miracle (miracle) wrote in luke_noah, @ 2009-02-04 11:56:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | -[luke/noah]-, -[other atwt character]-, fanfic, fanfic: [alternate universe], fanfic: [atwt], fanfic: rating: mature, » by: indigo_5 |
The Cellmate, Chapter 3
Original poster: indigo_5
Title: The Cellmate
Author: indigo_5
Chapter: 3
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimers: I own neither Luke, Noah, nor anything else related to ATWT. The show would look a lot different if I did.
Spoilers: None. This is total AU.
Previous chapters: Chapter 1; Chapter 2.
Summary: A figure from Luke’s past returns.
Notes: I love feedback more than chocolate.
Luke and Noah quickly became inseparable. They were careful not to show affection outside of their cell, not wanting to risk sending up a red flag with the warden and getting reassigned. But everywhere Luke went, Noah followed closely behind. They sat together for every meal. They worked side by side whenever they could. They walked through the prison yard together when they were let out for free time. And at night, in the quiet and the dark, Luke’s bed became their own private sanctuary. They pretended they were all alone in their very own bedroom in their very own home, kissing, touching, breathing, moaning. But always quietly. So quietly. And Luke soon wondered how he had ever managed to sleep without Noah’s warm body against him, Noah’s strong arms encircling him, Noah’s smooth chest a pillow for Luke’s head.
The bed was small, and uncomfortable, and it creaked and groaned under the weight of two grown men. But Luke didn’t mind at all.
Then, one day, Luke and Noah were hanging out in the TV room when a guard approached them and announced that Luke had a visitor. “I do?” he asked, puzzled. Luke’s parents had been visiting as often as they could, but they always let him know ahead of time, and he never forgot. He looked forward to them too much. “Who?”
“I’m not your fucking social secretary, Snyder,” the guard said gruffly, turning away. Luke breathed deep. He still wasn’t used to the way things went here, wasn’t used to being treated this way. It was a long fall from the life of the grandson of Lucinda Walsh, able to command respect anywhere in Oakdale simply by showing up and announcing his name. But that was then, this was now. He stood up, shrugged at Noah, and followed the guard out to the visiting area.
He settled himself into the booth when he got there, nothing but a chair and a telephone receiver and a scratched pane of plexiglass, a familiar setting now, and wondered what this was all about. But as he waited, he found his mind quickly wandering back to Noah, as it always did. The taste of Noah’s skin, the sound he made when Luke bit down on his neck, the smell of his sweat when he moved fast and deep. Luke closed his eyes, losing himself in it. But a loud rapping sound on the glass startled him out of it, and he looked up to find a familiar and not entirely welcome face staring back from the other side, holding the other receiver to his ear, looking at Luke like he’d lost his mind.
Reg. Shit.
***
Luke walked straight back to his cell when the visit was over, finding Noah already there, reading, waiting for him. “Hey,” Noah said when Luke entered, closing his book. “So who was it?”
Luke stopped at the cell door, unable to talk. Noah had told him so much. He owed him an explanation. But he couldn’t find the words. How about that, for once in his life, Luke Snyder can’t find the words. It struck him as funny, but he didn’t laugh. He just folded his arms over his chest and looked away.
“Luke?” Noah’s voice was smaller now, tentative. He paused. But Luke still couldn’t coax words out of his mouth. Finally, Noah spoke again. “Look, you don’t have to tell me,” he said. “I didn’t mean to -- I mean, you don’t owe me any --”
“Shit, Noah, it was Reg.” Luke was still looking away. He bit his lip.
“Your boyfriend,” Noah said slowly.
Now Luke did laugh. “My ex-boyfriend. Very, very ex, trust me.”
“Oh.”
Finally, with effort, Luke turned his head. Noah was sitting on the edge of the bed now, looking up at him, waiting. Shit. He couldn’t. “Look, you don’t want to hear about it,” Luke said in a rush, running his hand through his hair and walking toward his own bed.
“I don’t --”
“I’m gonna grab a quick workout. Got to burn off some energy before bed.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Usually, of course, they worked out together. But Noah didn’t offer to come along, and Luke didn’t invite him. He stole one more quick glance at Noah, then spun around and walked quickly out the door.
***
In the dark, it was easier to talk. Noah hadn’t joined him yet; he always waited at least half an hour after lights out, to keep the rumors from the other inmates down. But Luke wasn’t sure if Noah would come to his bed at all tonight, knew Noah wasn’t sure if Luke wanted him there. So when twenty minutes had passed and he couldn’t bear the silence anymore, Luke just spoke into the darkness.
