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.
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His own words are clipped, strangled, forced out between his lips as he tries not to notice or think too much about the long line of his thigh between her legs. Luther's having to draw on iron control and discipline and that tightness in his jaw, trying desperately not to focus on the weight of her, or the way the swerve of traffic throws her even harder against him and he has to swallow against that tantalising pressure. As she squirms to readjust her position, and the movement presses her into him, and everything in him narrows down to the heat of that contact. Oh god. This is the worst.
(Don't. He can't. Not now. Not now when she's planted right on top of him.)
More critical questions which need answers and which he finds himself considering in a blind distracted panic: why doesn't she have a coat or a shawl or something. He can't stop looking at the curve of her shoulder so close to his mouth, right beneath his chin. He can smell Allison's shampoo, the cool crispness of spearmint and aloe vera with a subtle touch of honey, suddenly overwhelming when his face is almost pressed into her hair, jaw tucked against her neck.
He has never thought about Allison Hargreeves' shampoo before. It has never been relevant before. Now it's suddenly all he can think about.
He's also never had anyone in his lap before, let alone her, so this is a unique kind of hell and getting worse. It's like the worst kind of endurance test he never had to go through at the Academy, exercising a particular kind of willpower. There's not enough room for either of them to wear a seatbelt, so he has to keep hanging on. His fingers feel like they're burning where they're fanned against her stomach.
She said it wasn't a long trip, which is the only lifeline he has to cling to, even as he's trying to stare out the window and count the minutes and pretend he's watching the lights and streets of Los Angeles passing by, while he notices not a thing.
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When all she was focused on was 'not being that person.' The asshole who makes the whole line wait so that they can get in a cab by themselves. Refusing to get in the ones before them with anyone else in them. Refusing to let anyone else get in with them even if the cab line was basically a mile long. It was all dumb.
But so was thinking her reputation or decency was of higher importance than not being settled directly on Luther, held to Luther, by Luther. Because he had no choice in the matter. The way this dress hugs her body perfectly, hiding nothing, but also gives her no distract from any slightest pressure continually pressing through it. Every nerve in her body had to be screaming at this point; every muscle poised between fight, flight, and freeze in the perfect agreement of all three.
In the way Allison Hargreeves never ever reacted to a threat.
But nothing else in the whole god damn fucking universe was Luther Hargreeves.
With his hands on her. Were this cab and this dress constantly sliding her in little jots forward and back on his lap. Was the way his breath kept tickling the hairs on the back of her neck or her shoulder anytime he breathed out. Was the bump of her hair or her head into his face at the sudden fast stops. Was the faintest awareness of one of the people to their side whispering something that sounded like mumbled mumble Hargreeves mumble and not having the vaguest clue which one of them that might have been.
Or if her brain was just melting and reaching for anything.
She was such an idiot—more than anyone else on the planet tonight.
Allison clenches her teeth, trying to find anything to distract herself that isn't letting her gaze slide sharp to the people next to her, either. She doesn't want to give any of the three of them a sign of how hard she feels rattled. Like parts of her might vibrate off, or burn away under Luther's touch.
(How long had she wanted Luther to just reach out and touch her? How many days, weeks, months, years? Shoulders, and thighs, and arms, next to each other, but also never any closer, and not in anything like this. And not. She'd never wanted anything about Luther to be against his will.
It was why it was never him. Never. Never. Never.
Not except in training when she was told she had to.
Not even that day when he said no and made her leave alone.)
Allison tried to make her ears stop ringing, stop feeling hot, pushed a question out that she hoped didn't come out high pitch, and too fast, the first even vaguely logical, non-related, sounding question her brain could put together: "What did you do before coming to the museum?"
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Her question is another lifeline; it's something for him to distract himself with and hang onto, to think about and try to set his words down in an orderly line to answer her.
"Some of it, you're not cleared to know." A touch of dry humour, the truth but also teasing. His thumb absentmindedly traces the arch of her ribs in the fitted bodice, before he remembers and makes himself stop. This. They don't do this. He's never had this, as much as he'd wanted it, dreamt of it for the better part of a decade, hardly dared consider he might, someday, be able to touch her.
