Her words are quiet enough that he's not even entirely sure he heard them right; it could be he imagined them, except there's an iron self-flagellating edge to them that he wouldn't ever have dreamt up himself for her. But still.
"That's okay too," Luther says, his voice just as soft, just barely on the edge of an exhale. His breathing is slowing down to a steady rise-and-fall now, hands back to being laced over his stomach, their conversation having ebbed back to confessional and then to surprisingly comfortable silence.
It had seemed impossible to sleep earlier, wired and jittery and practically clawing out of his own skin, but something's finally started to feel normal and familiar and reassuring about this moment. Like so many times they'd talked themselves to sleep through the bedroom windows, except with that small difference (massive difference, earthshaking difference) that she's lying right next to him this time. But there might as well be a brick wall of propriety between them for all the proper distance he maintains, and when he next blinks, he drifts under and loses some ten seconds of consciousness. Wakes up again, looks back up at the ceiling.
And then, he dozes off again.
Which, in the end, is how they wind up falling asleep: with the soothing presence and weight of someone else on the mattress beside them (a kind of weight that Allison had grown too accustomed to over the past year, and one that Luther's never known). Him under the covers and her on top, curled up on the other half of his bed, but they can both intrinsically sense the other one is there. That they haven't vanished in the night. Still haven't vanished. Still haven't.
By the time Luther wakes up again in the morning after the full knock-out unconsciousness of total exhaustion, bleary, his body stinging with little bruises everywhere, his covers are rumpled and there's an impression in the mattress that wasn't there before. But Allison's gone, and he actually can't remember if she left before or after he fell asleep. There's no way of knowing.
Luther's voice has that elastic quality of someone fighting sleep and losing, and if Luther hasn't any experience with that, Allison has it in spades, from more people than just both of her previous husbands and daughter. The words pulled apart into a loose, quiet string of sounds; half strained toward holding on and half already having let go altogether. Luther says it's okay, and she wants to lean into it. Even when she knows it's not.
It's who she is and who she keeps being, when she lets herself, when she loses her temper, herself. She had two good years with nothing like that in it, one here and one there. But was it a good year at all, if in both, the only reason it was good, and she was incapable of letting herself do something like that, was because she couldn't talk, because was only half herself, and sometimes it felt like even half was stretching it.
Allison hadn't entirely paid attention to when Luther's breathing evened. Her thoughts pulling her back and back and back in her head. But eventually, she realizes it's been quiet for too long that has to have long added up to minutes now, which is why she does realize. That Luther's breaths have gone, deep and long and heavy. Unguarded and uncontrollable the way it does when one has fallen all the way away.
She should go. It's the first thought. This wasn't a social visit or an invitation.
Luther's bed isn't where she belongs, for all that the thought twists a sharp, sour note in her stomach and chest, she means even like this. She means she should get up and go back to her bed to sleep. Maybe she even truly means to, but she watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, listens to the sound the reminds her over and over and over alive, alive, alive.
Here, here, here.
The waiting is over now.
It's better than any promise the untouched, white glass, moon never made her.
Maybe she means to go, but instead, she rolls back on her side, facing him, watching him sleep, dabbled in the shadows of the dark, late room. When the urge becomes impossible, she doesn't even know how much longer, that somehow even this doesn't quite feel real, exhaustion dogging her steps, from helping save Vanya and losing Ray and the fight at the farm and being back here, continually trying to pull her under and her blinking stubbornly, widening her eyes against it, that she gives into moving the tiniest bit.
It's not his shoulder or his face, even though part of her considers it, maybe even more so because it's foolish and impossible. One of the newest scars at the edge of his eye. The round of his shoulder that rises higher on the bed, and the line of his arm, the way he's laying, looking up, that the top of her head, closest uncovered part of him.
What she settles for, with the softness she barely would touching Claire with once she'd fall asleep, for letting her hand creep until it settles, her fingers against the blanket, barely touching his side. Enough that she can feel the strain of the cloth rising to cover the broad expanse of his chest, the heat rolling off him already soaked into it.
Letting herself close her eyes and giving into what she shouldn't—allowing herself to feel it again. Real, real, real. Alive, alive, alive. You were right, always right. You don't have to wait, pretending you aren't counting, anymore.
He's better than the moon ever could have been tonight, even if a foot, an inch, the divide of the blanket feels just as far away as it.
Allison slips off without realizing it. Having fought it so long, it's less like it takes her hand and tugs her away, and more like it comes for her from behind. Drop kicking her between one moment of closed eyes and weary exhaustion and oblivion the next. But she's still so tightly strung, the adrenaline refusing to leave her entirely, merging with that even dead asleep too-on-key readiness to spring up that parenting left wired in, and she wakes up a handful of times.
