Brilliancy 6/14
In the twelfth week Luke is standing outside the hospital trying to muster up enough courage to actually enter. Last night´s dream still feels so real and he needs to see Reid to be sure that the last few weeks have really happened. He wants to touch Reid so badly that his whole body is aching for him, but he has to remember that it´s not the same. Reid is not the same, and if Luke walked in there and hugged him and declared his love, Reid would most likely throw him out or order a CAT-scan.
He takes a deep breath and walks through the doors and up to the reception where Alison is standing.
“Oh hello again”, she says and smiles. “Lucas, right?”
“Luke actually. Everything okay?” Alison seems to be a bit surprised from the fact that Luke can perform coherent sentences and she seems to revaluate his mental status.
“I´m fine thank you.” She looks behind him questioning. “Didn´t your father come with you today?”
“Sorry, he had some other stuff he had to do.” Alison looks so disappointed that Luke has to add “but I´m sure he will drop by another day.” Not that Damian has said anything about that. In fact he stated that he was only nice to her to get the information they needed but Luke sees no need to fill Alison in on that.
“So, is Doctor Oliver here today?”
Alison glances around to make sure that no one is listening before she leans forward. “Yes he is! He´s going through some paperwork today and said that he didn´t want to be disturbed unless the hospital was caught on fire, but I´m sure he wouldn´t mind a visit from a friend. Go down this corridor and his office is the third to the left.”
Luke says thank you and walks down the corridor until he reaches Reid´s office. He raises his hand to knock but his trembling fingers trace the name on the golden plate. He suddenly remembers that he has done this once before, on Reid´s gravestone and he feels blinded by grief for a second. Reid is alive. He closes his eyes and exhales a breath he didn´t even know he was holding and knocks hard on the door.
“What?” Reid´s annoyed voice isn’t exactly welcoming but Luke opens the door anyway and walks into the room.
Reid is sitting behind a huge desk, a pen in his hand with at least ten files spread out in front of him. His hair is damp, and Luke guesses he’s just had a shower. His short hair is curlier than usual and it makes him look so handsome and so sexy in a way that is so Reid, and Luke wants to walk right up to him and run his fingers through it. He doesn’t though, because when Reid sees him, he leans back in his chair and raises his eyebrows and Luke remembers that nothing is like it should be.
“Hey.”
Reid rolls his eyes. “You don´t give up do you, Mr. Grimaldi?”
Luke closes the door behind him and walks over to the chair across from Reid and sits down. “Not when it comes to you.”
“Please, do come in and take a seat,” Reid says sarcastically and gestures to the chair Luke is already sitting in.
Luke smiles nervously and realizes how much he has missed this. Missed Reid, missed hearing Reid´s snarkiness, missed their banter.
“Look”, he says, “I´m really sorry about last time. I usually don´t drink that much but I was having a rough time and I wanted to thank you for taking care of me.”
Reid lets out a surprised laugh. “You´re unbelievable”, he says and rubs his forehead with his hand.
“Yeah, anyway. I was wondering if you maybe wanted to do it again?” Luke can feel his cheeks turning pink. “I mean, not the part with me getting too much to drink, but go out for dinner or something…” He trails off, curious about the look of disgust on Reid´s face.
“You know, Mr. Grimaldi, I despise people like you. First you try to buy me and when that doesn´t work you move on to blackmail. Then you show up months later, using a fake name and try to get me into bed. And now you want to have dinner. What`s wrong with you?”
“What?” Luke feels like he is having a flashback to the first time he meet Reid, the same angry gaze meeting his and words similar to those he had just spoken. But it didn´t make any sense, what blackmailing?
“I´m curious though“, Reid continues, “what where you trying to accomplish by sleeping with me?”
“I… What? Nothing! I just… I had no idea who you were.” Luke can´t seem to find the right words and he wasn´t prepared for this.
“You almost made me lose my medical license and then you just happened to enter the same bar as me one night. Don´t pretend to be an even bigger idiot than you already are.”
Luke is speechless. He stares at Reid and tries to understand what the hell is happening but nothing makes sense. Did he try and blackmail Reid into coming to Oakdale but didn´t achieve it in this world? There was nothing about this in the journal and if Damian helped him he should have said so. What have I done?
