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]

There's a fleeting panic that crosses his face for a second when they first see each other, and she can see the expression skew across his features before he manages to smooth it over. An immediate, brewing worry: What if she'd lied— what if she wasn't actually out of town this week, and instead just wanted to avoid him, didn't want to see him, couldn't tell him the truth and reject him directly—

But there's something in her own shocked, stunned, blown-open look that tells him no. That even after all these years and those thousand miles and their lives walking different paths, he's still somehow convinced that surely they don't lie to each other.

(When he first said he would leave with her, he hadn't lied. He had truly believed it at the time.)

He's not being very subtle, because subtlety is not Luther Hargreeves' strong suit. He's still looking right past everyone as his gaze snags on her, tall enough that he can just look over other men's shoulders and heads. He's completely missed whatever the curator was saying about... some kind of interactive segment, some audience participation recording thing, he has honestly no idea what it is anymore. He can't stop looking and looking at her, drinking in the sight of her.

It's not the same as the magazines, or even her on camera, on his television set. She's more alive, more present, and god, that dress—

He could never have forgotten how beautiful Allison is, but the reminder of it in-person is like being hit with a sledgehammer right between his ribcage. Luther's fingers are tightening; a small spider-webbing of a crack clinks and appears around the edge of his glass, and he has to consciously force himself to relent, to loosen his grip, to remember how to breathe. How to pick up the abandoned scraps of conversation that he'd been pretending to be a part of.

They've met each others' eyes, too far away to say anything, so instead he just arches an eyebrow, raises his drink in something like a toast. Nods toward the bar counter on the other side of the room. A question in his eyes.

An invitation.

Even if she can't extricate herself from her conversation just yet, or even for a while, just as Luther won't be able to for a while either, for politeness and for appearances and for convincing this curator he should call the Umbrella Academy if some ne'er-do-well decides to rob this museum. (But she's still here, and from this moment onwards, he's not able to lose her in the crowd. Some part of him is always watching, paying attention, every part of his concentration shot, orbiting, and tumbling inwards to the swallowing black hole that is the presence of Allison Hargreeves in the same room as him, breathing the same air as him.)

[numberthree]

Every nerve in her body is suddenly more awake than it's been this whole day. Maybe the last handful of days. Orienting to a spot she can't look at, as she has to flounder gracefully for her first response, more smile and amused demur of ducking her head and light laugh at the words said to her than actual words at all.

Which staves off, and saves her, from the fact Luther's name is the one word trying to crawl up her throat, to crowd her mouth. Tugging with furious intensity on a line suddenly attached between the core of her and a space too both impossibly far away and too terrifyingly closer than ever was possible. None of which deters her producer at her other side from rolling into his schpiel. Talking her up.

Allison wants to look. She needs to pay attention to this. To everything about it. She's been waiting and pushing for a break like this one forever. Closer and closer to the limelight she can't take by herself. If there are any number of things she has rumored herself into positions and proposal for along this way, she didn't do this one, and there's a desperately possessive measure to not letting her fingers slip off it either. To being offered it, having earned it, if she can step up to the plate.

Allison expects it to be short, fast, and more than not, not about her.

What she doesn't expect the invitation to get a short preview of the first exhibit,
where the camera crew is getting shots before the crowd will be let in shortly.

Even though she knows as she's doing it that it's the wrong thing. Her first reaction, to being asked, offered a private first highlight, to being taken away from this space, is to look back finally. And it is. It is him. Still him. Smokey blonde hair, and mile-long, unstoppable, stare. That would be all blue if she were close enough to see his eyes. That feels so intense it's like a physical wave slamming into her all over again.

So hard she's halfway to a step that direction,

"Is everything alright?"

And the rubber band snaps again, smarts, sharp against her fingers, her mind. Coldwater slamming her skin, scrambling her nerves, reminding her again, what she's supposed to be doing—making her words too fast, her smile too dismissively charming at the executive she should be charming. "It's nothing. I recognized someone else here."

"Do you need--"

"No. No, it's fine. It can wait." It's not. It can't. It has to.
What is he even doing here? How was he? Why was he.
"I would absolutely love to."

"Good," and he says something about not sharing her with the whole world just yet, laughing at his own business joke, with that same distant, overreaching self-importance of so many other people like him, while tucking her still-captured hand into his elbow to lead her off toward the exhibit entrance and the camera crew.

It's the last direction she wants to go. She doesn't let herself look back, but there's a part of her suddenly caught in the screaming worry she's pressing hard down into her bones, all but letting herself dig her nail into her skin to demand stays under control, because what if there isn't a later, what if he's already gone by the time she's freed up by any means, if she is at all. What if she never makes it any closer, and she's already walking away.

[obediences]

When Allison has to turn her head away, orient her shoulders away, and start walking in the opposite direction, Luther can't help but watch her go like a forlorn puppy, like all the light and the air in the room is vanishing with her. That red dress hugs all her curves and its bright colour stands out in everything; it helps him pick her out of the crowd. Until she disappears through that doorway.

There's drowning white noise in his ears and he doesn't realise his new conversational partner has been talking. Luther forces himself to look back at the woman. She's a few years older than him, but not by much. "She used to be in the Academy, right?" the stranger asks, following his gaze (he is not subtle), with the kind of withering envy in her voice that so many girls had used for the Rumor, for so many years, across so many events.

So. People still mostly remember Allison for her past. Her origins. Something feels bitterly unfair about that, for everyone, and he can only imagine how infuriating that must be for her when she's trying to make it as an actress by her own merits. No, she left that behind, he wants to say, try to explain, but the words are ash and dust on his tongue, and he can't even bring himself to be flippant about it even with his own charm cranked up to maximum. This task to schmooze and woo and be the shining radiant golden son of the Academy, Reginald's best and brightest, the best representative for the school. (With a graduating class of one.)

"Sorry, I need to—" He can't finish his sentence, but drains the rest of his drink and sets it down on a passing tray. "That's the exhibit over there, right?"

