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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[numberthree]

It's not like all those years ago, overreacting to the thought of him dying.

It's a choice, but it's not an automatic assumption or an impulsive over roll that she didn't catch until it was already over. There's a network of uncertainty, of knowingly overstepping, when the bare muscles beneath her fingers suddenly flutter. Not wanting to, but ready to let go, if the next second his whole body lurched away. Or her wrist was caught in the same snakebite iron vice of a grip, hand lifted meaninglessly back away.

But it doesn't. Luther doesn't.

He just turns his head toward her finally, and she can't see his face as clearly as she wishes she could. As if it were daylight -- and she knows this wouldn't be happening if the room was full of light streaming in the windows from the outside, or yellow-white warm from the ceiling, or bed table. And the thought of losing it for anything, when it's not taken back (not yet, not yet, not yet), lodges in the sudden kick of her heartbeat, the way her hand settles down against his arm, the muscles there, rough skin with the smallest stubble of rough hair. Less a question, a butterfly ready to drift away, fingertips tightening a little, spreading a little.

It's more than she could ever had asked for, even in words, which makes it even more surprising when he turns toward her, shifting the whole of the bed with him, but doesn't turn himself entirely. She wonders only the barest second about the logistic of that, how much even taller on his side, because of those shoulders, but it vanishes, sudden and swift on a sharp breath in her nose when Luther's hand finds the side of her face, and then his thumb, maybe larger, maybe rougher, but somehow also so soft, infinitely as gentle as though her skin was a pane of glass, traces across her cheek with the pad of itself.

And for a moment, Allison goes so still it's like that one touch might shatter her.
In the way that time, and desperation and destruction, and deliverance from both can't.

And this, this, this is the problem that lights every night with moonlight. Jagged reverence, only learning to breathe in the roughness of those words, the absolution of suffocation resisting believing in the myth of breathing, that sounds so deeply torn and worn, holey with wear and living through it, snatched from the jaws of death itself, saved on that truth, impossible gratitude still crusted with drying blood and scar-scroll work. That she's here, that she's real, that feels that way, he does, somehow, like the absence of her mattered more than can be touched, the her without all the pretty lies and sane smiles.

This one. This her. The real one. Inconvenient. Impulsive.
Impossible, and brash, and sometimes far more broken than whole.

The one who has lost all sense of the bed her body is resting on, or even the rush of her heart, against Luther touching her, choosing to touch her. Allison isn't sure at all she remembers how to breathe, when the impulse she's trying to fight, is leaning into those fingers, that hand, like she isn't already there. In his hands. Wherever he wants her. Whatever he wants of her. It's already his. It always has been.

It's like pulling teeth to pull anything like sane words into an order, with him curled this close, his hand bracketing her face, starting to feel her heartbeat in her teeth, her ears. "I'm sorry you had to go through that. I never would've--"

She never would have hurt him with that. Let anyone else use it. Touch him. Hurt him. Like that. Use her as a cudgel against him. She shook her head, minutely, almost unwilling to move enough it might cause him to lift his hand, again. "I wish I could take that back for you."

[obediences]

It's like the most delicate switch has flipped. They never do this except unthinkingly, except now he is, rather, thinking about it. Noticing the closeness of every inch where their bodies happen to touch, because she laid down a challenge and he called her bluff and now she is way, way too close and in his bed and he's touching her face and this, again, is more than he bargained for.

And yet Allison has the outer edge, and so there's no graceful way he could shrink back and meld into the wall, or clamber over her and flee his own room.

And besides.

He doesn't want to. The closeness is surprisingly welcome; it anchors him, reassures him that she's actually here, isn't some figment he's dreamt up or some passing mirage he kept spotting in Dallas. He can feel the huff of her breath against his hand as she talks.

(Her lips against the rough stubble of his cheek; her hands latched onto the collar of his shirt.)

Up until about a minute ago, this whole scene had been excusable, had been something he could rationalise. His best friend and their late-night conversations, nothing out of the ordinary, this was some form of normal, this was fine. But now it feels like he's accidentally tripped over something and fallen face-flat into it, unsure how to recover. His chest is impossibly tight and her skin is too warm beneath his hands and his fingers are still trailing the line of her jaw.

"Take it back? It's not like you chose to strand us across multiple years." Even saying that feels like he's squeezing breath through strained, clamped lungs. The awareness of those years, the wedge driven between them all.

"It's my fault I made that assumption, anyway. It probably— I mean, it probably would've been easier to handle. If I hadn't stopped. I shouldn't have stopped."

Like she, apparently, had never given up on him them.

[numberthree]

The least helpful, least rational part of her is listening -- even as she can't miss all his words spoken this close, this certainly -- because everything else is so much louder, and he says hadn't stopped and should have stopped so close together, and she has to bite down the overwhelming urge to let don't stop scramble out her mouth.

Completely off the actual topic of any of the actual words he said.
But she's not that insane. Even if she has no clue what she is now.

Because Luther's fingers are still edging along her jaw like somehow he has to make sure all of her jaw bone is still there, still attached. Which is ludicrously untrue, even in her head. But so is the fact she can't keep her head from tilting, following the feeling of those fingertips in the dark, the way it makes her chin start to lift away from her neck. Her pulse ratcheting. Desperately confused, but far more unwaveringly, uncontrollably desperate for him not to stop touching her. The ground below her to crash into so far down suddenly.

A shiver, manic and persistent against the frozen hold of her muscles, trying to slide with the force of a battering ram down her spine, to spread through her as the softest static tingle was left every place his finger passed beyond and her mind went all the wrong places. Because. How much of her face would fit into the cup of that hand, if she so much as turned those few centimeters the opposite direction?