“I… I don´t know what to say.” He looks pleadingly at Reid, but the man who is staring back at him shows no emotion at all except for anger and Luke realizes that this isn´t his Reid. The thought hurts so much that he pushes it away, because he will not give up, there has to be a way to make this right.
Reid snorts. “You don´t? Well, that must be a first. I thought you were incapable of shutting up.”
“Why are you treating me like this?”
“Why?” Reid sounds surprised from the fact that Luke actually has to ask that. “Because I don´t like you. People like you seem to think they can get whatever they want just because they are born with blue blood in their veins. I´m not easily bought or blackmailed into doing something I don´t want to do, and I sure as hell won´t sleep with you so get the hell out of my office.”
In the twelfth week Luke no longer knows what´s real and what´s a dream. In a way he feels like he´s back to square one and he tries to tell himself that it isn´t worse than the first time they met. But deep down inside, he knows that this will be a lot harder than he anticipated.
Luke has no memory from how he got back to the hotel. He wandered around the streets in New York, unable to come up with anything to make this better, to fix things, to know what the hell has happened. He wants to tell Reid the truth so bad, but he doesn´t know where to start and if this Reid is anything like the one he loves, he won’t believe him. Not yet anyway.
When he finally reaches the hotel, anger has replaced the feeling of hopelessness and it feels so good to be angry instead of feeling sad. He admits being angry at Reid for not giving in to him, for not feeling the connection between them and for making this so hard. He´s angry at the whole situation, hasn´t he suffered enough already? He lost Reid, he had to watch the man he loves die and seconds later he had to endure people he considered being his friends act like vultures.
He went through nine painful weeks without Reid where he tried to drink himself to death, and then he wakes up in this parallel universe where nothing makes sense, but where Reid is alive only to find out that Reid hates him. It´s not fair and Luke can´t stand it anymore.
He unlocks the door and when he walks in the first thing he sees is his father sitting on the couch talking on his phone. He feels the anger burning inside of him and he knows exactly what he is going to do with it. He slams the door shut and marches up to his father who looks up at him, a bit surprised
“It was you wasn´t it?” Luke spits out, not caring that his father is in the middle of a phone call.
Damian says something in Italian and shuts his phone, looking more than a bit annoyed by Luke´s interruption. “It was me what?”
“Don´t give me that shit! I know you forced me to blackmail him to come to Oakdale and do Noah´s surgery, don´t lie to me.” Damian opens his mouth to say something but Luke isn´t interested in whatever lies his father is about to give him. “It´s so typical you, isn´t it? God, I can´t believe I actually trusted you again. I´m such an idiot, you will never change.” He laughs bitterly and is about to leave when Damian grabs his arm and pulls him around.
“Luciano, what are you talking about?” Damian´s eyes narrow dangerously and he looks more upset than Luke has seen in a long time.
“Don´t play innocent! You made me try to blackmail Reid into doing Noah´s surgery and now he hates me! You could have told me before I went over there, but as usual you don´t care about me at all, do you?” He tries to pull his arm loose so he can get out of there but Damian tightens his grip.
“Be very careful of what you say to me Luciano. I may have done a lot of things in the past that I´m not proud of, but since your mother gave me that ultimatum 18 years ago I haven´t done anything that could be considered even remotely illegal, and that includes blackmailing.” Damian releases Luke´s arm and turns around to the table to pick up his papers.
“What ultimatum?” The anger is slowly leaving him and instead, he starts to feel ashamed of the things he accused his father of. Damian sounds sincere and even if he told Luke to blackmail Reid it was still Luke´s choice to do it.
“If I didn´t stop with everything illegal and dangerous your mother wouldn´t let me see you again. Why do you think I live in Oakdale?” Damian turns around and Luke can see that he´s still angry but his eyes soften when he watches his son. “Everything I have done, I have done for you and I swear that I have never heard of your Reid Oliver until you told me about him three weeks ago.” Damian turns to leave and this time it´s Luke who reaches out for him.
“Damian, I´m so sorry.”
“We can talk about this later Luciano, I have a few things to take care of right now.”
Luke watches his father leave and sinks down in the couch, covering his face with his hands. Today turned out to be a brilliant day Reid hates him and his father, who has done nothing but help him, is angry at him.
