It's a fresh addition to his repertoire, still so comparatively new in relation to everything else. For lack of any other vices -- all so stringently, ferociously forbidden during the years he lived under Reginald's roof -- Luther has wound up latching onto caffeine and alcohol. Some nervous snacking, too.
Because as coping mechanisms go, it's better than the alternatives. So, so much better, and they've just had a firsthand reminder of it in the hospital tonight.
"I haven't started keeping a flask next to my bed," he says wryly (and okay, so some things haven't changed about him yet), "so. It'd have to be downstairs. But I could bring something up." Because she looks tired, and Luther had always gone and obediently fetched things for her in the past anyway, even without being rumoured into it. A forgotten tie or misplaced gloves, or a magazine she simply didn't feel like walking across the room to get.
Allison can't help the way it makes her mouth crinkle into part of a smile and the faintest shake of her head when Luther thinks he's being cute with that first, most obvious, retort, even if her question had been half lost on him for what she'd actually meant to be asking. But he got close enough to what she meant when she asked it by the end of his own words, and so she just nodded instead.
The clarification isn't worth the time, and even if it's a lot like Luther's found a reason to vanish from her doorway and her room as quickly as he invited himself to it, he'll still be right back in a few minutes, too. Right back to this second he's finding a way to exit from, but back and with a drink. She's too tired to try and unknot that. It's easy enough to just leave it at that nod, and just send,
Okay.
Bring me a glass, too.
Whatever it was, and if that was all it really took (as if anything was ever that simple here), it was so little to tacitly agree to after today. It wasn't like she was the only one who was tense, and exhausted, and keyed up, and who had to live through today, too.
Stepping away and taking that long, long walk down to their massive kitchen is actually a relief -- it's a breather, giving him some space to recollect himself and figure out how he found himself in Allison's doorway to begin with. He'd just needed to see her face. Had wanted that ease of seeing her expressions, of continuing the conversation without cold hard text or literal physical walls between them. But then Luther hadn't known what to do with himself once he was there. Should probably just hand over the drink and then get out of her space again, back to their separate sides of the wall. But--
By the time he's poured two glasses from a bottle of half-empty whiskey in the family's extensive liquor collection and then made his way back upstairs, he's managed to slingshot right past 'recollected' and back to 'in a tizzy'. She hears him coming up the stairs, then down the hall; there's really no masking that heavy footfall.
"I never had a nightcap back home," Luther says quietly as soon as he re-enters, his gaze riveted to the two glasses as he half-tiptoes toward her, so careful not to spill any. "I know Dad did--" That impeccably-locked liquor cabinet that none of them were ever allowed into, "but this is a first, I guess."
Allison is left there, oddly enough, to reach up and rub her face, while Luther's steps get further and further away. Not certain if she's trying to rub more awakeness into her face, and herself, or if it's just because she's tired, or because that was a bit awkward. Which hadn't been the point either.
Allison picked up a pillow and scooted back to the headboard, a little grateful she didn't have to worry about making the bed she'd never even unmade, only dropped on top of. She put the pillow in her lap and flattened her fingers on the soft fluff as she let herself lean back and waited. The dark silence of the house that was stillness. Five and Diego likely long gone to bed, too. The rest of the near-empty house spread out in the space beyond her door. Where Luther was.
She didn't regret saying it. She told herself that twice, as she dug her fingertips a little into the pillow waiting, trying not to give any court to the idea Luther might take as long as he could if he really had been looking for any reason to go once stepping in. It wasn't exhaustion. It wasn't a mistake. She still meant it. It still changed nothing. But that was a lie, too. Because somehow it loosened something inside her, too. Something she hadn't even realized until she saw what it was to not have it.
Allison closed her eyes briefly. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Until those steps start faint and quiet, getting louder the closer Luther gets in coming back, before he's another large shape in the shadows that wanders back into the room. Careful, slow steps as he makes his way to the side of her bed, and she took one, and deciding simply, and straightforwardly, to start somewhere she hadn't really even though of before her fingers touched the glass,
You should close the door.
She could say it's to keep the sound from traveling, from waking up Diego, or Five, in bedrooms all not too far away, even if not as close as they'd all been once upon a time in that tiny hallway, but she never made a habit of lying to Luther. And she's pretty sure that one would be just as transparent all of this, too.