But, for all of being the one who charged the red flag of just a few texted words, she can't suddenly. Make sense of any volley. Because the other side of that hairline crack is she shifts that much and he just lifts his hand and stops altogether. This thing. This impossible thing. Where it suddenly would make so much sense if she were dreaming. If she fell asleep on her bed, only thinking about bothering him before she did. There were so many things she dreamed about at night, in the dark, that she never looked at in the daylight.

She shook her head, but her voice has that wrinkle in it instead, a little too high, a little too fast, "You did what you had to, to make it through."

"That wouldn't have been good for you either, if I -- if none of the rest of us were --"

Does it even work.

If they keep saying the same words.
Even as the shape of the problem changes.
Because it was never just about time. The family.

Because just surviving hadn't ever been enough for her, had it?

[obediences]

Luther holds her like something precious, like something that might break and snap between his fingers if he applies too much pressure. (Or might dissipate into nothing, vanishing right between his hands. He's wondered, for a while, what it looks like when someone Ports out. If you had a camera running on them like Reginald's nighttime monitoring, would you be able to capture the exact moment it happens? Or does it only happen when you aren't looking? Whenever you blink, letting your gaze slide off them for one unattended second?)

Allison moves infinitesimally, her neck starting to arch as she leans slightly into the touch; he can feel the shift of her muscles and the angle of her cheek beneath his hand, a tectonic drift. They're still far too close (and yet not close enough—) for comfort: both lying on their sides, mirroring each other, where they can easily look right into each others' faces and read those splintering, earnest, aching expressions by the dimness in the room, having grown adjusted to the darkness. That murkiness is a lifesaver; it blurs Allison's edges, makes it safer to look at her. Where those few inches of mattress between them in the bed are a canyon and yet Luther has, for once in his life, gathered up all the paltry scraps of his courage to reach across that invisible barrier and somehow, inexplicably, miraculously, he's still touching her.

His hand slides slightly to the nape of her neck, the side of her throat, the now-long-healed scar he can still trace the trajectory of. He'd unthinkingly touched it once, in the late-night darkness like this. This time, he can also feel the delicate lines of Allison's vertebrae, the knob of her spine beneath his hand. It would take so, so little to snap a neck or shatter bone with the wrong pressure. It would take so, so little to rewrite someone's mind with the wrong word.

She's trying to grant him the same absolution he gave her.

You did what you had to, to make it through.
It was hard, right? Losing everyone and getting stuck here. [...] No one gets to tell us how to deal with the end of the world, right? Not even each other.

And yet, it's true. They hung onto what they could, took whatever parachutes they could find. And right now, Luther's distinctly aware of the fact that he's probably grasping onto another one, another safeguard against the tumbling free-fall. The comfort of her being right here— and god, but he never wants it to end.

There's so much he could say about the rest of their family and their coping mechanisms and the ways they got through the time, like his surprise and pride at Klaus mastering his abilities for once— But there's a strange shiftless restlessness beneath Luther's skin, and he can't bring himself to name the others anymore. Can't talk about them anymore, with her in front of him. The others don't belong here in this dark and quiet room; it doesn't feel right to bring them in, when Allison's gaze and the thoughtful turn of her mouth is so close.

"We should probably start listening to each other and actually take it to heart already," he says, sounding a little distant, a little contemplative. It's running in circles, handing forgiveness back and forth to each other while still finding it a bitter pill to swallow themselves.

But he gets it, though. They're both stubborn in exactly the same way. It's always so much easier to be kinder on each other rather than themselves.

[numberthree]

Luther isn't stopping. Luther isn't stopping. Luther isn't stopping. Luther isn't stopping.

His fingers trail down her skin, across the hook of her jaw, and on to her neck. The infinitesimally thin, fragile skin that covers everything between the powder-fine sides of itself. Bones, and breath, and blood. The racing, hammering skitter of her pulse, drumming in her ears, and even that can't pause what always happens when her instincts trigger this direction.

Her father's speaking, cold and crisp and commanding, 'Your voice is your greatest asset, Number Three. Don't ever let anyone take it from you.' Of the ballgag Dr. Terminal shoved between her teeth and the slicing pain of Vanya's bowstring. Blood flowing out like a waterfall from a blown dam. The utter loss of her voice, her powers, her-self. Getting it back. The overprotectiveness of not wanting it touched, and it requiring patience to let people touch her there, kiss her there, help her with a necklace, a zipper, to cover her scar with makeup. Before, but even more so after.

But Luther touches her, keeps touching her, thumb running down the line of her spine, fingertips tracing the line of her scar (again, again, again; never like this), drifts the collum of her neck like it's a whole new continent, and feels so wholly, jaggedly, out of sync with all she knows of herself, every moment of her history shatters against his hand, because all she wants is for him not to stop. All she wants is for him to touch every inch of even this part of her, to make it his, to understand it is, always has been, the same with her, that she's never once felt an ounce of fear about him touching her.

He's too disastrously close, and her breathing is becoming a near-silent, too short thing, that isn't reaching her lungs, making her swallow reflexively beneath that hand, and she's doesn't care that she almost died twelve hours, but there's an entire fissure of terror written into life, on the idea she might die, right here, if what he's feeling is nothing at all like the ruin these few seconds have made of her so quickly.

Nothing so catastrophic as being pushed into a wall, and kissed so hard her lungs and mind stop working. And it yet it's somehow, so much worse. Debilitating, when his face is too close, his mouth is too close. For the life of her, she suddenly can't remember if she kissed Ray goodbye in those last seconds, can't remember anything except that Luther has been a part of every single one of the days that made up those years.