In the thirteenth week Luke still wakes up every night screaming. Reid is dead and it´s so painful and it hurts so much that Luke can´t breathe. The only difference is that Reid is no longer dying in a train crash. One night he drowns and another night he gets hit by a bus. He has been stabbed, poisoned, hung, he’s fallen off a hotel balcony and on one particularly awful night, he died in Luke´s arms from a gunshot, inflicted by none other than Damian.
After that Luke is afraid of falling asleep and he tries to stay awake by reading the journals more thoroughly but it doesn´t take long until Reid is there, blood in his hair and those blue eyes filled with so much pain and fear. Luke jolts awake and he picks up the photo of Reid and tries to calm down. His heart is racing and his hands are trembling and the only thing he can think of is that he needs something to make him forget, to make him sleep peacefully.
He walks into the living room and opens the mini bar. There are a few beer bottles and an expensive champagne, but it´s not what Luke craves. He needs vodka and he opens a few cabinets but there is nothing so he settles for the beer. There is more alcohol in the champagne but opening up a bottle of champagne makes him feel like he´s celebrating something and that feels so wrong. He opens a beer, raises the bottle and takes a big gulp when he feels a hand on his arm.
“Luciano Eduardo Grimaldi Snyder. What the hell do you think you´re doing?”
Luke jumps and almost drops the bottle but manages to put it down without spilling too much.
“You scared me,” he says to Damian and wipes his mouth with his arm.
“I asked you what you were doing.”
“I just, I couldn´t sleep and I need… wanted something to drink, what´s wrong with that?” Luke says defensively because he feels like he has been caught doing something he shouldn´t be doing.
“What´s wrong with that? You told me you were an alcoholic Luciano, I think you know what´s wrong with this.”
“Not in this world or universe or wherever I am. This body has never had a kidney transplant, I should be able to drink whatever I want.”
Damian sighs and shakes his head before he walks over to the couch and motions for Luke to join him. “It doesn´t matter which body you have Luciano. The need to drink is in your head, and you still have the same head don´t you?”
Luke closes his eyes and runs his hands over his face. He knows that Damian is right and he knows that he shouldn´t be drinking but he can still feel the taste of beer on his tongue and he wants more.
“I can´t sleep and I needed something to make me relax.”
“Drinking is not the solution Luciano and I will not allow it.”
“You do know that I´m 22 year’s old right?”
“23 actually, but I´m still you´re father and this is not negotiable.”
“Fine, “ Luke says and stares at angrily at his father until he realizes what Damian just said. “I´m 23?”
“Happy birthday Luciano,” Damian answers with a smile.
“Oh God, I forgot. And I talked to mom earlier and she didn´t mention it either.”
“You called your parents?”
“Yeah, I wanted to know if she knew anything about this whole blackmailing thing, but all she remembered was that Noah had wanted some famous neurosurgeon, but he had a really long waiting list so we had to settle for Doctor Channing. I called my grandmother too, but she didn´t know either, so I guess the only way I can find out is if I ask Noah, and I´m really not interested in talking to him.” Luke walks up and takes a bottle of water from the mini bar and pours the rest of the beer down the sink. He feels strangely relieved from doing so, and walks back to the couch with his water.
“It doesn´t matter though, it´s still my fault and I can´t change what I have done,” he continues. “He almost threw me out of his office.”
They sit in silence for a while and Luke plays up the scene where Reid told him to leave in his head again, trying to think of what he could have said or done differently. With a heavy sigh he realizes that he can´t come up with anything.
“You can´t give up now Luciano.”
“What am I supposed to do then? He hates me.” Luke is unable to sit down anymore so he gets up and starts pacing back and forth in the room. “And he thinks that I´m still trying to blackmail him into doing something and seeing how stubborn he is, I can´t convince him otherwise.”
“Of course you can. Think Luciano! You know him, think of something you can do for him. Now, try to get some sleep, you look terrible.” With that, his father walks up to the mini bar and pulls out every bottle that contains alcohol and takes them with him in to his room.
In the thirteenth week he´s back at the hospital again, with a cup of Reid´s special coffee. Everything Damian said made sense and Luke will not give up. He would have preferred to meet Reid somewhere else, but since he turned down him down last time and Luke doesn´t want to feel like a complete stalker he decides to go to the hospital. Anyway, knowing Reid, he probably spends most of his waking hours there anyway.