When he shifts in the bed, or his breathing changes. When she gets too cold without her own blanket.
Enough to realize he's there. Still real.
Enough to take note of it and selfishly curl in on herself, on sleep, like she's stolen this more than its stolen her, covered her head and blotted her eyes, keeps dragging her back, like she's the rebellious child not listening to the logic she should go, or she should let go. The last time it's early. She knows before she even looks at the clock. She was somehow more exhausted with the light sleep.
The room was just marginally brighter than it had been for most of the night. Morning is coming, and she should have left so long ago, the first moments she realized he'd fallen asleep. But she couldn't. But she's selfish. She's always been selfish of Luther, even just in her head, after he was gone both times, and she was married, and she was supposedly moved on, and she never was. It was never a possibility, he wasn't, and she still never was.
(The hazy memory of fading black spots and hypoxia, of his mouth under her fingers, of his mouth against hers, desperate words and even more desperate breaths, being pushed into her, her gratitude and something too big and too old to ever truly just be gratitude, no matter what hat and mask she gave it, laughing and kissing his cheek, pulling his face into hers. Another stolen moment.
Impulsive and accepted at the edge of the dead drop from terror to relief.)
She slips off the bed with the careful ease of someone who has done this before. Had to leave beds and sleeping people in them for several different reasons, most of them pertaining once upon a time to work, even though she doesn't want to, and she watches him for another too-long moment at the bathroom door.
Face coming into more precise focus as morning lightens the world and the shadows of his space. Slack with ease. The strain in the muscles of his shoulders gone boneless loose in unconsciousness. He's beautiful like this. Unencumbered. Without the reticence that makes him pull away from people, from even her. Hunching in on himself. Too conscious of the space he takes up, of the way he looks, how he thinks he stands out.
She wishes too exhausted to care about her hypocrisy that this was hers, more than it is, more than it already was in ways no one else got. That she could tell him how much none of it matters to her. She still thinks he's beautiful. He stills stops her heart on an all too regular occurrence. With a smile, a laugh, his fearless determination, the way he sees the world, still hopes and wills the best from it, no matter what it does to him, how it's never managed to break him in ways it has her. That he still makes every corner of her ache in the same way it did starting almost fifteen years ago when she didn't know how to name it at all.
She's too tired to fight it, to admonish herself, as her thumb toys, even more hypocritically, with the back of her wedding band against her finger, reminding her, again, what she should be thinking of, who, that damage she does when she's allowed to love anyone, and she wants nothing more than to go back to sleep. To not being able to think. Feel. Hear herself. Have to deal with all the broken pieces smashed into the one space of her.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obediences) wrote2019-03-28 10:51 am
wrap or yours to close?
"That's okay too," Luther says, his voice just as soft, just barely on the edge of an exhale. His breathing is slowing down to a steady rise-and-fall now, hands back to being laced over his stomach, their conversation having ebbed back to confessional and then to surprisingly comfortable silence.
It had seemed impossible to sleep earlier, wired and jittery and practically clawing out of his own skin, but something's finally started to feel normal and familiar and reassuring about this moment. Like so many times they'd talked themselves to sleep through the bedroom windows, except with that small difference (massive difference, earthshaking difference) that she's lying right next to him this time. But there might as well be a brick wall of propriety between them for all the proper distance he maintains, and when he next blinks, he drifts under and loses some ten seconds of consciousness. Wakes up again, looks back up at the ceiling.
And then, he dozes off again.
Which, in the end, is how they wind up falling asleep: with the soothing presence and weight of someone else on the mattress beside them (a kind of weight that Allison had grown too accustomed to over the past year, and one that Luther's never known). Him under the covers and her on top, curled up on the other half of his bed, but they can both intrinsically sense the other one is there. That they haven't vanished in the night. Still haven't vanished. Still haven't.
By the time Luther wakes up again in the morning after the full knock-out unconsciousness of total exhaustion, bleary, his body stinging with little bruises everywhere, his covers are rumpled and there's an impression in the mattress that wasn't there before. But Allison's gone, and he actually can't remember if she left before or after he fell asleep. There's no way of knowing.
But that's okay too.
fini. ❤
It's who she is and who she keeps being, when she lets herself, when she loses her temper, herself. She had two good years with nothing like that in it, one here and one there. But was it a good year at all, if in both, the only reason it was good, and she was incapable of letting herself do something like that, was because she couldn't talk, because was only half herself, and sometimes it felt like even half was stretching it.
Allison hadn't entirely paid attention to when Luther's breathing evened. Her thoughts pulling her back and back and back in her head. But eventually, she realizes it's been quiet for too long that has to have long added up to minutes now, which is why she does realize. That Luther's breaths have gone, deep and long and heavy. Unguarded and uncontrollable the way it does when one has fallen all the way away.