That she'd let herself pretend it wasn't true,
until she was holding that book in her hands.

The kindest, sweetest, romantic gesture of husband being so observant. Trying to reach her wherever she was, to put her heart in her hands as a gift from his, and not realize what he'd done, that it wasn't about her, or even him, definitely not them. That her heart was, had been, always would be: Luther. That a single day hadn't passed where she could make herself end it without looking up at the sky at that untouched white-glass moon, or the stars of those few dark skies every month willing the moon back to her sky.

That Luther had once owned a copy.
Of course, he had, in among all those hundreds.

Historical and yearning, and something, something about space.

Allison tries her damnedest not to let her eyes drift to his mouth as he speaks, again, and fails, fails, fails, as soon as his voice is in the air. Her chest too tight, impossible necessity to do something, anything making her fingers finally move, so much more careful, slower, than she wants, even if she's not certain even she could make herself push even half an inch faster, take more, than this light graze, up the line of the muscle that had rested under her hand.

"We're not good a that," are the only words that fall out, and all she's can think, irrational and desperate, and wanting, is she's so tired of being so good at this. At three decades of every almost, and every interruption, and every second like this tucked away, forgotten, apologized for failing. At pretending there's anyone else. Has ever been anyone else. And it's the last thing she should do, but she tries to remember what it felt like, that hazy first half-second, of realizing his mouth was pressed against hers, the feel of his lips, the barest shiver, and shift of them, before her body forced her to violently gasp in the air it needed to function.

[obediences]

And Luther doesn't even know, has no idea what this is doing to her. Because he's the one with the physical hangups, right? A simple touch like this isn't world-changing to anyone else; surely she'd take this in stride; surely it doesn't matter. He can so often instigate these touches when it's to reach out and offer comfort and reassurance to her, her needs always superceding his own — except this time it is just selfish. It is just because he wants and, for once, he is indulging. Letting himself have this. Savour this.

Apologies are still brimming on his tongue. For having broached this far, trespassed this far. Some of their family fall quickly into displays of affection — Klaus all airy breeziness and hands everywhere, desperate for that physical connection — but Luther is a locked box and a shut door, an indomitable statue. Being team leader left no room for tenderness, didn't let him show those same soft edges in the same way, at least whenever he underwent the acrobatics required to contort himself into being Number One. Around everyone else but her, the universal exception. Allison's hand goes back to his arm, anchoring her to him even closer. It's so much more than he ever thought he could have; he would have expected this stretching inconceivable moment to end long ago, and yet. And yet. It's not stopping. It's not stopping.

"No, we're really not."

After a moment of hesitation, his hand shifts enough to brush a lock of dark wavy hair behind her ear (he saw it in a movie once, he's always wanted to do that), and she is still too close. Luther's heart is hammering louder; less rabbity, more like a hollow gong ringing out through his ribcage, up into his throat, caught behind his teeth. He can feel it in his face, his fingertips, every part of him alight with the excruciating awareness of how close Allison is. She'd perched by the end of his bed before, he's come in and sat at her vanity for spur-of-the-moment conversations, but the equation changed tonight the moment she actually lay down. It changed when he rolled over to get closer to her. Each small rebellious act is another slippery step down this slope, until it feels like he's tumbling ass-over-teakettle and doesn't have anything to hang onto anymore, to stop this perilous collapse. What is he supposed to do with his hands? What is he supposed to say?

With her hand now on his arm, Luther catches a small glint of reflected light. On her ring finger. His throat catches; like walking on jagged knives, like stepping into a bear-trap, and he wants to lurch away from all of it like he's touched a hot stove, a sudden flare of pain.

(She's married. She's married.
The woman that I love loves someone else.)

But his hand's just been at her throat and so, too, he realises that the familiar cold metal chain of the locket is still around her neck. Both. Both at once. Somehow. And it makes everything double again, the two timelines layering disorientingly over each other, and there's a question on his tongue and he's not sure how to ask it. Or if it'll just break everything, shatter their friendship beyond repair or retrieval, if he's completely and utterly misread every laugh and lingering look and touch over the years, years that they've been treading water and walking circles around each other—

"The Porter gave you back the necklace," Luther says, and he sounds a little surprised, his thumb now against the metal links, the dip of her collarbone. She hadn't been wearing it in Dallas, because of course she hadn't.

[numberthree]

His hand raises and Allison's heart takes a kamikaze dive toward that so, so, so far away ground, only to feel her heart slam disoriently into her teeth, when inside of pulling back his fingers return to the side of her head, brushing back a strand of hair, coasting the edge of her ear, soft as a whisper against the shell of her ear, but somehow harder than a punch.

Incoherently, at that small gesture, she can't hold on to his words.
Only to the ache in her chest. The confusion. Longing.
The tingling along her ear, skin right behind it.

He's barely touching her -- and it's not like she even knows why he is, how he is, what's happened to make it suddenly broachable action -- but it's like every centimeter he crosses is a part of her she'll never get back. It'll be marked with this, the way hopscotched seconds in their childhood were, fingers brushing on the sly, knees and thighs pressed as they studied right next to each other.

That it's hard to remember until she does they haven't. Really touched. Which is insane. Because every person who was touched her has been held to the impossible benchmark of this. This thing that never, and so many times, almost, happened. This place they all failed, even when they never knew there was a rigged comparison-war to win they had to chance of getting into the same stratosphere with.

Her own fingers, paused momentarily the minute ago, when she'd been brutally certain it was all coming to an end, when he'd first pulled his fingers back, shift again. Fingers drawing down the arm he has between them. The bend at his elbow. His skin is thicker. It'd always been as durable, but it'd felt just as normal as anyone else's. Normal was gone. This was the new normal.