The reception is weirdly enough unattended and Luke hesitates a bit before he walks down to Reid´s office and knocks. There is no answer though and the door is locked so he turns around and decides to head back to the waiting area and stay there until someone can tell him where Reid is. I will not give up.
“Seriously, there is no way of getting rid of you is there, Mr. Grimaldi?” Reid´s voice is coming from somewhere behind him and Luke can´t help but smile before he turns around. Reid is dressed in scrubs and has one of those ridiculously looking surgical hats in his hand. He´s just as beautiful as ever but he looks even more tired than the last time they meet and Luke has to force himself to stay where he is and not walk over and touch him. Instead he leans against the wall, shoves his hands in his pockets and gives Reid a cheeky grin.
“Fancy meeting you here Doctor Oliver.”
Reid snorts. “Fancy that. Look, if I wanted someone to follow me around I would get a dog.”
“Or an intern,” Luke says.
“What?”
Luke shakes his head, trying to let go of the flashback he got. “Nevermind.”
He suddenly remembers why he’s there and holds out the cup in his hand. “I brought you coffee.”
Reid glances down at the cup before his gaze meets Luke´s again. “What makes you think I want to accept anything you have to offer?”
“Oh, come on now.” Luke takes a few steps closer and wiggles the cup a bit. “It´s your favorite.”
“I seriously doubt that. Is it poisoned?”
“Doctor Oliver, I know you don´t think much of me, “Luke says jokingly, “but I wouldn´t try to kill you in your own hospital.”
The corners of Reid´s mouth twitches, as if he´s trying to suppress a smile. It´s only for a second but Luke feels a rush of relief from that tiny crack in Reid´s armor. Encouraged by the small victory he takes a few steps closer to Reid, who hesitates a bit before he raises his hand and finally accepts the cup. Luke closes his eyes when he feels Reid´s fingers brush lightly over his, but it´s over in a second and when he opens his eyes again he sees Reid taking a small sip and furrowing his brows.
“How did you know I drink this?” he asks suspiciously.
Luke smiles. “Just a lucky guess. I´ll see you around Doctor Oliver.” He turns around and walks towards the exit.
In the thirteenth week Luke believes there is hope after all.
He takes a deep breath and walks through the doors and up to the reception where Alison is standing.
“Oh hello again”, she says and smiles. “Lucas, right?”
“Luke actually. Everything okay?” Alison seems to be a bit surprised from the fact that Luke can perform coherent sentences and she seems to revaluate his mental status.
“I´m fine thank you.” She looks behind him questioning. “Didn´t your father come with you today?”
“Sorry, he had some other stuff he had to do.” Alison looks so disappointed that Luke has to add “but I´m sure he will drop by another day.” Not that Damian has said anything about that. In fact he stated that he was only nice to her to get the information they needed but Luke sees no need to fill Alison in on that.
“So, is Doctor Oliver here today?”
Alison glances around to make sure that no one is listening before she leans forward. “Yes he is! He´s going through some paperwork today and said that he didn´t want to be disturbed unless the hospital was caught on fire, but I´m sure he wouldn´t mind a visit from a friend. Go down this corridor and his office is the third to the left.”
Luke says thank you and walks down the corridor until he reaches Reid´s office. He raises his hand to knock but his trembling fingers trace the name on the golden plate. He suddenly remembers that he has done this once before, on Reid´s gravestone and he feels blinded by grief for a second. Reid is alive. He closes his eyes and exhales a breath he didn´t even know he was holding and knocks hard on the door.
“What?” Reid´s annoyed voice isn’t exactly welcoming but Luke opens the door anyway and walks into the room.
Reid is sitting behind a huge desk, a pen in his hand with at least ten files spread out in front of him. His hair is damp, and Luke guesses he’s just had a shower. His short hair is curlier than usual and it makes him look so handsome and so sexy in a way that is so Reid, and Luke wants to walk right up to him and run his fingers through it. He doesn’t though, because when Reid sees him, he leans back in his chair and raises his eyebrows and Luke remembers that nothing is like it should be.
“Hey.”
