obediences | for numberthree.

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! psls

for numberthree.

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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[ I'm not too worried about yesterday, if there's a tomorrow. Tonight. ]

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 — 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.

With Luther ghosting hot words into her skin, Allison feels like something too tight and too strained is finally just snapping in her head. Because the first urge is to tell him whatever it is he might step on or run into, she can replace it, and if she can't, she doesn't care so long as he doesn't stop.

"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.

"This is different, I don't know, maybe you've changed things arou—"

Before Luther can keep half-protesting, though, she's already caught his mouth again and he's muffling a laugh against her lips. He's strong enough that he's cradling Allison with just an arm against the curve of her thighs, while his other hand hovers into the darkness to feel his way towards the bed, to hopefully not knock over or break any lamps.

But in their eagerness, he's still moving too quickly; his shins collide with the edge of the bed sooner than expected, and it trips both of them onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs and the breath being knocked out of them as they land on each other. He shifts his weight onto an elbow, trying not to crush her, a hand splayed apologetically against her stomach. "Shit. I'm sorry."

Even at the best of times, Luther hasn't been especially interested in sex (and a small internal voice is too-knowing, realising, it wasn't the what but rather the who). But it turns out a single right word or touch or heated look from Allison is, apparently, enough to drive him to absolute distraction; he already feels too-aware of everything, the warmth in his cheeks, the patter of his frantic giddy heartbeat, his skin too hot on the frame of his body, too desperately conscious of how close their bodies are pressed against each other now, even with all these layers between them.

One second she's grinning triumphantly against Luther's mouth, letting himself be silenced into kissing her, laughing into it, but not fighting her off having done it at all. The next, she's falling into the bed, with the unexpected rebound of the bed bouncing back up and Luther tumbling right down into her, too, all too long arms and legs everywhere.

There's not even enough time for Allison to fully take it all in, except that her heart is hammering in her ears, and Luther's hand is not warm and wide across the expanse of her stomach. While he apologizes. Like her entire mind isn't still three paces back caught like she'd been socked in the teeth with the idea of that hand there, without her shirt in the way. Luther's hand on her skin.

"Are you, though?" Thrown up at him above her, like the last thing in the world she could suppose him to ever be at the moment, or that he should ever even consider being at the moment, is sorry. It's more amusing than it is anything else. There's a bubble of laughter still caught up in her chest, even though it's deep-fried and burning along the edges in the feel of her mattress and blankets actually under her now, while Luther is close but not close enough anymore.

Allison hooked her heel on the bedframe and pushed on it, wiggling up over more of her bed, tugging him further on to it with her.

Edited 2020-11-28 07:11 (UTC)

There's a smile wreathed on his mouth. "Okay, you got me. I'm not. Not one bit."

He trails along after her, following the line of Allison's hand and arm, the bend of her elbow as she pulls him further up onto the bed. There's a muddle of sheets and blankets and pillows underneath them — a stuffed rabbit trapped somewhere under his knee, one of Claire's, which Luther finds, extricates, and then moves it gingerly to the floor — before he leans back down to kiss her again. One elbow is still holding himself up, while the hand on her stomach starts to wander: he finds the arch of Allison's thigh where she's hooked it against his legs, slides upwards and follows the dipping curve of her side, the small of her back, before his thumb slips beneath the hem of her shirt and traces a line across her hip.

It's the smallest first encroachment beneath their clothes, the raging-hot warmth of bare skin blazing beneath his touch. One inch of Allison Hargreeves' hip beneath his fingers is going to kill him. This is going to be the death of him.

Allison doesn't need to be able to see his smile, to hear it in his voice as he admits it, and the words, and his tone, alone, make the already frenetic beat of her pulse skip further. (And how strange and normal, that without adjusted dark vision, she could estimate already and still exactly where she'd need to curl her knee up to kick out at someone and roll them at the general location he's at to take someone ot.)

