luther "the big shy one" hargreeves | #00.01 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obediences) wrote2019-03-08 09:00 pm
obediences) wrote2019-03-08 09:00 pm
Entry tags:
for numberthree.
And Iโd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, Iโd find you and Iโd choose you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
ALTERNATE UNIVERSES
MASK OR MENACE
The Epistolary Edition
( They arrive on the same day.
One, your typical tourist postcard. The Hollywood sign in bright block letters against a perfect blue sky. On the back the handwriting is sloppy, upside-down, and at an angle, without a signature or a return address. Thereโs a strange pattern across one corner that looks like something purple was spilled on it, the watercolor stain of it streaking that edge, all the way to the last word on both lines.)
( The second a small white envelope, with unblemished, unmarked, flap back seal. Itโs addressed to Luther Hargreeves, and there is a small neat, normal return address in the corner. Inside it is an equally small card. There is the silhouette of a yellow bird twined with a fancy cursive "B" in the right corner on the front, but the rest is simply pristine, folded white card stock. The handwriting inside, like that of the address on the envelope, is meticulously perfect.)
Hope everything is well there.
Allison
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Mostly it's correspondence for Sir Reginald, for the butler to sift through and vet before even daring to bother the man with any particular letter; so Pogo runs interference, handles most of the routine requests for information or scheduling inquiries, juggles the man's itinerary, keeps the insipid public from burying the Nobel laureate with letters. Et cetera. Et cetera.
These two pieces, though. He'd looked at the name and address on one, and turned the postcard end-over-end, before setting them on a silver tray and knocking officiously on the door of the only occupied bedroom in the children's wing.
Master Luther. You have some missives today.
And Luther jerks, flabbergasted — what? surely that can't be right — before he's being handed the tray, and he's picking them up with shaking hands. He reads the postcard first, because he can't help not.
And her handwriting is messy and wine-drunk, but there's similarities in those rushed angles to whenever Allison was writing quickly: blazing her way through an assignment, scribbling down her answers as swiftly as she could so she could get out early, go do something far more interesting. Written like she was ripping off a band-aid. He'd recognise her anywhere, even unmarked and unsigned. And Luther feels his heart turn over in his chest.
It feels like an unexpected gift. They hadn't even had her address, he wouldn't know how to reach her even if he'd worked up the courage to try; now, at least, the door is slightly cracked open.
So he tries over and over and over to write his response, and scraps six different drafts, before an envelope is finally sealed and goes out with the next morning's mail. Every time he wrote something and changed his mind on it, he re-did the entire letter rather than scribble out the text. But in the end result, his handwriting is just as neat and prim and tidy as hers; they've been well-drilled on their penmanship. )
There might've been a postcard; I've never seen the Hollywood sign, so it's on my mirror now. Don't worry about it.
But it was really nice to hear from you.
I didn't really think you woulI would've thought you'd be way too busy to sit down and write. Lots of Hollywood parties to go to? How wild is it, on a scale of 1-10?
I saw you got cast in another TVCongratu
Things here are quiet— y'know, just the usual, saving the world. Pogo looked like it was Christmas when he handed me this envelope. He'd probably like it if you wrote again.
- L.
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They are the two words that encapsulate her entire existence.
They are the only two words that circle Allison's mind, over and over and over, and if she were the type to she'd sit down and put her head between her knees, she would. She doesn't. She may hate her father, but his training has applied far more to this new world of hers than she ever would have dreamed. She wouldn't be caught dead with her head between her knees by her siblings when she was younger or her roommates now. Not ever. No one was allowed to get the better of her. Not ever again.
She listens as well to 'don't worry' as he did to 'please disregard.' What did she write? Why is it she can impel whatever she wants from whatever's in front of her, but she can't force her mind to just turn up what it was. How bad. How stupid. How desperate. It's on his mirror, and she's picturing which side of the mirror for way too long without breathing.
It takes days. She puts it down. Picks it up. Puts it in her a bed table. Takes it out. Reads it more times than she'd admit even the first night. Horror sticks, but slipping out from it is the sore, sad desperation. That ache in her chest she did so well to put in the smallest box in the smallest room inside her head. The one that had somehow won out that night. On the town. Drinking a little too much celebrating her new job. Doing the stupidest thing in the entire goddamn world as her gift to herself apparently. More reasons she's never supposed to lose control of herself.
