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]

— 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.

[numberthree]

Luther's surprise, the way he goes just that much stiller when she leans in, without once looking away from her face, isn't surprising. There's something too familiar about all of that. Where the surprise isn't that it happens, but that it's still happening, right now, in this second, like somehow six hundred something days just keep not drowning out the things she never can forget no matter how hard she tries.

Isn't sure she's anywhere near ready for him to be still doing.

The way she isn't ready for how much it somehow matters. Luther congratulating her. Luther referencing her character like he actually has the smallest clue about what she's referencing, more than just some self-aggrandized step on the ladder she was referencing earlier. Her eyebrows knit gentle, only getting halfway there, expression too open for the quietly uncertain surprise, like she didn't quite understand or couldn't quite let herself believe.

"You've watched it?" is quieter than her earlier converted whispers, not in her volume so much as that it's almost like it tumbles out too quickly, too fast, too straight from the confused stumble and catch of her heart.

[obediences]

The look she gets back is pure Spaceboy attitude at his cockiest and most playful, the raised hitch of his eyebrows, shoulders sloped nonchalantly. A man with a secret. (Normally she's the one carrying around all of hers.)

"Of course," Luther says, as if the answer is duh, as if it isn't actually a startling surprise that he's even able to follow her show. Only thirty minutes of recreation per week isn't even enough to watch the full forty-five of an episode.

(Some things have actually changed, at home. With less students to train, the schedule's fallen apart and left him shiftless, his itinerary less scrupulously monitored by the Monocle. As a result, Luther is often hopelessly bored. In contrast to those carefully-metered-out half-hours before, nowadays there just aren't that many distractions to fill up the time.)

"Didn't I say I was your biggest fan?"

That letter, buried in her stack at home, that signoff that had accidentally bruised her heart in his signing of it.

[numberthree]

Of course.

Of course, he says, like that makes any sense.

His words thrown out so nonchalantly, lodging in her chest, her throat, something she doesn't want to name rising in those same places. Filling her chest, trying to get to her throat, the trembling flicker of her lips that can't seem not to tremorous move against each other, but don't yet know how to open, what words to even reach for.

It was a joke. It was a lie. Wasn't it? But he's smiling broadly, unchecked, all bright, sparkling blue eyes and golden smile, like somehow he's proud of it, like he managed that no problem, like there's nothing in the world that could or would or had kept him from it, from seeing her, even all the way out here, not with him, and her fingers tighten a little where they had been laying so casually on his jacketed bicep, and she --

"Allison! Allison, over here!"

It's only that it's become a habit, that she's already pulling up a smile (she doesn't feel, with the network of buzzing in her stomach, that is something fiercer than anything so fragile as butterflies) right as there's a flash to blind her. Rock her a little back on the extremely tall heels hiding under this dress. Fingers sliding, habitually around part of Luther's upper arm.

She knows the person's face -- even through that arrogant, apology of a smile for the surprise, that isn't one and is the other, because none of them really care for more than their byline and their selling dollar -- but she can't place a name. He's still got the camera up, looking over it, and she doubts he'll go without at least one or two more, and something to put with it.

Which, of course, is why the first words out of his mouth are: "You aren't here with Robert's tonight?"

Allison's not surprised about that either, even though she lets her grip slip slightly down Luther's arm, more into the catch of elbow, saying with an enigmatical smile, "Apparently not."

Not a confirmation, not a denial. About either of them.
She really isn't helping the people she doesn't have to out.

[obediences]

His whole body feels like it's gone stiff and rigid, made of cement, turning into a statue after a single paralysing heartbeat. And just one word. A name.

Luther has had a few weeks now to get used to the realisation she'd planted in his head with that letter. (The people you're dating.) Some time to grow accustomed to it, and to somehow try to anticipate the blow when it comes, even if it still catches him off-guard as it always has and always will. But thankfully, this time it isn't like a sledgehammer to the jaw; although he doesn't smile dazzlingly for the camera, just looks a little serious and somber, perhaps appropriately dour for Sir Reginald Hargreeves' son. But he still feels it ricochet through him, pinging back and forth. He takes the moment to gather himself while Allison is posing, her mouth settling into the practiced smile he's seen her leverage hundreds of times at photo ops. (Dating.)

It's an echo of what she'd written, and yet that echo is still rippling here, now, so long after she wrote it. She was one of America's most eligible bachelorettes even when she was in the Academy. Why in the world would that have changed?