It'll fill in as her eyes get used to the dark, but she's hardly thinking of that at all when Luther is leaning back down into her, and his mouth is warm and willing and how had it all changed so fast and not for the worst. How was this even possible. She'd maxed out on whatever she deserved in this and every and any world with Claire and the Council.

But Luther's fingers suddenly brush her bare skin, instead of continuing the broadly painted palm of her side or her back, and everything becomes surprisingly electric. Her breath catching still in her throat, and her stomach feeling like it dropped two to three unexpected feet through the air, half bottoming out from her in a way that is patently too much like she's never been touched.

"Good," comes out a stuttered set of seconds from his words, but not forgotten.

"You sure?" he finds himself asking, the words tripping out almost accidentally. One more check. Because they're crossing boundaries and closed doors and breaking down walls, slamming into uncharted (and til-now-forbidden) territory, into her bed, and so Luther can't help but ask. Make sure. That they're not going too quick, not biting off more than they can chew, not taking that one last step that's too suddenly and unexpectedly far for her comfort.

But then the aggrieved look he gets from Allison in return is eloquent enough alone, even completely wordless: a sort of if you stop now, Luther Hargreeves, I am going to murder you and bury your body in the garden, and so he laughs into the crook of her neck, mouthing at the angle of her jaw, following the thread of her pulse. He wonders if he could leave marks on her neck if he tried. Probably could, but shouldn't. (Even so many years on, discretion still feels like the watchword.)

"Okay, okay," Luther says, bemused, as his hand slides further under her shirt. Exploring the curve of her stomach, the dip of her belly-button, even as all her muscles tense underneath him like a bow-string going taut at the contact. "But if you ever do. Reach a point of wanting to stop for the night. You know that's okay."

If she weren't predisposed to the entire world of possibility trying to boil her ability to think straight about anything at this point, she'd probably take it more to task. But she is, isn't, can't. Because his mouth is on her throat, and he's laughing into her skin, and she thinks that will be tattooed into her skin longer than any mouth that pressed a kiss or pressed teeth in there.

She doesn't even entirely know how to hold more than the thought (Luther laughing, in her bed, against her skin) as it dissolves against the slide of his hand when Luther decides he'd like to play madness himself. His words all soft, placating, a joke, reminding her with nothing-like-done-yet predictably patient nobility that makes her wants to shove her pillow into his face for, that she's allowed to stop at any moment.

As though somehow she's not a) entirely aware at this point in her life, especially while having to figure how to one day have those conversations with her own growing daughter somehow, and b) full capable of stopping anyone from ever doing anything to her she disapproved of. (Or. Fine. And. C. That it's just as disastrously endearing still, and she wants to kiss him again, until he can't breathe, just for saying it. For being the kind of man who still does say it, just so it is said, even after being threatened with death before he got laid for not shutting up.)

Except his fingers are skating fire across the delicate skin of her stomach, her side, at the same time, catching her breath against her teeth, muscles shiver as the inside of her stomach feels like it's simultaneously trying to cave in, tighten up, and push up into that hand. And it's more that than anything in his earlier words that she answers.

"You should worry far more about my never letting you stop."

There's a beat, and she lets the other words fall out, weighted, even small. "Ever."

Maybe to anyone else, it would sound shades into a threat. But there's a confession laced deep in that one word.
That she's not sure she'll ever have a clue how to stop, how to let go, of him, any of this, after this happens. She won't.

Edited 2020-12-05 03:15 (UTC)

Those words burrow deep; they settle around his heart like a clenched fist, a lead weight in his stomach that robs him of the rest of his breath. The promise, the insinuation, the confession, the ask. Luther goes still for a second as those words land, pulling away just enough to look at her. There's a shiver of anticipation coiling tight in his abdomen. He's perhaps looking a little unexpectedly somber now, because that Ever had the sound to it of—

(He thinks, suddenly, of pinky promises. His finger hooked around hers before they were even teens.)

