luther "the big shy one" hargreeves | #00.01 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obediences) wrote2019-03-08 09:00 pm
obediences) wrote2019-03-08 09:00 pm
Entry tags:
for numberthree.
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.
no subject
But what if I am lamentiYou're lucky I like a challenge. Alright, fine. Trying to get someone to buy me a drink it is. I think it'll be easier if they don't actually recognize me, either. Cross all your fingers for me that I don't run into any fans; they'd be quicker to buy me a round, probably, but I never really know what to do with them. I think part of why I'm bad at talking to people is because whenever they recognize you, they don't really see you as a person, if that makes sense — and it's always questions about everyone else in the rest of the Academy, which I can't answer, and then it's questions about what I do, which I can't really answer either. I inevitably disappoint them by explaining that I only ever train, and work out, and prepare, and study, and work on my flight certification, and that's awfully boring content for an extended conversation. Your life is probably way more interesting for them to hear about. I always have to pad out the interviews.
Especially now thatBut alright, thank you for the information. I'll order a straight whiskey on the rocks and then shove an umbrella (ha, ha) in it, and metaphorically pour one out for you. And then I'll debrief you on the mission and whether it's a success or an awful, awful failure and I wind up with a drink thrown in my face or something.
It's a tragedy that I can't wear your shirts but you could wear mine. How about that: I'm going to keep an eye open for the kitschiest thing I find in the next place I'm sent on task.
- Luther
( What is this? He's starting to ask himself that more and more often these days, because he can feel himself starting to open up further with each letter. He thinks he can spy a playfulness between the lines that he's trying not to read too much into, and yet does anyway, and bats it right back at her too. Brinksmanship. Oneupmanship, almost. How far can they go with this before it's too far.
He wonders it more and more, the sharper that pleasant ache twists in his chest as he rips open each envelope. Luther doesn't always bother with the neat silver letter-opener anymore, either: he's too impatient, he just tears his way through to get to the letter as quickly as possible, and then delicately smooths out the paper, careful to not ruin it. Drinking up her words, and knowing that she touched this paper just days ago. It's a window across the entire continent and into Allison's head, her words spilling out onto the page, a bridge being built between them.
How does that one quote go again—?
The book just got re-released a few months ago; he'd read it quietly to himself between training hours, and he thinks of it now. In the end, after long rumination, Luther goes to Pogo and asks to use the ancient stuttering photocopier, and he makes a copy of this printed page, folds it up, captions it from the source, and tucks it in the envelope behind his letter. )
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Allison's heart seizes, confusion stripping it raw, by the time she hits the second sentence of the carefully folded section Luther has pulled out of a book and inserted without comment, rhyme, or reason mentioned anywhere. Her skin tightening and prickling at the words there. The image of a closeness undeniable not defined by space, or time, or nearness. Before it got to the demands of what to bring to the blank page.
The one she sat down to each time she wrote him. They wrote each other.
It felt almost too electric, too bare a commentary. )
For the life of me, if anyone ever throws a drink in your face, you owe me that story. I will not be able to continue living without it. I can't even picture it, and at the same time, now I can't stop trying to figure a way in which that could happen somehow. Unless you've somehow changed entirely in the last two years, you're just so
sweetkindthoughtfulunabbrasivepolite, and that's rarely what makes that happen.Which makes it all the more hilarious and hard to let go of now.
I managed to score an unexpected free day off the week after our birthday, and the girls and I did head to San Francisco and take the Napa Valley Wine Train for one of their full package 'Estate Tours.' It was different. Due to our numbers, we got around the thing where they apparently mix groups together until every table on the train has four people.
It was all plush padded seats, and big clear windows to watch the vineyard that you're traveling through the whole time, and a four-course meal spread out before and after three different winery stops. The food was great, and the visits were fun enough, and I did find one or two things I liked. There's so much more to it out there than I had any clue about. It's everything to those people.
Also, there's this time called "The Magic Hour" in Napa, or at least on their train, that happens an hour before sunset, where everything glows. The mountains turn all golden yellow from the sun just sinking behind them, and clouds go pink, and it turns the grapes this golden-green. It was charming to watch as we headed back the way we came on our return ride.
Your quote has had me thinking since I opened your last letter. I'm pretty sure you'll agree I've never done anything lightly since the first time I managed to open my mouth, but I definitely haven't had a reason to write this much for any reason since
getting ouleaving the Academy. So, I guess there's to something new and different for twenty-one, too.Allison
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When he receives Allison's reply, he reads it over and over while sprawled on the comfortable sofa in the basement, the stuffing leaking everywhere, the cushions dented from years' worth of seven children camping out on it. He has room now to kick up his feet, his whole body stretched out along it, when before he'd probably have been jostling with Klaus for space.