She hates herself. Tells herself it really is stupid. Tells herself to put it away. Tells herself his handwriting still looks the exact same, and somehow that only hurts more. Like everything else is still the same. Somewhere else. In the wrong 'where else. That just so happened to somehow still be the right one for him, even two years later. She still hates that.
Even when she still can't bring herself to hate him.
Especially now, with fingers on a paper he was touching,
holding, writing on, looking at only days ago. She's such a fool.
It takes four minutes to even remember she, of all people, has a command of words after she writes his name for the second time in two years, and the first time not just to address an envelope out of necessity. )
Sorry, again. Really.
It is pretty go, go, go around these parts all at time.
That's why this took so loWork keeps me busier than parties do, but those can be their own version of insanity. I guess I'd rate LA somewhere around an 8 on normal days, and 200 on the insane ones, when people actually fill the top of an indoor pool with floating candles and pomegranate seeds just for decor.How are yAre thingsAre youDo youI'm glad things are good there. Tell Pogo and Mom I send my love.
That I haven't forgotteThat they can write, if they want to. I'm busy, but I can find the time. I still have to come home and eat and sleep and shower like everyone else in the world.I saw a broadcast about what you did in Mumbai. Congrats on that.
Allison
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the epistolary edition: first meeting. los angeles, time unspecified.
Luther had tried not to look too eager about it: jumping at the opportunity, falling over himself to say yeah, sure, I can go. He'd affected nonchalance even while his heart did its best to climb up into his throat and kill him right then and there.
It had taken so much courage and nerve for him to then broach it with Allison in his next letter, tentatively floating that he was, probably, going to be in LA in a couple weeks, and would she maybe want to get some coffee—? He hadn't mentioned details yet. When the answer came that she was out-of-town that week, he'd felt that crushing disappointment roil over him before he swallowed it. Just another bitter pill to press down and join that locked-up, bricked-up well inside him. It had already been two years away from each other, after all. So what was one more?
The first thing he realises when arriving is that Los Angeles is warmer than the northeast, even in late autumn, almost-winter. He checks in at his hotel and does the rounds the next day, meeting with some of Reginald's contacts about some project on the dark side of the moon, delivering the updates he's been tasked to send. And as the hours crawl on towards the ceremony, he has his suit delivered to his room, laundered by the hotel and freshly-pressed after how rumpled it had become in his luggage and after the plane. (God, he can't wait for the kinks in the Televator to finally get ironed out.)
Luther travels light: he has his wallet in his back pocket and his party invitation on heavy cardstock in the pocket of his coat, and that's it; they're the only things he's armed with between tonight's festivities and his early-morning flight tomorrow to go back east. At first, the thought of this trip had been a strangling hope—
But now it's just work.
Similar to hers, in fact: Luther puts on that blinding smile, answers questions, acts the cocky superhero that they all know him as. Space. He holds his drink and he holds still for the pictures, and occasionally lets a fawning fan buy him a refill (he's old enough now to drink legally, they all are), and he puts on his best face even as it doesn't touch that quieter, steadier heart of him beneath those layers and layers of PR-trained facade. He has to present the Academy in a good light; has to stand as a respectable replacement for his father, not let him nor their reputation down. (In all honesty, Luther's a far better guest than Reginald: the young man is polite and patient where his father is notoriously impolite and impatient, and Luther has a certain boyish charm that he can leverage sometimes, a weapon like any other.)
He's half-listening to one of the exhibit curators in this sparkling marble foyer, drink sweating in his hand, half-distracted, when he finally hears it.
Out of nowhere. Behind him somewhere. A laugh. That laugh. A merry tinkling bell and it's two years older but he'd know it anywhere. Luther's head pivots like it's on a swivel, his whole body turning to look back over his shoulder, across the room, through the crowd, searching for the source. And through the crowd, he sees her. In that gown. She wasn't supposed to be in town this week.
Allison.
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She's been running on three-to-four hours for most of the last week, and she'd decided it was a godsend when she was informed, along with about a dozen other, all her sets were up and they were headed home a day early. The plane ride wasn't the best, continually waking her back up, making the dream of her own bed, and her own pillows, stronger each time.