He could probably ask someone for a tour — Reginald would have, he thinks, Reginald would've just sneered down his nose and demanded someone show him around — but Luther can't bring himself to. Instead he goes back to the bar, orders another drink, pays for this one himself. Holds it in numb fingers and then takes refuge at the side of the room. He stands out far too much to be a wallflower — people fall into his orbit, drawn in, asking the celebrity questions, but there is, as always, the sense that Luther is still somehow trying to disappear. If he could purposefully fade into the wainscoting, he would.

"Yeah, I averted that diamond heist last month," he's saying instead, his voice on autopilot, that smile on autopilot. "In Vegas, yeah. No, it wasn't difficult— most jobs don't need the whole Academy, honestly, most criminals are no match for me anyway."

He hates it. He hates all of this. He's focusing mostly on his hands, and on not shattering this new glass in his palm.

"Where do they tend to approach from? The skylight. It's always the skylight, if you were wondering. They either send robots or mechs smashing through it, or they rappel down with rope. Security's worse at the windows, and verticality can give people quicker access if they're looking to rob an exhibit or what have you. Yeah."

He talks infiltration points with an affected lightness, the same way that Allison might discuss filming locations or set schedules. It's the job. He likes doing the missions; he hates talking about them, at least when he's the only one fielding the questions, the only one forced to fill up these silences and retell the stories and carry all of it. It's times like this that Luther misses the others the most. Klaus would be distracting everyone, hogging the spotlight and the conversation, and even when cornered Luther would be able to punt at least half of the questions to Diego, since he'd occupied the same spot as teenaged heartthrob, and Ben would—

Ben would—

Clink. He looks down in dismay, realises this glass has chipped, too. He glances back at the exhibit doorway. There's other exits to the museum; he knows that from examining the blueprints with the Monocle beforehand, in preparation for the talks with the owners and pointing out weaknesses in the security and how the Academy could be of assistance. He's memorised the layout. There are four different exits in that wing alone where the ushers and producers and her escort might steer her out, if the Hollywood crew are looking for a discreet escape. He's stuck on that thought, like a hook in his jaw, a dull pain. After this, after everything, after one measly shared moment, if he winds up missing her entirely because he was too shy to just walk across the fucking room and say hello—

God. He hates this.

[numberthree]

If she'd had more time, she would have been able to do a little research on this event -- any research on this event. She'd have at least a handful of facts, and some humor prepared. Commentary on things she'd be excited to see coming, the prospects it presented, and the people who put it together, the reasons behind its installation in LA.

As it is, she can't bring herself to settle on surprise alone when they walk into the first hall, and the hanging art display from the ceiling, of the exhibit title, is 'Space, The Future, and You.' It's so on the nose; all she can do is let her eyes linger on it before they finally make it the alcoves, decade replica uniforms, wallboards around the room, which look like they are covered with the familiar museum and science facts.

It feels like the whole universe is playing some kind of joke on her.

(She hasn't had enough sleep for this kind of joke.

Luther feels like a mirage fading behind her,
and like a magnet, she can't ignore,
pulling harder now out of sight. )

It makes it harder to focus, while she's left alone to look at the first few parts of the neatly marked interior hall path, as the executive excuses himself "briefly" to sync up with his news crew. It's never been her subject, but she's grown up listening to thousands on thousands of facts about outer space.

She's not surprised when he returns with one of his cameramen either. She hadn't thought about it, but she's not actually surprised at all as he asks -- in that way that isn't asking at all, is everything about playing the game, granting favors for future promises -- to get a few shots as they make their way through. It'll be good press both ways.

(The series that will come out later circulates hard for months (before it's usurped by the lead star promo releases for the next season of the show). Allison Hargreeves, rising star, in her vibrant crimson gown against the backdrops blacks, and grays, the white of the moon, costume cases, replicas, and panel boards. But the one that will stick for years is a near-accidental shot, or maybe it's a later-production zoom in, on just her.

The picture doesn't give away the object she's staring at which, happens to be painting filling a whole wall, over three sets of waiting benches. A piece she remembers being on the wall of a bedroom next to hers so, so much smaller in that personal replica. It's not in the photo. Nor the benches. Nor any backdrop. The picture is so close-cropped; it's just her face, her neck, her bare shoulders, the top cut and fold of her dress, and a hand.

She's staring forward and upward, the fingers of that hand unconsciously pressed to her lips as though caught entirely in the world of whatever her focus must be, making it more Mona Lisa for what covers rather than reveals, and the world will argue forever about whether she's on the cusp of rapture or despair.

She'll laugh with delight when asked, but she never does tell.)

It could be twenty minutes, and it could be longer, when someone dashes in to give then a ten-minute warning for camera crew on the doors opening and she released with not much more than a thank you, and a promise for a call later this week, to set up a meeting and talk terms for potential plans between her, him, the producers and directors. It's not now, but it was never going to be now. Now isn't truly about the offer, but about her willingness to show up, to play along, to be part of whatever is needed of her.

Released Allison slips back out the door she came in, her eyes already skipping fast across the crowd, even as she tries to keep the desperate need and trepidation that she'll already be right, he'll already be gone. She's looking for the tallest person in the room. Head and shoulders above everyone else, and he's not the only one, but he's the one she stops on.

Near the bar, surrounded by a flock of dozens, throwing that sharp, but as aloofly above them all as charmingly inviting, smile. The smile that goes almost too well with the suit. The careful style of his hair. The easy casual, but professional posture. Catches under her breast bone, even when she thinks, that's not Luther's smile. It's Space's. Which makes it still his because Spaceboy is as much him, if not more than what he keeps under the costumes and uniforms, but somehow, all at once, not the one she wants to know is still in there.

The one that Luther carried like a secret.

The one that belonged to whispering in a long-gone window.
That tugged out slowly, surely even on the living room couches.

The one she has no right to, and she doesn't know if she'll ever see again.

Determination grinds itself into her spine, the set of her shoulders, tilt of her chin, and she starts to head his direction. Allison Hargreeves, from child-Rumor to burgeoning-starlet, was nothing if not the sum of engaging her challenges and demons, even, maybe especially, the ones that turned her stomach upside down, before they could come for her first.