"Never," Luther says, agreeing. Promising. And so rather than stop, he moves downwards and rucks up some of the fabric of her shirt, rolling it up her midriff with his hands. Other people, with enough impatient hastiness, could've ripped off each others' clothes by now and been well on their way — but even after so long, after twenty years of waiting, Luther is still slow and exploratory while his mouth takes his hand's place and he presses a kiss to the curve of Allison's hip, her stomach, the arch of her ribs. Each glimpse of more exposed skin from her remains a terrifying revelation, a miracle, one he presses his lips to as if he has to memorise every inch of her this way, commit it to memory, map her with his fingertips like Braille and never forget a single minute of this.

It's another small word. Only two syllables. But it's almost too big. Like his own matching admission. Like his 'I don't especially want to stop, but' only so many minutes ago. Like he understands. Like he feels it, too. All those words fluttering back.

(I would do anything for you. You make me want to wake up each day, and you're in my dreams every night. You're the most important person in the world to me.

That's what I've been doing. For the past year.
Choosing you, and her, every single day that I can.

I love you. Every minute. Every year. The whole time.)

As Luther's mouth deposits these sudden dots of heats across her abdomen, that ripple outward, causing her muscles to quiver under the press of his lips, to shake when he finds a new place and her skin feels somehow like it's never been touched right, or mattered that someone was, not really, until this moment.

As Luther starts stripping her of a truth she's buried so deep in her bones so long and so deep. She had Claire. She had Krakoa. She didn't need anything else. She didn't deserve anything beyond those two miracles she already didn't deserve. She may have not wanted Luther, but she was also nowhere near the only person in the world who recognized how perfect -- how good -- he was.

She was only the first. And the one who couldn't have it.

(....who could've? This whole time? Who was? Or was about to? Always had?)

That rule, burned in as stark as her tattoo, so well known it was deeper than breathing, that was growing holes everywhere as Luther kissed his way up the rungs of her ribs like somehow they each mattered, and her back arched her body into his mouth, helplessly, one hand digging into her comforter and the other finding the back of his. Incapable of not touching him now that she could.

Edited 2020-12-05 19:27 (UTC)

It's distantly amusing to watch Luther slip briefly into just the first taste of his ice cream. It's silly. The whole thing tastes like childhood, though it never entirely stops being burned on the far, far edge of her thoughts. It lets her chuckle a little, even as she's got her spoon in her mouth, at the words that come out. Like somehow, she'd given him more than some ice cream flavor at a small, well-loved and well-trafficed, but hardly even famous, little shop.

"When I first got here--" Allison said, putting her spoon back in to dig a little more out. "--the first few months, maybe half of that year, I went through more than one place just tasting most of the flavors."

Allison's just gotten her spoon to her mouth, shaking her head a little, with a falted smile around it, at the strange necessity to -- what exactly would you call it now? Tell Luther the truth? Connect her experiences to his? Like somehow part of any of those links were actually left outside a handful of handwritten words? Did it really matter?

Did it matter for more than just h--

"Mommy!"

There's a shriek of something that pretends to be a whisper behind them, from a small child, and like all small, small children, given to thinking they're doing well but not really having any clue yet, it's anything but quiet, as she leans into her mom. "The princess is still here!"

It's almost too much. He's always over-thought things, but this is something else: he can't fall into this quickly, impulsively, thoughtlessly, without feeling the years falling away beneath his touch, or the weight of all that time building up each moment his lips graze across bare skin. Luther could have spent thirty minutes on her wrist alone, running his tongue along the faded ink of her tattoo, pressing a kiss to her palm. He could be here forever, mapping every single part of her, making up for all the years they couldn't. Learning this language.

And they do have a new language to learn, a new vocabulary to add to their repertoire of all the wordless tics and habits they already know about each other, burned down into their bones. He wonders if she's ticklish anywhere. He wonders what she likes best.