Reid rolls his eyes. “You don´t give up do you, Mr. Grimaldi?”
Luke closes the door behind him and walks over to the chair across from Reid and sits down. “Not when it comes to you.”
“Please, do come in and take a seat,” Reid says sarcastically and gestures to the chair Luke is already sitting in.
Luke smiles nervously and realizes how much he has missed this. Missed Reid, missed hearing Reid´s snarkiness, missed their banter.
“Look”, he says, “I´m really sorry about last time. I usually don´t drink that much but I was having a rough time and I wanted to thank you for taking care of me.”
Reid lets out a surprised laugh. “You´re unbelievable”, he says and rubs his forehead with his hand.
“Yeah, anyway. I was wondering if you maybe wanted to do it again?” Luke can feel his cheeks turning pink. “I mean, not the part with me getting too much to drink, but go out for dinner or something…” He trails off, curious about the look of disgust on Reid´s face.
“You know, Mr. Grimaldi, I despise people like you. First you try to buy me and when that doesn´t work you move on to blackmail. Then you show up months later, using a fake name and try to get me into bed. And now you want to have dinner. What`s wrong with you?”
“What?” Luke feels like he is having a flashback to the first time he meet Reid, the same angry gaze meeting his and words similar to those he had just spoken. But it didn´t make any sense, what blackmailing?
“I´m curious though“, Reid continues, “what where you trying to accomplish by sleeping with me?”
“I… What? Nothing! I just… I had no idea who you were.” Luke can´t seem to find the right words and he wasn´t prepared for this.
“You almost made me lose my medical license and then you just happened to enter the same bar as me one night. Don´t pretend to be an even bigger idiot than you already are.”
Luke is speechless. He stares at Reid and tries to understand what the hell is happening but nothing makes sense. Did he try and blackmail Reid into coming to Oakdale but didn´t achieve it in this world? There was nothing about this in the journal and if Damian helped him he should have said so. What have I done?
“I… I don´t know what to say.” He looks pleadingly at Reid, but the man who is staring back at him shows no emotion at all except for anger and Luke realizes that this isn´t his Reid. The thought hurts so much that he pushes it away, because he will not give up, there has to be a way to make this right.
Reid snorts. “You don´t? Well, that must be a first. I thought you were incapable of shutting up.”
“Why are you treating me like this?”
“Why?” Reid sounds surprised from the fact that Luke actually has to ask that. “Because I don´t like you. People like you seem to think they can get whatever they want just because they are born with blue blood in their veins. I´m not easily bought or blackmailed into doing something I don´t want to do, and I sure as hell won´t sleep with you so get the hell out of my office.”
In the twelfth week Luke no longer knows what´s real and what´s a dream. In a way he feels like he´s back to square one and he tries to tell himself that it isn´t worse than the first time they met. But deep down inside, he knows that this will be a lot harder than he anticipated.
Luke has no memory from how he got back to the hotel. He wandered around the streets in New York, unable to come up with anything to make this better, to fix things, to know what the hell has happened. He wants to tell Reid the truth so bad, but he doesn´t know where to start and if this Reid is anything like the one he loves, he won’t believe him. Not yet anyway.
When he finally reaches the hotel, anger has replaced the feeling of hopelessness and it feels so good to be angry instead of feeling sad. He admits being angry at Reid for not giving in to him, for not feeling the connection between them and for making this so hard. He´s angry at the whole situation, hasn´t he suffered enough already? He lost Reid, he had to watch the man he loves die and seconds later he had to endure people he considered being his friends act like vultures.
He went through nine painful weeks without Reid where he tried to drink himself to death, and then he wakes up in this parallel universe where nothing makes sense, but where Reid is alive only to find out that Reid hates him. It´s not fair and Luke can´t stand it anymore.
He unlocks the door and when he walks in the first thing he sees is his father sitting on the couch talking on his phone. He feels the anger burning inside of him and he knows exactly what he is going to do with it. He slams the door shut and marches up to his father who looks up at him, a bit surprised
“It was you wasn´t it?” Luke spits out, not caring that his father is in the middle of a phone call.
Damian says something in Italian and shuts his phone, looking more than a bit annoyed by Luke´s interruption. “It was me what?”