(As well as the urge to get up and punch the pilot for obviously being shit at his job.)
What had not been a godsend was the post-it waiting on the front of her bedroom door when she got home that read: Call Production Now with the last word underlined four times. At least that's what the note had said. Which was, also, wrong. But determination and fifteen minutes more focus finally got her on with one of the producers who'd call for her.
Who said they'd been loving all her work, and were already sweet-talking the network into shifting in another lead role for her starting in the next season, and could she come to this 'probably boring museum opening' in six hours, where the bigwig she needed to meet as soon as possible, would be overseeing the crew doing the news coverage on it for the station.
It wasn't something you said no to, but Allison was definitely considering putting all of their names next on the death list. The one where she was allowed to just tell them all their head's popped off like champagne corks.
Fine. It probably was still a godsend, too, just not the one she was hoping for with crisp, cold sheets and soft pillows, and getting lost in them until at least tomorrow night. Only escaping that perfect cocoon for the bathroom and water and food. But she'd kill herself before taking any other option, too. She says yes, of course, she'd love to, she has nothing, forcing the smile she can't feel into her voice, with gratitudes and platitudes.
She pulls out the best dress she has. The one she had not paid for. Hangs it in on her bedroom door, and sets three alarms, before letting herself have three more hours of sleep. Then, it's up again. Showering, taking her time with her hair, and then her makeup, before sliding into the dress. Simple, shining, silky, single-colored, and skin tight.
One did not pull punches with a chance like this. They didn't come around often, if ever.
Which was how Allison found herself in the middle of a crowd of hundreds, bright-eyed and smile-ready, being scintillatingly responsive and laughing at an opening question thrown her way while shaking a hand. Later, she'll reason it might have been something deeper trained than impulse, or distraction. Something about familiarity drilled in for decades.
But there's a sharp move right over the shoulder of the executive in question, and her eyes snapped to it, just in time for her expression to freeze. Then, shift to shock so stiff it was silencing, before her hand, still in his, was touched again, a hand closing over the back of hers, while he leaned, and she had to look back at the man, utterly at a loss for what he'd started to say about some last in-production-episode sent his way. As Allison tried, if not to figure out what he meant through the sudden crackle of white noise, at least not to look away from his face again. Definitely, not immediately. Any further than the edge of her vision looking forward at him. Where she still couldn't miss it.
Where it's impossible. It's impossible.
But Luther is standing. Over there.
Staring at her.
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But there's something in her own shocked, stunned, blown-open look that tells him no. That even after all these years and those thousand miles and their lives walking different paths, he's still somehow convinced that surely they don't lie to each other.
(When he first said he would leave with her, he hadn't lied. He had truly believed it at the time.)
He's not being very subtle, because subtlety is not Luther Hargreeves' strong suit. He's still looking right past everyone as his gaze snags on her, tall enough that he can just look over other men's shoulders and heads. He's completely missed whatever the curator was saying about... some kind of interactive segment, some audience participation recording thing, he has honestly no idea what it is anymore. He can't stop looking and looking at her, drinking in the sight of her.
It's not the same as the magazines, or even her on camera, on his television set. She's more alive, more present, and god, that dress—
He could never have forgotten how beautiful Allison is, but the reminder of it in-person is like being hit with a sledgehammer right between his ribcage. Luther's fingers are tightening; a small spider-webbing of a crack clinks and appears around the edge of his glass, and he has to consciously force himself to relent, to loosen his grip, to remember how to breathe. How to pick up the abandoned scraps of conversation that he'd been pretending to be a part of.
They've met each others' eyes, too far away to say anything, so instead he just arches an eyebrow, raises his drink in something like a toast. Nods toward the bar counter on the other side of the room. A question in his eyes.
An invitation.
Even if she can't extricate herself from her conversation just yet, or even for a while, just as Luther won't be able to for a while either, for politeness and for appearances and for convincing this curator he should call the Umbrella Academy if some ne'er-do-well decides to rob this museum. (But she's still here, and from this moment onwards, he's not able to lose her in the crowd. Some part of him is always watching, paying attention, every part of his concentration shot, orbiting, and tumbling inwards to the swallowing black hole that is the presence of Allison Hargreeves in the same room as him, breathing the same air as him.)