"There wasn't really any time for sightseeing." The trip and itinerary had been pared down to the bare necessities, cut to the bone, with no extra time in the city. If he'd known he was still going to cross paths with Allison, he'd have fought harder to make it a longer jaunt, a proper week-long stay on the west coast before his duties at the mansion inevitably called him back.
"I got in yesterday, and got to check out Grand Central Market for dinner, and had some really good ramen. And then today has mostly been meetings with Dad's contacts, before the museum opening. It's been pretty boring. I wanted to go to the Last Bookstore, but there wasn't time."
He's regretting not fighting for that week now, for so many reasons.
Mainly this one reason.
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Especially when her heart had leapfrogged confusedly sideways at the touch that started and then stopped immediately, only for him to start talking right next to her ear again, and she swears something between her head and her heart and her lungs is going to actually strangle itself soon. She's so stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She knows better than this.
She needs Luther to stop touching her.
(She wants him to have not stopped that soft glide over her middle, too.
She's never considered throwing herself out of a moving vehicle before. But suddenly.)
"This is you guys." A voice suddenly cuts in, before Allison can even pretend to come up with breathing, no less words to answer the ones Luther has, again, so easily produced. Like talking is somehow normal. Teasing her with her clearance level (ex-superhero, only superstar wannabe now), and then answering in spite of it. But instead of replying to his answer, Allison is looking at the two people grabbing their bags and only making that vaguest of eye contact of people who don't know each other just sharing space for five minutes to get home. Or to wherever.
There might be something a little manic about her consideration of the other two-thirds of the bucket seat they are currently taking up and the fact she plans to get there, even if she has to fall face-first into it shortly. If only to plaster herself to the piece of the car furthest from Luther's hands. Arms. Mouth. Chest. Stomach. Lap. Legs. Every single part of him touching her too much; and not nearly enough.
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And there's that moment's hesitation, of both of them waiting just a little too long, before he feels Allison start to shift. She starts the careful, gentle slide over to the other side of the taxi, and it feels like climbing a mountain; like she's swimming through molasses to get away, and he regretfully lets his hands slip off her again. Instead, he ducks down to bundle up the excess fabric from the dress, and holds it up for her while she readjusts her position, so she doesn't step on it while crossing over.
Almost immediately, Luther already misses the warmth and weight and closeness (is it already over? when the hell is he going to be able to touch her again?), even as it's something of— a relief, a reprieve. At least this way, he can remember how to breathe again, when he's not being dizzied and knocked over by mint and aloe vera and honey.
He smooths down the fabric of his trousers; still feels like his entire body is pins-and-needles where she'd been sitting on him, not from any actual weight, but just from the mere proximity. Like Allison's a magnet and he's set of metal ball bearings, scattered and loose and being drawn right into her. The cab driver's double-checking the intersection for their next stop with Allison again, and Luther can't actually remember what he was saying a moment ago. Something about bookshops. Right. There was a bookshop he'd meant to go to.
It doesn't matter. Nothing actually matters except that his heart is pounding a little too heavy in his throat and his palms feel sweaty and, jesus christ, a simple ride in the backseat shouldn't ruin him like this. Shouldn't throw the entire world askew, reminding him in one collapsing fell swoop everything he'd loved and missed and wanted about Allison Hargreeves.
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(Except.)
Even if her nervous system, still all green lights and lightning, strung high on the too-tight awareness of the breath that had just been on her neck and shoulder, the hands that lingered before letting her go, legs and chest, pressing her everywhere else, left the strangest hot sear in her skin. Too awake, too aware, too many things she wasn't supposed to be feeling, too much like it was still happening.
Even when she was only saying, "Thanks," and rearranging the excess fabric of this dress into the actual foot space, she had between not having two pairs of legs or Luther's height to take into account for any longer. Everything is still a buzz at too high a key in her skin, in her head, her teeth. Like it won't stop. Like if the passing streetlamps, singing in briefly through the windows in patterned every few seconds, focused on her too long pink-red would show straight through the color of her skin somehow.
Everything still felt warm, which made the whole idea of coffee suddenly seem deeply ludicrous, like the last thing she wanted was to be even further overheated by her own idiocy. She'd rather almost anything else. Something else like. Allison's head titled as the idea struck her. Lips pressing. She knows it's frustration and guilt (and two-three things she doesn't want to name but can't ignore), but it's maybe not a terrible idea either?