Luther shifts slightly on the bed: hips pressing against hers before his knees straddle either side of her hips, giving him enough room to pull back and catch at the edge of Allison's shirt, dragging it the rest of the way; it snags on her shoulder, before she wriggles and helps him drag it off. And he looks down at her. Allison, languid beneath him, looking completely fucking irresistible. Even the plain, serviceable bra (it's the weekend, she's an overworked mother, of course it's plain) is a miracle. The curve of her shoulders, the dip of her collar-bone, her hair sprawled over her pillow, that smile in the corner of her mouth that he still wants to kiss stupid. That expanse of dark bare skin which is, technically, the same he's ever caught glimpses of when she's in a bikini on the Krakoa beach, but the context. Is so very different.

"You are so beautiful," he blurts out, brain wired to mouth, before he can even think of biting it back or measuring his words.

Okay. Some of it is impulsive.

It's the kind of thing that said by anyone else would be a lie.

Not malicious by any means. People told each other casually acceptable lies in bed all the time. Things right for the moment. In the moment. That might not be later. When you never saw each other again, or not for a year. She's told her share, and she'd been content in the warmth of ones told to her, in the heat of the moment. But Luther, who lied only rarely when he could ever helping, didn't lie to her. The way she didn't lie to him. Ever.

And so he says it, and what she feels is not that shiny cat-like warmth of years ago.

It's this strange, all too real ache. Because she hardly feels that even when she goes to the nine's for a delegation event. She feels frazzled at all ends most of the time, and just narrowly keeping it together behind the mask of being untouchable so. Something she thinks her family, and Luther especially, are the only ones who truly see clear. But Luther.

Luther says those words with the rush of boyish awe she'd thought he only had left for the sky of stars he'd never gotten to go get lost in, and there's no way not to believe it. That somehow Luther still has that tone -- as disbelieving reverent as it is shoved out too fast, like he might not be allowed if he didn't get it all out now -- and Allison feels it in ... a way she can't even explain.

A way that's only Luther's. Because only Luther has really ever known her, seen her, all of her. Best and worst. The days when they make a new alliance or save another child. The days when she throws herself on the couch buries her face under a pillow and says her child can starve and Krakoa can sink into the sea. (Or that she's just going the rumor the whole lot of another faction into eating each other the next time one dares to even look in the vague direction of her, just see if she won't.)

And somehow, there's still this. Clogging up her heart unexpectedly.
On the stupidest, simplest of words like they're some kind of benediction.
The kind she never knew she needed to hear until they broke the foundation of her.

It's all she can do to smile, just a little, one side of her mouth only, knowing it would get wobbly if she tried for anything more than just that yet, and push up on her elbows, "Is that what you tell all the girls?"

Edited 2020-12-23 00:13 (UTC)

It's the loud noise, the shriek, that instantly draws Luther's attention — all of him sharpening to attention like a hunting hound hearing the whistle of his master, calling him to heel. He swivels in his seat to look back at the child, searching for what could be wrong: raised voices could mean an emergency, could mean someone in danger, and so Number One snaps into place. His muscles tighten and she can see his legs gathering underneath him, as if he's ready to spring out of his seat.

But it's not an emergency, and no one is dying, and everything is fine.

"Princess?" Luther repeats dumbly, then glances back at Allison. Oh. Right. The ballgown. Like something out of the picture books. He continues, though, as if on autopilot: "She's not—"

Thankfully, he's interrupted before he can puncture the illusion and crush some poor random innocent child's dreams.

It took Allison very little time to parse the squealing child and even less to recognize the way Luther tensed, then freeze, like he was about to throw himself headlong into the small child, only to then see it was a small child.

Allison's hand had very suddenly found Luther's shoulder in the middle of his statement. A small but certain pressure squeezed there, her voice dropping to a quiet near-whisper of an octave she hasn't used in years, without much thought to that part. "It's fine."

Her hand seemed to lift quickly and smoothly as it landed, as though Allison had only briefly touched him as she walked past him. However, it would have taken someone standing at least as close as both of them in that passing second to have realized she'd actively said anything.