But she's only made it fifteen feet into the crowd before someone calls her name, in the other direction of the crowd grown even thicker in her absence, and its the show coordinator for the play she understudied in the beginning of the just-passed spring. She has no choice but to smile, as though delighted at the surprise, waylaid again.

[obediences]

Allison's braver than he is, always has been: ready to storm across the room like she's besieging the battlements. His heart skips a beat as he notices her trying to make her way towards him. But then she's waylaid; he watches her get diverted, like a ferocious wayward rip current is dragging her away, through this ocean of people and conversation and sparkling lights and the flutter of camera flashes. Voices blurring into an indistinguishable wall of noise. It's a dizzying array, all the more jarring compared to the quiet, silent hours and days and weeks he spends back at the Hargreeves manor. A dog on the leash, tied up in the yard before he's trotted out like so much pageantry, a kennel show. (Best in breed. Look at his height, the length and turn of his calf, that strong jaw, how obedient he is to commands.)

Luther wants to tear himself away and go to her side now that she's back, but there's still the obligatory hoops to jump through. The governor's here, unexpectedly, recognising him, thanking him profusely for... something, he'd done something last year and he can't even remember what, the missions all blur together in a haze of violence and blood without the other members of the Academy to break up the monotony. Luther pretends he knows, says it was nothing, it was a pleasure, he'd do it any day. Have they had any trouble with any other villains lately. Oh, a weather manipulator? And they ruined the perfect weather of Los Angeles? What a shame. Ha, ha.

This world is paper-thin, like he'd said in those letters. You could rip it apart. They're all just going through the motions, dolls arranged just so, following some kind of arcane social rules and procedures that he hasn't quite mastered — he lives in a world that is always watching and where everyone knows his name and everyone always wants something and he is constantly judged on how useful he can be, how handsome, how marketable, and there really aren't that many differences between Hollywood or their past life at all, is there.

The movement in the room has shifted; the doors have opened, the public are getting their own looks at the exhibit. It frees up the space a little, means there's more room to walk (more room to get over to her), except that Allison seems to be absorbed in conversation with someone who Looks Important. Just like how Luther, himself, is trapped. Moments like this, he wishes he could be nameless, faceless, anonymous. He wishes both of them could be. Then the world wouldn't want and demand so much of them, drinking it all up until there's so little left over for them.

He finishes his drink. His superhuman metabolism runs fast, doesn't really let him get drunk easily, but there've been enough drinks slammed back now that he's starting to feel the buzz, a distant slight looseness in his limbs. Careful, Number One, an inner voice reminds him, and the voice sounds like his father. It always sounds like his father. Be mindful of your strength. Inebriation affects your coordination. Don't break the goddamn exhibit before it's even opened.

The thing is, he does want to step through those doors and go see what the museum has to offer. That whole wing is right up Luther's alley; he'd actually been pretty excited about the idea of checking it out, before spotting her. But as long as Allison stays in this room, then he's anchored in this room making small-talk, trying to smile through a face that's gone rigid. The smile flutters, keeps wanting to turn into a worried frown.

But then there's someone else at his elbow, asking him a question he actually wants to answer. And Luther turns with surprise, a tilt of his head as he recognises the Canadian astronaut, and his demeanour instantly changes, the insincere glint fading. Instead, sounding respectful, admiring: "Oh, jeez, it's an honour to meet you. Seriously. Yeah, space is still in the cards. I'm still certified, yes. I've been training on the new Hargreeves Enterprises shuttle, it's been based on the Endeavour design—"

And for the first time, he lets himself fall back into the conversation, and in letting it have more of his attention rather than just a tiny pittance, a shred, 5% of his focus. This time Luther actually looks at the other man, free hand gesturing enthusiastically, paying attention to the questions and their answers, finds himself asking how well he knew St. Zero, and how sorry he still is for the loss.

It is, at least, a way of making the minutes go by faster.

[numberthree]

It would, in all honesty, help Allison if Luther weren't handsome.

Not that this is a new development. It's as normal as the sky is blue, LA is hectic, and Luther Hargreeves has been the perfect production of America's Golden Boy Dream since he was born. Tall and broad shoulder, well built and yet lithe, golden-haired and blue-eyed, dashing smile and unfailingly polite. He still looks all these things every time she has any chance to glance over.

It would help if she could not get stuck on the way his hands move in the air. If he didn't still give that little respectful dip of his head, she's never been sure he knows happens, when he gives one of those polite greetings. If he didn't lean in all intentively, giving his focus to whichever new person he's talking to when she looks over again. Because she can't stop wanting to look over.

She can't stop wanting to look over when the show coordinator is congratulating her on the pilot. She can't stop wanting to look over one of her earliest male co-stars from a much earlier commercial appearance stops to say hello, and give the side of her, all empty air, a speculative once over while commenting that he's surprised she's alone.

She can't stop wanting to look over when she's stopped for a photo, a sound bite, a quote by roaming reporters. She can't stop wanting to look over when she finally manages to snag a champagne glass for the first time from one of the passing trays, without the action detracting from a conversation. She can't stop wanting to look over when she realizes though she'd started in his direction, she almost always somewhere between the middle and the furthest side from him.

She can't stop wanting to look over when co-star reappears with a laugh, barging into the middle of a conversation he wasn't even part of, disregarding the momentary pause from her and conversational partner. She can't stop wanting to look over when the crowd is slowly starting to thin away to tour and exhibit, wanting to know if he's left to do the same (how much is it killing him to stand around making small talk while space awaits, tantalizing at the edge of reach).

Not that she can miss him. When she is turned toward that direction.
Not that anyone can. He might as well have a spotlight on his head.

Spaceboy, the first boy in space, still the savior of millions.
There's a light to him, to that, even the highest here can't touch.

It's the wrong moment for co-star guy to surface a third time back in front of her, but so is the way he makes no effort to keep his focus on her face, continually having to look back up at her face. It takes all of Allison's energy not to rumor him either into some state she doesn't want to deck or into a completely different configuration of himself because no one would miss this shit.

But there are too many people, even in the thinned crowd,
who would see her, hear her. Part of her only wants it more then.
Considers just rumoring the batch a few dozen people around her for it.