(Watching her kiss someone else on television was much, much easier when the sight was confined to that small blocky screen in the basement, and with the clear knowledge that it was all fake, an act, a character.)

Allison handles the photographer with ease, her expression enigmatic like the Mona Lisa, but with the side-effect that when Luther sneaks a glance out of the corner of his eye, down and to the side, trying to read her, he realises that he can't interpret it either.

He waits until they're gone. Until the after-images of the flash have faded behind his eyes, until he can see properly again, feel the weight of her hand on his elbow again rather than his whole body gone numb like his heart's forgotten how to pump blood. And in the end, he just tries for one single word:

"Robert?"

Just the one name, and affected nonchalance in Luther's voice, even as he's the exact opposite of careless and uncaring. He's not quite sure if he nailed the intonation, or if it came out too strained. He can't tell anymore. He's never had to do this before.

[numberthree]

Luther goes a bit wooden next to her, and she thinks she'll owe him an apology in a moment, even though it does seem to be the one normal thing about this. The only part of it like everything that once was. Posing for pictures and pretending to be grateful. It's stranger to be out here, in the real world, all dressed up side by side, that it is to picture them in their costumes, or school uniforms, as the Monocle stood by, with the eyes of a hawk, watch everything anyone near them did or asked them.

He goes eventually, and Allison pulled a breath in, but made it all her effort not to roll her eyes at it. It was one thing to let herself when getting rid of the most annoying leech at the party, and another when allowing oneself to have an overblown reaction because of, also publically invited, paparazzi. She was still learning how to make that look utterly unaffected.

Some people made it look so easy.

She mostly wanted to tell them to eat their cameras.

Which might be why, she's still a little stuck in pushing it down when Luther speaks.

"Roberts," Allison corrected with a drag on the 's,' even though the look she throws him is less enigmatic with the retreat of their guest. Cursory help that happens more than just this one time. "Last name, not first. It's British." But it's Luther's look of unconnected question that makes her realize she has to do it for him. That he might have said he was watching, but it's not like it meant he knew them by any other name.

"He's on the show, too. Derek. The cop."
The main star of the show, of course.

[obediences]

"Oh, right. Detective Graves." Luther doesn't exactly perk up — not at this insinuation — but there's that light of recognition sparking in his eyes and tilt of his head, at least. Because of course Luther only knows the character names; outside of her, he doesn't really give a damn about knowing the rest of the cast, doesn't put in any time or effort to memorising names or faces or learning about their careers. He's too busy assiduously committing supervillains and criminals to his mental rolodex instead, like the world's worst game of Guess Who. Hollywood is horrendously boring and inconsequential in comparison, except for the incredibly specific context of one (1) Allison Hargreeves.

"I guess you guys, uh, go to a lot of these events? Together? As coworkers?"

He's still trying to sound completely nonchalant and probably failing utterly, his Adam's apple bobbing in a nervous swallow. He never really has to lie about anything; he's out of practice, if he was ever in it to begin with. He isn't fully looking at Allison, either, just shooting her a sidelong glance whenever he's pretty sure there aren't any more cameras pointed in their direction. Like he's a hunting hound scenting the breeze, or a man checking for a turn in the wind and trying to read this change in the weather. Gauging her by how she responds, although she's one of the best in the world at keeping her cards close to her chest.

[numberthree]

Luther is still making the mockery of a statue, not quite looking at her, as he affects recognition and questions with that same strange tone. A little too clipped and too fast. Not enough that she thinks anyone else standing next to them would notice. But it hooks somewhere in the back of her mind—the shift to this from even seconds ago.

(She was always good at reading him once upon a time, but two years of learning to pay attention to everything about her own voice, about the voices of the people she's playing off on any stage or set, or those she goes to watch and learn from while they are performing: it's heightened that even more.)

But even there, she feels a little stymied by the inability to tell if the regimental soldiering of the questions is that he wants to know or doesn't care at all. That pepper of too-serious questions that makes her look up at him amused, smile lightly crooked, as she shakes the arm of his her fingers are still folded in the elbow. "Yes. But not that they know that."

"That man is a terror off-camera --" Though her tone makes it clear, the use of that word is nothing like the one they might have used only a few years ago—terror and horror and destruction. So much as something to be settled with. "--with an entourage of three almost at all times. I'm pretty sure he still has his personal facialist coming in to see to him daily between sets."