One four years. Now five and a half, or six. This is the normal.
(This is the thing that Luther refused to amend trying to defend changing.)

The once smooth line of down turned into what feels like an endless space of little rises and dips, and she'll can't forget that he used the word hate still, even flippant, how he ever could, that it still matters. It doesn't to her. She wants to know, to touch, even this part of him. Has wondered, unstoppable in the dark at night, in her own bed, in the rare occurrence of glimpses only.

She can still remember nearly spitting out her drink in surprise,
as Luther ripped his shirt open, buttons flying everywhere, yelling at Dad.

Luther's next words are a hammer blow: hot, cold, possessive, ashamed; before she can even reach for words. Thoughts. She'd realized, and she hadn't taken it off. It hadn't mattered in the dark of her room. She hadn't thought about it coming up swinging all but literally to force his hand. She hadn't thought about that fact, as his thumb rests on her collar bone, even lower than her neck, caught at her clavicle.

That what she on, the absolute normality of silky pants and matching tank, is nowhere near enough clothes. Leaves her feeling bare, exposed, aware of the too much skin uncovered even for all that there isn't anything else to the bland, comfy smooth line of it. None of it untoward, that she'd ever cared about brushing her teeth in the same bathroom between their rooms, and yet none of it covering enough of her suddenly. Her skin. The locket that usually hangs at her breast bone, tumbled sideways, against her shoulder closest the bed.

It's a ripping scratch. A damning notice from a man trained to be observant of every detail around him, not in days, but in seconds. To formulate and plan, act and order half a dozen, in seconds.

She has no right. She has no defense.

Allison wants to pull her hand back from his arm and clutch it in the palm of her hand, against any uncomprehending swell of selfish shame, like the fingers brushing the chain could, all too easily, press the chain between two fingers and snap it. Take it back. Undo that gesture. That moment in the kitchen. Every one here since. Have every right to do that. After what she's done.

"It was back when I woke up there," finally manages to gut itself out of her, serrated chunks of muscle and lung torn from the inside of her ribs and forced up her throat. She never took it off. Never. She never had it with her in Dallas. (She doesn't think she ever could have there either.)

It's not an answer. A defense. An explanation. A confession. But she can feel it building, a wave slamming into her teeth, too. Another desperate apology she owes. A thing she can't do. Not even for him. (Or Ray, or Patrick, or any man between leaving and getting married twice. All for the wrong reasons, to all of the wrong people.)

Maybe if she'd had even this to hold on to she wouldn't have let other things slide into place to be held on to instead, wouldn't have said forever, amen, knowing that her definition of that word had an hourglass counting down to its end before it was even asked. But is that a lie, too. An evasion, a justification, desperate, for how she's never been as strong as Luther. Able to be alone, unadored even she couldn't return what she took.

[obediences]

Turnabout is fair play. Now it's Luther's turn to feel like his skin and nerves are on fire, Allison's fingers drawing careful lines of sheer burning flame down the crook of his arm, the exposed rough pitted skin (inhuman, monstrous). He's gotten better about it over the past year or two, letting other people see it, but none of those people had mattered in the same way that Allison matters. He always thought he would still be completely averse to that touch, would need to propel himself away from it at light-speed.

But the difference is, this time he doesn't yank away. He bites down hard, feels the warmth radiating from wherever her fingers follow the line of his arm, and he forces himself into practiced stillness despite the fact that there's something almost ticklish in the contact — and who ever knew that Luther Hargreeves could be ticklish?

He doesn't, in fact, hate the sensation.

When she finally talks, he finds himself swallowing. Trying to unclench that jaw, at least enough to squeeze some words out. "Good. It'd be a pain in the ass having to go get a replacement." Luther says it lightly, jokingly, trying to cut some of this unbearable unbreathing tension in this room with some humour — except it's also a benediction. That easy assurance that, if the locket were missing, he would get her another one. Would hand her his symbolic heart over and over and over, even if—

( even if she's married )

There's no guidebook for any of this. It feels like they're fifteen years too late. He has always been years too late, behind the curve, too sluggish and slow and tentative and skittish to act, a boxful of chocolates in his hands long after someone else has already come out of nowhere and beaten him to the punch. It'd probably be easier if they were giddy carefree teenagers again, but Luther doesn't know how to navigate this. Never has.

And just a moment later, his joke seems to curdle in his stomach. It's probably too far. Because what right does he have to be buying heart-shaped jewellery for Mrs. Chestnut, even just talking about it, so...

Luther's hand finally slips reluctantly away from her collar, the crook of her shoulder, retreating back to that gaping space between them in the bed, and he's already apologising. "Sorry. That, uh. You probably don't want— I mean— I know that was probably an over-step, I—"

[numberthree]

Luther says it light, a quiet rumble of a joke, but Allison's heart jerks in a disbelieving little stumble. Dizzy with the confusion of those words now, too. The impossible idea he's saying, even with, even with all of this, everything she's done, keeps doing, that he'd still do it again.

Right here. Right now. If this place had taken it away for good.

And she has no clue what to do with that, and there's no part of her that deserves it. Everything hurts with the joke of it. Like it's a given. Luther not walking away from her eternal line of fuckups is a given. And the edges of her eyes prickle with unexpected suddenness, and it hurts. She feels so fucking stupid. For letting all of it happen. For making all the choices she did. No one made her. She did that on her own.

She never gave up believing, but she didn't wait either.
And no part of her deserves that kind of promise.
Something eternal and unwavering.