“Don´t give me that shit! I know you forced me to blackmail him to come to Oakdale and do Noah´s surgery, don´t lie to me.” Damian opens his mouth to say something but Luke isn´t interested in whatever lies his father is about to give him. “It´s so typical you, isn´t it? God, I can´t believe I actually trusted you again. I´m such an idiot, you will never change.” He laughs bitterly and is about to leave when Damian grabs his arm and pulls him around.
“Luciano, what are you talking about?” Damian´s eyes narrow dangerously and he looks more upset than Luke has seen in a long time.
“Don´t play innocent! You made me try to blackmail Reid into doing Noah´s surgery and now he hates me! You could have told me before I went over there, but as usual you don´t care about me at all, do you?” He tries to pull his arm loose so he can get out of there but Damian tightens his grip.
“Be very careful of what you say to me Luciano. I may have done a lot of things in the past that I´m not proud of, but since your mother gave me that ultimatum 18 years ago I haven´t done anything that could be considered even remotely illegal, and that includes blackmailing.” Damian releases Luke´s arm and turns around to the table to pick up his papers.
“What ultimatum?” The anger is slowly leaving him and instead, he starts to feel ashamed of the things he accused his father of. Damian sounds sincere and even if he told Luke to blackmail Reid it was still Luke´s choice to do it.
“If I didn´t stop with everything illegal and dangerous your mother wouldn´t let me see you again. Why do you think I live in Oakdale?” Damian turns around and Luke can see that he´s still angry but his eyes soften when he watches his son. “Everything I have done, I have done for you and I swear that I have never heard of your Reid Oliver until you told me about him three weeks ago.” Damian turns to leave and this time it´s Luke who reaches out for him.
“Damian, I´m so sorry.”
“We can talk about this later Luciano, I have a few things to take care of right now.”
Luke watches his father leave and sinks down in the couch, covering his face with his hands. Today turned out to be a brilliant day Reid hates him and his father, who has done nothing but help him, is angry at him.
In the thirteenth week Luke still wakes up every night screaming. Reid is dead and it´s so painful and it hurts so much that Luke can´t breathe. The only difference is that Reid is no longer dying in a train crash. One night he drowns and another night he gets hit by a bus. He has been stabbed, poisoned, hung, he’s fallen off a hotel balcony and on one particularly awful night, he died in Luke´s arms from a gunshot, inflicted by none other than Damian.
After that Luke is afraid of falling asleep and he tries to stay awake by reading the journals more thoroughly but it doesn´t take long until Reid is there, blood in his hair and those blue eyes filled with so much pain and fear. Luke jolts awake and he picks up the photo of Reid and tries to calm down. His heart is racing and his hands are trembling and the only thing he can think of is that he needs something to make him forget, to make him sleep peacefully.
He walks into the living room and opens the mini bar. There are a few beer bottles and an expensive champagne, but it´s not what Luke craves. He needs vodka and he opens a few cabinets but there is nothing so he settles for the beer. There is more alcohol in the champagne but opening up a bottle of champagne makes him feel like he´s celebrating something and that feels so wrong. He opens a beer, raises the bottle and takes a big gulp when he feels a hand on his arm.
“Luciano Eduardo Grimaldi Snyder. What the hell do you think you´re doing?”
Luke jumps and almost drops the bottle but manages to put it down without spilling too much.
“You scared me,” he says to Damian and wipes his mouth with his arm.
“I asked you what you were doing.”
“I just, I couldn´t sleep and I need… wanted something to drink, what´s wrong with that?” Luke says defensively because he feels like he has been caught doing something he shouldn´t be doing.
“What´s wrong with that? You told me you were an alcoholic Luciano, I think you know what´s wrong with this.”
“Not in this world or universe or wherever I am. This body has never had a kidney transplant, I should be able to drink whatever I want.”
Damian sighs and shakes his head before he walks over to the couch and motions for Luke to join him. “It doesn´t matter which body you have Luciano. The need to drink is in your head, and you still have the same head don´t you?”
Luke closes his eyes and runs his hands over his face. He knows that Damian is right and he knows that he shouldn´t be drinking but he can still feel the taste of beer on his tongue and he wants more.
“I can´t sleep and I needed something to make me relax.”
“Drinking is not the solution Luciano and I will not allow it.”