He goes immediately motionless — still, stock-still like a deer in the headlights, and she sees that questioning flicker race through his expression and the slight rise of an eyebrow, his emotions ever an open book when they give him away — before he consciously sets that reaction aside, loosens back into movement, and goes to obey.
It's to not wake up the others, he tells himself. Diego's room is right on the other side of that wall. They'd done this so many times when they were younger, carving out these small moments of privacy in hushed voices and whispers and muffled laughter and huddling under the blankets, lights out. The two cans and string draped between the windows.
So Luther presses the door shut with one hand, palm resting against it for a heartbeat longer than necessary, before he turns back. Turns his attention back to his glass of whiskey, and he's glad for that distraction, too, and for something to do with his hands. He's still standing next to the bed, looming too much, too conspicuously near the center of the room. He is just too tall.
When Luther freezes Allison wonders if it is too far. A suggestion as much as a direction (as a command, without any sound to inform it), and nothing like the end of a question. Wonders if it's too much like gutting the only escape route, and if he needs one of those. From her, and not so much from her, as much as in general. The last thing she actually wants to do is make him feel trapped.
Except that he yields right then. Turns back, crosses to the door, and closes it. Hovering a little longer than necessary by the door. Long enough Allison swears she can hear it in a couple of too loud beats of her heart. Even as he listens. Luther is obedient in so many things, in so many ways, and the barest pauses before and within his obeying are an entire language she somehow hasn't forgotten. Uncertain if she's pushing too hard, but continuing on, Allison decides to take point on at least off-settling some of that too blatant frozen awkwardness from the first time he stepped half-in.
Bed? Floor? Desk chair?
I'm not picky, but staring up at nearly the ceiling will give me a crick in my neck, so you should choose something.
That one is an exaggeration, but she doesn't add anything beyond the hyperbole of it. It's strange to have to choreograph it. When they were young the place they felt the second most themselves was wherever and whenever they'd managed to squirrel away the time and space to just exist in the same space together. Strange to feel that same anxious uncertainty that wants to force it into order, order it to be orderly, lest it fall apart, dissolve into sands trickling out between her fingers, before she can even figure it out for herself, no less try to make any part of it easier for him.
There's that eternal instinct of eyeing escape routes, never being backed into a corner, a soldier's habits honed over a lifetime. Except Luther's never needed one from her, never; but nowadays he'd claw off his own skin in order to not be too near her, or anyone, anymore. The park on the moon base, the waiting room, at least those were in semi-public. None of it's the same as closing the door.
So he glances at the bed and she watches that consideration flit through his mind, before he shifts and pulls up the desk chair instead. Moves it closer until he's seated by her bedside (and that, too, reminds him of a hospital bed and him bowed over her motionless body). At least taking the chair is imposing a little bit of safe distance, to keep his head clear even as he takes a deep swig of that whiskey.
He wishes this were normal again. Like the old days. Like they used to be.
He can see his fingers wrapped around that tumbler, dwarfing it.
(Just a couple weeks ago, they didn't look like that.)
Luther's visibly sorting out what to say — he's never really been at a loss around Allison, but he is now. He needs to find something else to talk about, something other than the looming question of Klaus and what to do with him. So his free hand drifts to his neck, fingers gesturing at his throat. Asks what he hasn't yet, until now: "Does it hurt?"
Just because she isn't picky, doesn't mean she didn't have a preference in that list, but Allison isn't sure that isn't the exhaustion talking, too. Or if it's the exhaustion that's unmasking what she doesn't have the energy to just gloss over caring about. The thing is she knew when she offered it, and it's not because it was the safe one, it's because it's the one that would be most comfortable for him. She doesn't know how not to do that. Too.
She doesn't know that she wants to pick it apart. Her toes flex a little under her thighs, still sitting with her legs crossed, back to the headboard, and the pillow in her lap, and she settles it with the fact he's still there. No matter what it is. Still there, and not like he's searching, frantically, for a reason to leave. She takes a drink of her whiskey finally, letting her eyes close just a little as the warmth seers down the inside of her throat, and she considers how to open that box again. The one in between them.
Which puts her at the surprised disadvantage of his question, which seems to come out of nowhere. At least nowhere she's expecting, wrinkling her brow briefly, before she shook her head, resting the side of her hand and the bottom of the glass on the pillow while choosing easy words.
No.
It did at the beginning, after I woke up, obviously, but not since getting here.