He just marinates in her words, the images she's painting, which are so much more descriptive than anything they've handed each other until now. And so when he picks up the pen again, he really does try: )
I don't know how I'm supposedly the fan of poetry when you can write like this. That's beautiful. It's almost like I was there myself, I can picture it so well from your latter. I'll have to see if I can find any photos of the Magic Hour at work.
I wasn't trying to say you weren't trying, by the way. Just— I don't know, I remembered that quote and it happened to be on my mind, about the importance of writing and reading, and I thought it was fitting.
So, I guess it's my turn. I'm not as good at telling stories as you are, so I apologize in advance.
I told Dad that I was going out, and he said whatever for, I didn't have a mission scheduled — so I said I'd just turned twenty-one so I was heading out for a drink. He'd forgotten
ourmy birthday, of course. He thought it was a complete waste of time, and that it would interfere with my training regimen and if I got hungover I'd jeopardize my health, but I'm twenty-one and it's legal so there isn't actually anything he can do to stop me, really. Just a couple drinks, I said, and I wouldn't disgrace the Academy or anything and I'd call Pogo from a payphone if I ran into trouble. So he let me go.I tried to find someplace that wasn't too crowded or with too many people, so I went to a hole-in-the-wall on the lower east side. You have to walk down some steps, with this unassuming unlabelled metal door covered in graffiti, that looks like it leads into a basement but it opens up and turns out to be this massive brick-walled space. So dark you can't even read the drinks menu without turning on a lighter, and sticky wooden counters, cracked leather in the booths, and enough people to show it was popular but not enough that you had to be crammed in elbow-to-elbow.
The bartender absolutely did not recognize me and didn't want to give me a free drink — if I'd been a cute girl, he probably would've — but a woman down the counter took pity on me and bought me one. It was a tequila shot, with the lime and licking the salt off my hand and everything. Not exactly the same as what you'd described, but I took it anyway.
It's actually the first drink I've ever had? I play by the rules too much, I guess. It burned like I'd swallowed a warm flame going down, but I actually really liked it with the lime. And I got the cocktail umbrellas and tried some whiskey neat, and I did not vomit on anyone's shoes and I didn't get any drinks thrown in my face, so I consider the night a success.
She asked for my number, but I pretended I had aDo I get a reward for passing the challenge?
- Luther
PS: This is the most I've ever written outside of Academy assignments, too.
no subject
That some part of her wants to keep that image, the one that he's describing, as someone who has it altogether out here. Cool and cultured. She's making it out here, and she can sound just as smart and smooth about it as everyone else. She tries hard not to think why that matters more than the absent, confused sputtering of everything when this started. Months ago now.
How did it get to be months? )
It's weird to think about, isn't it?
None of us wrote letters we chose to, and yet for years on years of our lives, we all got fan mail. All these letters people took the time to think out and write, good or bad, short or long, by themselves or with gifts, and we never actually answered them back. Or wrote letters to anyone ourselves. Letters were just things that happened to us, or happened in history books and classic literature.
You probably still don't have any, so I will tell you for the sake of the world, that the life before you realize the mailbox is mostly full of bills and ads for things you don't want is more blissful. Maybe I'd feel differently if the cable bill came hand-drawn and written and sassed me by name like it actually knew me. Or what I watched. It is to dream.
I have to say. I'm impressed that you asked dad, and somehow convinced him to let you. I assumed you'd just sneak out,
if you went at alllike all those other few times we all did through the years, here and there. Your bartender sounds like an absolute dick, but I'm glad someone managed to have some sense of commemorative spirit. Tequila is not a bad starter, either. There are a lot of people who hate it and a lot of good ways to have it.I commend you on completing Operation Birthday, acquiring your drink, not destroying anyone's shoes, and not offending anyone else's sensibilities. You have a officially had a time of it and are allowed to consider yourself twenty-one now in the eyes of the world and not just the calendar.
I wish I could'veWhat kind of a reward would you want?
Allison
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It's such an innocent question, and yet not. He reads and rereads and rereads the sentence, traces the sharp angles and curves of Allison's handwriting, and tries to imagine what tone might be infusing those eight words. If this were over the phone, he'd be better able to read it, to gauge her voice and her mood and the intended slant to that question. Was there a coquettish edge to it? He can't tell.