She doesn't ask. How often did she ever? Her brow furrowed in thought when it struck, and less than fifteen seconds later, she was leaning forward, slipping toward the front of her seat and leaning into the center console area, addressing the driver. "I've changed my mind. Can you take us to the intersection of--" Allison described the location with a few other notable landmarks but not the chosen change.
He pointed out it was the opposite direction, but Allison could pay for it, and that was all that really mattered.
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"What's up?" he asks. There would ordinarily be a prickle of concern at the back of his neck, maybe, except there's no urgency to the way Allison reroutes them. There's just the matter-of-fact, straightforward way she takes charge and takes them elsewhere. Number One wasn't ever actually Number One in practice; even her abilities aside, she could steer him so effortlessly with a word, with a touch, a mere hint of what she wanted, and he'd move mountains to give it to her.
His foot is jittering against the floor of the taxi, bouncing with nervous energy, which he finally notices and then forces himself to be still again. Hands against his knees, spine straight with rigid posture. She's over on the other side of the seat now, there might as well be a wall between them, but the cab still feels too small and cramped and close. Luther considers opening the window for a gulp of some fresh air; his cheeks still heated slightly in a lingering blush, and so he makes himself look away, back out to the street and the passing lights. That dress is a problem. Everything about her is a problem. (The best kind of problem to have.)
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It's not irriration. That's not the name for this feeling. The static crackle in her skin that feels like it's not calming, but only humming louder, and slightly stronger in its contrast, without further contact. But she doesn't want to name it. Like somehow, she's just going to willfully ignore that doing that for a decade didn't smother it either.
That there's nothing smothered at all by his two years' absence.
Even 'absence' feels too kind of a word at the edge of this electricity.
It's almost like she doesn't want to be (kind), because everything already always is. The whole world bows toward him as it is. The light passing the windows, while he's looking out it -- seeing, she can't quite even guess, he'd never dreamed of coming here, and she'd had all her dreams already in her eyes when she got here two years ago, but she can't think of that -- as the light, coming and going, continues to paint into far too clear relief the edge of his profile.
Strong jaw, and forehead, and the broad shoulders, nowhere near able to be concealed even in his well-cut professional appearances suit. All catching in the passing streams of white-gold light. The way his head tilts, so goddamn familiarly as his gaze catches on whatever it is in passing, out his window, and his head turns even minutely to let him watch that thing until it's gone, again, too. She hates how much it aches. (She's glad it's not all gone.)
And she hates that some part of her desperately wants him to say something again, anything. That even irritated -- even whatever this is; that it's not; because it never can be -- it's still all the minutes slipping by that she'll never get back. Like she's losing words to silence and the clock. And when had she ever cared if he was the one talking, even if it felt like she couldn't hold her own temper or reactions in?
"So." Allison prompts, ever petulant against desperation when she could act rather than react, than plead. Or whine. Even with herself. "These clandestine meetings of yours. Were they boring? Interesting? Is the world ending, and you're just not going to tell me now, because I'm simply one of the little people now?"
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When she starts talking again, though, the corner of Luther's mouth twitches into a smile even as he's looking away from her, out the window. She can see that twist of amusement on his face before he even turns to meet her eye again. There's that warm, teasing, fond note in Allison's voice, which he can't ever get enough of. She never, ever sounds like that in the interviews or the press junkets. If only he could just record that sound and have it with him forever.
"If the world is ending, you'd be one of the first people I'd tell," he says, and that statement sits somewhere between a tongue-in-cheek joke and the truth. If the world was ending, he'd need to get the Academy back together.
(And just savour as much time with her as he can have, before it all ends.)
"But they were pretty boring, though. It's mostly just business negotiations and new invention patents. Some space things, though, which is more interesting, but which I can talk about less." He's just looking at her now, his arm propped against the door.
A contemplative look in his eyes, before he winds up admitting: "You could never be one of the little people, though. Even if you took off the uniform."
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She says it with all the coolness of what this city has made of her in that way, the way everyone compliments everything. She heard enough of it during her little private tour and any number of her hello's right behind them. Words that mean absolutely everything and absolutely nothing, that are the pride and price of the handshakes of business in this world.