Not like the day before it, when breathing and swallowing had felt like they were tearing her apart from the inside to match the out.
Allison lets herself do what she hasn't once with anyone else, gaze going a little unfocused as she reaches up with her free hand to touch, with only the tips of her fingers, the scar on her skin that glares at her in every mirror. The ungraceful line marring the column of once unbroken skin, caught in a million pictures and one million rolls of film. Hard to say if it's the lack of wanting to be seen self-conscious or lack of wanting to let anyone in further than she has to with what it requires of communication already. That she doesn't worry about as much with Luther, even if it doesn't entirely make it comfortable either.
The subject shift was somewhat out of nowhere, but his mind's following a tangled skein of leaping from topic-to-topic. Her gratitude for him waiting by her side until she woke up. Her coming back. Hospitals.
What she came back from.
The scar has been covered up as best as possible, every time she's been out in the world here; makeup cleverly applied, masking herself from view. But here, at the end of a long day, it's more visible. And Luther knows that sensation when assessing the damage after a battle, the careful probing the edges of a wound, the ragged healed ridges of it. He unconsciously leans closer (Allison's like a wild animal showing its throat, a mark of vulnerability), and his free hand moves from his own body to hers, fingers splaying gently against her hand, a thumb against the soft skin of the scar.
Not the bloodied mess of bandages from that day. Not the ugly sight she woke up to. A month and a half healed now, but he still hasn't gotten to take too close a look at it; she hasn't let anyone close enough to.
Her shoulders press into the headboard before she's more than processed the raise of Luther's hand, and it feels like everything inside of her skin and her bones trembles incomprehensibly when Luther's hand covers hers, and it's not just her own fingers against that thin jagged line of thicker healed skin.
It's his.
Theirs mixed.
The very short distance to Luther's own face she can't help from looking to now, against a flush of some hot, sticky combination of shame and fear and nervousness and forcing herself to breathe, which only, unconnected until it's happening, makes her feel it even more. Her breath. Her pulse, ratcheting. Their fingers there, on her skin. Her throat. Even when half of every impulse is to pull away, even without shifting to a side, because she knows he'd stop if she did even that much. Said a single word. She knows it without question.
Makes herself not pull away. Not look away. Picks three words.
See. Doesn't hurt.
Except that everything about those words is wrong now.
With the mental network, it's almost tempting to say that it's easy to forget she's mute. Whenever they've caught her most off-guard, tripped her up entirely, her text even comes in an organic ramble that makes him smile and feels like she's actually talking again. When it comes like that, he can hear it like she's reading the words out loud to him, imagine it thrumming in his eardrums.
But it isn't actually easy. Nothing's easy.
Everything has to be such an effort, for her. And Luther misses the sound of Allison's voice, the husky catch of her laugh. A voice he'd carved into his heart for years. A thing he had taken for granted.
It feels like her heart transfers to somewhere between the placed their hands are and her ears. Unable to focus away from it at all, and unable not to nod when Luther says those words. More than a little even. Like she'd agreed and nodded, and though about it again, and did again. She hates a lot of things about this, and even this place, but it still true. It is still better than the alternative. Dead on the floor in that cabin, all of her blood racing out of her, vision blurring so quickly into spots and blackness, breaths shorter and shorter.
She thinks, again, for a second of seeing the still frame of that car, behind Diego, when she hadn't thought Diego was real, hadn't known the memory was. Her body across their laps, Luther and Diego's, bloody and squished in that small space. For more hours than she wants to think about still. Even at this second. Like somehow that's still more than she can stand being real. Having to hold Luther having done.
Yes.
Allison presses send on that, but it's not where it ends. She can see, feel, how unfinished it is, and without having even figured out how exactly she was going to get back here, they are. And it is right here. Right now. Maybe it's impetuous as much as it is some terror, but neither ever did stop her much. She moves without hesitation, smooth and fast, even for how small it will be. Not even her wary sane patience with the understanding she's not supposed to push him is more than a whisper against this topic, against the need that decides her.
Both. Her hand shifted under his, fingers spreading to link between his own as she lifted her hand from her throat and ducked her head a little at the same time. Moving the still small distance that put her hand, and his around it, against her own cheek, for saying it (even if it was never actually 'saying it') with him there, too. Better than dying, and better than waking up alone when I hadn't.
This is touching her, and so it's not the same as what he'd once repelled; back home and her hand reaching tentatively for his cheek and Luther's grip snapping out, whiplash-quick, an iron vise to clamp down and shove her away from him.