He knows what reward he'd want: Her. Just her. Allison in the doorway of his bedroom again, flashing him a brilliant smile, laughing that clear bell-like laugh, throwing herself down on his bed and tugging his book away. Paging through his record selection, and him letting her have that honoured position of choosing the next album. Sparring in the work-out room in the basement, her blows darting and quick like a hornet, the pair of them working up a sweat. And then the playful rewards she'd never actually doled out: a kiss on the cheek, bestowed like a boon.
He can't ask for it, any of it.
He puts pen to paper again. )
Hey, speak for yourself, I answered some of that fan mail. Or well, I guess I never really wrote letters, really, but I personalized as many of the autographs as I could before my wrist gave out.
And good point about the sneaking out. I don't know why I went straight to him, and didn't even think of bypassing it— Although I guess it's just harder, without Klaus to come up with the idea or Diego to egg me on. It never occurs to me on my own. It's actually easier these days, though, to get some things past him. He's stopped putting in as much effort now that there isn't a whole team to manage, if that makes sense. Pogo and I can do pretty well by ourselves. He's started focusing more on his research and tech
and a project onBut thank you, thank you. I'm feeling pretty good about Operation Birthday. Me conquering stingy bartenders and polite crowds = worth entering the annals of the Umbrella Academy right alongside the sortie against Mr Universe. And it was a better way of marking the day than doing a hundred pull-ups and reading a book, anyway.
Any of the rewards I'd want, though, I can't have.
- Luther
no subject
She says maybe once she's done. But that doesn't happen.
She says in the morning. But that doesn't happen either.
She thinks it's only been two days when she picks it up, again, a little annoyed at being so busy, and skimming the words once more gives her an idea. Which sends her to pulling out an extensive portfolio and leafing through pages with a determined expression of focus and consternation. It feels a little like cheating, but at least it is something and maybe next time she will have the time to do better?
When the mail is brought in at the Academy a few days later, it is not envelope. Or it is. It is just much larger than it should be. The material far more durable than paper, and slapped with large "FRAGILE" stickers two on the front and two on the back, like someone was making as sure as they could nothing would happen to it.
When he opens it up, a single thing exists: a glossy headshot in black and white of Allison, her hair blown into an array of waves around a bare shoulders, behind her into the diffuse light. She's looking back over her shoulder out of the image, straight at the viewer, and the press of her mouth hasn't turned any direction. But there's something right at the edge of her mouth, almost impossible to point to what, that makes the whole thing feel like she's smiling all the same.
Written across the top, the careful side not on her face, and the bottom, around the mainframe of the photo, is Allison's slightly loopier fast handwriting in familiar black sharpie. The one with 'slightly more character' that she may have been practicing through the last year, as something better than her father perfectly trained printing. Especially her signature. )
Scientific tests were necessary.
Is this or is this not a letter?
☐ Yes
☐ No
All My Love & Best Wishes,
Allison Hargreeves
no subject
He sets the photo on his cramped desk, moves the stack of books and scattered paint tubes aside, and leans over writing his response, his handwriting as narrow and tidy as ever: )
☑ Yes
The definition of letter can be pretty flexible, if you just put your mind to it. Maybe I'll dedicate myself to training carrier pigeons next, and tie some scrolls of paper to their ankles. Maybe my next message to you will be via telegram, or Morse code.
I still owe you a birthday present too, right? Here — I think I promised you a souvenir.
I was Honolulu, fighting a magma-themed supervillain on the slopes of Diamondhead. Most of my clothes literally burned up in the battle. It'd probably sound like something out of the pulp comics, like I was some scantily-clad hero out of Edgar Rice Burroughs or something, except it was so embarrassing. I had to stop at a tourist shop on the beach just to find something to wear on the way back. It got me through the newspaper interview afterwards, and I brought it home. I can't exactly wear it around the house, though, so it might as well go to a good home. You should visit Hawaii someday, if you haven't been, and enjoy it properly. I took an experimental high-speed plane back, designed by one of Dad's contacts, so I didn't really get a chance to stick around or soak up the sun.
- Luther
( With the letter comes a wrapped package: soft and clearly not as fragile, when she opens it, she finds a cheesy space-themed Hawaiian shirt. Obviously clean, because it smells of Grace's laundry detergent and fabric softener, the same scent as all their neatly-pressed matching uniforms — but he's also worn it a couple times before he remembered to wrap it up for the mail.
It might've been intentional. It might've not been. )
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"Isn't it?"
