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.
no subject
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.