It's coquettish (flirtatious?), but her words still catch like they're trapped in his throat. Stuck with me, she says, as if being stuck with her is something awful. An inconvenience, a blight on his time, as if it's something he hasn't been wanting and craving and desperately missing for the past two years. An undefinable something flickers across Luther's face, too quick to catch, but also too quick for him to suppress it either — he has his moments, but he isn't anywhere near the actor that she is.

The pause goes on just a heartbeat too long before Luther's able to reassemble some semblance of the banter, steady out his voice when he says: "I could think of worse fates than being stuck with you."

A tilt of a shoulder, a half-shrug. "And I'm here all night, so I'm all yours." And then, because he can't help but tack on the relevant information and relay the stakes and tell her and maybe, in one small way, prevent the party from whisking her away from him again— Luther's eyes remain steady on hers, his voice now serious as he adds: "My flight's not until tomorrow morning."

It's more time than either of them thought or expected to have with each other today (which had been nil), but it's still a cold hard dose of reality. An expiration date. An awareness that, Cinderella-like, there will be a time when this ball eventually has to end—

But for now. He's hers.