It felt, somehow, patently absurd that everybody else could take this sort of thing for granted. (Like that first-ever Dear Allison, agonised over and paper scrapped and redone and rewritten before he'd finally dared to pin it down in ink.) That, somewhere out here in the world, somebody could buy Allison Hargreeves ice cream cones anytime they damn well pleased, instead of waiting for a night that feels like an unexpected and un-earned miracle dropped in his lap, and which he isn't even sure when he's going to be able to do it again. This precious, desperately rare thing.
(And that train of thought is a slippery slope, of wondering What would it look like if he could do it anytime he liked, but Luther can't let himself go too far down that particular road.)
"Sure," he says, because it's logical, rational, and makes it sound more a fair-handed exchange rather than the fact that he, very suddenly, wanted nothing more than to buy her something. The gentlemanly gesture that was a part of dates, supposedly, or so the movies had taught him.
Once he's paid and they've armed themselves with spoons and napkins and the hot, crowded shop has spat them back out into the warm night air towards a few circular tables and parasols (ha) set up outside, he also suddenly realises that this might be logistically more dangerous than he'd expected. He looks at Allison's gown with a little bit of alarmed concern.
"We might not have thought this through all the way. Are we gonna put you out thousands of dollars if you wind up spilling on that?"
As if they hadn't already risked so much worse in the past; as if, in another life, her pleated skirt hadn't been hopelessly stained with someone else's blood.
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(And that train of thought is a slippery slope, of wondering What would it look like if he could do it anytime he liked, but Luther can't let himself go too far down that particular road.)
"Sure," he says, because it's logical, rational, and makes it sound more a fair-handed exchange rather than the fact that he, very suddenly, wanted nothing more than to buy her something. The gentlemanly gesture that was a part of dates, supposedly, or so the movies had taught him.
Once he's paid and they've armed themselves with spoons and napkins and the hot, crowded shop has spat them back out into the warm night air towards a few circular tables and parasols (ha) set up outside, he also suddenly realises that this might be logistically more dangerous than he'd expected. He looks at Allison's gown with a little bit of alarmed concern.
"We might not have thought this through all the way. Are we gonna put you out thousands of dollars if you wind up spilling on that?"
As if they hadn't already risked so much worse in the past; as if, in another life, her pleated skirt hadn't been hopelessly stained with someone else's blood.