And yet. There's a part of it that lingers. That doesn't let her look away from Luther, and the light-shadow-light shadow plays on the side of his face, and those eyes she's known in even pitch darkness since childhood. That wants it to be true. To believe. Wholeheartedly. Simply because Luther said it.
Because Luther never lies.
(He changes his mind. But he didn't lie. Once upon a time. )
"None of it important enough he thought he should go to himself?"
It's more than a little dismissive. She doesn't try to make it not be. Allison has never much been a fan of the man calling himself their father, and the last thing she'd ever want to even imply for a second is that she'd rather have looked up and found his cold, hard, scrutinizing gaze across the reception fall, but she doesn't like the idea of Luther playing lackey for him still either.
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They rarely have to name the actual specter between them. He and him. They both know exactly which bogeyman they're referring to. Sir Reginald Hargreeves, the Monocle, father, dad, sir. All that complicated Gordian knot that Luther still hasn't been able to hack his way out of.
"How, uh," he starts now, picking his way through the conversation and trying to find some way to redirect Allison's laser attention back onto herself, because he's realising that he squirms under her crosshairs these days, too-aware of the particular ghost haunting them and not wanting him to cast a long shadow over this precious, rare conversation:
"How's the new season going? For your show. It must be good, considering your— good news."
(Luther's not an expert at Hollywood but he is, at least, smart enough to not name outright what she'd whispered to him earlier. The cab driver's still there, could theoretically sell the scoop somewhere.)
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Out here doing the job even their father deemed below him, but not Luther.
It's easier that Luther throws her an absolutely buntable question to follow on it. She could. But she doesn't. Though maybe in only the way he'd get. If he still did. How much could change -- be lost, be replaced, be forgotten -- in somewhere over two years?
"Exhausting--" Allison says, but there's a curl to her mouth was so much less rarely seen when she was younger. When she left someone twice her size on the ground, or frozen them in place and could slide circles around them uncaringly pleased. The smile that was more shark than girl, the one who hungered for a challenge always five times bigger than herself and refused to let anyone tell her no. "--But, yeah, in the good way."
She wouldn't still be standing, upright, out tonight, in this dress, in this cab, if it wasn't true. If it weren't worth it to her, she would have just gone to sleep and made excuses in the morning. She has that to thank for even a few seconds of Luther miraculously, accidentally, stepped into her life and night, too. "The whole next half of the season is full of unexpected twists and some pretty big reveals."
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"Guess I'll just have to find out the old-fashioned way of watching week-to-week like everybody else, huh?"
As he does. Has done. He really wasn't kidding about being her biggest fan, about catching all the episodes when he could, whenever he didn't happen to be out-of-town on a mission (and even then, Pogo was sometimes able to videotape the evening's episode for him on scratchy grainy VHS). Once Allison's career finally hits the movies, he and Pogo will inevitably be renting those videos, too, making popcorn and watching them in the basement.
The car lurches, bumps slightly against the curb, and cruises to a halt. "We're here," the driver says, craning again to look back at his passengers.
And Luther's still shooting Allison an inquiring, puzzled look, because they haven't stopped in front of a coffee shop (and the storefront she actually wants is still around the corner). Where's 'here'? he mouths.
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Not that the irony doesn't strike her that she catches him on the news.
She can't see her show mattering to things he and her father consider to most.
But the arrival distracts from the thought, from the response she'd been pulling together in her head, and shifts him to the soundless question she wouldn't even need to read his lips to know. They like to control things, to plan, to have their fingers on all chances and avenues, Reginald Hargreeves children. Which makes it pert that Allison throws him a smile that is all winning delight about denying him any of it, and, instead, turning her attention to the driver and paying.
Ruffling up under all the fabric of the skirt portion of this dress again and finding the garter thigh band with the pocket that has her ID, her credit card, and a little cash only: the last of which she hands off to the driver. Before her hand is already on the door, smirk still on her lips: "You'll just have to come along and see."
For all the vague bravado, it's not all that impressive, and actually, before they turn the corner to where Lick Ice Cream is, she wonders if it's actually beyond the pale of childish. The wrong choice. Utterly. Made in the heat of a frustrated moment. Well and truly passed, with the back seat's safe space turned into a few feet on the sidewalk, back in the still-humid but slowly cooling night air, where they're just too people who used to know each other walking down this street.