Which is right when Luther's hand finally lifts and there are words suddenly pouring out of his mouth, halted skipping apologies, not finishing anything thought, and the only feeling she has at first is nauseous dread. But not like earlier. This one is sharp, like being stabbed between her ribs, and it's only that her fingers had been on his forearm, that she catches his arm pulling back at wrist in terrified impulse.

When the force of denial turned desperate doesn't have proper aim, in the dark, in alarm, and she ends up pulling his hand back into her face. Her hand over his, and she's shaking her head, her nose, against his fingers, his palm, and she can't breathe, and she can't stop herself, like it's the only light in the world and it's fading again. "Don't."

Her voice is small, more air than sound, trapped against his fingers and his palm, lips brushing skin when she can't stop shaking her head, because he's wrong and she's never wanted anything more in her life, and it's reckless and dangerous, but maybe that's all she's ever truly been and only ever sees it fully in his eyes. "Pl-" The syllables are on her tongue, on his skin, before she even knows it's coming, and even when there's a sharp breath in, she can't stop it on seeing it, only pause it the flicker of a second. "Please don't."

Don't apologize for it, any part of it, like is some kind of accident he didn't mean. Don't say something like that and then take it right back. Don't do something like this and then blow it off as nothing. There are so many things she can take, so many ways she keeps breaking-but-not in this life, but she doesn't think this could one of those.

(She'd never gotten over the first one had she.
Not then, and not even now.)

[obediences]

It hits him like falling bricks. Allison Hargreeves never says please, except now she's said it twice within one month. Sort of.

I'm sorry.
Talk to me
please

The memory of it is still there, close to hand, but hearing it aloud is so, so, so much worse, better, stronger, impactful, worse. Like being socked in the jaw. Allison's voice. Small and shattered and pleading like that. Her physical strength doesn't stand a chance of dragging him back if he doesn't actually want to go, like tugging on a heavy immovable rock — but he follows the movement, lets her steer him back. Her lips against the rough skin of his palm, his heart thundering in his ears.

His lungs feel thin and wrung-out; as if he's just run a mile, ten, twenty, a marathon. It feels like he's walked out the airlock without putting his helmet on; he can't unbatten his chest and get enough air. There is literally not enough air in this room. Which doesn't make any kind of rational, physical sense, except that Allison's proximity and her hand curled over his and pulling him closer, it's somehow swallowing up all the oxygen in the room.

And Luther's touching her again, one over-large hand bracketing her from jaw to cheek, the delicate bones of her face beneath his fingers again. This thing that they have never, ever been able to allow themselves.

(He's been trying not to think about it or make too much of it, making more of it than it actually is, but he remembers his mouth on hers for the first time in their lives — not exactly how he had envisioned it, all those times he'd envisioned it, for the past decade and more. His desperate lungs making hers work, then their foreheads pressed together. Each others' steady rock, a moment to catch their breath both literally and figuratively. Falling into each other.)

"Allison," he says, his voice questioning and tentative and hopeful all at once, while his heart still tries its level best to claw its way out of his ribcage and escape, hop right outside and leave him bleeding out. His durable skin can take knives, bullets, no end of punishment, but none of those things have the same impact as Allison Hargreeves just mumbling please into his skin.

[numberthree]

Allison wants to take it back. Still wants to drag it out of the air, out of Luther's skin, because neither of those can hide it well enough. Because there is a weakness, a helplessness, in that one word, in that admission, even more so in not being able to stop her hand or her mouth, either, at the same time, and the one thing Allison has never been -- as The Rumor, as a World Wide Star, as a Civil Rights advocate -- is weak.

But she couldn't let him. And that might suddenly be worse. A worse fall.
Something so far over the line, it couldn't cover it from exposure.

Her heart has to have become some kind of jack-knife and there's a tremble in her shoulders she can feel, and she wasn't supposed to, except that Luther's hand is back. Heavier against the side of her face, large enough it really can bracket all of her there, and she can't remember how to breathe, and, he's somehow even closer out of that, too, and none of the words trying for her tongue are safe anymore.

Because there's never been a day in her life she didn't want him to.
Because there's never been an overstep Luther could make, that she didn't already want.

His voice is a question in the frame of her name, and Allison can't tell exactly what question it is, because she can only tell what she wants it to be, with such a burning blinding intensity that it's excruciating. The terror that she made a mistake, and the greater one of whichever she could make next if she even let herself have an inch now. Because she didn't stop herself from falling by doing that, she skittered right over off the cliff edge instead. It's all a breath away, the part of her lips from tumbling out.

When all she can manage is nodding, too fast, too certain,
her hand small over the expanse of his, still,
tightening over his against her face.

Because the answer is yes. It doesn't even matter what the questions is. It's the only answer that's ever been here, ever will be. So many years, so many lies, so many of the wrong eyes looking back at her, when all she wanted it to be was the man staring at her now through the dark.

[obediences]

Everything in his skull and chest is a clamorous riot right now, the looming hope and anticipation and terror mingling, all bouncing around off two words repeating like a horrible litany, a caution, a warning sign and alarm bell: She's married. She's married. She's married. And that's supposed to mean something, isn't it. Those words, that commitment, that promise that two other men have managed to get from Allison Hargreeves but he hasn't.

But—
( i never gave up on you )
But—
( i just, i needed something to hold onto )
Luther's gone from thinking she was dead, out of reach, forever, to now they're back in this home they've built together, and where he gets to be with her every single day. And what a gift that is — like finally seeing sunlight after a decade in darkness, feeling it warm him from the inside out. Quick breakfasts in the mornings, both of them orbiting each other on their way out to work; occasional check-ins via the network even when they're apart, because being apart is terrible; eating Chinese takeout on the sofa together, her bare feet thrown over his knees.