And yet somehow Allison is still smiling as she says it, holding the offending article up to see the full breadth of it, as Bea rolls her eyes, continuing on her way into the kitchen to get who knows what. Allison can't stop looking at the Hawaiian eyesore, still holding part of it in her hand as she's finally opening the letter to figure out how her cheating on her last letter somehow ended up her up with this.
She knows it'll be something, but not how or why, and it's a nebulous warmth that has her smiling, pulling up a knee toward her chest as she starts down the familiar handwriting on this newest letter. )
I supposed I shouldn't be laughing, but honestly, I'm just glad I don't have to ask if you managed to keep all your limbs and skin intact.
Keep being that luI didn't catch the news on that one, but I've been snowed under lately with memorizing lines. You'd think it couldn't take up five billion hours a day, but somehow it does.I'm trying hard to not imagine you suddenly absolutely naked in Hawaii, clinging to the smallest dregs of your costume left. Or what it took to manage a conversation even to get this shirt. I'm sure the fans loved that. How much of you was blister red before you managed to find clothing and put it on?
It's sad you didn't get to see any of Hawaii while you were already there, but that's always the way it was, wasn't it? I'll find some use for your sad, lonely, space-themed savior you've so quickly and heartlessly cast off.
Critical questions which need answers:
Will the morse code be quieter and more challenging to hear than across a whole room and through the wall? Will the birds try to stab my fingers apart with their beaks, or is this like you've decided to make me into a Disney Princess and birds will fly in through your window singing things? I can still aim well with a book or a lamp, even from dead sleep seconds earlier; I'll have you know.
- Allison
( It doesn't happen the same night. Of course, it doesn't. She has more control than that. First, it was left on the back of a chair. And then the days passed. She never knew how many. Other letters even. But at some point, the way too many busy days do, she ran out of nightclothes about three days after she ran out of clean socks and jeans, and it just seemed not a terrible idea. Convenient. Still clean.
Even if she laughed at herself in her bathroom mirror.
The clash of the colors and her skin. Her hair.
And just as she was falling asleep, she swore it smelled like him, like his pillow had when she used to fume until she was half spent, pacing holes in his bedroom floor, before throwing herself on his bed to fume-sulk the rest of it out while he read or painted or talked at her. )
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So, most of the letter comes easily. Teasing. Jokes. Banter that isn't the same as bantering with her in-person, but it's the closest thing he can get right now, and thus the next-best thing.
But then. The last part. The last part (which does not come easily) is buried in the post-script, as if it's an afterthought; as if it's not the foremost thing at the front of his mind and haunting him, ever since Reginald received the invitation, and turned down the invitation, and then Luther had wrangled his way into taking it in his stead. The opening of a new science museum in Los Angeles. )
Good, because I actually told it to you to make you laugh. And look, that's a relief; I'm glad it didn't manage to hit the mainland media properly. It's the kind of ungraceful, not-quite-dignified incident that doesn't reflect well on the Academy, probably. I managed to persuade the reporter into cutting out the 'wardrobe mishap' comments from the eventual print interview, though, and for that I'm grateful.
Someone else probably would've had third-degree burns, but yeah, I was pretty much blister-red and lightly singed all over, and lobster-red from blushing. (I bet you're laughing again. Stop that.)
Critical answers, as promised: Morse is a bit more challenging now that I can't just knock on the wall. You'll probably need to install a telegraph in your home. And Disney Princess would fit you so well — remember when Mattel reached out to Dad about licensing that Barbie? — but I know you don't like being woken up too early, and I don't want the birds to die, so we might need to scratch that off the list.
- Luther
PS: Another critical question. What does your schedule look like the last week of this month? Are you going to be in town then?
I'm going to be passing through for an event, and if you're not too busy, I was thinking we could grab some coffee or something. I don't know. It might be nice.
I miss yno subject
It's a tragic sort of feeling starting at those words—that offer. Like something more, something real, than this was finally offered up, but only after the world had already taken the when and where from her. She can't change those plans. She needs this work. Needs to keep trying to do her best, hoping that someone will see it, appreciate it, do something about it.
Because as much as she doesn't mind rumoring herself into positions, she wants, even deeper, to have someone notice her without it. Wants the validity that she belongs here, for any small part, just because of herself. It just feels gutting to realize any chance of seeing Luther is the price, too. There are things she thinks about asking, but she doesn't want to know, also—everything she can't have.