“I’m not in love with him, you know.”
There was a long, long pause. Long enough that Luke started to wonder if Noah had actually fallen asleep. But just as he lifted his head, straining to see in the darkness, Noah’s voice echoed back to him. “Okay.”
“I mean, I never was.”
Another pause. “Yeah.”
Luke pressed his lips together, unsure how to proceed. He and Noah hadn’t defined what they were to each other. Did Noah even care about this? Did he want to know? Fuck, Snyder, just ask him. “Do you want to hear about this?”
Noah’s voice was small, but Luke could hear him clearly. “Yes.”
Luke closed his eyes, remembering. And he began to speak.
***
It was the fall of Luke’s freshman year when they met. Luke was so excited about college, about everything new that awaited him there, and especially about the prospect of finally finding a boyfriend. OU had a pretty good-sized gay student population, and Luke figured his chances had never been better. He showed up half an hour early for the first GLBT Committee meeting of the year, and Reg was already there, setting up. When Luke walked in, Reg’s eyes flickered over his body quickly before he met Luke’s gaze, so quickly it was almost imperceptible, but Luke caught it. And was thrilled down to his bones. He was checking me out, he thought. Holy shit.
Reg was cute, and friendly, and he liked Luke, and at that moment, that was all Luke needed. They’d made a date before the meeting even began.
Reg was Luke’s first everything. His first kiss, his first boyfriend, his first lover. He was only a year older, but Reg had been dating guys since high school, and he was eager to show Luke the ropes. Luke, 18, sexually frustrated for years and finally with someone who wanted him back, was more than eager to learn them.
It surprised Luke how it got so serious so quickly, but he didn’t really know any different, so he didn’t say anything. They met each other’s families. Reg came to Thanksgiving dinner at the farm. By the time the spring semester started, he was asking Luke to move in, but Luke came up with a million excuses. By now, he knew something was off. He was getting restless, feeling suffocated. But Reg was such a sweet guy, and he was familiar, and Luke was going through a lot at home, and he just didn’t have the energy to go through a breakup. So he pretended everything was fine.
That summer, Luke took an internship in Chicago, one that involved staying overnight in the city during the week and just coming home on weekends. Reg wanted to join him there, but Luke said no, and they had their first real fight. Finally, after a lot of talking, they decided they would take a step back for the summer, see other people, but remain boyfriends, and see how they felt when school started again.
It was a wild summer. Luke tried out the Chicago gay scene, had a handful of dates, a couple of hot one-night stands. But he found he didn’t like the anonymity of it, the feeling that he was doing something dirty. When Fall came, Reg was there, familiar, warm, and Luke fell right back in. It felt right. But it didn’t.
The second time they slept together after reuniting, Reg told Luke he loved him. Cried it out, actually, when Luke was deep inside him, seconds before he came. Luke didn’t know what to say. But he felt very warmly towards Reg, and he sure liked the sex, and he figured that comfortable feeling must mean something. So when they were lying together in the afterglow, he said he loved him too. Reg smiled bigger than Luke had ever seen, hugging him close, whispering more words of love in Luke’s ear, and Luke knew immediately that he’d made a mistake. But how do you take that back?
***
Luke’s voice trailed off, and he lay still, mentally kicking himself for being such a heel. It was about to get worse, and he wasn’t sure he wanted Noah to know these things about him. But suddenly there was a weight on the mattress next to him, and he couldn’t keep from smiling as Noah slid under the blanket and wrapped his body around him. “I’m listening,” Noah said quietly. “Keep talking.”
Luke closed his eyes and snuggled deeper into Noah’s body. “It gets bad now,” he said, figuring honesty was the best policy here. “I’ve done some really fucked-up things.”
Noah snorted, kissing Luke’s hair. “Have we met?” Luke grinned. “Remember who you’re talking to. You don’t have to warn me. Just talk.”
Caressing Noah’s arm, Luke breathed in deep. “Okay.”
***
The problems with Reg took a back burner for a while when Kevin came back into his life. He had thought he was over all that, the high school crush, the anger, the feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, pain. But when he heard that Kevin’s bid for school president was unopposed… when he heard that Kevin planned on voting to cut the gay film festival, the one openly GLBT-supportive thing the campus did all year… when he saw Kevin joking with his friends, without a care in the world, knowing he could do anything he wanted and the world would still love him… he just snapped. He decided to run, and it got ugly quickly. Kevin ran a homophobic campaign, enraging Luke even more. He told Luke to drop out, telling him he didn’t have a chance. And Luke just couldn’t let him win. So when Casey suggested stuffing the ballot boxes, he took the idea seriously. Reg didn’t really understand, but he said he would support whatever decision Luke made. And when he did it, and it all crashed down around him, and he got kicked out of school, he lashed out at everyone. Suddenly, it was Casey’s fault for talking him into it, Reg’s fault for not stopping him, the dean’s fault for bringing in an expert to analyze the vote of a stupid student government election. He yelled, ranted, got drunk, threw tantrums. And Reg put up with all of it, every bit of it, and Luke could only push him further and further away.
