obediences | for numberthree.

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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Luther tilts his head and watches Allison lean forward (caught and entranced by the twist of her bare shoulder, the line of her arm as she leans it against the chair; the sloping curve of her spine and the dip at the small of her back).

"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.)

When Allison looks back from the driver, sliding back on the seat, her answer is, perhaps, a little more artfully vague and imperious than it needs to be; and maybe she tells herself it's because she's tense and irritated. "Consider it a surprise."

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?"

It's not quite irritation, but neither of them have the vocabulary for it either. It's restlessness, a nagging ache of wanting something and not having it. Not getting it. An itch he can't scratch, and with that clock still ticking down over their heads.

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."

Edited 2020-10-11 03:19 (UTC)

"Flatterer."

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.

"Not really. He was going to schedule the appointments on the east coast, for when they happened to be passing through town, but if I was going to be out here anyway then it just saved some time."

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.)

It's all patented excuses for their father. The kind Luthor had been defending for longer than she could even remember where started. She didn't know what it was the tied Luther to him stronger than anything else on this planet, but it was there. It had always been there. Maybe it always would be, since he was still out there doing the job without any of them.

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."

"And which I, obviously, don't have clearance to hear about either." His arm's still propped against the window, knuckles now resting against his chin, hiding a half-smile behind his hand as he looks at her. Security permissions and clearance levels and need-to-know bases. Luther has his trade secrets these days, and so does she. In a way.

"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.

It's still strange to hear him say that. She knows he did earlier, but it's still strange to hear. To picture Luther watching her on tv every week, on the television she willed into existence when she was too young to really be letting herself get away with things anymore and already obstinately doing it anyway. It's still incredibly strange to picture him watching her. Like that was just a normal occurrence.

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.

Luther unfolds himself from the taxi (absentmindedly patting his pockets, checking he still has his own wallet too), stretching his legs as he walks down the pavement, and then he's looking at the shop. All brightly-lit neon in the window, diner-style counters and bright fire-engine-red stools. "Oh wow," he says, marveling. Hands shoved in pockets and his shoulders sloped, head tilted backwards as he takes in the store. It's such a normal everyday thing, but instantly he knows what this means. Because as if, Allison. As if he could ever forget.

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.

He can't, but Allison can.

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?"

They push themselves into the ice cream shop, pressing into the line and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the other customers, even as they look out-of-place. It's far closer contact with the average civilian than Luther is accustomed to; normally his whole life is held apart from the rest, locked away behind the walls of the Hargreeves manor.

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.

The whispers start not long after they make it in the doors.

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."

"Then what...?" Luther starts, glancing over at her, following her train of thought but not following it all the way to the end of the path. Always far too serious for his own good. Like no end of occasions in the past when Number Three had been the one to cut through that rigid somber self-importance; the one to make him loosen up and start joking around, those blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments of Number One being more lighthearted. She was always the best at dragging it out of him, and sometimes the only one who could.

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?"

Even if she's not surprised, she finds herself nettled into a flush of frustration, even as everything sidelines for the young boy. All dinner-plate wide eyes and voice rushed like if he didn't get all his words out fast enough, this chance would pass him by, and Luther would vanish before his eyes.

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?"

She's always been far better at this part. The secret behind Luther's ability to keep it together in front of the cameras, back in the day, was that none of it had been an act; he had been that beamingly pleased to strut in front of the news corps, practically glowing with pride, enthusiastic in describing how their missions had gone, how pleased he was to be of service, how the Academy was fulfilling their sworn duty, how glad he was to fight alongside his teammates. It was PR-practiced, but none of it was a lie.

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."

To Joe, my biggest fan!
When you take a chance on yourself, you're believing in all of your unlimited potential.
— Space

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.

Edited 2020-11-16 06:16 (UTC)

Like so much of the time since she bustled up and absconded with Luther as her fake-date, this second feels pulled straight out of the past. Writing a message and signing her name. Handing it off to Luther and paying maybe a little too much attention to the way his fingers are still long and slender. Against the notebook. Around the pen. Like somehow, it should be different.

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.

