I should start out by saying that I avoid spoilers about Luke's storyline on As the World Turns whenever I can and today was the sort of day where that pays off. I had some inkling, going back to Brian Wheatley's arrival in Oakdale this past summer, that there was something up with him. He didn't seem personally homophobic at all, but he acted so strangely about Luke being out and he would occasionally give Luke & Noah the oddest glance when they were being affectionate in public.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Today Luke's grandmother Lucinda, still fresh from surgery, decided that life was just too short and that she didn't want to be alone any more. Lucinda, never one to waste time, had barely uttered her proposal of marriage before she & Brian were having that most romantic of dream weddings: the hospital bed ceremony! Luke should seriously be taking lessons from her on how to move things to the next level, relationship wise, because he & Noah obviously don't know what they're doing!
Speaking of Nuke, Noah found Luke stumbling around even more drunk than he had been in yesterday's episode. After Luke told poor Noah that he was just like his father, "Colonel Don't Ask Don't Tell" and more or less collapsed in his arms, Noah drove Luke back to the farm and tried to get him to drink some water and sober up.
Luke just about broke my heart when he went from angry, bitter drunk to wounded, vulnerable drunk and asked Noah to please stay with him, saying he just wanted things to go to back the way they were. Noah pointed out that he couldn't keep Luke from cheating in the election or getting drunk, so he didn't think they could go back. He told Luke to sleep it off and left with his car keys, which of course flipped Luke's switch back to angry, bitter drunk as he went stumbling out after Noah on foot.
Which is how Brian, on his way to pick up some things for Lucinda, discovered Luke wandering along the road, close to passing out but determined to find Noah and get his keys back. Brian took Luke back to the farm and told him to change his clothes and brush his teeth (he'd apparently been sick sometime after Noah's departure) and then tried to get him to sober up before anyone in his family saw him.
After coming back downstairs (sans shirt, I might add!) and thanking Brian for not yelling at him, even though he deserved it, Luke broke down in Brian's arms (more or less: they were sitting facing each other and Luke sort of fell into him) and told Brian that he'd ruined everything he loved: school, his parents' respect, and his relationship with Noah.
Brian stroked Luke's head and told him it was all going to be all right, that he was a good person, and then he kissed Luke on the forehead... and then on the cheek.... and then on the lips, full on, open mouth! Luke, who looked completely out of it (Van Hansis plays a drunk very well, I have to say), sort of went along with it for a second and then leaped backwards, asking "What the hell was that?" before running out of the room.
Luke still has no idea, of course, that Brian is his new step-Grandfather, and given that Brian seems to be giving Lucinda a reason to fight for her life against cancer, Luke is going to have a tough decision to make when he sobers up: tell Grandma that her new hubby just tried to make out with him, thereby destroying her happiness and possibly her will to live, or let her go on living a lie. I suspect that Luke will be hitting the bottle even more as he deals with all of this.
What I like best about this is that the show isn't writing Brian as someone who is just using Lucinda as a cover. Just before spotting Luke on the side of the road, Brian was singing along with the car radio, obviously very happy about having Lucinda as his wife. Before the ceremony, he assuaged new step-daughter Lily's worries by signing a pre-nup, so he's not after Lucinda's fortune, either. His affection for her seems to be completely genuine and from the look of things, the show is writing him as a character who is probably not out even to himself.
Things could be getting very interesting.
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