With practiced air of touching on something that is rather known around this world, but not the one she came from, she tugs him to follow her to the next exhibit piece, by that same hand on his elbow, even as she continues on. "But it's good press for keeping the show in conversations and publications, even if it is unconfirmed, when the tabloids pick up shots of us out rehearsing or getting coffee. It ends up being beneficial for both of us."

[obediences]

"Ah," he says, with the sound of dawning understanding, and there's a slight ebbing of that tension: some of the knots in Luther's shoulders loosening as he breaks into movement, lets her draw him further on to the next exhibit, although his concentration's shot and he's not doing his usual meticulous read of every single plaque anymore. He's still spinning; untethered, caught off-guard, processing that faint distant relief.

Of course Allison uses the tabloids, and cultivates a purposeful ambiguity around her co-star if it helps her. It's just another weapon in the arsenal.

(He is so relieved.)

"There's so much out here," Luther says after a pause, his voice quiet enough that only she can hear him, looking at the replica moon lander in front of them although he's not actually looking at it, "that I don't get. The hoops to jump through. The public image to craft. I mean, we did that too, but at least at the Academy we were known for our work more than, I don't know, relationships, fake or otherwise."

Because there wasn't supposed to be anything more to them than the work, really: the cocksure smiles, the bravery and derring-do, the training, the missions. That life had, in its way, been brutally simple. (But empty.)

[numberthree]

That first word is so small and punctuated Allison thinks maybe just to let it lie there between them. That she could focus on the moon lander, a sizable replica of something she's certain Luther had a tiny version of a million years ago on one of his shelves, with all the little planes and other space models.

She still doesn't care much for space really, more than that it exists (more than that, everything about it only reminds her of him; too many memories of his excitable, thrown up face babbling about whatever new thing he'd found like if he didn't get it out, he might pop). She is still staring at it when he starts talking again, quietly, making her leaning a little in toward him.

"Because we didn't have any." Allison winces just a brief flicker when her words come too fast. Too pointed even for not being an attack. For that fact, she doesn't entirely believe that either. Diego and Vanya's little band, before Vanya was shipped away. Klaus and Ben, before Ben died. Her and Luther, before.

They all came to harsh ends. Nothing grew in that place.
Nothing lived long enough to thrive. No one chose those things.

"It is complicated," Allison stresses the second word more than the third; there's very little about being challenged Allison has ever found offputting. Going back to his point rather than apologizing for her slip. "I do still feel like I'm constantly learning a litany of unwritten rules, in a world made of doors and windows and ceilings and floors you can only see once you bump into them and not before."

And if she happened to rumor her way through most, well, she didn't regret it either.

[obediences]

"I mean, and that makes complete sense. I'm only out here doing this sort of stuff for a few days at a time, and I never really know how it's supposed to go, whenever the itinerary isn't planned for me in advance. I just know how to do the one thing."

They had been raised as weapons, not as people.

It's a bit of honesty that he had never offered to the rest of the Academy, and that he'll only give to Allison. And yet Luther stops just short of saying how thin and paltry and unsatisfying the one thing has become. He's never gotten far enough to admitting it outright, even when the others were rebelling and chewing through their bridles, bucking their father's authority.

Although he's had some time now to start gaining a slow-growing sense of it. To look around at what he'd been left with after everyone else was gone, and to find it lacking.

Her hand is still on his elbow; after a moment Luther glances down, as if verifying it's real, he's not imagining things, and that slight weight and pressure really is Allison. Touching him. More contact than they've had in over two years. He clears his throat.

"You look like you've been figuring it out well, though. Doing well for yourself out here."

[numberthree]

Allison can't quite help that there's a small bit of pity for Luther, as much as she doesn't want it to be there, for the words he says just as quietly. It might not be easy. Some of it might even feel like being punched in the face, unexpectedly, at times. But she was out here. Learning more. Seeing more.

Maybe it showed her how much she'd never known, how much their father had kept from them, but at least she knew it now. Had the chance to know. To change it. To control what she knew, and to never let anyone have that kind of control over her anymore.

She blinked back from the thought as Luther cleared his throat eyes, raising from where her fingers were still wrapped around his elbow loosely. There was the reflexive tear between tightening and relaxing her grip happening, even as she looked back at his face. Her cheeks suddenly feel warm, feeling uncertainly like she'd overstepped.