She doesn't. She can't. She smiles, even if it pains her, and then excuses herself, politely, to the powder room as though she isn't headed toward seething when he says to her back 'Don't keep me waiting long, honey,' and she's even more certain her fist would fit perfectly in his eye socket. The ring she's wearing might break his orbital socket, probably along with the finger it is on, too. But it would be worth it.

Still, she doesn't turn around, and her mind is turning over options at the speed of her impatience, even if this kind of thing is as typical in LA as that hectic, and that blue sky, too. Which is when her gaze lands on Luther and something else clicks into place, like a latch closing hard, with a ringing clatter to a lock.

It doesn't start with I need you or could you please or would you mind as the person he's talking to steps away at just the perfect time. It starts with Allison grabbing his hand at his side, before he's even seen her face and slipping deftly under his arm (with a faint twist to making his elbow straighten in midair) before he can try to dislodge her like an unexpected attacker. Her shoulder jostling into his side, while that captured hand gets pressed down hard, pushed flat open, palm against the perfectly smooth, and unlined to the skin under it, curve of her opposite hip.

It starts with the words, "You're my date now. Roll with it," bitten off through her teeth and her lips barely move, as though it were years ago and they were exchanging orders in the street no one else could hear.

[obediences]

He'd finally managed to get distracted for once, to get absorbed into conversation with someone who actually knows what they're talking about, who values the same things he does, who leans more into prim and tidy checklists and worst-case contingencies rather than So who are you wearing tonight, Mr. Hargreeves. And for that brief little window of time, Luther hadn't had his attention peeled for her, his attention lapsed, and so he's caught off-guard by the sudden arrival. He's prepared to pivot on his foot; not to deck this encroaching stranger because the hands are soft, a woman's, but to firmly extricate himself and politely decline whatever she's offering (because of course there have been offers, ever since he turned eighteen and some even earlier, as soon as he hit that growth spurt)—

But then Luther looks down and to the side, and it's Allison, and Allison's voice in that quick murmur in his ear, standing up on tiptoe to reach him, and it feels like a rockslide has landed directly on his head. A car crash, a pile-up, thoughts knocking into thoughts and panicked overwhelmed thoughts, most along the lines of what. Ears ringing, dizzied, stunned by the feeling of his hand suddenly settled on the curve of her hip, warm and soft beneath his fingers even through that gown, the way she fits perfectly under the angle of his shoulder. She's close enough now that he can suddenly smell her shampoo, her perfume. This is the closest they've been in years.

"I," he starts, slow on the uptake and absolutely not rolling with it, but Allison's hand on his wrist tightens further as someone else starts swimming their way through the crowd towards them. Luther doesn't recognise him — his memory for supervillains and scientists is a steel trap, but there's only one Hollywood name whose career he follows so conscientiously — but the other man does have that actorly look. Handsome by way of the common denominator, blandly appealing, all the hard edges sanded down soft and manicured and exfoliated. Luther's hand flexes before he lets the weight of his arm settle around Allison's shoulders (the bare skin of her shoulders, strapless and plunging neckline and even deeper on the other side, if he tilts his head he can see the curvature of her spine disappearing into the small of her back).

He has, plainly, forgotten how to breathe.

"What'd I say about keeping me waiting, Allison?" The other man says as he arrives, smirking, a strut in his step as he sizes up Luther. "And hey. Who's this? Don't think we've met."

And when he feels her fingers dig into the space between his shoulderblades, Luther falls back on hard-trained publicity etiquette and quick recovery. He looks down and it's Space who says, smoothly, with that brilliant smile: "Her date. Who're you?"

[numberthree]

Luther had gone rigid as a sign-post, eyes wide, and stuttering a sentence he never finished while his body convulsively shifted in disjointed places around and against her. Her hand on his hand on her hip, his arms across part of her shoulder, her back, the stutter-stops that were shivering up just barely against her shoulder.

But Allison wasn't looking at him already. She'd looked back across her shoulder at the asshole, already cutting a line directly for her. It couldn't have been more than a minute. Only long enough to cross the room and kidnap Luther without warning (and how is it possible that he's been this close, just a few feet, a few seconds walk, when it's felt like the most of an hour had made her sure Luther was still half a country away, even at visible).

When her fingernails dig into the coat they're on, and it's more to keep herself from peeling right back out from under Luther's arm and doing the one thing she's not allowed to do out here. At the museum. In the whole of LA, and Hollywood, and California at large. Because there are so many things she has to become out here,

But just as much there are restrictions on what she can't be,
And she had just so little rest. The urge of instinct is tighter coiled,
Ready to spring, and all the more willing, tempting for the lax leash of it.

Luther slips into action she wasn't sure would happen, and it's a goddamn epic relief on the same par as being fucking annoying that she has to pretend she couldn't just crumple this man like a piece of waste paper. Instead, she smiles winningly, leaning slightly more into Luther. Comfortable. Intimate. (It's the habit of acting, sliding into character, but there's a prickle starting down her shoulders as she realizes it's not someone random. It's Luther. Luther's hand, and Luther's voice.)

Allison doesn't have time for that, though, doesn't give herself the time for it, any more than she gave herself the time to rumor the man, or gave Luther the time to say no. She takes that relief, and the hand that settles a little tighter on her, and runs with it. Her smile stays light. A little more politely stilted than earlier, but still passingly professional.

"James, this is Luther Hargreeves. You know, from the Umbrella Academy." Without giving him the time, as though she was peerlessly just playing hostess to the moment of networking introductions, she looks up at Luther with that same peerless expression, tilting it shades fonder (even as something in her chest gives a worrisome clatter at everything him) as she caught his gaze. Her voice dropped purposely softer, more winningly fond with him.

"Luther, this is James Covington. We did a commercial back last year." Her gaze flipped back to James, fingertips of her free hand coming up to brush as she paused artfully, even caught at looking polite and sheepish in one. "What was it again: gum? The dental one?"

Decidedly nonplussed, and almost offended, at the reference to being at least half-forgotten, maybe as much as everything in front of him suddenly, his response was flatter: "Cat food."