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mask or menace outtakes: homecoming.
She feels the faint ripple of his bare arm beneath her fingers; not jerking away, but the slight tremor at being touched, the unaccustomed weight of contact. When Luther turns his head to the side to look at her, his eyes are too-wide and too-blue and too-startled and too, too painfully relieved. Drinking up the sight of her, as if he can commit her to memory, then maybe she won't vanish this time.
Even this. Just having her here and within reach is more than he ever could have asked for.
The moment goes on; lingers; catches. When her hand curls against his arm, Luther hesitates, before he shifts to roll half onto his side in order to see her better too, like a mountain range looming up in the bed beside her. Luther's other hand flutters indecisively before reaching out for her face, a mirror of their position outside the farm; back then, for a single brief heartbeat they'd simply fallen into each other, unthinking and instinctive and so quick that neither of them had time to think it over before their foreheads were pressing together, their hands pulling each other closer. There's some of that here, as his thumb traces the edge of Allison's cheek, almost wonderingly. As if reassuring himself of the truth of what she'd just said. She's real. She's here. And not going anywhere.
"And thank god for it," Luther murmurs softly. He's too tired, still running on fumes, still blown over by the chaos of the battle and the relief of being home with her, and her still alive, not dying in his arms (for a second time), that the tenderness slips out before he can reel it back in.
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It's a choice, but it's not an automatic assumption or an impulsive over roll that she didn't catch until it was already over. There's a network of uncertainty, of knowingly overstepping, when the bare muscles beneath her fingers suddenly flutter. Not wanting to, but ready to let go, if the next second his whole body lurched away. Or her wrist was caught in the same snakebite iron vice of a grip, hand lifted meaninglessly back away.
But it doesn't. Luther doesn't.
He just turns his head toward her finally, and she can't see his face as clearly as she wishes she could. As if it were daylight -- and she knows this wouldn't be happening if the room was full of light streaming in the windows from the outside, or yellow-white warm from the ceiling, or bed table. And the thought of losing it for anything, when it's not taken back (not yet, not yet, not yet), lodges in the sudden kick of her heartbeat, the way her hand settles down against his arm, the muscles there, rough skin with the smallest stubble of rough hair. Less a question, a butterfly ready to drift away, fingertips tightening a little, spreading a little.
It's more than she could ever had asked for, even in words, which makes it even more surprising when he turns toward her, shifting the whole of the bed with him, but doesn't turn himself entirely. She wonders only the barest second about the logistic of that, how much even taller on his side, because of those shoulders, but it vanishes, sudden and swift on a sharp breath in her nose when Luther's hand finds the side of her face, and then his thumb, maybe larger, maybe rougher, but somehow also so soft, infinitely as gentle as though her skin was a pane of glass, traces across her cheek with the pad of itself.
And for a moment, Allison goes so still it's like that one touch might shatter her.
In the way that time, and desperation and destruction, and deliverance from both can't.
And this, this, this is the problem that lights every night with moonlight. Jagged reverence, only learning to breathe in the roughness of those words, the absolution of suffocation resisting believing in the myth of breathing, that sounds so deeply torn and worn, holey with wear and living through it, snatched from the jaws of death itself, saved on that truth, impossible gratitude still crusted with drying blood and scar-scroll work. That she's here, that she's real, that feels that way, he does, somehow, like the absence of her mattered more than can be touched, the her without all the pretty lies and sane smiles.
This one. This her. The real one. Inconvenient. Impulsive.
Impossible, and brash, and sometimes far more broken than whole.
The one who has lost all sense of the bed her body is resting on, or even the rush of her heart, against Luther touching her, choosing to touch her. Allison isn't sure at all she remembers how to breathe, when the impulse she's trying to fight, is leaning into those fingers, that hand, like she isn't already there. In his hands. Wherever he wants her. Whatever he wants of her. It's already his. It always has been.