"Ta-da," she says as they round the corner, even though she doubts if he'll remember, and there's a little uncertainty in her imperious showy tone. Just at the edges of her mouth and her eyes. Wanting him not to see suddenly stupidly turned juvenile standing there in this beautiful dress, having left the fanciest public party of the night likely and the relative safety of everyday coffee shops, for an ice cream store of all things.
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They both stand out horrifically, now that they're far away from the gala — other people on the street are sneaking glances at the fashionable pair, particularly the gorgeous woman in her overwrought ballgown. (Gorgeous and vaguely familiar too, in that Los Angeles way that all supporting actresses and faces in commercials are.) They look like two people who swanned out of a fairytale and found themselves downtown, Cinderella and her prince, both with a hankering for dessert.
"I can't even remember the last time I—" Luther starts, and then cuts himself off sharply, because of course he can remember. Both of them can. It would've been the last time the Academy was a twosome; the pair of them being rewarded with ice cream at the tail end of a job well-done, both acutely aware that they were probably too old for ice cream anyway, a little embarrassed by it, but enjoying it anyway because it was one of the only treats they were ever allowed. Luther's sweet tooth had been born from it. It was one of his few indulgences.
And it had been a bonding activity. Ever since the Academy had dwindled to just Number One, there just hadn't seemed like much point.
"My diet's been really boring lately. I can't tell you how much I've missed ice cream." He sounds wistful as he looks at the glowing neon, before he tilts his head and shoots her a sidelong look for a moment.
And in that moment, it's entirely possible — and more than likely — that Luther means he's missed more than ice cream.
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Allison who stocks ice cream in her house and knows enough places to have a favorite location that makes random and rare odd-flavor batches. Thoughts she can't help slipping through while Luther is talking and looking in her direction. It's so inconsequential to her days and months now (except now, except here, when she knows she didn't pick it entirely because it was inconsequential), and it makes her a little sad for him, which she tries to keep off her face.
He chose that just as much as she chose all of this.
"A free night seems as good an excuse as any," Allison offers back before nodding sideways for him to follow her to and through the front door. It's been a while since she's thought about it, but being here with him reminds her even more. About how even this, early on, had been another of those 'Oh, that's not how that works out here' moments.
The world outside of The Academy ate ice cream all the time, but especially more when things went wrong and 'you need a good sulk,' as Bea put it, than as a celebratory gift for when they went right. She could admit some of it never lost the zeel, even in sweat pants and bare feet on a couch, of feeling like she is unrepentantly breaking the rules in her father's face. Even if there were no rules, and she'd be surprised if her father thought of her at all.
(Some part of her still surprised Luther even answered that stupid drunken postcard.)
The door has a light chime, and then it's the bustling of the nighttime crowd voices who've backed all the stools, the little table-chairs set, and even in standing room only already, too, hovering in places. Allison notices it as much as she doesn't, just making her way to the frosted glass counters where the colored gallons of ice cream sit in neat rows, with their titles.
"Old favorite or something new?"
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Old favourite is his first thought, his immediate knee-jerk response, because his tastes have always been simple: plain chocolate, no decoration. It's what he always ordered back in the old days.
But these aren't the good old days, are they? Los Angeles feels fresh and new and like all his nerves are keening on a knife-sharp edge, afire from Allison's mere proximity. Everything about this evening feels different and more alive than ever before, so why not?
"Something new," he says, looking up at the menu. "How about Hazel's Pumpkin Pie? That sounds good. Kind of like Mom's home-made pies, except in ice cream form. Do you have a favourite?"
Because she knows this shop, and so can have an actual preference; she has this whole other life where she could, perhaps, have accrued more complicated tastes in dessert in all the years since they last did this together. It shouldn't matter; it's such a small thing to miss, but he misses it anyway. Favourite music, a developing taste in cocktails, everything she's picked up in the two years that they've been apart and the paths of their lives have started diverging. The split in the road that was never supposed to happen.