But this, he can do. The unexpected warmth and comfort of her fingers against his — something he hasn't felt in so long, can't remember the last time he just sat and held hands with someone, apart from that instinctive unthinking reach for each other when the time vortex appeared in the Hargreeves garden.
(And yet, still, there's that quiet, quiet voice in the back of his mind, that guilty shameful whisper of I wish this were two weeks ago. When he'd been ill-at-ease in his dream-built bones, but at least it was his old skin, something that at least looked right, and didn't catch him at off-kilter angles staring out of every mirror like Allison's scar did hers.)
Luther allows the touch for a long lingering moment — lets himself savour it, like a selfish treasure, the smallest indulgence they were never allowed to have — and then he pulls away. Not sharply or violently yanking himself away like he'd once done, but just slowly disentangling their hands instead. Reluctantly drawing back to their separate realms again.
Even if he just wants to stay, to relish this moment even more. Trace the angles of her cheek, the delicate shift of her knuckles.
Can't.
"So— let's just. Not let that happen again, if we can help it. For any of us." It almost sounds like a weary joke, could be a subtle evasion, but there's something somber in Luther's voice too, his steady blue gaze as he meets Allison's eyes. He means it.
Luther doesn't move; doesn't jerk back his hand from her shift, doesn't shift his hand, his fingers in the slightest over her hand. Stays quietly frozen for all but that small word. Let's her take this smallest thing she should be satisfied with the miracle of being granted, like having it a second doesn't blow past that entirely. Doesn't make the fierce traitor ache turn over her heart, flaring like stoked flame, with the sudden wish that her own hand wasn't between her cheek and his palm. That it was just that, his hand only that she could lean into.
Rough and warm and steady against her skin. She doesn't care if it's larger, or heavier, any more than she thought even for a second, all her life or even the ones with his fingers at her throat, about the sheer danger and capability of his strength, physical and supernatural both. She's never felt anything but safe with him.
Allison can't remember if he tried to comfort her when she woke up, before she remembered. How she got hurt. What happened. Before the notepad and Pogo. She's so late to even realizing, and he's gone through so much of her anger since only hours after that waking, that it feels like she was blindly obviously all over again. She wants to close her eyes. She wasn't to add an apology to that too small, too soundless, thanks.
(She wishes uncontrollably, arrestingly, chokingly it was his hand, against her skin. Wishes he would move. Would touch her in any way except holding still where she put him.
That it's the exhaustion. The too late gratitude. The scare from the day. But that it's never just that. Not with Luther. Never with Luther.
Knows it would be too complicated, too much moving, the tenuous bubble would burst.)
Especially when he draws back, gently then, like somehow he can feel the encroach her will trying to slip what little grasp she still has on it, in the still dark and quiet of the night, in this moment of painful truths and tentative trust. She doesn't fight him, even as it makes her chest ache for the loss, phantom ghosts of the warmth against her cheek. Her own palm. The places his fingertips had lain. The full back of her hand. She let him disentangle his fingers and the back of her knuckles, even as it felt like losing a part of herself.
Let own hand fall back to her pillow, and the whiskey glass resting there on it, while Luther's voice filled, and erased, that too large room, as she lifted to glass to take another drink. To do anything against the phantom warmth and the sudden empty air, at her cheek, at her throat, at her hand, the too full, too empty ache in her chest that seemed like it could have been written in the perfect mirror of his blue eyes unwavering on her. A language, a line of words, deeper and truer than any of the ones he'd just said.
I'll try my best.
It's no promise that she couldn't lie to him even now.
Because of who she is, they are, the unwavering, unthinking way they throw themselves into every battle, and because no matter how true any of the rest of it is, because of who he is, too. No lie would be good enough. No lie could be true enough. She doesn't want to die on him. She doesn't want to die at all. She still needs to get home. Needs to change time. Needs to save Claire, and the rest of the world while she's, they're, at it.
Needs to believe there's more of this. These small, silent, awkward series of missteps and choices bringing them back to anything like the children they once were. To the truest thing she ever knew in her life. The truest person she ever knew. The only one who ever truly saw her, knew her, liked her without any masks, or lies, or rumors.