And then he got behind the wheel.
***
Luke went silent again, but Noah didn’t say anything. He just held him, stroking his arm, waiting.
“I don’t remember much about the accident,” Luke said finally, his voice shaking. “I was so drunk. There’s just these flashes. A small white car. A lot of broken glass. A lot of blood.” He swallowed hard. “I ran a red light, apparently. I smashed right into this woman driving home to her kids. Put her in a wheelchair.” He closed his eyes tight, seeing her sitting in that courtroom, looking so small and broken, staring at him with hatred in her eyes. “It was awful,” he whispered. “And it could have been worse. I could have killed her. I almost did.”
“But you didn’t,” Noah said softly, his lips against Luke’s ear. Luke just breathed, his eyes still screwed shut. “Were you hurt? In the accident?”
“No. A few cuts and bruises. I was fine.”
“You weren’t fine.”
“Well, you know. Physically.”
“Yeah.”
Luke let the silence stretch out as he waited for his breathing to return to normal. He hadn’t cried in months, and he wasn’t about to do it in front of Noah. When he thought he could manage it, he continued. “So. Anyway. After that, I just didn’t want to see anyone. I moved back to my parents’ house and locked myself in my room while we waited for the trial. Some people called me, but I didn’t call them back. I ignored Reg completely.” He shook his head. “Over a year together, and I just dropped him without a word. I couldn’t face him. I just couldn’t deal with it. He called every day, he came by the house, but I refused to come out of my room. Then one day, I was on my way out to a meeting with my lawyer, and he was actually sitting outside the house waiting for me. He had been crying, and he told me he loved me, and that he knew I loved him too, and that we could get through this together. And I just snapped. I called him a pathetic moron, said I’d never loved him, that he creeped me out and needed to quit following me around like some psycho stalker. I said a lot of other things too… I can’t even remember it all. I was just spewing anything I could think of, just trying whatever I could think of to get him to stay away. He started crying again, and he tried to put his arms around me, and I shoved him so hard he fell on his ass in the driveway. And we just stared at each other for a minute, and then I said, ‘Leave me the fuck alone.’ And I never spoke to him again.”
“Until today.”
“Yeah. Until today.” And Luke was quiet again. He wasn’t sure how to explain this next part. Didn’t want to say too much. But he couldn’t just stop there.
“So what did he want?”
“I don’t know, really. Just to talk, I guess. He asked if I’d gotten his letters. I said I had, but I hadn’t read them. I tried to apologize, for that and for so many other things. He just kind of took it in. And then he thanked me for the apology, and he said I seemed better, like my old self again. He asked me what had put the sparkle back in my eyes.” Luke laughed softly to himself. Reg could be such a cornball sometimes. But the truth was, he knew exactly what he had meant by that, and he knew the answer too. It was curled up right next to him. “I just kind of dodged that, but we talked for a while, and it got better. Like we were becoming friends again. We even laughed a little. And I was sitting there thinking how nice this was, how it would have been so great if we could have just stayed friends from the beginning, and then I asked if he was seeing anyone. And that was a mistake. He got all quiet, and said he’d tried going out with our friend Tony for a while -- I don’t know what the hell he was thinking there; Tony goes through guys like Kleenex -- but anyway, he was telling me about him and Tony, and then he just suddenly starts crying. And he says he never got over me, and he’s still in love with me, and he knows he’s still a pathetic moron, but he can’t help it.”
Noah exhaled. “Wow,” he said softly.
“Yeah. And I just didn’t know what the hell to say. I told him he wasn’t pathetic and he wasn’t a moron, and that I was a total asshole for ever saying anything remotely like that, and that he deserved so much better than me. But he said he only wanted me, and that he would wait for me, and that all I had to do was ask. But I told him I couldn’t do that.” He swallowed. Here goes nothing. “Because there’s someone else.”
Noah suddenly got very, very quiet. It almost seemed like his breathing stopped. “There is?” he whispered.
Luke rose up on his elbow, looking into Noah’s eyes for the first time since he’d started talking. “Yeah,” he said softly, tracing his hand lightly down Noah’s cheek. “Isn’t there?”