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First, likely, because of their clothes and how everyone can't not notice the zip it sends through the crowd, but it's not that many seconds after before the first time she catches their last name from some not far enough away mouth, and for the life of her, she's pretty positive that's always going to be more Luther. The boy still running around as the one last, great superhero of their modern age. Still on the news and magazines at a common rotation.
Also. The one of them who was far taller than everyone else in the room. Easy to spot.
There's. Allison doesn't even know if she can label that strange, knotted feeling -- emotion? reaction? -- in her center. But she finds herself amused less by Luther's unexpected answer and more by the way his tone sounds just a little uncertain. Reaching for something new in more ways than just picking ice cream flavor.
And she has to wonder if it's that she knew that voice better than any sound in her whole life for a very long time, or if she's trying to hear something there. If she's right. If she ever really had been. But she knows that's a lie. She knows how well she knew him. And she knows why.
Not the ice cream why. The big why.
"Yes," Allison says with a momentary smile flashed his direction, before she's looking through the glass, before adding with something of a smirk that betokens even more of her answer, or its lack thereof coming that easily, than the words that follow. "But it doesn't look like they have it out right now."
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Before he can finish his question, though, someone's stepped out of their place in line to talk to them: a younger teenaged boy, star-struck. "Excuse me, you're Spaceboy, aren't you?" he asks, and Luther finally tears his focus away from the menu and from Allison in order to look at the civilian. He blinks, and it's like the ordinary people are becoming visible again for the first time since the museum. He'd looked right over and past them when they first entered the shop; irrelevant, beneath his notice, just like he'd been taught.
"I am, yeah," he says, and there's that familiar mask slipping into place again. The same lilt to his voice that he'd used when he had to schmooze back at the museum, or in interviews. "Are you a fan?"
"Your biggest! Could I get an autograph? And you—" The kid's voice turns hushed and awed, as he looks over at Allison. "You're The Rumor. Nobody's seen you two together in ages."
From the mouths of babes. Luther feels those words like a sliver beneath his fingernails, and he wonders if she ever takes offense at that, at the way so many people still remember her for the Academy rather than this new, delicate career she's been carving out for herself. But she must be used to this. The way it kept cropping up in the press, haunting her the past couple years.
And then, on top of that, the reminder. For both of them. Of how very long it's been since the two of them even occupied the same physical space together.
Luther's smile flickers, a temporary dimming, before he's able to marshal it back into place. "How about it?" he asks, looking at her again. "Two-for-one autograph, and we make this kid's day?"
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Your biggest.
How many million times. How many different faces. How many different voices and countries and people had said those words? They're almost irrelevant in their own way, too, but whatever it is in her center grows a scattering of unexpected thorns pricking her as the words repeat in her head. So close to another set, written more than once. So close to a truth that hasn't been true ...
... for as long as the boy so easily points out they've been apart.
Luther's smile catches, freezes, dims on his lips, and she wonders if he doesn't know how much of everything out here still rides on that. If it's her name that makes his face shutter closed so briefly. The name she's supposed to have put away, with her costume and all those memories, when she left the Academy.
Her smiled might have briefly faltered among it all, but it puts itself back up on the wall right. The way her father expected them always to remain. Resolutely. The way this city expected of everything. Unerringly. The two had blended here since she arrived. The coattails she could neither hide nor ignore. Not when they opened so many doors and turned on so many cameras.
All she had to do was be gracious.
And lie through her teeth about the world she left.
As though everyone understands. (As though she hadn't lost anything.)
Her regained smile was a peerless thing, gracious and amused, even if it's one she's still practicing in the mirror for longer than she'd admit. That she'll keep doing until it's effortless. Until she can manage it just as well as anyone here. That gracious delight at any interruption anywhere that had never been needed in her childhood.
"Of course. Who should we make it out to?"
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So by sheer necessity, Luther had gotten a little better at his poker face, over the last couple years, as the questions from the reporters subtly changed — Space, when was the last time you spoke to your brothers? is The Rumor ever returning to active duty? what really happened? why did the Academy dissolve? — and, for the first time, he'd had to lie. They're retiring to entertain other career pursuits. We all parted ways amicably. The Academy is as strong as ever. It had seemed like they'd been keeping a pretty good lid on it all, too, spinning that particular angle for the dissolution.