It's like pulling teeth to pull anything like sane words into an order, with him curled this close, his hand bracketing her face, starting to feel her heartbeat in her teeth, her ears. "I'm sorry you had to go through that. I never would've--"
She never would have hurt him with that. Let anyone else use it. Touch him. Hurt him. Like that. Use her as a cudgel against him. She shook her head, minutely, almost unwilling to move enough it might cause him to lift his hand, again. "I wish I could take that back for you."
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And yet Allison has the outer edge, and so there's no graceful way he could shrink back and meld into the wall, or clamber over her and flee his own room.
And besides.
He doesn't want to. The closeness is surprisingly welcome; it anchors him, reassures him that she's actually here, isn't some figment he's dreamt up or some passing mirage he kept spotting in Dallas. He can feel the huff of her breath against his hand as she talks.
(Her lips against the rough stubble of his cheek; her hands latched onto the collar of his shirt.)
Up until about a minute ago, this whole scene had been excusable, had been something he could rationalise. His best friend and their late-night conversations, nothing out of the ordinary, this was some form of normal, this was fine. But now it feels like he's accidentally tripped over something and fallen face-flat into it, unsure how to recover. His chest is impossibly tight and her skin is too warm beneath his hands and his fingers are still trailing the line of her jaw.
"Take it back? It's not like you chose to strand us across multiple years." Even saying that feels like he's squeezing breath through strained, clamped lungs. The awareness of those years, the wedge driven between them all.
"It's my fault I made that assumption, anyway. It probably— I mean, it probably would've been easier to handle. If I hadn't stopped. I shouldn't have stopped."
Like she, apparently, had never given up on
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the kiss that wasn't: 2.10 outtake.
a. the kiss.
Lutherโs words, a demand, a plea, an order she couldnโt force her body to obey. For him. For her. For Lutherโs mouth pushing air, she could feel on her lips, in her mouth, never make it anywhere into the click and gurgle in her throat, the top of her chest. Again and again, until there was a moment it all went still, the whole world stuck in a snapshot still frame, against the pressure of his mouth pressed to hers, willing her to live, willing her not to die, before suddenly she gasped in and air, every bit as sharp as Diegoโs knives, pierced into her lungs.
Had her coughing, wheezing, gasping, like her body, still in panicked shock, couldnโt figure out how to take in both enough or any air. Lutherโs face half blurry above her, asking if she was okay, an answer she could hardly give as her lungs rattled and rasped and demanded all the air in the world, and Luther slid straight into apologizing. Without even being able to say the words, rushed its โthe thingโ and not the name, the action, what it had taken, the anything heโd been willing to do to help her fight it. โจโจ
Allison has no time for that, fingers reaching out to find his face, stop his mouth, black gloves against his pale skin, only managing a hoarse, โShhh,โ as his face went slack into her fingers, into not having to explain or defend, and it wasnโt enough. For how grateful she was, how stupidly endearing that inability to name, noble half-embarrassed apology, the need to, this first-second making sure she wasnโt offended, he hadnโt overstepped in trying to save her.
The strange part-laugh raw in her throat, as her fingers knotted in the collar of his jacket, wide across his neck, pulling herself more toward him, and instead of her hands, she ran her mouth into his. Only briefly feeling the pain of the muscles and too much speed there. The only response that could ever truly put into place how much she didnโt care in the slightest about his mouth pressed against hers, saving her life.
That it was the only thing that made the smallest sense. When every other second she was either losing him or almost dying in front of him. That the last thing she was sorry about was these circumstances, was his utter willingness to do anything for her, compared to the sheer number of days sheโd never come up with even the flimsiest excuse just to give in and do it herself already.
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Mouth on hers and his lungs working overtime, pressing air into hers. Breathe, Allison. Breathe. Luther's words like a steady tolling of a drum in tandem with her heartbeat. Breathe, Allison. Breathe.
And when she finally takes that rasping shaky trembling breath, Luther finally feels his own heart restart. His whole body unclenches its tense muscles,
as her hands latch onto the lapel of his jacket, his face, dragging herself closer. The apologies are tripping over his tongue, then, before she stops his stammering abject contrition with a hand.
And then with a kiss.
