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]

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.