"Ah, right." Allison's voice never left smooth, as her fingers shifted into a point about remembering now, before her hand fell back against Luther's on her. (Every muscle up her fingers, her palm, her wrist taking in the warmth of that hand, the long, thing fingers suddenly, the weight of both of those against her hip, the solidness of where the rest of his arm curved up her side, along her back.) "Science Diet."

[obediences]

It's astounding how easy it is, to slip into this skin. They've never played house, but they have had to occasionally slip into acts; a mission, a role, effortlessly tag-teaming and lying through their teeth to fool an opponent.

And this is its own beautiful thing, getting to watch Allison operate. Playing James like a fiddle even without using her powers, stoking that stewing simmering bitterness in the man with a few well-aimed words hitting their marks. And when she turns to look up at Luther—

It's an act. He has to remind himself of that. It's the actress he's seeing those doe eyes and hearing that warm fondness from, but it still makes Luther's heart seize in his chest and turn queasily over. Because there's also so much familiarity in it. The way they'd always gravitated to each other; her leaning her chin playfully against his shoulder while they were supposed to be studying, his arm around her at Ben's funeral, the occasional brush of her pinky against his. All the muscle-memory is coming back in fits and spasms, the years tumbling back into place like a series of dominoes. A set of old coats that he'd removed, set aside, shoved into storage and pointedly never looked at until now. There's a slight quiet beat as he lets the years roil through him, getting himself back under stern control, and then the mask is back up.

Science Diet. Right.

"Oh, I heard that one's good for nutrition," Luther says brightly, and it's hard to tell if that blue-eyed earnestness is genuine or if he's got his knives out. Space can wield the Hollywood-style disingenuousness, but it's a rare thing, doesn't sit naturally on him.

But his hand tightens on Allison's hip, quietly tugs her even closer against him, her body jotting neatly against his.

"Thanks for keeping her company earlier tonight, James. I had to wrap up my conversation with the governor before they cut me loose."

—Oh, there's the knife. A slight sharp possessiveness thrumming beneath Luther's voice, a particular edge to his smile. This, too, is a role: the one he has to play, jump through the hoops and walk the walk and be the looming threatening handsome date, that's how these things go. (Except there, too, is the grain of truth in it, and how once he has his hands on her he is, genuinely, reluctant to let go. Even under pretense. Even if it is play-acting.)

[numberthree]

From half-forgotten to doubly outclassed, they can both almost watch his face go pink under whatever reaction it all causes for him, in that little backward brain of his. She probably takes too much pleasure in the way his mouth can't seem to figure out what it wants to say, or more aptly, anything to say that's not only his punctured pride.

"Of course," comes out late, like he had to retrace even to what Luther had said, while not even knowing how to reply to him, torn between his eyes making the circuit of all the places they were touching, and almost bitter in the uncomfortablness that he had to look up at Luther. "I was glad to."

James floats in the pause after, where no one tries to help him, before he stumbles into desperation like it's not apparent, a reeking glowing wave around him. Looking only at her again, somehow. "I'm filming for an action movie right now, and I know they're still looking for extras, if you're still looking to break into the films, I could probably get you in."

Allison would be impressed -- at anyone trying to top Luther, from the ground floor, while being implied to exit stage right, with only genial politeness over sharp edges from both of them -- if she weren't already so far into disgusted that rage is a color outline on his body. She is going to rumor him into being a vegetable if he comes near her ever again in the future. She won't even care if she has to lure him off to a closet first.

But Allison smiles. Lets herself looked touched.
"Of course. Call my agent, and we'll set up a lunch."

Or a convenient reason why her contracts say she can't.

The man flounders, and she wonders how stupid the fool is, and even worse how desperate he seems to think she is, before he can't seem to find anything else to throw out at her like bait, as though she's a fish, willing to do anything for any option laid in front of her. But he finally turns away, with only a last, "I'll do that," looking more annoyed than anything else as he goes.

Allison's shoulders rolled back the slightest bit with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head. She'd be doing humanity, and Hollywood, a favor wiping that slate clean. Still, with him fading into a crowd, Allison looks up, back at Luther, quicker impulse than thoughr at all, and it's arresting without a distraction (a mision, a reason, preparation).

Could he just stop being gorgeous?

This close up he is all towering height, and suited shoulders, over a three-piece, cheekbones, that nose, and that jawline, before she even got to how blue his eyes never stopped being within those pale eyelashes, before she was trapped, pinned, in that realization again, and Allison forces herself to speak before her throat can even dare to try and close up on her like she's a child with no control.

No. She's not doing this. It's just Luther. She lives in LA, where everyone is pretty; she'd lived next to this man for nearly two decades, she still remembers the points when his growth spurts ruined his balance. She can do this.

Skipping again step one, where anyone else might have come out the gate with an apology, Allison ducked straight into simply: "Thanks. I thought it'd probably be inadvisable to disembowel someone on the showroom floor in the same hour I got a promotion."

There's a shadow-quick hint of a sharp tick at the corner of her mouth as the words slip out, almost before she even allows herself to think that she hasn't been able to describe anything that viscerally, violently, and yet casually uncaring in well over a year.

(Not since the last time she had to rumor Bea out of forgetting she had.)

[obediences]

It's all such a stupid bit of huster and bluster, and playing by the tame and toothless rules of a world he still doesn't entirely understand or agree with. Allison doesn't need a knight in shining armour to come swooping in to rescue her from any man; she never has. But as she thanks him for it anyway, his smile flashes at her, genuine now, softening even at that glint of sharpness from her. There she is. This lethal pair who can still joke about things like disembowelling and knowing that it isn't entirely a joke. They'd been raised to spill blood. The sticky corn syrup kind on Hollywood sets isn't the same; doesn't cut to the bone the way they were taught to.

"God, can you imagine the PR nightmare? They'd have to bring in cleaning crews to scrub the perfect marble. Everyone would be horrified. Your career would be ruined."

They don't fit here. Their kind of people don't fit here and this conversation makes it all the more apparent, but for just this moment, he can forget that fact because here is Allison Hargreeves, beside him, under his arm, shining and brilliant and beautiful.