That instinctive gratitude propels her unthinkingly forward and she just slams herself into him, hands scrabbling for everything and everywhere she can reach. Luther goes motionless like a startled deer or like he's standing on fragile ice, careful to not shatter it beneath him, his hands still pressed into her shoulders, his stiff shoulders and arms rigid, face not moving— disbelieving—
He'd had his mouth on hers just a moment ago, and yet he can already feel the difference in this one, the shift of their bodies. There's a kind of giddy relief to it, to the way she captures him and smashes their faces together, and then Luther finally softens, leans into it in return: fingers tightening against her cloak, the two of them sprawled in the snow, clothes still singed from passing bullets, the sound of fallen bricks still shifting just feet away, they're a breath away from a battle still — but suddenly none of that matters, absolutely none of that matters except Allison.
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b. the conversation.
She was going home.
To Claire.So soon.Everything else was just minutes and hours to whittle away until that arrived, and as evening calmed and evened out the explosive afternoon, as the day turned dusk, and then dark, she realized Luther had gone missing again. She checked the barn first, before finally finding him inside. In the kitchen of the broken house. The receiver pressed to the side of his head, and she can hear that faint, deep mumble.
โจโจThat name โ Jack. โ but itโs the tone, more than the words that gives him away.
They all kept losing things. It seemed to be the thing their endings did best, bad or good.
Allison leaned against the walkway wall, watching him, waiting. In case.
Not wanting him to have to be alone with this if he didnโt want to be.
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Despite the fact that he didn't personally send in the army of gun-toting assassins, he still feels personally responsible (that mantle on his shoulders, impossible to avoid: if it hadn't been for the Hargreeves, this idyllic little farmhouse wouldn't be a ruin). Plus, he was the one who flew through their wall. Every time he catches a glimpse of that particular gaping void in the living room wall, with the chilly night air gusting through it, he winces.
But it's time to go.
The kitchen is dark. He hasn't even turned on the light, since it would only illuminate more of the damage: bullet holes through all the walls, cabinet glass shattered, cracked porcelain and mugs scattered all over the floor. He'd righted the fallen kitchen table, but has to keep pulling in his hands and resisting the urge to grab a broom and sweep everything up.
His back's to her, his shoulders tight and hunched, the receiver miniscule and toy-like in his hand. Luther is practically bowed around it, and Allison can see the exact moment when he sags in disappointment and delicately replaces the phone in its cradle. He'd thought for a second that Jack had picked up, but in the end it had just been the operator and then that low buzz of the phone ringing and ringing and not being answered.
When Luther finally turns around, he looks a little surprised to see her. Maybe a little abashed at being caught in such a moment of vulnerability, all of him craned and waiting for that call. The call which hadn't happened.
(Maybe it shouldn't matter. Maybe the man isn't even worth saying a personal goodbye to, and their relationship was never actually on that level. But Luther has a habit of caring for older men who don't give a damn about him in return.)
"Hey," he says softly. Tilts a shoulder, almost in a shrug. "Couldn't get through. Oh well."
Luther is so very bad about sounding nonchalant, even when he's trying.
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mask or menace deleted scene: f2020; the conversation.
They could wait. They could take this slow.
But they've waited more than long enough. Over ten years, by latest reckoning. Long past any attempt at patience to hold them back tonight (tonight, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow). All the doors and windows are slamming open, and Allison's arms are still draped around his neck, and so it's easy enough for Luther's hands to slide down and pick her up into his arms, her legs hooking around his hips. They're still kissing dizzily as he starts walking, barely able to keep their hands off each other โ maneuvering through the hallway, Luther stubs his foot on an endtable, swears low and under his breath against her throat while she muffles another laugh, shushing him again, trying not to wake Claire. He's trying to navigate his way half-blind through the familiar muted darkness of Allison's house, over to the unfamiliar muted darkness of her bedroom, the place he's never gone.
Once they're finally inside, he doesn't bother with scrabbling for the light switch, just nudges the door shut behind them with a foot, and then turns his attention back to the woman in his arms: his mouth against Allison's jaw, the crook of her neck, the shell of her ear. "Point me in the right direction," he says, "and tell me if there's anything breakable between the door and your bed."
Just saying those words, knowing what they mean, where they're leading, sends his heartbeat ticking another notch higher, sharper.
