-wife is in the same town as him. You can’t solve a problem by running away from it.”
“I’m pretty sure the phrase ‘man up’ has misogynistic overtones,” grumbled Faith.
“I see you’re not disagreeing with my assessment of your craziness,” snarked Reid.
“Perhaps, I overreacted by running away at the sight of Methy McPornstar touching my man,” admitted Faith.
“Yeah, perhaps,” said Reid. He forwent rolling his eyes but only because Faith was being so vulnerable. “You know what one of my favorite things about you is?”
“What?” asked Faith suspiciously.
“Ethan and Natalie.”
“Huh?”
“Have you ever met two kids as emotionally even-keeled and well-adjusted as those two?”
“No. They’re kinda creepy with how psychologically sturdy they are.”
“The reason those two kids aren’t a mess is because of you and Luke. The two of you have given them a sense of safety and security that you and Luke never had. They know that they can rely on the two of you no matter what those slack-jawed idiots you call parents are up to. That’s your proof that you aren’t doomed to be Mini-Lily..”
Faith smiled.
“Maybe I should go and hash it out with Case,” said Faith.
“Maybe. The poor dumb bastard is probably completely unaware of how your relationship was on the verge of imploding before I talked sense into you.”
“Is that Luke’s shirt?” asked Faith.
“No,” lied Reid with no compunction.