She should go. It's the first thought.
This wasn't a social visit or an invitation.
Luther's bed isn't where she belongs, for all that the thought twists a sharp, sour note in her stomach and chest, she means even like this. She means she should get up and go back to her bed to sleep. Maybe she even truly means to, but she watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, listens to the sound the reminds her over and over and over alive, alive, alive.
Here, here, here.
The waiting is over now.
It's better than any promise the untouched,
white glass, moon never made her.
Maybe she means to go, but instead, she rolls back on her side, facing him, watching him sleep, dabbled in the shadows of the dark, late room. When the urge becomes impossible, she doesn't even know how much longer, that somehow even this doesn't quite feel real, exhaustion dogging her steps, from helping save Vanya and losing Ray and the fight at the farm and being back here, continually trying to pull her under and her blinking stubbornly, widening her eyes against it, that she gives into moving the tiniest bit.
It's not his shoulder or his face, even though part of her considers it, maybe even more so because it's foolish and impossible. One of the newest scars at the edge of his eye. The round of his shoulder that rises higher on the bed, and the line of his arm, the way he's laying, looking up, that the top of her head, closest uncovered part of him.
What she settles for, with the softness she barely would touching Claire with once she'd fall asleep, for letting her hand creep until it settles, her fingers against the blanket, barely touching his side. Enough that she can feel the strain of the cloth rising to cover the broad expanse of his chest, the heat rolling off him already soaked into it.
Letting herself close her eyes and giving into what she shouldn't—allowing herself to feel it again. Real, real, real. Alive, alive, alive. You were right, always right. You don't have to wait, pretending you aren't counting, anymore.
He's better than the moon ever could have been tonight,
even if a foot, an inch, the divide of the blanket feels just as far away as it.
Allison slips off without realizing it. Having fought it so long, it's less like it takes her hand and tugs her away, and more like it comes for her from behind. Drop kicking her between one moment of closed eyes and weary exhaustion and oblivion the next. But she's still so tightly strung, the adrenaline refusing to leave her entirely, merging with that even dead asleep too-on-key readiness to spring up that parenting left wired in, and she wakes up a handful of times.
When he shifts in the bed, or his breathing changes.
When she gets too cold without her own blanket.
Enough to realize he's there. Still real.
Enough to take note of it and selfishly curl in on herself, on sleep, like she's stolen this more than its stolen her, covered her head and blotted her eyes, keeps dragging her back, like she's the rebellious child not listening to the logic she should go, or she should let go. The last time it's early. She knows before she even looks at the clock. She was somehow more exhausted with the light sleep.
The room was just marginally brighter than it had been for most of the night. Morning is coming, and she should have left so long ago, the first moments she realized he'd fallen asleep. But she couldn't. But she's selfish. She's always been selfish of Luther, even just in her head, after he was gone both times, and she was married, and she was supposedly moved on, and she never was. It was never a possibility, he wasn't, and she still never was.
(The hazy memory of fading black spots and hypoxia, of his mouth under her fingers, of his mouth against hers, desperate words and even more desperate breaths, being pushed into her, her gratitude and something too big and too old to ever truly just be gratitude, no matter what hat and mask she gave it, laughing and kissing his cheek, pulling his face into hers. Another stolen moment.
Impulsive and accepted at the edge of the dead drop from terror to relief.)
She slips off the bed with the careful ease of someone who has done this before. Had to leave beds and sleeping people in them for several different reasons, most of them pertaining once upon a time to work, even though she doesn't want to, and she watches him for another too-long moment at the bathroom door.
Face coming into more precise focus as morning lightens the world and the shadows of his space. Slack with ease. The strain in the muscles of his shoulders gone boneless loose in unconsciousness. He's beautiful like this. Unencumbered. Without the reticence that makes him pull away from people, from even her. Hunching in on himself. Too conscious of the space he takes up, of the way he looks, how he thinks he stands out.
She wishes too exhausted to care about her hypocrisy that this was hers, more than it is, more than it already was in ways no one else got. That she could tell him how much none of it matters to her. She still thinks he's beautiful. He stills stops her heart on an all too regular occurrence. With a smile, a laugh, his fearless determination, the way he sees the world, still hopes and wills the best from it, no matter what it does to him, how it's never managed to break him in ways it has her. That he still makes every corner of her ache in the same way it did starting almost fifteen years ago when she didn't know how to name it at all.
She's too tired to fight it, to admonish herself, as her thumb toys, even more hypocritically, with the back of her wedding band against her finger, reminding her, again, what she should be thinking of, who, that damage she does when she's allowed to love anyone, and she wants nothing more than to go back to sleep. To not being able to think. Feel. Hear herself. Have to deal with all the broken pieces smashed into the one space of her.
So it's what she does.