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"Nothing important." Even as it catches in some back of her throat, her spine, the all too clear thought no one's ever been in this room for this. She chose not to do this in the house. The Synod, sure, once or twice after the founding. But not the house, not here, and no one convenient from Krakoa, on this tiny island, where any of it could affect the Council. Or Claire.
It makes it feel -- as she's pushing his head back and searching for his mouth again, having to be kissing him again, the new-dark blurred-shape of him left from the light being left on the other side of the door latching -- like it's always been waiting for him. She has. (She has.) The one person who already existed inside all of her walls. Every part of her head. And her heart. And this house.
"Back. Back. To the right. It's not like you haven't been in here before."
But not like this. Never like this. For this. God, were they really going to do this.
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teen au: if you cannot be a poet, be the poem.
The whole Academy inevitably counted down the time and the minutes, every week. Luther was the most strict and regimented and obedient out of all of them, but even he started getting restless by eleven thirty-five: his gaze starting to drift to the clock on the wall, watching its hands steadily carving out the remaining minutes until their only half-hour of freedom. His wingtip shoe starting to tap on the floor, fidgeting but surprisingly steady, almost measuring out the remaining seconds with each bounce of his foot.
Klaus' attention span was absolutely atrocious (making paper airplanes, carving doodles into the grain of the table), so keeping his focus on the study material was an utter lost cause. Diego's was a little better, but only because he wanted to do better than Luther on the next quiz. But in the end, they were all still sitting technically silent in one of the classrooms, heads bent over their books.
At twelve o'clock on the dot, Luther slams the cover of his textbook shut, a little harder than he ought to. And he reaches for the thin volume of poetry instead, which has been sitting discreetly and patiently hidden away beneath the stack of academic texts.
"Dismissed," the Monocle says crisply from the front of the room, like he always does, "for the next half hour."
And they scatter. Off to their bedrooms, or the back garden to enjoy some of the summer sunshine, or the basement rec room (or the dusty greenhouse upstairs—). Today, the others head for other corners of the sprawling house, while Luther and Allison are the only ones who return to the residential wing.
He'd been partway through this book of poetry, and he's desperate to hopefully finish it sometime this month, so he settles immediately on his bed and cracks it open.
He barely glances up when his door opens without a knock, Allison letting herself in peremptorily as always. He keeps his gaze riveted on the page, but she can see the smallest smile creep on the edges of his mouth. At the movement in the periphery of his vision, the creak of her weight on the floorboards. Sometimes they spend their leisure time apart. But more often than not, they do this; always gravitate towards each other in these few precious minutes they have to spare.
"You're not watching TV?" he asks. They hadn't always had a television; one had simply appeared without explanation in the basement one day, as if they'd always had one.
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A fifth time. She's sworn she'll ace the next test.
Maybe not as good as Luther, but at least better than Diego.
It really is no use, and she finds herself staring at the ink as shapes more than letters by the sixth time. The spaces between the words in the two columns like a pattern. Sneaking a look toward the clock, up through her lashes, while refusing to let it even tilt her head the smallest millimeter. Luther, of course, is still dutifully bent toward his book, all tall rounded shoulders and dipped head, like somehow this reading is the most important thing ever.
He's as exhausting as he is enviable when he's like this. And he's always like this. Never flagging. Never wavering. Never get caught up in the boredom or the tedium of the memorization of the material. Which Allison is thinking, her gaze having returned to her book, and her finger pressed the page, that she's refusing to let tap.
Wondering if she just whispered it, I heard a rumor, it was time now if any of them would even remember, or if it would just skip completely, like one of Luther's records after getting a scratch. It's tempting, and she's still thinking of it when Luther suddenly sits up straight in his chair, all force and the concussive sound of closing his book like he is throwing it into the desk. A second too early.
It made her mouth twitch at the corner even as their Father dismissed them.
(Maybe Luther wasn't completely impervious.)
Allison didn't miss the book Luther was carrying back to his room, nor any of the time before it, as he continued to choose even more reading in his free time. If it wasn't Luther, she'd think something was seriously wrong with him. She'd have mocked any of the others for it. Wanting to read even more after the sheer mountain of what they already did.