On an awful night after long hours thinking their brother might die, and the smell of hospital seeped into their clothing, and now in need of comfort, a well-adjusted person probably would've offered a reassuring hug. Or even just his arm around her shoulders. Or just sitting there together, in companionable silence, staving off the darkness a little longer. Or, at least when leaving, perhaps delivering a friendly kiss to the top of her head before drawing away.
But the Academy hadn't been trained that way.
So Luther finishes off his whiskey — one glass, even neat, isn't enough to make a dent in him — and slowly rises to his feet again.
(Maybe someday, he'll linger; he'll stay just for the sake of staying, for the low murmur of conversation, for being near each other. But he's been awake too long and there's that exhaustion buzzing in his wrong shape, so recently disoriented, and this house is alien and unfamiliar too — not decked in their childhood posters and magazines, all the old comforting touchstones gone, and the only thing that's right is Allison, here, in front of him.
The silence lingers, not long, before Luther is pushing himself to his feet, and Allison takes a moment before deciding to even let her gaze travel all the way back up to the top of his height, as he says those words. There's something she can't really parse. Whether it's a sting or an ache, or just the inflation of exhaustion, that knows he's right, knows they both should sleep.
This place never lets itself lull long, and they'll need to see Klaus again, and the house has to be seen to.
Still, she finds herself swallowing and only nodding. Not reaching even for the four letters of any sort word. Okay. Good. Fine. Right. Allison just nods, against the weight of her eyelids and the unshaped one inside of her chest. She wonders how many minutes this even really was. Should be, is, grateful he felt he could, but there's something sore in it, too. A door opened and closed so quickly.
She has to remember she started this, too. With only two words.
(She could blame Klaus, but it's not what started this.)
And besides, it got started years ago, a snowball tipped into motion and rolling inexorably down the mountain, gathering weight and heft with every year. Even with those years apart, they hadn't lost any of it.
Luther can't tell how long this little meeting had taken, either: it simultaneously felt too brief and too small, and also like it had dragged on forever, the awkward lurch of the conversation intolerable. Moreso for how conversations between them had never been awkward before.
He lets himself back out of Allison's room, and closes the door behind him. Pauses there on the landing, listening to the house settle around them. Wonders if he's made a mistake.
But in the end, Luther turns and goes back to his room.
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obediences) wrote2019-03-28 10:51 am
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Because as coping mechanisms go, it's better than the alternatives. So, so much better, and they've just had a firsthand reminder of it in the hospital tonight.
"I haven't started keeping a flask next to my bed," he says wryly (and okay, so some things haven't changed about him yet), "so. It'd have to be downstairs. But I could bring something up." Because she looks tired, and Luther had always gone and obediently fetched things for her in the past anyway, even without being rumoured into it. A forgotten tie or misplaced gloves, or a magazine she simply didn't feel like walking across the room to get.
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The clarification isn't worth the time, and even if it's a lot like Luther's found a reason to vanish from her doorway and her room as quickly as he invited himself to it, he'll still be right back in a few minutes, too. Right back to this second he's finding a way to exit from, but back and with a drink. She's too tired to try and unknot that. It's easy enough to just leave it at that nod, and just send,
Okay.
Bring me a glass, too.
Whatever it was, and if that was all it really took (as if anything was ever that simple here), it was so little to tacitly agree to after today. It wasn't like she was the only one who was tense, and exhausted, and keyed up, and who had to live through today, too.
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By the time he's poured two glasses from a bottle of half-empty whiskey in the family's extensive liquor collection and then made his way back upstairs, he's managed to slingshot right past 'recollected' and back to 'in a tizzy'. She hears him coming up the stairs, then down the hall; there's really no masking that heavy footfall.
"I never had a nightcap back home," Luther says quietly as soon as he re-enters, his gaze riveted to the two glasses as he half-tiptoes toward her, so careful not to spill any. "I know Dad did--" That impeccably-locked liquor cabinet that none of them were ever allowed into, "but this is a first, I guess."
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Allison picked up a pillow and scooted back to the headboard, a little grateful she didn't have to worry about making the bed she'd never even unmade, only dropped on top of. She put the pillow in her lap and flattened her fingers on the soft fluff as she let herself lean back and waited. The dark silence of the house that was stillness. Five and Diego likely long gone to bed, too. The rest of the near-empty house spread out in the space beyond her door. Where Luther was.
