for numberthree.

[obediences]

And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.

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[obediences]

It’s such a banal, everyday picture for anyone else in the world to paint — jeans! — but for these two, for him, it has the tint of impossible fantasy to it. Luther’s never looked quite so casual or at-ease as that mental image depicts. Some interviewers occasionally asked about a more casual look for their broadcast, to make him more affable and approachable, and the Monocle had slammed the door shut on that possibility: the Academy was formal, the Academy was stiff and buttoned-up and almost Victorian, the Academy couldn’t reflect poorly on Hargreeves Enterprises. (And then there was Luther: Reginald’s most successful experiment, his biggest failure, obeying the rules to a tee.)

“If the acting thing ever falls through,” he says after a moment, “you could be a stylist.”

Beat, then, quickly, “Not that it’s gonna fall through. I mean it’s obviously going really well! It’s gonna be fine.”

Oh god.

It’s always so comfortable with Allison until it’s not: until he accidentally steps into something awkward, some breach of etiquette, gigantic foot stuffed in mouth. Luther sighs.

The universe could take pity on him and have them turn the corner and spot her apartment building any minute now—

[numberthree]

It's the rarity—the all-but impossibility—that shatters something harder. So much more completely. Luther's hand traveled up the soft skin of her neck, catching her jaw with the kind of just more than normal pressure that meant she couldn't just jerk away. And she's not certain she could. Would. She deserves whatever he could—

But his words aren't angry. She can hear a matching kind of desperation, but she can't feel it because all she can feel is his hand's warm, solid presence. All she can feel is how much Luther doesn't touch her, shouldn't be touching her, a kaleidoscope of too bare, too shameful things all lining up together, as his blue eyes blur in her vision. The way her fingers knot at her sides and touching him is the last thing she could let herself do now.

He's always been something she wanted too much.

Throwing her arms around Luther's neck and leaping into him. (And how his arms just floated around her.) The feel of his hand over hers. (When she admitted she'd married a man, not for love but to survive.) Pushing her way into his arms in the kitchen after he told her she had to leave her husband. (The feel of his hands on her back, the tilt of his head against hers.) The press of his mouth against hers. (The instant flustered apology after.)

It's always been more than nothing. They've both known that.
But attraction—even love—isn't always enough.

Never with their family. With them.

Not enough with Claire. (Had she rewritten whoever Claire was originally supposed to be?) Not enough with Ray. (Who chose the cause, the fight, the mission over her in the end, just like Luther. In their childhood, in the basement, in the concert hall.)

"I didn't m—I wouldn't—" But she had. She did. She'd said the words. She'd watched his eyes go empty and white the first time. Then, she'd said the actual words and felt him go limp around her. She made a mess and then did it again, trying to take it back. (I did what I always did. I made a wish, and then I couldn't take it back.). Half of the terror now is that her despair will make it worse. She's already slipped, and it never stops there. "I just wanted you to come back to me. I couldn't lose you."

"Not again. Not a third time." It's all useless, and selfish, and ashamed. What doesn't she ruin if she lets herself touch it? Didn't he understand? How important it was? He was? Himself and his whole existence in her world? "But I'd never. Not you. You know that." It's so weak, but it's all crawling out of her at speed. Maybe the only chance she'll get to tell him it all, as everything else becomes rust and stardust debris. "You're the only person who knows who I am and still likes me anyway."

Pretty and petty, vicious and vengeant, manipulative and ashamed, jaded and jagged, always aware she was more broken than she was ever whole; willing to survive at any cost—almost. And even with all her worst flaws, even when she turned herself on those closest to her, he'd never turned his back on her. He was the one thing she could trust in the three worlds and timelines.

[numberthree]

The universe is, in fact, kind to Luther in this way.

Even as Allison half-rolls her eyes, Luther stumbles into sputtering about, implying she might not make it. It touches down, smarts a here-and-then-gone mark, errently wondering if he finds her choices as stupid as their father does. Beneath what she could be accomplishing day in and day out as The Rumor and not a real person with her own wants and dreams.

But Luther is tripping on himself,
and Luther wouldn't be subtle if he did believe it.

The only subtle bones in Number One's body exist behind the mask.
Luther, under take off the mask when you talk to me is floundering uncertainties.
Always trying to figure out what to make of anything not defined by their father's opinion.

It's endearing as it is a little too obviously still present, that still so very sheltered part of him, untouched, unchanged, unlearned, or broken by this beautiful, but also ruthless, real world outside the gates of the Academy. Allison fixes him with a raise of eyebrows and the slant of her mouth:

"Mmmh. You want to dig that hole any deeper before I let you into my place?"

[numberthree]

Allison frowns at both the words and the turtled response. Mouth thinned, head bowed, gaze still focused on where he painted her nails. It's not because he won't bite back at it— if she were Diego, Luther would have crossed a whole room for the implication of half as much in twice as many words—he's choosing not to. There's tension in the line of his shoulders and jaw. She regrets saying it. She doesn't.

She hates their father. But Luther doesn't.
But he doesn't ask—or order—her to pretend the same.

That's where it should stop, right? With the spoiled, arrogant, selfish thought that she's just special. That she has a blank check to say whatever she wants and Luther, well, he just let her—and that's not entirely wrong (Luther is the one who hunkers down through her actual storms of fury, even follows her to that attic room if she storms away first, waits her out, without forcing her to stop before all the poison is outside of her, too). But it's not just that.

Allison's gaze is still chasing the edge of his brow, the press of his mouth. And something bigger than her just feels sad. Because she's not sure he does disagree. Hate would be a too strong word in Luther's mouth of classics, poetry, and long-dead warmongers. But he's not blind. And she thinks he sees more of it the older they get. The more he can't earn any more gratitude or pride for being unwavering than someone like Klaus for doing nothing.

The best he gets is not being insulted for ineptitude;
there are no laurel crowns for unwavering victory.
(Not inside the Academy doors, at least.)

"Right. And somehow, that translates to bigger bedrooms making us weak."