His heart shuddering in his chest. Her. In his bed. Right now and too close. And him asking without asking, and her nodding immediately, with no hesitation.

How did they get here. He can't remember anymore, because the previous few minutes have been blasted into obliteration and everything's been swept away until all he can focus on is this, now, this exact moment, the sound of Allison's breath, the radiant warmth of her skin under his hand. So Luther takes a deep breath and screws his courage to the sticking-place. How incomprehensible that he can leap into battle and face down bullets and monsters and supervillains and plausible death, but closing these last few inches is, instead, the most terrifying thing he's ever done.

(Are you a coward? A team leader is meant to never to show hesitation or trepidation in the face of a challenge, Number One.)

So his fingers curl and he leans forward with the last of the distance between them evaporating, as he gently, so gently, presses his lips against hers. It's close-mouthed, almost prim by way of a shy fifteen-year-old boy who's never kissed a girl before, and careful like he might break something (and he very well might, destroying their entire relationship, his best friend, he might lose her by doing this, but he almost lost her already and so he has to try).

[numberthree]

Allison isn't certain she's breathing anymore. Or, if she is, that it's getting inside her. If there's a her to get inside of left anywhere. That isn't the full-fledged traction of feeling Luther's fingers shift against her skin, and watching him slowly move closer and closer, each inch a mile, a canyon, a breath, a second, an eternity.

And there's only long enough to realize she's not sure if she's more scared that he'll change his mind, or this, like everything else she's ever done, will find a way to come calling and costing her everything. The only thing she has left. The only gravity and acceptance in the whole of time and space and multiple universes.

She'd take suffocating, again, right now, over losing him.

But he doesn't hesitate. He doesn't stop.

His lips brush hers, soft as the first touch of his fingertips, again like she's glass, like she's breakable, like she might dissolve or blow away on that first touch. And for a second, maybe he isn't wrong. As everything in her head goes silent, and there's nothing except Luther's lips against her, and the brush of his nose, fingers on her cheek, pressing up into his mouth. Except 'up' is a direction that doesn't work when she's horizontal, and up is suddenly not the instinctual normal, but sideways, not forward, and she doesn't have time for the nonsense of logic and her spine and being sideways.

There's nothing but Luther -- Luther, Luther, Luther, pounding thunderously in her blood, in her ears, filling up her head -- but the way her hand on his has to move, leaves the back of his hand, for his cheek so close by, brushing the rough stubble of his cheek, while her other arm is moving, other hand finding the bed to push her more upward, even as the other is curling the back of his head, pushing more into him, pushing him backward, still without breaking this kiss.

Because the only thing left aside from his name, and the pressure of his lips, and the clamor of her heart, is the clarity of the fact it's been too long, she's taken too long to get here, and whether she or the future dies on this second, on his lips, on this kiss, or not, she has to give it all she has, all she is.

[obediences]

It's like finally turning a key in a lock, flinging a long-shut door open after years and years, and Allison is hurtling through it. He'd been so fearful and skittish, picturing her recoiling in horror and rejection from the trespass, the assumption, this stealing of what he's never taken before—

But Allison throws herself in as if all she'd been waiting for was the starter's pistol. Her hands everywhere, climbing up his neck, then fingers curling into his short hair, her whole body shifting and reorienting like she's turning toward the sun. He doesn't know what to do with his hands anymore; he's lost track of one of them where it's stuck under the pillow, the other's still catching at her jaw as her mouth opens up and moves against his and it's like she's handing back every breath he gave her earlier today, with interest. Luther is normally all stone angles and stiff body language, but he can feel himself melting into her touch, every part of him coming alive at her pushing into him, their bodies leaning closer in the bed like two mountain ranges colliding.

For all that he's supposedly Number One, he does not take the reins in this. A girl had once shoved him against the wall of the nightclub; he doesn't remember it well at all, but there's the sudden ghost of sensation as his wide shoulder nudges the wall slightly, as she seizes on him and doesn't let go. Luther can't even focus on his hands, because it's all down to this: he's kissing her, he is kissing Allison Hargreeves, and most importantly she is kissing him back. His eyes have instinctively closed, the rest of the world melting away and everything narrowing down to focusing on the sensation of her mouth and tongue against his, with an almost somber concentration. Serious as a heart attack, just hanging on and pushing back and doing his best to keep up, as he dissolves into the kiss.

[numberthree]

If it were anyone else in the world, maybe Allison would have worried that it was an overstep, over-ambitious, regretted, a mind changed, when no other part of her was touched, that every move forward was unshared, but even for that, Luther hasn't pulled back.

Luther shifts with her, for her, a titanic tide stopped only by a wall, and this kiss doesn't break. Even when it stays tremulously soft and tentative, it still shifts, too, attentive even now. Following her lead, from only a second, a step behind, before it's a mirror, matched, attempting the same, against the soft, slow open of her lips, his, theirs. The brush of their tongues, smooth and soft. The feeling highlighted against the rough stubble of his cheek under her fingers again, somehow back to his jaw and side of his head.

If Allison Hargreeves had ever believed anything holy in her existence, it was trapped in this one kiss, as every behind it blew back and down, matchsticks and crepe paper and card castles, like the bodies of that whole army Vanya dismissed with a wave. Everything behind her fell before this kiss. Before him. Before the way her heart, her head, her chest, every cell in her body ached not to stop touching Luther, kissing Luther, even as it all slowed.