It's still new, this, and it still takes a creative amount of balance to figure out how to squat down in heels this tall, but she does at least know what she should do. Which is figure out how to balance, gracefully, as she lowers herself until her knees are parallel flush with her chest and her toes are very certain they should not be supporting her like this, and smile, saying only, "Hello, there."

Luther does his best to fade into the background, in his seat at that patio table. And unlike the interaction with the fan earlier, it actually works here, because the little girl has eyes for nothing else but Allison: she's starry-eyed, her entire face lit up as the princess elegantly sinks down to be closer to her level. Balanced perfectly on those heels, and wielding poise as if she'd taken posture lessons, had walked down long corridors with books balanced perfectly on her head. (And with Grace as their mother, really, who knew what sort of life lessons were doled out?)

And he sits there with his spoon forgotten in the ice cream, twisted sideways with one arm over the back of his chair, just watching the interaction play out. Something in Luther's crisp blue eyes softens as he sees the way she smiles, the patient and effortless way she handles this exchange. (He, too, has eyes for nothing else but Allison.) As long as the kid isn't asking for his autograph or isn't a spider-demon in disguise, Luther isn't sure what the right move is here; so he stays quiet, trusting her to know what to do and say far better than he could.

Saturdays, twelve o'clock.

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.

The end of Saturday morning classes, Allison thinks, is what hell must be made of. Book dust caught up in the sunbeams and seconds that refuse to budge. She's read the same passage four times now, but she doesn't look up. Not when Ben's shoes are starting to shuffle restlessly behind her. Not when Klaus' paper airplane lands on her desk, and she picks it up, only to crumple it in her fingers, before giving a delicate flip of her wrist and letting it fall to the floor. With only a slice of a glare before returning to her page.

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."

Sometimes you could practically see The Rumor's powers as they make their way into the world: the slight dazed pause as a villain hears her words and they sink in, anchoring inside their minds like a parasite, taking root and changing their behaviour as they fall under her sway. When her words change the fundamental foundation of the world, though, there's nothing to outwardly indicate that anything has shifted underfoot — but Luther is absolutely positively certain that if he went downstairs now and borrowed the newspaper from Pogo, he'd see the afternoon schedule full of reruns.

"Showoff," he says instead; one finger delicately turning the page of his book, even as he squirms a little closer towards the head of the bed, clearing space for Allison to come plant herself at the foot of it like she always does. His long legs are still sprawled out across the bed, but there ought to be enough room for both of them, even growth spurts considered.

They've become experts at this part, too: making room for each other, finding space between the cracks to fit each other, tiny minutes carved out between the regimented hours. Sometimes it's him sitting politely on the very edge of her bed in her room, other times it's Allison sprawling herself on her stomach on his plaid duvet while he hunkers over a model plane at the desk. They're comfortable and at home in each others' rooms in a way that the rest of the mansion doesn't invite. (The rest of the house seems to swallow up sound, and demands straight spines, perfect posture, quick brisk steps, polite words and well-trained behaviour, educational posters every few feet.)

Part of him caves, and his gaze darts up to catch a better look at her. Magazine. Nail polish. Applying it and then waiting for it to dry will take up most of the half hour.

"You could just rumour yourself a coat of nail polish," Luther points out, practical and pragmatic as ever; but then he pauses and reconsiders. "Unless the act of putting it on is the point?"

Showoff, he says, but it's not the voice of Number One admonishing her. The voice that stills her spine the same way the hand that too quickly finds her arm or her shoulder stops her from taking those always too fast steps, those first too sharp retorted words, most often at their father, but not only at him. The first one he does with everyone who steps out of line, and the second almost only with her.

(A fact that the others don't miss, any more than the fact it works on her,
when there's every likelihood nothing else might, except him, just as well.)