(Until Vanya's book will come out, a few years from now, and smash that illusion to smithereens.)
He's still mired in those thoughts and trying to get his expression under control while Allison effortlessly picks up the thread of the conversation. "Joe," the kid declares, practically bouncing on his heels in excitement as he digs out a Moleskine notebook and a pen, hands it over to her first. He's only, what, four years younger than them or so? But the difference feels like a lifetime.
When it's Luther's turn, he feels the soft, supple leather of the cover, and the feeling of pages well-paged. "I have one just like this," he says, tapping the notebook with the pen as he closes it again, tucks it shut with the worn elastic. "I keep all my field notes in it. Great choice."
And then his scrawled signature at the bottom. Luther Hargreeves. He had practiced that one so many times, getting it just right, intent on it not appearing childish or blocky. (It had some unconscious similarities with Reginald's signature, in fact: the jagged lines when he crossed the t and curled the g.)
"What do you recommend from here, Joe?" Luther continues with a nod towards the menu, and the charm's back like a bright lightbulb snapping on. The secret, again: It's not an act. He is, genuinely, curious.
"The caramel salt lick," the boy says, grinning. "I get it every time. Some of the other flavours are too weird for me, but that one's great."
"Maybe I'll try it. Thanks for the tip."
It's not quite a dismissal, but he's hoping it can, maybe, work as one.
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He should be more different.
There aren't two more people to pass it through next to them.
It wouldn't even normally be her because this isn't her normal anymore.
Which leaves Allison considering Luther and his newest Number One Fan, at odds with the mixed-up emotion it dredges into her. Old familiarity, like a strange creaking floorboard of an ache. A slightly colder, more familiar, distance. Or, maybe, more like absence. She'd left, and it seemed like so very little about him had changed, while it felt like almost everything about her and her life had since that day.
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What difference does any of it make? Not much. They might as well have stopped all the clocks, cut off the telephone, when she left.
(But then that postcard. The postcard and her hasty scribbled letter afterwards, which threw open all the doors again and took Luther down off the shelf, dusted him off, brought him back to the world of the living.)
There's a few more niceties exchanged, why are you in LA, is somebody going to attack us, and Luther, smiling, explaining about the museum opening, and no, kid, you're not in any danger. Eventually, though, Joe is self-conscious enough to thank them again and then finally withdraw, fleeing back to his mother's side, beaming. Luther watches him go, something inscrutable on his face, before he falls back into the line himself alongside Allison. His hand settles on her shoulderblades, nudges her forward.
"Do you get tired of that?" he asks, quietly, his voice low and for her ears only. "Or do you miss it?"
She's getting there as an actress, but her star hasn't soared as high as the Rumor yet.
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There's a smile, with a faint twist (even as her mind can't come off the heated presence of five fingertips she can't even see,). "Hollywood is the wrong place to be if someone's avoiding that."
The nice thing about the distraction is that the small cluster of people in front of them, assumedly all come together, too, moves off in a bunch, and it is their turn. Joe, having filled up all the rest of their time in line. Shuffles them up to it being their turn as the harried girl behind the counter, who pauses for just a long enough blink to be surprised at their clothes, tosses out the rudimentary opening to them as well now.
"Welcome to Lick. What can I get for you two tonight?"
Allison's glance is more in Luther's direction because she probably would have said both, but now she doesn't know if he is changing his from the pie to the salt lick. Instead, she just smiles. "I'll take a toffee caramel swirl."
Then, remember. "In one of those bowls this time."
Because of the dress, of course.
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A compromise. He's polite as ever, and also ravenous as ever. It's been a few hours now since the business dinner earlier, and as it's been ever since he was a kid, Luther's body needs a lot of fuel to power that superstrength. And the bowl, of course, to protect the very expensive suit, which he doesn't really get to wear often enough — more often than not, he's in the Academy colours and uniform, the super-suits that Grace has to meticulously launder and repair every time he comes home blood-stained and soot-covered and ripped and torn.
They sidle a little further along, down the row to pick up their orders as they're doled out to them, and then a spark of inspiration hits like a lightbulb going off, and Luther fumbles for the wallet in his back pocket. "Here. Let me get this for you. My treat," he says, as quickly as he can.
He's never gotten to pay for anything for her before.
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