He's a fossil preserved in amber, a statue: unmoving and unchanging, while the rest of the world moves on around him. Because the Hargreeves mansion itself is a mausoleum, and nothing in there, after all, has changed in two years. Since the moment the last teammate left — since Allison walked out — the only sign of passing time is the dust accumulating in the corners and Grace's careful tidying-up of the bedrooms (Luther hadn't let her touch Allison's at first; forbidding any alteration like that might jinx it, still hanging onto some faint desperate hope that she'd be back again before long). The dwindling fan mail. A few more trophies in the cabinets.

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.

She doesn't jump this time when nearly his whole hand suddenly touches her back. Polite and careless and directionary. But if she doesn't jump, it's not like for a second, a few, too many, her whole attention shifts there. Fingers pressed against her bare skin, the oh so carefully moderated pressure of Luther touching anything.

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.

Edited 2020-11-18 17:17 (UTC)

"Two scoops of the apple pie one," Luther says without missing a beat, "and a scoop of the salt lick, please. Also in a bowl."

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.

Allison is a little surprised at Luther's fumble and sudden rush of words, as his wallet seemed almost to get the best of him, and the offer is normal enough -- but not, something she's all too aware of with her surprised tilt of a smile. Because people might, but he, they, didn't, couldn't ever. Also, it was just strange to think about Luther having his own money.

Which probably wasn't. It was probably some tyrannically ordered and rule-bound amount handed out to him with his trip by their father. Allison was pretty positive buying her ice cream wasn't on that list. And for the first time, stomach still wobbling with that first blush of surprise, Allison finds herself wondering if her father knows about this.

It's so patently suspect of the Monocle playing chess with his children, for some grand and pointless aim, it takes Allison another two seconds to remember they didn't even know this was going to happen. Because she wasn't supposed to be here, she'd told Luther she wouldn't be. Hadn't even known she would be until this morning. Reminds herself, her own insanity aside, Luther's not here in her favorite ice cream shop because of some twisted order to be here. That he'd said.

Schooling herself between vitriol and that too familiar unsettled twist in her stomach, the one he made happen far too easy to be anything good for her, Allison tried to pour herself back into a normal response. "I supposed that would be fair after getting the cab ride."

Like somehow that was all it was, and one generically polite sentence hadn't already blasted her thought an unexpected rollercoaster of too many feelings and opinions and overreactive considerations.

It felt, somehow, patently absurd that everybody else could take this sort of thing for granted. (Like that first-ever Dear Allison, agonised over and paper scrapped and redone and rewritten before he'd finally dared to pin it down in ink.) That, somewhere out here in the world, somebody could buy Allison Hargreeves ice cream cones anytime they damn well pleased, instead of waiting for a night that feels like an unexpected and un-earned miracle dropped in his lap, and which he isn't even sure when he's going to be able to do it again. This precious, desperately rare thing.

(And that train of thought is a slippery slope, of wondering What would it look like if he could do it anytime he liked, but Luther can't let himself go too far down that particular road.)

"Sure," he says, because it's logical, rational, and makes it sound more a fair-handed exchange rather than the fact that he, very suddenly, wanted nothing more than to buy her something. The gentlemanly gesture that was a part of dates, supposedly, or so the movies had taught him.

Once he's paid and they've armed themselves with spoons and napkins and the hot, crowded shop has spat them back out into the warm night air towards a few circular tables and parasols (ha) set up outside, he also suddenly realises that this might be logistically more dangerous than he'd expected. He looks at Allison's gown with a little bit of alarmed concern.

"We might not have thought this through all the way. Are we gonna put you out thousands of dollars if you wind up spilling on that?"

As if they hadn't already risked so much worse in the past; as if, in another life, her pleated skirt hadn't been hopelessly stained with someone else's blood.

It's nice to push back out of the crowd and into the warm evening air, even knowing there are eyes following every one of their steps, same as there is a small stir of a titter from some of the groups as they are stepping back out of those doors. It's nothing new, but it's not normal anymore either, and Allison can't decide if she's a little annoyed -- jealous? -- of its unchanged ease for Luther.