She didn't regret saying it. She told herself that twice, as she dug her fingertips a little into the pillow waiting, trying not to give any court to the idea Luther might take as long as he could if he really had been looking for any reason to go once stepping in. It wasn't exhaustion. It wasn't a mistake. She still meant it. It still changed nothing. But that was a lie, too. Because somehow it loosened something inside her, too. Something she hadn't even realized until she saw what it was to not have it.
Allison closed her eyes briefly. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Until those steps start faint and quiet, getting louder the closer Luther gets in coming back, before he's another large shape in the shadows that wanders back into the room. Careful, slow steps as he makes his way to the side of her bed, and she took one, and deciding simply, and straightforwardly, to start somewhere she hadn't really even though of before her fingers touched the glass,
You should close the door.
She could say it's to keep the sound from traveling, from waking up Diego, or Five, in bedrooms all not too far away, even if not as close as they'd all been once upon a time in that tiny hallway, but she never made a habit of lying to Luther. And she's pretty sure that one would be just as transparent all of this, too.
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It's to not wake up the others, he tells himself. Diego's room is right on the other side of that wall. They'd done this so many times when they were younger, carving out these small moments of privacy in hushed voices and whispers and muffled laughter and huddling under the blankets, lights out. The two cans and string draped between the windows.
So Luther presses the door shut with one hand, palm resting against it for a heartbeat longer than necessary, before he turns back. Turns his attention back to his glass of whiskey, and he's glad for that distraction, too, and for something to do with his hands. He's still standing next to the bed, looming too much, too conspicuously near the center of the room. He is just too tall.
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Except that he yields right then. Turns back, crosses to the door, and closes it. Hovering a little longer than necessary by the door. Long enough Allison swears she can hear it in a couple of too loud beats of her heart. Even as he listens. Luther is obedient in so many things, in so many ways, and the barest pauses before and within his obeying are an entire language she somehow hasn't forgotten. Uncertain if she's pushing too hard, but continuing on, Allison decides to take point on at least off-settling some of that too blatant frozen awkwardness from the first time he stepped half-in.
Bed? Floor? Desk chair?
I'm not picky, but staring up at nearly the ceiling will give me a crick in my neck, so you should choose something.
That one is an exaggeration, but she doesn't add anything beyond the hyperbole of it. It's strange to have to choreograph it. When they were young the place they felt the second most themselves was wherever and whenever they'd managed to squirrel away the time and space to just exist in the same space together. Strange to feel that same anxious uncertainty that wants to force it into order, order it to be orderly, lest it fall apart, dissolve into sands trickling out between her fingers, before she can even figure it out for herself, no less try to make any part of it easier for him.
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So he glances at the bed and she watches that consideration flit through his mind, before he shifts and pulls up the desk chair instead. Moves it closer until he's seated by her bedside (and that, too, reminds him of a hospital bed and him bowed over her motionless body). At least taking the chair is imposing a little bit of safe distance, to keep his head clear even as he takes a deep swig of that whiskey.
He wishes this were normal again. Like the old days. Like they used to be.
He can see his fingers wrapped around that tumbler, dwarfing it.
(Just a couple weeks ago, they didn't look like that.)
Luther's visibly sorting out what to say — he's never really been at a loss around Allison, but he is now. He needs to find something else to talk about, something other than the looming question of Klaus and what to do with him. So his free hand drifts to his neck, fingers gesturing at his throat. Asks what he hasn't yet, until now: "Does it hurt?"
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She doesn't know that she wants to pick it apart. Her toes flex a little under her thighs, still sitting with her legs crossed, back to the headboard, and the pillow in her lap, and she settles it with the fact he's still there. No matter what it is. Still there, and not like he's searching, frantically, for a reason to leave. She takes a drink of her whiskey finally, letting her eyes close just a little as the warmth seers down the inside of her throat, and she considers how to open that box again. The one in between them.
Which puts her at the surprised disadvantage of his question, which seems to come out of nowhere. At least nowhere she's expecting, wrinkling her brow briefly, before she shook her head, resting the side of her hand and the bottom of the glass on the pillow while choosing easy words.
No.
It did at the beginning, after I woke up, obviously, but not since getting here.
Not like the day before it, when breathing and swallowing had felt like they were tearing her apart from the inside to match the out.