Except that he didn't pull away, which made it a little harder to breathe, to look away, as he spoke. Studying his face above hers. The careful, solemn honesty that looked like it could have stepped out of any of a million other memories. That looked like the day before she left, except not, too. There was something there, wasn't there.

For all that, it was the same, and his face was still the face that staring too long like this made her pulse do everything it shouldn't, there was something else there, now, wasn't there? A shadow at the edge of the blue in his. In his tone. Something that wasn't quite apologetic or regretful, but was ... something.

"Maybe," Allison said, finally convincing her body to breathe in again. "I'm trying, at least."

Then, her head tilted, overly considering him and the people near him, before she said, "You know what? I know what you should really see in here." And that if anyone didn't need to see the same things they'd seen a million times, it was Luther. Especially if she could give him something, he might never have. Her hand slid, down his arm, more toward his wrist, his hand, impulsively, "Come with me."

Without waiting for an agreement, she bustled them out of the line, dragging him with her, and headed them in a different direction between the partitions of the big area, between the sectioned off areas of walls, toward the only thing that had stopped her heart when she first came in here, too. It'll only take past the second portion after all, given once they pass it, the reason for their destination fills up the entirety of the wall they're facing, long before they'll be right in front of it.

[obediences]

It's a half-finished, blurted-out "What?" from his lips, before her hand is catching his and she's dragging him onwards. Like an adventure, like Allison pulling him into the great unknown, and he'd follow her anywhere and everywhere. Through the crowds, and into the wing where her private tour had taken her earlier. It's something of a dead end, benches laid out before the wall with nowhere else to go.

Except it's everything.

Earthrise. That famous photo. The view he's been longing after, training for, preparing for, getting certified for, for years. It's a massive blown-up painting reproduction of the same picture he's had sitting on his bedroom wall at home, that small snapshot like a carrot at the end of the stick. This larger version dominates the whole hallway they're in; it makes them feel awfully small, looking up at it. The white text quote overlaid on the black heart of space: We set out to explore the moon and instead discovered the Earth.

Reading those words twinges his heart, and like there's a thick cord tied from his heart to his fingers, muscle and sinew, he instinctively squeezes Allison's hand tighter. A bit too hard, grinding her fingerbones together, before he consciously loosens his grip.

Even Joni Mitchell had sung about it. In a highway service station / Over the month of June / Was a photograph of the Earth / Taken coming back from the Moon / And you couldn't see a city / On that marbled bowling ball / Or a forest or a highway / Or me here least of all…

"Wow," Luther says, in the end. Inadequate. His words never feel like they're enough. He continues, haltingly, "That's beautiful. I mean. That goes without saying. But it is."

Head craned backwards, chin tilted up. He rarely feels short, but he's actually too small here in the shadow of this. And it's just a picture. (He wonders, again, what it'll feel like when the base is finally completed. When he gets to be camped out there for real.) He's quiet for a moment; just looking in silence, drinking it in, still holding Allison's hand, possibly having forgotten outright that his fingers are still entwined in hers, ring finger and pinkie hooked through hers.

Then he seems to blink himself out of the reverie. Look over to the side again. A shy smile flickering across his face. He wouldn't have seen this room, off the beaten path, if she hadn't been here to use her connections and take him to it.

"Allison. Thank you."

[numberthree]

Allison feels it the first second he realizes it's there, his step just barely faltering before speeding up, and while she knows as well as anyone could how much he's loved space since he was small, it's never meant the same to her. It's a nice photo and all, but it isn't this.

The way Luther stares up at it, gone so still that he might not be breathing anymore. Head tilted back, having to look up to something so much bigger than him, the way almost nothing ever is. Fingers tightening on hers in a way that is so familiarly alarming, and ingrained, that she doesn't even wince at the blossoming shriek of pain, except for a faint tension at the edges of her eyes. He's lost in the blown-up image, and she's lost in the blown open state of his face.

Luther Hargreeves has always been handsome. Teen heartthrob and All American Boy, with his gold-blonde hair and his bright blue eyes, with his polite 'ma'am's and sir's, and his smile that made crowds of girls screams. That will never not be true. But it's not that. Or it is that because that will always be him, but it's so much more. It's this.

This thing that cuts through all of it and lays his face so bare it almost hurts to look at. Turns awe and yearning and holiness into a color, an expression Allison hasn't seen in years. That boy, he keeps carefully locked away in his chest, in his heart. Dreaming forever of this one thing that captivated him within everything else, from so young. Words soft, reverent, moved, just falling from him as he stares at it.