No. This is lightly chiding, maybe even just barely amused under being distracted. Allison sat down as Luther moved to make her space without being asked or lightly swatted with the magazine first. She curled one leg under her and left hanging, a foot on the floor. She's looking at the nail polish, even as she says the word as easily as though she were reciting facts, "I could tell myself just to know how to perfectly crack a man's jaw, too."

Her gaze raises with a calculated flick and a smirk at him over the top of his pages. "But where would the fun in that be."

If Allison flouted whatever rules Allison decided to before her father snapped her hand in the cage of whatever harder punishment each time, but she hadn't missed those lessons any more than One or Two. Rumor, witch, cheater. She could have changed a lot more things than the ones she let herself. All of them knew that. But she wouldn't have earned them in the same sense. There was a difference between winning and finishing the game by remaking the board.

There was a different feeling knowing she'd done something with her hands and not just her powers.
Allison started shaking the tube, though distractedly, her head tilting to read the title on the spine of his book. "Unless you have a better idea."

Edited 2021-03-11 03:43 (UTC)

He nods, a little abstractedly and almost as if the gesture's just for himself, but he's agreeing. The rationale makes sense. Number Three was always neck-and-neck with the boys, adamant about proving herself and earning her spot alongside them (and sometimes outstripping them) rather than skipping the line; the victory wouldn't have meant as much otherwise.

He's competitive as hell with Number Two. So he understands well enough.

Once she glances over at his book — he lifts it up higher so she can see which one it is, in this case Penguin Classics, Sir Thomas Wyatt's The Complete Poems — he mulls over an idea.

"We can multitask," Luther says, and only after the words are out of his mouth does he realise exactly how that sounds; the way it skirts the lines of something they've been nosing up against but haven't crossed, this nebulous unspoken limbo they're living in. The edges of his ears start to turn red in a predictable blush. "I mean, I can read out loud to you or something. So I'm still reading but not ignoring you, and so you don't get bored. And I bet it's better than that magazine."

He ducks his head again, unable to meet her eye for a second, as he backtracks through the pages, already searching for a viable candidate. Something that won't be muffled in too much archaic Elizabethan language; something simpler and shorter where his tongue won't trip over all the words in self-consciousness over reading them aloud. Even as his heart already gives a stupid little lurch in his chest, his breath held, waiting to see if she'll shoot down the idea as something too silly. Dull. Boring.

This was why she'd come back over and over and over again at the beginning. This was what she sometimes thought, in the quiet, dark solitude of the night, that she imagined entirely. Especially in the comparison. She hoarded this more preciously than makeup or the minutes of interviews she managed to say her own words not already picked by The Monocle for her.

She way Luther -- vaunted Number One, leader of the Umbrella Academy, and every little girl outside this mansion's dream -- suddenly blurted something out, gave an owlishly large blue blink, and suddenly looked anywhere else but at her, and started all but stammering. A flush creeping up his neck, the tips of his ears, sometimes even his cheeks.

It was nothing anyone saw outside of this room. It was nothing anyone saw except her. And, Allison thought with something both vicious as it was possessive (...as it was protective?), she'd mercilessly tear apart every single sentence that came out of Diego's mouth if she had to if that was the price of keeping it. Luther.

(This.)

It made her want to reach out and push back the perfectly cut blonde hair that fell over his forehead just enough when he'd duck his head and look down. To chide him that if he kept doing that, he would have to straighten it up even more than mussing the back of it on his pillow would. But all of it really just a problem and the ache in her chest is a crescendo she can't control, can't even predict how hard it will hit her out of nowhere.

Allison arched her brows, more amused at his offer, his rambling, and the sudden leafing of pages than she really cared about the offer itself. "How will it help you to finish if you're backtracking? Are you trying to imply that I can't keep up with a simple poetry book, Luther Hargreeves?"

Edited 2021-03-12 20:13 (UTC)

The corner of his mouth tugs again and he's shaking his head, though his eyes remain riveted on the page, bemused, as he tries to find his way back to... there. The Heart and Service. It had crept under his skin when he'd read it yesterday and he hadn't quite exorcised it yet — his thoughts had kept tiptoeing back to it over the course of the day, testing the words like he was weighing them in the palm of his hand, the lines hovering in his memory even while he'd been doing strength training and endurance drills. He'd been wanting a moment to look back at it anyway.