"Anyway, you're truly welcome. Glad to spare you the inconvenient homicide. He seems a pill."

Luther's skipping steps, too. No hello. No I missed you. Falling into this familiar banter, as if they're simply and seamlessly picking up a conversation they started two years ago, is easier. Safer. Safer than broaching how he really feels, because if he opens that box, he's not sure what words will come spilling and stuttering out.

[numberthree]

Allison can't, for the life of her, check the delightedly, conspiratorial smile that grows as he falls into step with her deadpan humor-threat and thread, with his agreement about the logistical nightmare of annoying real-world facts, and how no ones got the time for that kind of nonsense or taking care of people having agast opinions and weak-willed trauma reactions.

There's a shrug of those very bare shoulders and blase sort of impatient-patience that touches her expression even as she doesn't stop herself from saying the first thing that comes to mind this time either. "The men of Hollywood. Utter sweethearts with no clue how to get up the ladder, or irredeemable shits who see no one on it but themselves."

It's absolute hyperbole, but there's a larger core of truth to it, too.

Blithely, she adds. "I guess you're stuck with me now."

"Unless you are headed out soon."
Given his comment about the Governor.

She's too good at this for her good, even as she asks it, without a question, in the same conversational tone. There's an unflinchingness in not hiding from juggernauting those words out right after the first ones. Not clinging like a child to some stupid, desperate hope (that he might be, might stay, might just play along for even longer than two minutes), and not looking at the light to be able just to be prepared for whatever's coming after this moment she stole. He doesn't owe her anything.

(Not that it stops her wanting it all the same.
From hoping despite the brutal realism.)

[obediences]

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.

[numberthree]

She catches it. Or more precisely, she catches the something in his expression that is almost something, and then just as quickly isn't anything at all. If she didn't know him better, she'd have written it off, in anyone else, as momentarily caught in thought, but Luther was more in control of himself than most people ever had to be. Which made it something. Dread tightens like a boulder suddenly took over the whole of her stomach like she had overstepped beyond the necessity of help after he already stepped up to the plate because he had no choice other than to be forced into it, when he still doesn't speak right after it.

But then his words, when they do come, belay it, making her smile a little lopsided. Even as that knot unknots itself only to knot up again, something sudden too aware of time. Of both having it, and the existence of a clock counting down, sand falling through an hourglass, to however long is left of this event.

"Me, too. Aside from basically needing to stay the duration, and all this--"

Allison let one hand raised to gesture generally at the crowd, that had kept her so long, that kept calling her name, pulling her away, to be teaming with more and more faces no matter how many you passed, or greeted, or stopped for. That might not stop even for this fluke in a million.

"--I'm probably pretty freed up from anymore work while here."

[obediences]

It's a sudden lightening of the load, like a deep and constant pressure on his chest has abruptly lessened, leaving him more able to breathe. Probably pretty freed up. "No glamorous afterparties to go to?" he asks, gently, perhaps with a touch of wistfulness, but there's still that small smile curling at the edge of his mouth. Suddenly they have the evening, the whole damn evening, and it's so much more than they've ever had before— even after spending close to two decades under the same roof, they'd never had free time like this, free to choose and do what they like with it—

And now that they have that freedom, Luther realises he doesn't know what to do with it. He clears his throat, glances over her to the large doorway leading to the exhibit.

"You wanna give me the tour?" he asks. Despite the fact that he has the blueprints memorised, the mental map of the museum sitting in his skull like an illuminated diorama. It's not the same. It's not the same as being able to stroll, leisurely, through these semi-darkened hallways (they're murky for this premiere, intimate, not the full blazing light once this place opens for real), with Allison's arm looped through his, and her pointing out whatever things they'd pointed out for her on her private walkthrough.

The curator he was speaking to earlier could probably give him a more knowledgeable, in-depth rundown of the place;

but that isn't, however, who he really wants to hear from right about now.

[numberthree]

Allison is half-tempted to roll her eyes at the light teasing at her expense, but dear god, she doesn't even want to invoke the devil by the chance of putting it on her lips. Because there are so very many all too real ways she could get invited to one, or more than one, by those it would be easy to turn down and by at least two people she still really shouldn't turn down asking for anything tonight.

Even as it collides with the thought that Allison viscerally doesn't want that, because she wants to sleep before she murders someone without stopping herself, Luther is asking that second question. And she's, suddenly equally sure, she doesn't want to sleep at all. Ever.

She doesn't want to lose a minute of this impossible thing to closing her eyes.
She doesn't want anyone to demand it from her suddenly, and to have to give into it.

"I'm surprised you haven't made it inside." There's a tilt of her head, turning the earlier painful irony of the surprise striking too deep in her chest, into something she can toss right back at him as a confided joke. "Or that they didn't make you pose for pictures under the main sign, since it might as well be named for you."

It's easier throwing it at him, light and trite, amused than it felt like the universe had needed to throw it at her like a brick. "Let's go, then, Space. I wouldn't want to be the next person to keep you from--" With a flourish of her raised free hand, as though the movement of her hand across the empty air in front of them was passing over the title floating there, or the idea inside of it. "--The Future."

There's a lilt on several of those words that leans into the title pieces, too, though it really does little more than making her pleased with herself and entirely amenable to just giving up all her circulating to see him through the room he'll understand and recognize more in one circuit than she will in both.

[obediences]

She's smiling and joking and waving her hand and he simply isn't sure how he's supposed to deal with that. Luther can placidly rebuff any end of flirtation from interviewers, reporters, those hyperventilating members of the fan club, the scheduled meet'n'greets, but he is wholly, vastly, unprepared and unarmed for Allison Hargreeves being so winsome and, frankly, cute. Something in his chest seizes, unclenches, at her playful lilt.

But in the end Luther laughs at her joke and the flourish. He takes it entirely seriously and earnestly when he responds: "I was talking to the curator earlier and he told me a bit about it, but then I got stuck out here. Was waiting for the right tour guide, I guess."

They're not touching on any of it: how precious these minutes have suddenly become, how long it's been, how wide that continent-sized space between them has become. Pretending that this is something they do all the time, because that carefully-practiced nonchalance is the only way to get out of this intact.