Allison lets herself do what she hasn't once with anyone else, gaze going a little unfocused as she reaches up with her free hand to touch, with only the tips of her fingers, the scar on her skin that glares at her in every mirror. The ungraceful line marring the column of once unbroken skin, caught in a million pictures and one million rolls of film. Hard to say if it's the lack of wanting to be seen self-conscious or lack of wanting to let anyone in further than she has to with what it requires of communication already. That she doesn't worry about as much with Luther, even if it doesn't entirely make it comfortable either.
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What she came back from.
The scar has been covered up as best as possible, every time she's been out in the world here; makeup cleverly applied, masking herself from view. But here, at the end of a long day, it's more visible. And Luther knows that sensation when assessing the damage after a battle, the careful probing the edges of a wound, the ragged healed ridges of it. He unconsciously leans closer (Allison's like a wild animal showing its throat, a mark of vulnerability), and his free hand moves from his own body to hers, fingers splaying gently against her hand, a thumb against the soft skin of the scar.
Not the bloodied mess of bandages from that day. Not the ugly sight she woke up to. A month and a half healed now, but he still hasn't gotten to take too close a look at it; she hasn't let anyone close enough to.
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It's his.
Theirs mixed.
The very short distance to Luther's own face she can't help from looking to now, against a flush of some hot, sticky combination of shame and fear and nervousness and forcing herself to breathe, which only, unconnected until it's happening, makes her feel it even more. Her breath. Her pulse, ratcheting. Their fingers there, on her skin. Her throat. Even when half of every impulse is to pull away, even without shifting to a side, because she knows he'd stop if she did even that much. Said a single word. She knows it without question.
Makes herself not pull away. Not look away. Picks three words.
See. Doesn't hurt.
Except that everything about those words is wrong now.
Maybe not physically.
(But.)
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But it isn't actually easy. Nothing's easy.
Everything has to be such an effort, for her. And Luther misses the sound of Allison's voice, the husky catch of her laugh. A voice he'd carved into his heart for years. A thing he had taken for granted.
See. Doesn't hurt.
Liar, he could say. But won't.
Instead: "Better than the alternative," he says.
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She thinks, again, for a second of seeing the still frame of that car, behind Diego, when she hadn't thought Diego was real, hadn't known the memory was. Her body across their laps, Luther and Diego's, bloody and squished in that small space. For more hours than she wants to think about still. Even at this second. Like somehow that's still more than she can stand being real. Having to hold Luther having done.
Yes.
Allison presses send on that, but it's not where it ends. She can see, feel, how unfinished it is, and without having even figured out how exactly she was going to get back here, they are. And it is right here. Right now. Maybe it's impetuous as much as it is some terror, but neither ever did stop her much. She moves without hesitation, smooth and fast, even for how small it will be. Not even her wary sane patience with the understanding she's not supposed to push him is more than a whisper against this topic, against the need that decides her.
Both. Her hand shifted under his, fingers spreading to link between his own as she lifted her hand from her throat and ducked her head a little at the same time. Moving the still small distance that put her hand, and his around it, against her own cheek, for saying it (even if it was never actually 'saying it') with him there, too. Better than dying, and better than waking up alone when I hadn't.
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This is touching her, and so it's not the same as what he'd once repelled; back home and her hand reaching tentatively for his cheek and Luther's grip snapping out, whiplash-quick, an iron vise to clamp down and shove her away from him.
But this, he can do. The unexpected warmth and comfort of her fingers against his — something he hasn't felt in so long, can't remember the last time he just sat and held hands with someone, apart from that instinctive unthinking reach for each other when the time vortex appeared in the Hargreeves garden.
(And yet, still, there's that quiet, quiet voice in the back of his mind, that guilty shameful whisper of I wish this were two weeks ago. When he'd been ill-at-ease in his dream-built bones, but at least it was his old skin, something that at least looked right, and didn't catch him at off-kilter angles staring out of every mirror like Allison's scar did hers.)
Luther allows the touch for a long lingering moment — lets himself savour it, like a selfish treasure, the smallest indulgence they were never allowed to have — and then he pulls away. Not sharply or violently yanking himself away like he'd once done, but just slowly disentangling their hands instead. Reluctantly drawing back to their separate realms again.
Even if he just wants to stay, to relish this moment even more. Trace the angles of her cheek, the delicate shift of her knuckles.
Can't.
"So— let's just. Not let that happen again, if we can help it. For any of us." It almost sounds like a weary joke, could be a subtle evasion, but there's something somber in Luther's voice too, his steady blue gaze as he meets Allison's eyes. He means it.