“You do know that I´m 22 year’s old right?”
“23 actually, but I´m still you´re father and this is not negotiable.”
“Fine, “ Luke says and stares at angrily at his father until he realizes what Damian just said. “I´m 23?”
“Happy birthday Luciano,” Damian answers with a smile.
“Oh God, I forgot. And I talked to mom earlier and she didn´t mention it either.”
“You called your parents?”
“Yeah, I wanted to know if she knew anything about this whole blackmailing thing, but all she remembered was that Noah had wanted some famous neurosurgeon, but he had a really long waiting list so we had to settle for Doctor Channing. I called my grandmother too, but she didn´t know either, so I guess the only way I can find out is if I ask Noah, and I´m really not interested in talking to him.” Luke walks up and takes a bottle of water from the mini bar and pours the rest of the beer down the sink. He feels strangely relieved from doing so, and walks back to the couch with his water.
“It doesn´t matter though, it´s still my fault and I can´t change what I have done,” he continues. “He almost threw me out of his office.”
They sit in silence for a while and Luke plays up the scene where Reid told him to leave in his head again, trying to think of what he could have said or done differently. With a heavy sigh he realizes that he can´t come up with anything.
“You can´t give up now Luciano.”
“What am I supposed to do then? He hates me.” Luke is unable to sit down anymore so he gets up and starts pacing back and forth in the room. “And he thinks that I´m still trying to blackmail him into doing something and seeing how stubborn he is, I can´t convince him otherwise.”
“Of course you can. Think Luciano! You know him, think of something you can do for him. Now, try to get some sleep, you look terrible.” With that, his father walks up to the mini bar and pulls out every bottle that contains alcohol and takes them with him in to his room.
In the thirteenth week he´s back at the hospital again, with a cup of Reid´s special coffee. Everything Damian said made sense and Luke will not give up. He would have preferred to meet Reid somewhere else, but since he turned down him down last time and Luke doesn´t want to feel like a complete stalker he decides to go to the hospital. Anyway, knowing Reid, he probably spends most of his waking hours there anyway.
The reception is weirdly enough unattended and Luke hesitates a bit before he walks down to Reid´s office and knocks. There is no answer though and the door is locked so he turns around and decides to head back to the waiting area and stay there until someone can tell him where Reid is. I will not give up.
“Seriously, there is no way of getting rid of you is there, Mr. Grimaldi?” Reid´s voice is coming from somewhere behind him and Luke can´t help but smile before he turns around. Reid is dressed in scrubs and has one of those ridiculously looking surgical hats in his hand. He´s just as beautiful as ever but he looks even more tired than the last time they meet and Luke has to force himself to stay where he is and not walk over and touch him. Instead he leans against the wall, shoves his hands in his pockets and gives Reid a cheeky grin.
“Fancy meeting you here Doctor Oliver.”
Reid snorts. “Fancy that. Look, if I wanted someone to follow me around I would get a dog.”
“Or an intern,” Luke says.
“What?”
Luke shakes his head, trying to let go of the flashback he got. “Nevermind.”
He suddenly remembers why he’s there and holds out the cup in his hand. “I brought you coffee.”
Reid glances down at the cup before his gaze meets Luke´s again. “What makes you think I want to accept anything you have to offer?”
“Oh, come on now.” Luke takes a few steps closer and wiggles the cup a bit. “It´s your favorite.”
“I seriously doubt that. Is it poisoned?”
“Doctor Oliver, I know you don´t think much of me, “Luke says jokingly, “but I wouldn´t try to kill you in your own hospital.”
The corners of Reid´s mouth twitches, as if he´s trying to suppress a smile. It´s only for a second but Luke feels a rush of relief from that tiny crack in Reid´s armor. Encouraged by the small victory he takes a few steps closer to Reid, who hesitates a bit before he raises his hand and finally accepts the cup. Luke closes his eyes when he feels Reid´s fingers brush lightly over his, but it´s over in a second and when he opens his eyes again he sees Reid taking a small sip and furrowing his brows.
“How did you know I drink this?” he asks suspiciously.
Luke smiles. “Just a lucky guess. I´ll see you around Doctor Oliver.” He turns around and walks towards the exit.
In the thirteenth week Luke believes there is hope after all.