As it slipped to the faintest brushes of lips, and forehead pressed against his, not having a clue when she'd ended up with one leg under her, or herself more than half over his shoulder. Palm sliding down his neck, curled around the back, like a proof she couldn't stop reaffirming, as her eyes stayed closed and she couldn't bring herself to pull back more than these bare centimeters.

Her thumb brushed a line across the muscles on his neck, and she swallowed against the ache of all of this, like resetting a bone that had broken so long ago. That hurt in every part to snap into place, but everything shifted for it, the excruciating rightness of it. It'd always been this. Every day. Every moment. Since the beginning. And she'd made so many mistakes, hurt so many people getting here, whether she meant to or not.

It was gone. It wasn't. It didn't matter. It did.
All of it had happened, even on the bones of this.

Allison swallowed, the tip of her tongue brushing at the center of her lips, almost like somehow she needed even more proof, Luther Hargreeves had just kissed her. Real. That was still real even a second later. If she tipped her mouth again, she might be again. When she can't stop the tumble of words from her lips. The only confession she's wanted to make for at least half a decade, maybe the full length of it.

"You're the sweetest, kindest man I've ever known, and--" Maybe she thought she wouldn't, but she finds herself moving, not hiding from raising her gaze to find his face, his eyes, even in the dark. "-if it wasn't completely obvious, I've compared every man I've ever met to you."

Every single one. Not just Patrick and Ray and the long line of failed attempts to love anyone even a quarter as much as she'd always loved Luther. Everyone. Colleagues, and coworkers, and the other men in the community group. Bosses, and imPorts, and passing strangers. Luther was the benchmark beside which every man in her life was stood next to, and either earned her respect, her attention, or failed.

So often failed, even at their best. No matter how well.
Because even if they were good people, they still weren't Luther.

[obediences]

And he doesn't mind having her hands all over him; for once, he doesn't mind, he doesn't mind. It takes him out of his body and out of his overthinking over-worrying head, and just anchors him right here in this moment, with her, tangled up in Allison. Every little piece of him that was scared of this, that had tried to back out saying She's married or I can't or I don't deserve this— all of those words are smothered now, as the kiss asks the question and, just by leaning into him, Allison answers Yes and yes and yes.

Her thumb tracing against his neck is like a live-wire down his spine, Luther experiencing something of what he'd put her through earlier. The pins-and-needles marching its way across his skin, a fire lit with every touch, even as she pulls away just enough to catch a breath and their foreheads rest against each other, like they'd done in the snow.

And then when she speaks, the whole world stops. Again.

There's something tight-clenched in his chest, slamming open, like a bulldozer's made a wreckage of his ribcage as she says that. Luther feels that slow-dawning realisation sweep over him, and understanding clicks like puzzle-pieces falling into place, years and years' worth of it, and he can suddenly see it like a tapestry unfurling at his feet: the weeks and months and years wasted. All those moments when they'd been thigh-to-thigh on her bed, leaning perilously closer before Vanya came barging in. Them hunkered down in the greenhouse, before Sir Reginald tore through the door, huffing and puffing to blow it all down. Him pausing after a mission, the two of them alone in the stairwell together, his hand at a cut on her temple. Shy smiles exchanged over the breakfast table and her Mary Janes nudging his Oxfords beneath it. So many almosts. So many almosts and didn'ts.

His own words come spilling out in a rush, as if they've been caught in his lungs, behind his teeth, for fifteen years: "Oh, we should have done that a long time ago," Luther says, breathless, marveling. Then, a second later, marveling at how much he had missed: "I'm an idiot."

[numberthree]

Allison can't stop the winded chuckle that escapes her mouth, even when she thinks there might be something more of a wince that she can't keep out of her expression, even here in the dark, like she can't entirely hide it behind amusement. The understatement and the ownership of it that is so very on the nose of being so very Luther and can't belong to only one of them. "No, you aren't."

Except maybe he was.
She was. They were.

So many times, they could have avoided all of this.

If he'd just come with her. If she'd ever actually reached out after.
If she'd just held on and waited, let the faith they'd come for her be enough.

A million days and million mistakes, flickering in and out of her thoughts too fast, dissolving on the nearness of his voice, the flicker of breath she could feel brush her skin at those running, rushing, tripping on themselves, words. Away, and away, and away. Scraped sore on a relief that feels more violent than soothing. Ruthless, rather than forgiving. Turning every second inside out. Taking everything back, that wasn't this. Dissolving every mask, highlighting ever lie, the emptiness and longing under every time, where she settled for less and told herself it was fine.

Except. The one thing she couldn't take it back. Wouldn't. Even as everything else turned pale with and blew down, one didn't. The most important one. The one thing worth all the rubble and wreckage of all her wrong choices. The one she couldn't even consider folding the deck back on. Claire. Important and incomparable.

Forged in the path of those mistakes, one perfect thing: her daughter.

Claire. And Luther. The two halves of her heart.
That she couldn't be complete without either.

[obediences]

And hadn't they been slowly winding their way towards this after all? Over the past year? Their bedrooms beside each other again, hands clasped, late-night messages when neither of them can fall asleep, making each other laugh, this little house with its domestic routines, his lips pressed against her hand, a nighttime picnic under the stars. It still feels miraculous — and if he could shake himself now, try to be sure that he's actually still awake, he would. Maybe he fell asleep. Maybe he dozed off while they were messaging each other, and this is just some dreamstuff spun up out of nothing...

And because it's late, and they're both exhausted, and he can feel his body still twinging with the distant aches of blood vessels burst deep under the skin (broken wood and bricks and ricocheting bullets, all bouncing harmlessly off but they still leave their mark), then the whole night feels surreal. Painted in blurry lines, the room black-and-blue like a bruise. Luther's thumb traces the line of her cheekbone again, and he feels his heart pounding hollowly in his chest and he can see Allison's face, upturned, so close to him and still within reach.