Allison can't even pretend she isn't looking at him when he finally shifts and looks down to her at his side, with that small, shy, hesitant smile, and for the first time, she doesn't feel embarrassed about it. There's no room for that. For the first time, it's like staring into the sun -- maybe the way Luther feels staring at the world on the wall; shining color in the surrounding void of silent darkness -- when she can finally see all of the side of Luther that used to be hers, and only hers.

Not for the screaming crowds, or the morning reports, not for the cameras or the domino masks, not for the interviews, or their other siblings, or anyone at all. Not hers anymore, but also not gone either. All she can do is nod, looking at it. Him. Still there, under it all. Still just as impossibly perfect as ever.

"Do you--" And the words are stumbling out of her mouth, looking up at him, before she even knows they're coming. Except even as she catches them and they knot suddenly in her stomach to finish, she doesn't stop them. "--want to get out of here?"

[obediences]

Luther looks down at her, his own heart in his throat, swallowing the words that want to come tripping out:
I thought you'd never ask.
Yes. Always.

What does come out in the end, after a heartbeat that lasts a little too long, is wry and just a touch playful: "Yeah. I guess I could squeeze you in."

As if she wasn't the first thing he'd asked about in the letter, the first place where all his thoughts had collapsed the first moment he knew he might be in Los Angeles. The entire rest of this museum and its glitterati and cultural people-of-interest simply don't exist anymore; hadn't, since the moment they'd finally managed to gravitate back to each others' sides and strike up a conversation. He can't actually remember if there was anyone else on the shortlist Dad gave him, the contacts he was supposed to track down and chat up, but what he's already accomplished tonight will have to do.

Because nothing else matters.

He squeezes her hand again, carefully-measured this time to just be the faintest application of pressure, and then he lets Allison start steering him back through the museum. And even as they start ducking towards the exit, there's one regretful thought buzzing in his skull. He doesn't want to say it. Saying it aloud makes it painfully real, but he has to say it:

"Just so you know, uh, this is my last day in town. My flight back is in the morning."

He doesn't want to think about it, but their pool of available time together is measurable. Shrinking, like Cinderella counting down to midnight. That cup of coffee he'd wanted to get, it won't be possible tomorrow. Each minute is hopelessly precious.

[numberthree]

Luther might not remember if he has more to do, but Allison does.

She knows she should stay, wander, mingle, talk to as many people as want to talk to her, be caught in this dress, laughing and smiling, by as many cameras and journalists as are there, see the night out. That there's a sort of implied timeline of expectation. But one that no one requested, informed, or even implied once. It's not entirely like ditching, but it still snags somewhere in the box of knowing-doing what she supposed to at her level is overdoing it immaculately, too, so people can't find faults, so that she's everywhere, unavoidable, unreproachable.

But she doesn't care at all -- the whole of that idea, of the world, even the noise of the crowd not far from them, burbling along is a distance hum -- when Luther stares at her a too long, possibly suggested too much, moment, before his expression shifts, turning playful. His words make her smile a little, clouding up her chest with relief.

Luther squeezes her hand, and as much as she knows she should leave it at that, relief, her heart never did play fair where it came to Luther. Even when she doesn't want to, rejecting one set of priorities makes it so much easier to want to deny other unpleasing realities. She lets go of his hand. Casually. There are exits closer than the front, thankfully, so they won't have to press back out through the whole reception crowd, where they'd both be inevitably stopped a half dozen, dozen times first. It's out a side door and then looping back one side to where the taxi area is.

If she was feeling guilty about it, most of it vanishes at his words.
In the easy return of, "We'll just have to make the most of our time, then."

Even the exhaustion at the edge of her thoughts could be made to wait. Would. For Luther.
Who was already halfway out the door, on the night they weren't even supposed to be able to have.

[obediences]

They're stepping outside into the night air: brisker than during the daytime, but still warm and lovely even in the autumn with encroaching winter, so much warmer than it would've been back east. He wouldn't be surprised if there's already snow dusting the ground once he returns.

They're not the only people starting to leave the gala in trickles and streams, either; there's a line at the taxi stand, which they have to obediently shuffle into. Neither of them have cars of their own, nor personal drivers. (She will in a few years' time, and he would back home, but — I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.)