To come home and want to go stand in the places he was, even for a moment, while she wasn't there. She knows she would. Part of her wants to. Like somehow, that doesn't make her weak and stupider still. Nothing like over all of this and grasping for things that can't be hers, that even the universe is putting itself in-between happening again. Allison can't bring herself to joke. It feels like all the laughter was stolen right out of this. Like the light from it was stolen back from her. )
Sorry, but you can't make me anymore, Number One. I can laugh at whatever I want to laugh at. I don't even need a recording of it to be sure that I've pictured it right.
I know yoSadly, this letter seems to full of apologies, but this one is real, at least. I wish I could be here to meet you, but I'm going to be out of town from one, possibly two weeks straight at the end of the month. We're being flown back up to start the second half of the season shooting. I wish I could. Really. Sorry.
I may not even be able to write for a while in there, too, depending on how busy they keep us. But I could get together a list of places you should consider visiting, more than whatever I mentioned however many of these back that I'd seen if you want suggestions on what to do with that hour instead?
Still not
youra Diseny Princess,Allison
no subject
He hadn't expected it, really: hadn't known that simply reading ink on a piece of paper could rob the breath from his lungs like this, could feel so much like a punch to the gut. In a way, it's even worse than the other letter that had thrown him for a loop (dating). Because despite his better sense, Luther had already started picturing it: arranging a time and a place, all the stars lining up, walking into a coffee shop, Allison looking up from a table, both of them smiling and smiling. Finally in the same place. Together. Again. Even if it was just to sit at a table and talk like strangers and catch up on the past two years, and even if he didn't have much by way of stories to fill up the gap in comparison to whatever life she had been living— at least it would have been talking. In-person. Again.
But she can't. She's out of town and she can't, and the disappointment curdles in his stomach. How is he supposed to respond and still sound frothy and light and careless? How is he supposed to ask for recommendations around Los Angeles, when the truth is that none of those sights and tourist traps matter if he's not seeing them with her? How is he supposed to pretend like this chance will come by again quickly, when he's rarely out on the west coast, especially by himself? )
Shit. Oh well. I guess that'll have to be a raincheck, huh? Next time. If you get me that list, though, I'll definitely check them out, but don't put yourself out if you've got a lot of prep to do.
This one will be shorter than usual, but I'll keep all my fingers crossed for you re: the new season, and I want to hear all about it once you're back.
Signed, someone who Mattel never approached about a Ken doll and I'm still awfully disappointed about it,
Luther
no subject
When something he'd admitted wanting was just as impossible as their life had ever made things. She'd apologized in her last letter, right? She must have? She can't change anything, but she stares at the words, and guilt gathers like a boulder in her stomach. Like somehow this is absolutely her fault. Again. He'll be here (after never coming), and she'll already be gone.
This perverted inversion of the day he stayed, and she left.
This what feels like a cruel reminder of the world divided that day.
That they chose different sides of that line, different sides of this life.
She can't even say how long she stares at the paper after the first five words. For days. )
Yeah, raincheck, definitely.
Places Luther Hargreeves Might Like
- Griffith Observatory
- The Getty Center
- California Science Center
There are a few others, but if your trip is short, definitely one of those three. Maybe even one of the two from the first and the last. But any of those three should be good
if your tastes haven't. The Science Center has a shuttle, but I can't remember which one right now.Given the time I'm gone being not really long enough to forward an address for mail, it'll probably be a few weeks around there before I can answer one of these again, but I'll be looking forward to what you think. Maybe you can drop me your thoughts in a letter or a postcard while still there, even, and then it'll be waiting for me.
Allison
( It feels like it sounds desperate closer to the end. Almost a request. Some stupid kind of barely concealed plea that his letter, that's barely even near as much as his first ones, isn't a sign this is about to end as soon as it started because of all this. He has to know she can't actually upend her entire life, her entire schedule just because he'll be here and she didn't have enough warning.
She hates that everything in here feels wrong for not choosing to.
Choosing him first. Two years later. So much for anything like two years wiser. )
no subject
(He has, of course, already been imagining it all.)
But it's a good list, and Luther takes meticulous notes, takes out an almanac and winds up marking them down on a map of Los Angeles. )
Thanks for the list, I'll definitely check one or two of them out.
I'm not even sure if this'll reach you in time before you're away — isn't it a pain that we don't have a way to send these instantaneously? I should tell Dad to get right on inventing that — but anyway, I promise to scribble something while I'm out on your side of the country. And the next one will be longer besides, since I'll have more to talk about then.
I'll miss
ythese letters, but go knock 'em dead in the meantime.- Luther
( It might be his last letter for now, the correspondence pausing — but it is not, however, the last they hear from each other. That'll be another night entirely. )