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Rough and warm and steady against her skin. She doesn't care if it's larger, or heavier, any more than she thought even for a second, all her life or even the ones with his fingers at her throat, about the sheer danger and capability of his strength, physical and supernatural both. She's never felt anything but safe with him.
Allison can't remember if he tried to comfort her when she woke up, before she remembered. How she got hurt. What happened. Before the notepad and Pogo. She's so late to even realizing, and he's gone through so much of her anger since only hours after that waking, that it feels like she was blindly obviously all over again. She wants to close her eyes. She wasn't to add an apology to that too small, too soundless, thanks.
(She wishes uncontrollably, arrestingly, chokingly it was his hand, against her skin.
Wishes he would move. Would touch her in any way except holding still where she put him.
That it's the exhaustion. The too late gratitude. The scare from the day.
But that it's never just that. Not with Luther. Never with Luther.
Knows it would be too complicated, too much moving, the tenuous bubble would burst.)
Especially when he draws back, gently then, like somehow he can feel the encroach her will trying to slip what little grasp she still has on it, in the still dark and quiet of the night, in this moment of painful truths and tentative trust. She doesn't fight him, even as it makes her chest ache for the loss, phantom ghosts of the warmth against her cheek. Her own palm. The places his fingertips had lain. The full back of her hand. She let him disentangle his fingers and the back of her knuckles, even as it felt like losing a part of herself.
Let own hand fall back to her pillow, and the whiskey glass resting there on it, while Luther's voice filled, and erased, that too large room, as she lifted to glass to take another drink. To do anything against the phantom warmth and the sudden empty air, at her cheek, at her throat, at her hand, the too full, too empty ache in her chest that seemed like it could have been written in the perfect mirror of his blue eyes unwavering on her. A language, a line of words, deeper and truer than any of the ones he'd just said.
I'll try my best.
It's no promise that she couldn't lie to him even now.
Because of who she is, they are, the unwavering, unthinking way they throw themselves into every battle, and because no matter how true any of the rest of it is, because of who he is, too. No lie would be good enough. No lie could be true enough. She doesn't want to die on him. She doesn't want to die at all. She still needs to get home. Needs to change time. Needs to save Claire, and the rest of the world while she's, they're, at it.
Needs to believe there's more of this. These small, silent, awkward series of missteps and choices bringing them back to anything like the children they once were. To the truest thing she ever knew in her life. The truest person she ever knew. The only one who ever truly saw her, knew her, liked her without any masks, or lies, or rumors.
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On an awful night after long hours thinking their brother might die, and the smell of hospital seeped into their clothing, and now in need of comfort, a well-adjusted person probably would've offered a reassuring hug. Or even just his arm around her shoulders. Or just sitting there together, in companionable silence, staving off the darkness a little longer. Or, at least when leaving, perhaps delivering a friendly kiss to the top of her head before drawing away.
But the Academy hadn't been trained that way.
So Luther finishes off his whiskey — one glass, even neat, isn't enough to make a dent in him — and slowly rises to his feet again.
(Maybe someday, he'll linger; he'll stay just for the sake of staying, for the low murmur of conversation, for being near each other. But he's been awake too long and there's that exhaustion buzzing in his wrong shape, so recently disoriented, and this house is alien and unfamiliar too — not decked in their childhood posters and magazines, all the old comforting touchstones gone, and the only thing that's right is Allison, here, in front of him.
Which means he should stay.
But he doesn't know how to.)
"I should let you get some rest," he says.
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This place never lets itself lull long, and they'll need to see Klaus again, and the house has to be seen to.
Still, she finds herself swallowing and only nodding. Not reaching even for the four letters of any sort word. Okay. Good. Fine. Right. Allison just nods, against the weight of her eyelids and the unshaped one inside of her chest. She wonders how many minutes this even really was. Should be, is, grateful he felt he could, but there's something sore in it, too. A door opened and closed so quickly.
She has to remember she started this, too. With only two words.
(She could blame Klaus, but it's not what started this.)
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Luther can't tell how long this little meeting had taken, either: it simultaneously felt too brief and too small, and also like it had dragged on forever, the awkward lurch of the conversation intolerable. Moreso for how conversations between them had never been awkward before.
He lets himself back out of Allison's room, and closes the door behind him. Pauses there on the landing, listening to the house settle around them. Wonders if he's made a mistake.
But in the end, Luther turns and goes back to his room.