Within reach, for the first time in so long. After years with a continent separating them, then an entire atmosphere, then the divide of an entire timeline. Seeing her in so many dark-skinned women around town, his head snapping around like he could give himself whiplash.

(A version of her perched insouciant on the edge of a counter, in the moon base—)

"This is going to sound so stupid," he says, self-conscious, half-smiling because he couldn't suppress that smile even if he tried, "but can you pinch me? Hard. So I feel it."

It'd have to be hard, to even make a difference.

[numberthree]

Those words, self-conscious and soft, startle a laugh out of Allison that is truer than her last chuckle. She gets the feeling, except that for her, it is all so painfully, perfectly, solidly, real without question. Everything that was the Luther she'd been carrying with her since the moment she left the Academy and the man she found again two and a half (three, four, twelve) years ago all in one.

The empty space that has defined every one of her days since walking out of the Academy alone. The empty space that no matter how many people she touched, or let touch her, clung to her and in the silence, in the space, in the passing days and years, only grew stronger, stauncher, more steadfast. The empty space that punctured here and there, in confusing pinpricks since coming to this world. The empty space that had swallowed up her every late night in Dallas.

The empty space that had shattered against Luther's mouth, and made it feel like her heart was beating, not in her chest, but right under the place where his thumb traced over her cheekbone with the kind of delicate reverence he'd reserved for ancient books in his childhood and expensive telescopes and rare records in his teens. It was so real, so unbearably happening, that it couldn't be anything else.

For all that she was incredibly good at hurting, even if that wasn't the request, it wasn't pain that she wanted him to feel. Even a little. Not right now. With the echo of that laugh at his words still warm in her throat as she shook her head. "I can do better than that."

Or worse, she didn't know. If it was his dream (but it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't), she was surrendering to it all the same. Every stake and every mask, and every last shadow. For tipping her face in just those few centimeters and kissing him again. Like a mirror answer in her to the same problem -- same wonder; same disbelief -- but seeking the answer, both to have and to give back, in a different way.

Where Luther asked, Allison acted.

[obediences]

Luther's expecting that sharp but innocuous jab of pain to settle him back in his body, to remind him of the reality of this (and violence is a language he still speaks, a daily vocabulary: bruised knuckles and blackened eyes and cutting his knuckles on other men's teeth). But instead, just like that, Allison is kissing him again.

If he'd ever known it could be this easy, and that all he had to do was ask—

He freezes again for a moment, a deer in the headlights, taking the moment to let it wash over him like a wave and meticulously cataloguing every last detail of the sensation, as if memorising it for posterity, if he could press it into amber forever. The press of her nose against his; her mouth opening; the weight of her hand against the plane of his chest. The solidity of Allison's shoulder when his own hand settles there, fingers splaying almost timidly against the fabric of her shirt, as delicate as if he could burn himself on her skin. He very well might, still.

And then he gives back into the kiss; deep breaths, a pulse ratcheting higher in his throat, a hunger so long abated. That prim caution melting away more and more each second, as they simply collapse into each other, and he becomes increasingly painfully aware that they are in his bed. No one else has ever been here before. The only one who was, he'd kicked her out shortly after.

Luther's hands don't stray, however: the press of his lips and then the tentative exploratory shift of his tongue is increasingly eager, but there's just that fluttering barely-there touch against her shoulder, like this whole thing is fragile, like he might shatter her at a touch (or, more likely, he would shatter).

[numberthree]

Her lips press gently against his, and she's touching too much of him not to feel that he doesn't move. He doesn't. But. He doesn't jerk away either. Or press her back, as though all her strength to fight, it wouldn't even shift the air beside his smallest push. He's done it before. They both know he's capable of it. But Luther doesn't.

He's simply still and quiet. The race of his heart beneath her fingers not slowed in the slightest. She doesn't know what is going on in his head exactly, but she softens the surprise kiss, slows it, without stopping. Gentle, almost coaxing, a soundless request to come to her, come back to her, follow her; hand sliding up the back of his neck slowly, thumb running gently from in his hair down the back of his neck.

Allison doesn't need a race. She doesn't even need this to go anywhere. She just needs him with her. Whatever that looks like. Even if they need to stop kissing (even as insane and wholly impossible as that feels with her lips still against his). She considers pulling back, but then Luther's fingers raise, brushing the curve of her shoulder so soft that it feels almost uncertain. Shy. Barely braved.

But it's enough, and more than enough, when his hand is warm and heavy through the thin cloth covering her shoulder, choosing to touch her, and more than enough, when Luther's mouth finally moves, and he's kissing her back, again, letting her heart breathe out again. Let go of that momentary consideration (for a moment, but she knows, maybe not entirely).

She can take this incredibly slow, the way nothing else in her life has ever felt like it could be. But Luther has always been the eternal outlier. The place she was always supposed to have started. Tried everything. Learned everything. Where she'd felt safest. Happiest. It feels like that all over, again, in its own way. New and never touched, even though she knows she's nowhere near that. So very far from it, the fact curls cold guilt in her stomach.

But maybe she can tip that to her advantage.
Be the ground all of this rests on.

Luther can.

The race of his pulse under her thumb, a constant pounding that feels like it's running electricity up her wrist and into her arm, continually reminding her it's not just her. Especially as Luther slowly presses his mouth deeper, longer, slowly more and more open against hers; that slowly less and less cautious pass of his tongue, into her mouth, against her own. She can keep pace with him, pulling him slowly closer, slowly further out.