"I'm only implying that this is better reading material than some gossip about who wore what dress to the red carpet," Luther says, and there's that light warmth beneath his voice; the ghost of a sense of humour, the one that so rarely comes out, and usually just with her. He's always too stiff and severe and serious around everyone else, hanging onto that statuesque composure out of some belief that a sense of humour is undesirable in a leader. Maintaining that facade around Allison is a lost cause, though. He cracks. He always cracks around her, like she's dug her fingers into all his seams and pried him open.

"Anyway, I'm just trying to find the right one." He clears his throat; shoots a look at her over the top of the book with a question in his eyes, and she's teasing and amused but she hasn't shot him down yet, so Luther begins, and the stanza almost sounds like he's still asking for permission:

"The heart and service to you proffer'd
With right good will full honestly,
Refuse it not, since it is offer'd,
But take it to you gentlely."

The world would not believe her, but Luther looks best when he smiles in these small rooms and these squirreled away seconds. Not the grin plastered on magazine covers and billboards since they were twelve. All blinding teeth with peerless self-assurance, and more often than not, costume mask. This one. This less than perfect, almost slightly crooked, one, even though nothing about Luther is less than the perfection their Father order's them all to be.

Maybe not crooked. Maybe. Something almost like shy.
Another thing Luther wasn't. (Except.

Maybe here? With her?)

Poetry book in hand, he shoots her one last too-quick glance over the book, like she really might swat it out of his hand, before focusing almost too hard on the page she can't see, and Allison wonders if she's just signed up for a truly terrible way to lose her only thirty minutes. But even she can't quite believe her own disinterest in the objective when for a long second, she can't look away from Luther as he starts.

The way he swallows and clears his throat, not as he might before demonstrating something anywhere else, but like he's trying to gather his courage (and when did Luther ever have to?). The way his gaze softens on those unseen words even when his shoulders are still too tight, his voice some wavering grey beyond his normal gray regimental, uncertain, too.

Luther's recitation behind closed doors is such a difference from his public speaking. At press conferences and in front of the cameras, he's wielding the bombastic confidence that had been trained into him, loud and confident and with a winning grin like he's just stepped out of an all-American midcentury commercial. Don't hesitate. Don't trip over your words. Clear, brisk enunciation; never second-guessing.

Here, his voice is softer, lower, more careful. It had been such a small step from their memorising the Iliad, towards poetry then catching his interest later on, although Luther had been the only one that had really stuck with it. They all knew and gently teased him for it — o captain, my captain — but he never goes as far into it around the others as he does with her. It always feels so much like he's prying open a protective casing over his heart, and revealing too much.

While Allison opens her bottle of nail polish, he hyper-focuses on the words in front of him, concentrating on simply setting down one in front of another and then another and another, trying not to let himself think too much about what it means, what this exact selection might mean, what he's trying to convey:

"And though it be a small present,
Yet good, consider graciously
The thought, the mind, and the intent
Of him that loves you faithfully."

(The slightest self-conscious hesitation there before he suddenly hurries and presses on for the next stanza, almost like his foot caught on something and he tripped while walking, has to catch his balance again and scurry along, not letting them linger too-long on that. That particular line.

Even if there is, of course, a very particular reason he chose this specific poem. Luther Hargreeves is deliberate; he never does anything by unthinking halves. He clears his throat again, and continues.)

"It were a thing of small effect
To work my woe thus cruelly,
For my good will to be abject:
Therefore accept it lovingly."

He glances up, then. Still looking hopelessly sheepish, nervous, his heart in his mouth. "It's good, right?"

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Page 8 of 13

for numberthree.

mask or menace deleted scene: f2020; the conversation.

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teen au: if you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

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