Noah pressed his lips together in a thin line, then reached up slowly and covered Luke’s hand with his own. “Yeah,” he finally said. “There is.”
Relief washed through Luke, and he smiled, and Noah did too. They kissed, softly, deliciously, their lips moving together, tongues meeting gently in a tender dance. Noah rolled on top of him, and Luke slid his hands over his back, pressing him closer, kissing him more. And the rest of the visit began to fade away. Reg’s tears, his accusations, his anger. He’d said Luke didn’t know what he wanted. Said he was obviously still self-destructing. Said, “You’re tossing aside someone who really cares about you, someone who loves you, so you can fuck some convict?” He didn’t understand that it was more than that. That somehow, Luke and Noah had found each other, in the unlikeliest of places, but it was exactly as it was meant to be.
Luke slid Noah’s shirt off, kissing the bare skin of his shoulders, moaning softly as Noah rubbed their erections together through the thin layers of cotton that separated them. Luke’s shirt quickly joined Noah’s on the floor and they kissed harder now, stronger, wetter. And then the boxers were gone, and they were skin to skin, breathing hard, hands everywhere, lost in each other.
Noah rolled them over so Luke was on top, and Luke broke their kiss for a moment, his breath catching in his throat. Could it be? Would Noah let Luke fuck him? He had wanted to for so long, but he knew Noah hadn’t done that since Ricky, more than two years earlier, and he knew how hard it would be for him. And he loved bottoming for Noah, he loved it, it was ten times better than any sex he’d ever had. But Luke had always been more comfortable as a top, and he longed to be inside Noah, to feel that tightness around him, to find his spot and thrust hard, make him scream, make him lose control. And he knew Noah wanted it, too. He loved it when Luke slid a finger inside during a blow job, and the last time, he’d actually begged Luke to add a second one. He’d come close to asking Luke to fuck him a couple of times, Luke was sure of it, but he always stopped himself. Luke knew how scary it was for him, and he absolutely would not push it. Noah had to be the one to make the first move.
Noah was pulling at Luke’s legs now, maneuvering him so he was straddling Noah’s hips. “Want you to ride me,” he panted. And Luke was so turned on by the desperation in Noah’s voice, the rare words of passion (they had to keep so, so quiet), that he forgot any disappointment in an instant and crushed his mouth to Noah’s, devouring his lips, swallowing the groans that began when his hand found Noah’s cock. He grabbed Noah’s hand, sucking on the fingers, swirling his tongue around them as Noah panted underneath him. He knew Noah loved to watch him to do this, and he loved to put on a show.
After only a few seconds, though, Noah yanked his hand away and grabbed the back of Luke’s head with his other hand, pulling him into a passionate kiss as he reached behind Luke and eased the first wet finger inside. Luke moaned deep, shifting his hips to find just the right angle, and a second finger quickly joined the first, pushing, thrusting, perfect, God.
Luke sat up quickly, pulling a condom out from their stash under the mattress and tearing it open as Noah withdrew his fingers and gripped Luke’s hips instead. Looking over his shoulder to watch, Luke slid the condom on, then covered his palm in saliva and reached back to slick Noah’s cock. He slowly eased himself down onto Noah’s hardness, sinking gradually on to it, relishing that perfect fullness. Noah’s head was thrown back, his mouth wide open, as Luke began to move. He rode his lover slowly at first, easing into it, then faster, as he found the angle he was looking for, the way to push Noah’s cock right into that perfect spot. Noah began to thrust with him, matching his rhythm, pushing upwards, holding him tight. And Luke began to jack himself, fast, and Noah lifted his head now, watching the motion of Luke’s hand on his cock, his eyes so wide, his breathing ragged. Watching Noah watch him was incredibly erotic, and Luke was suddenly ten steps closer to coming. “Look at me,” he panted, and Noah’s eyes snapped quickly upwards, and they locked eyes and it was over. Luke watched as Noah lost it, hips jerking upward as he shot deep inside, and the groan he let out was just So. Fucking. Good. It sent Luke right over the edge, shooting come onto Noah’s stomach and chest, and he panted in open-mouthed ecstasy for a moment before collapsing forward, spent. Noah slipped out and wrapped his arms around Luke, holding him close, smearing the mess between their bodies, but Luke didn’t care. He cuddled in closer, eyes closed, panting, glowing. He wanted to stay right here, like this, forever. And he suddenly understood what had been missing with Reg.
It was this.
It was love.
He bit his lip, closing his eyes tighter. Shit, he thought. Now what?
Chapter 4