Luther slipped away with his book and the click of his door, and Allison turned around in her room. And around. She could leave him alone. She could come up with something else to do. But it was the only consideration for five seconds. Before she slipped back out her door, a magazine, a brush, and a bottle of nail polish in hand, as she pushed her way into his room breezily.
(As though there'd never been the second she'd stopped to look down the hallway, careful still and silent, listening for even the creak of the stairs. Or the other right between the one where her hand touches the door knob and the one where she turned it, some still-twisty thing in her stomach that crinkled unpleasantly, dripping doubt; about bothering him.)
But then he's smiling and pretending he isn't while she closes the door as soundlessly as she'd opened it. A skill they've all learned well enough in the utterly rare once or twice a year they can convince Luther to break nighttime curfew. But this is more than that; even she leans her weight and heels back on that reason like she isn't hooked on the edge of that not-smile.
Which is maybe why it's so easy for her to smile in an unfettered fashion and say with supremely smug ease, "I heard a rumor it's a rerun."
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los angeles. a phonecall.
A phone number scribbled in her familiar handwriting and then pressed into his palm, long fingers folding over the piece of paper. A kiss to the cheek goodbye as he heads back east.
Postcards and letters are fantastic (they've been piling up in his drawer back home), but they also take so long to cross the country in the mail — and so, one day, Luther makes sure Reginald's not home, and he heads to the hacked payphone downstairs, and he dials Allison's number. ]
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It's a bit of a grapple. Applicator pushed into the hand with the bottle, twisting, looking between the phone and where her feet end up, before her fingers finally catch the arm of the receiver on the table beside the couch. Dropping back down on the couch, a little out of breath. ]
Allison Hargreeves speaking.
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Something is very wrong; 3.02 Fix-It
But when the operator signs on
that isn't the number Allison barely manages to gasp out needing. ]
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Alarms have always gotten him up and out of bed immediately, the klaxons at the Academy propelling him to his feet and already reaching for the neatly-folded uniform on the chair, knowing the children would be timed on how quickly they could get up and get moving. But this particular shrill sound startles him — he's not used to the phone yet, no one ever calls him — and then he's automatically reaching out for the threatening noise to stop it, almost accidentally smashing the phone for a second, before he lifts it off its cradle in the darkness and presses it to his ear, his voice a low croak. ]
Hello?
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wedding at the end of the world (3.08 fix-it)
(Every so often, some nagging anxiety started to nip at his heels, teeth at the edges of his mind— a kind of distracted restlessness under his skin like there was something he was forgetting to do. Like he'd forgotten his keys, or something. That lurking awareness that maybe the gigantic floating ball of light devouring all of existence should be worth a little more strangling panic. Sometimes he finds himself standing by the window and staring out into that livid orange horizon, like the sky is on fire, and thinking: I should be worried about this, shouldn't I?
But every time it's happened over the last couple days, then Sloane returns and sets her bare fingers ghost against his cheek, or his shoulder, or twines herself around his arm like a snake, or she presses a kiss to his jaw, and everything else fades away into that blind haze and he's back to thinking that everything is fine, actually, and he forgets whatever he'd been thinking about.)
So. Today, right now, the world is ending and yet Luther Hargreeves' biggest problem is not being able to tie the bowtie with his clumsy hands. There's a pair of gloves sitting on the table. He'll head downstairs to the ballroom and join the others soon, just as soon as he figures out this dang bowtie.
He's standing in front of the full-length mirror (he'd had to crouch slightly and tip it backwards in order to compensate for his height), face furrowed into a frown of concentration, as he tries to tie the material but his fingers keep slipping. He should've bought a clip-on.
He's so absorbed, he doesn't even hear the footsteps behind him; someone else entering the suite.
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Allison has been standing here for a while. Well. More specifically leaning there. Shoulder against the door jam, holding a glass precariously by the fingertips at the end of that same arm. Watching him as though waiting for the seal to crack.
Maybe it only feels like 'a while,' perhaps it's only been a few seconds. Maybe watching Luther stand there in that god-awful shirt, mugging for a god damn mirror, like the announcement they made upstairs was somehow sensible by any stretch of even a truly demented imagination, actually lit on fire whatever air was left in the little breathably sane space in her brain. Because she can't for the life of any second since they said it find a shred of sense left in it.
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