So they join the queue, and Luther resists the urge to shove his hands in his pockets. The air feels fresh and freeing in his lungs, and he finds himself looking around the street and the palm trees as if he's never seen them before, drinking them in with clear eyes and a second perspective. He wonders what neighbourhood Allison lives in. Wonders what she might have in mind for tonight, now that they've ducked their other responsibilities.

"You got any recommendations to check out in the middle of the night?" Luther asks, and there's something of a laugh buried under those words. A little incredulous, a little delighted, disbelieving that they actually get to do this. Step outside the lines. Go do whatever the hell they want. He can't stop looking at her, sneaking glances to the side they shuffle forward in the line, waiting their turn. (They don't notice yet that there are too many people, and too few taxis.)

[numberthree]

Allison's exposed skin prickles as the shift from the inside high running air conditioning to the warmth of the fall night outside the walls of the museum, and she's in the wrong clothes for this, they both are, but it'll have to do, too. There's an excited skip speed up to her pulse as the door shuts behind them. A physical sound of their escape, as she does something that would, could, might be conceived as wrong for the first time in forever that doesn't have to do with being inconvenienced or impatient.

That makes her glance over at Luther as he speaks, and feel that hum into her skin, into her bones. It feels like any number of times when they were younger, when she knew she was dragging him into something she shouldn't, but he was right there at her side, at her shoulder, in step with her, in hidden-away places, never forced or rumored or drug there against his will. It swells in her chest. Like it hasn't in two years.

It might mean nothing now (after; because)
but it's still there. For her, at least. In her.
(She wasn't the one who backed out.)

"There won't be a whole lot open, but there are places you could see or walkthrough. The Griffith's Observatory. The St. Monica pier." She's counting things even as she counting certain others out. Other museums and the downtown art walk, the bright lights and big crowds of China Town. "Though, didn't your letter just say something about coffee or something?"

She can't remember entirely, only that it was asking for her time during it in that calm, quiet, off-handed way of his. Almost like the asking for it was too big and to be done small. Like she might not want to. Reminding her of her earlier words, You thought I lied?

"There are a million pretty great coffee places if we just want to sit and talk."

[obediences]

This time, Luther can't help it. He does just blurt it out, exactly what he's thinking. "That's pretty much all I want," he says, and feels his cheeks heat in a faint blush, and he's grateful that she likely can't see it; it's dark outside and they're facing away from the brilliant lights of the museum exterior, all decked out for the grand opening.

But it's the truth. He doesn't care about landmarks, or museums, or famous restaurants, so long as Allison remains by his side. They're probably both tapped out on culture for the night, anyway.

And there's the matter of their clothes, but he's not even going to broach that as a logistical problem. There isn't time for him to go back to his hotel, and her to wherever-she-lives, and for them to meet back up again afterwards; it'd be too many precious minutes wasted, for something pointlessly aesthetic and insignificant. Because it doesn't matter. The city's just going to have to put up with them in their handsome finery.

"So, wherever you wanna go. That's fine by me."

[numberthree]

Allison finds herself staring at him what might be a few seconds too long, or too hard, after Luther's answer. Those words shoved out so fast as if they couldn't be kept in. He's got specificism down, but it's a little winding to think about there not being some other distraction in the fact of that intensity. To just be sitting somewhere, across a table, with only each other to look at.

Her life had been made of so much of that, for so much of the greater share of the decade behind her, them, and yet, still now. Now, it felt precariously like an overly large magnifying glass affixing itself above her. And yet. Did she want anything else, herself, anyway? Did she want him distracted by other things if there were so few minutes and hours until he vanished entirely from her life again?

"Coffee it is, then." Her smile is easy, as much a trade of her childhood as these last two years Hollywood. The couple in front of them starts loading into a cab, and it moves them up to the front of the line.

[obediences]

Coffee is so small, so innocuous, but he still feels his heart swell in his chest, a warmth suffusing him just at the thought of it. The possibility. They shuffle a little forward again, and he's waiting for this cab to drive off and the next one to pull up, but it lingers instead, engine running patiently.

"Where you headed?" the driver shouts through the window, and Luther looks at the open door in the back, the two people already seated in there, their heads craned to glance out at them.

"Oh no, uh, it's fine, this one's full," he says politely, demurring, trying to shy backwards like a spooked horse.

But the line is stretching behind them, and there still aren't enough taxis to ferry everyone out through the streets. A packed and crowded event, people all starting to disperse at around the same time, and flooding public transit. He's not used to sharing; not like this.