Let's go, Rumor; he almost echoes, except that isn't her name anymore, she left that behind, so he just starts walking instead. And they swan their way through the now-thinning crowd together, through the doorway into the new wing. And... Well. No wonder that other astronaut from the Canadian Space Agency was invited. Luther pauses in the doorway for a second, struck, before he starts moving again and they make their way further in.

It really is everything. Replicas of older shuttles, spacesuit designs past and present and speculative future, charting the path of mankind working and reworking those specs, iterating, learning, getting better. There is even one corner of a placard dedicated to Spaceboy, with a photo of a younger Luther grinning and giving a thumbsup from the training cockpit, and he stops in front of the poster. A photographer's clamouring and he has to politely excuse himself from Allison's side for a moment — those blue eyes locked on hers, a silent mouthing It'll just be a second — and then he has to go pose in front of himself. Luther's still wearing a winning smile, but only she can detect the faint embarrassment underneath it, like anyone gets when being compared to their childhood photos, except the whole world's seen theirs.

He's back quickly enough, not lingering for questions, and exhaling when he reaches her side again. "You know, Dad was originally the one invited to this?" Luther says, blurting it out suddenly before he can think any better of it. "I'm glad I came instead."

It's still not fully addressing it, everything, all of it, but it's the first hint. A barely-glancing blow.

[numberthree]

He's there, in these quick glimmers. The boy she remembers, the one that it felt like was hers. Stolen from everyone else. Special and singular for so long. Until it wasn't, he wasn't, she wasn't. But there are sudden glimmers that catch her unexpectedly like he should be some other form of person. Someone who isn't that boy. Isn't the boy hidden beyond the white domino mask on the camera's. Isn't the one in those letters, still a mistake turned more hazy dream than reality.

She doesn't quite know who this is.

Except that they keep happening. Those glimmers.

The ease of his laugh and the curl of his smile, right before he answers her with that trained solemn seriousness. That slip of wide-eyed wonder and excitement, all but creating a static around him when he's looking at certain pieces. The embarrassed flicker of fluster, after he's played The Perfect Golden Boy, all suave smile and practiced pose of near a decade now.

Even this. Maybe this most of all. When he suddenly blurts out a confession, and it feels too familiar. Crests an ache in her chest, that makes her pulls her ribs in toward her spine just a little. Too many memories of waiting until they were alone. In the attic. In the living room. In one of their bedrooms. That wall crashing down eventually, where Luther just started expelling words like he'd been holding them in too long and only had seconds to finally admit them before he couldn't again.

It turns her expression soft, unguarded, aching with surprise she tries, and probably fails, to subdue. It tucks her mouth in at a corner impossibly drawing out of her, like a mirror unable to stop a reflection, with a shake of her head, like it's all that much more impossible in the face of that (and the winding relief she's not staring down her father): "I wasn't even in the country eleven hours ago."

It's a strange admission. More real than she likes, as it happens.
Like someone's pulled her strings to orchestra this accident.

[obediences]

Luther's chin snaps to the side at those words, suddenly processing that admission. Understanding clicks and settles over him; another sharp little twinge of relief. "I'd wondered. You said you weren't going to be in town. I thought maybe—"

He's looking vulnerable, equally unguarded, but he still shears off those words, not able to say the rest of that or finish his sentence, that train of thought (even obvious as it is). I thought maybe you didn't want to see me. It's probably revealing too much of his hand.

Which is, in and of itself, such a strange instinct to fall back on when she knew (knows) him by heart, can read most every flicker of expression and shift of mood in him. He's always shown all his cards anyway. And perhaps the more jarring thing is how even two years apart doesn't change that; can't change that, and hasn't. He is still so ceaselessly predictable, steady as the tides. You could set your clock by Luther Hargreeves.

His hands are back in his trouser pockets, trying for nonchalance but revealing bashfulness instead, as they stand between those massive wall panels of lunar photography and true-to-size models. He's not even noticing the rest of the crowd anymore, the other names and faces and people passing by and reading the plaques. Most of them just skim the captions, their eyes just sliding over each piece of paraphernalia and history; Luther, when he goes to museums, reads each placard from start-to-finish.

[numberthree]

Except that he isn't.

He's looking at her with surprised relief, and then.

Then, something Allison doesn't know how to translate. (That's a lie, such a lie, she doesn't want to know if she's right; she does know, as it lingers on his face, making no effort this time to hide it instantly away.) Why does he have to be so much like himself? Everything so starkly familiar, like a page turned back to glance over. Why can't everything about him be different, if that one fundamental thing was?

It would be fairer than her trading sentence ends with his jagged cut-off, and letting the first one roll off her tongue faster than she should let herself, with a slightly pointed raise of eyebrows: "--that I lied?"

The rest is still rolling around in her head, the other, perhaps, half-dozen things she could extricate the immediate cease-fire of words into being. She doesn't want to think it, question, question why she knows, why she knows that she knows (that she knows him, better than breathing, better than leaving).

Even if she looks a little piqued at the almost backward accusation founded by all that space and all that time (two different lives diverged in the woods, and), she can't stop the dice shaking out in her head still.

I thought maybe--

-- you were avoiding me.
-- you didn't want to see me.

-- you haven't forgiven me for what I did.

-- you were only writing back out of guilt or to be polite.
-- you're only standing here because you needed me to solve a problem.

[obediences]

— all of the above.

Luther swallows hard, through a mouth gone dry and woolly, as those three simple words hit their mark like a bullseye. That I lied. That quickfire volley, before she can even rethink and spool them back. There was, after all, a reason that Allison and Diego had always had the quickest tongues, the fastest to their verbal jabs, while Luther just watched their near-squabbling while bemused and exasperated. Even Klaus had run his mouth off far too much, too swift for his own good either. (Perhaps there was a reason, then, that Luther and Vanya had wound up the most quiet and methodical of the lot. Balance in all things.)