The path she's on now, the things she wants, nowhere near that yet.
She was recognizable, and famous still, but she wasn't The Rumor anymore.

Luther's sudden alarm at not stringing her choice into any eventualities and end results amuses her. Her first response is delightfully daring and unremorseful, feet slipped into shoes she so rarely gets to wears to flagrantly anymore, "As though anyone could make me pay thousands of dollars for anything."

"It's less that and more the chairs," Allison gestures with her spoon to direct his attention. While the table setup is nicely chic even outside the restaurant, their iron rod piece, with woven trellis & flower patterns cut in it. A hundred places and pieces in it that could catch or snag the fabric and ruin it entirely. "But I can stand, I don't mind."

"Yeah, I bet you can." They'd undergone an endless battery of endurance tests, sleep deprivation, hiking for hours. You never know when The Minerva will be out of commission, students; you'll have to be able to stay on your feet and make your way back to the Academy even if all other options are exhausted.

It was perhaps an odd way of utilising it, that she could stand perfectly in perfect heels for hours without flagging, but when needs must.

Luther shrugs out of his jacket and slings it over the back of his chair (a precautionary measure; the shirt by itself would be easier to launder if he spilled), and he takes a seat. Chivalry might've meant staying on his feet too, but the chairs are at a level that mean he can look at her more evenly, without tilting his head too far to look downward, and it gives his neck a bit of a break.

And when he tries the first bite of each flavour, a deeply appreciative look crosses his face that could only be described as blissful. He licks the back of his spoon, savouring it. "God, that's good," Luther says. It's not the same flavour as the plain chocolate he'd always had before, so it doesn't quite rocket him back to the Academy days — it's new, and that's almost more terrifying and exciting. He'd never have tried this place or even known about it, if Allison hadn't thought of it first and taken him with her.

(And wasn't that just emblematic of the whole thing.)

He digs in and considers how he really should've gotten more than the three scoops, all things considered, but it would take too long to get back in line. "You have the best ideas," he pronounces, and just for a second, it's like there's an echo of familiarity: the pair of them as teenagers, slipping away with schemes, Allison usually the instigator with some sort of plan, with Luther faithfully by her side to execute.

All of this. This entire night. He's a thousand miles away from home, but he feels home in a way he hasn't for two years.

It's distantly amusing to watch Luther slip briefly into just the first taste of his ice cream. It's silly. The whole thing tastes like childhood, though it never entirely stops being burned on the far, far edge of her thoughts. It lets her chuckle a little, even as she's got her spoon in her mouth, at the words that come out. Like somehow, she'd given him more than some ice cream flavor at a small, well-loved and well-trafficed, but hardly even famous, little shop.

"When I first got here--" Allison said, putting her spoon back in to dig a little more out. "--the first few months, maybe half of that year, I went through more than one place just tasting most of the flavors."

Allison's just gotten her spoon to her mouth, shaking her head a little, with a falted smile around it, at the strange necessity to -- what exactly would you call it now? Tell Luther the truth? Connect her experiences to his? Like somehow part of any of those links were actually left outside a handful of handwritten words? Did it really matter?

Did it matter for more than just h--

"Mommy!"

There's a shriek of something that pretends to be a whisper behind them, from a small child, and like all small, small children, given to thinking they're doing well but not really having any clue yet, it's anything but quiet, as she leans into her mom. "The princess is still here!"

It's the loud noise, the shriek, that instantly draws Luther's attention — all of him sharpening to attention like a hunting hound hearing the whistle of his master, calling him to heel. He swivels in his seat to look back at the child, searching for what could be wrong: raised voices could mean an emergency, could mean someone in danger, and so Number One snaps into place. His muscles tighten and she can see his legs gathering underneath him, as if he's ready to spring out of his seat.

But it's not an emergency, and no one is dying, and everything is fine.

"Princess?" Luther repeats dumbly, then glances back at Allison. Oh. Right. The ballgown. Like something out of the picture books. He continues, though, as if on autopilot: "She's not—"

Thankfully, he's interrupted before he can puncture the illusion and crush some poor random innocent child's dreams.

for numberthree.

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