But she calls him out on it, and that's part of what he meant, isn't it? I thought maybe you didn't want to see me would mean, ipso facto, that she had lied. Even wallowing in his own self-doubt, Luther would never have directly accused her of it, they'd always been honest to each other, and yet—

"I wasn't sure what to think," he admits, quietly. Accidentally circling closer to this thing, this unspoken yawning gulf between them, the black hole that would swallow them both. The years gone by. The wondering if they even had any claim to each other anymore.

"I wasn't expecting to see you here, or even in the country at all— and then I glanced across the room and there you were, looking..." The corner of his mouth twitches, rueful. "Well. Looking like you do. I wasn't prepared."

He could never be prepared.

[numberthree]

She's always been the one with the sharpest temper. The most exacting words. Only Diego kept up with her in that way, but even Diego kept his mouth in check around their father, instead of the way Allison honed herself on not holding back there. Which makes it a miracle that Allison manages not to point out immediately that if one of them was lying, it'd never been her. Her mouth presses a little too hard, and maybe there it is—the first sanded edge of Number Three.

A world that finally managed to teach her to hold her tongue. Sometimes.
That her insubordination and insolence would cost more in this world.
That she didn't have the time to rumor everyone she lost it at.

Or. And. That she knows. Deeper down than she wants to admit when it'd be easy to take that flare of annoyance and keep it pure. White-hot. Even as it's already fleeing her, dissipating back, and she knows what she's always known. Luther never lied to her. He changed his mind at the last minute, but he hadn't lied before then, and he hadn't lied then either. He just chose something else instead of her. Long enough ago, it's embarrassing to feel stung on it suddenly.

The compliment doesn't entirely go amiss, even if it's not Hollywood smooth.
Maybe that makes it harder to ignore what she can on every other mouth.

(Has been since the magazines started showcasing her at thirteen.
The only girl. Have a gold star and a big spotlight, darling.)

There's something doubtful and yet forcing patience, when she turns to look at the strange planet crawler robot with its large wheels that's next as the group in front of them ambled on finally. She can't remove the stain of feeling like she's having to defend herself, even as she's offering it because it wasn't like it wasn't a surprise for both of them. She never thought she'd be headed home today when she went to bed yesterday.

"I was supposed to be gone another three days. Maybe longer. They said to clear a week and a half at the outset. But we got done early with all the secondary tier scenes, and the retakes, so they sent a good number of us home this morning."

Beat. Just letting her mouth make sound and sense of something else.
"Probably better for the budget than putting us up until everyone finished."

[obediences]

It is, in the end, a defense from her after all, even if he hadn't meant for it to come out that way, like the world's gentlest interrogation. But Luther's exactly where he said he was going to be (even if he didn't, precisely, tell her what was pulling him to LA or where the itinerary was putting him). At least Allison's comment is couched in wry aside, though, wreathed in softer edges by the end of it, the explanation, the mild joke.

"Makes sense," he says, even as his own claim sounds and feels inane to his ears. Luther has no idea what a secondary tier scene is, so he has no way of knowing or confirming. Does it make sense? Sure. Probably.

(But she doesn't lie to him. And so. He buys it as the truth.)

And then Luther starts to flounder, grasping for what to follow that up with and how to get further away from that black hole; searching for something to hang onto and climb and get them out of this quicksand. "Was it TV again or a movie? Should I be looking out for you on the big screen or small, next year?"

Even as he says it, part of him already hates it. Small-talk was never their thing. They'd never had to lapse into these quotidian catchup conversations before, and had mostly managed to avoid it even in their letters, but now that they're looking each other in the eye he's suddenly grasping at straws, trying to cover that stutter-stop.

And it feels stupid. Stupid and unnecessary and like the very last thing he'd ever needed to do with her — they could talk for hours, were never at a loss for what to say — but it's there nonetheless, a metaphorical hiccup like a scratch in the record.

[numberthree]

"The show." Easy enough.

Before, she adds, with a small wave of fingers. "All of this is, too."

The 'this' gesture isn't expansive like before they got in here, when she was painting the clear air all across the front of them with 'The Future.' It's just the raise of hand, waved fingers between them, indicating the whole of this space, this place, the night. Whichever he decided to latch on to it as, they'd all be correct.

It takes her a second's consideration, where her hand pauses in midair, and Allison makes a discreet glance of the arc around them. Though not one that attempted being a secret. Just one that was subtly checking for how distant or not they were from any other groups, stragglers, anyone jockeying with a camera or mic, for what had populated behind that thought. It would not do to cause any of the numbers of kinds of stir's she could by not being aware of that either while deciding to speak in a crowded location.

She leans, what looks like easily and conversationally into his arm, for all the world another patron of the tour, sharing a private delighted moment. Her voice clips quieter so as not to carry, as she glances up through her lashes, only nearly not leaning her cheek against his arm in doing so. "I got home just in time to be told I'm being added to the leads for it, next season, and that I needed to be here to seal the deal."

Allison doesn't know how to stop the fond, all too secretive next-octave drop to her voice, when she leans even closer to him, like, perhaps, this is the greater of the two reveals: "I'm supposed to be dead to the world passed out right now."

[obediences]

She sidles so much closer, eradicating every last inch of personal bubble between them as she leans in for a confidential, confessional whisper (there had been so many moments like that when they were younger: Luther passing a note and folding a tidily-folded piece of paper into the palm of her hand, Allison's mouth against his ear and a honed whisper sans the actual rumour). He feels the electricity of her against his arm like the whole limb's gone numb, a too-sharp awareness rippling its way up all his nerves; his fist clenches unconsciously, then loosens, trying to banish some of that pent-up energy.

And even after everything, even after her abandonment of the Academy and his abandonment of her... he's realising, with a ripple of surprise, that he's proud of her. Of this news. Number Three had been his red right hand, where Number Two had been his bruising left. Allison Hargreeves isn't supposed to be second string to anyone; he'd always known that she was leading material. Right from the start.

"Oh, man. Congratulations," Luther says softly, his lips barely moving, pitching his voice just as low to mirror hers, even as his mouth is wreathed in a smile. "It's about time. I always thought the savvy lab tech should've been on-screen more."

Does he conscientiously, assiduously make time for her show every single week? Maybe.