for numberthree.

[obediences]

And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.

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[numberthree]

"No," Allison can admit, or agree, to that easily, but only like it's a stone between two others because the only thing she can say after his words is already crowding into her mouth. Making it so much bigger, so much longer, so much more illogical. "But you were I originally started doing it."

It feels foolish, and hopeless, and -- even anchored by his fingers -- insane—an adult admitting to the stupidest of childish things. A child reaching for something lost so, so, so long before when there was never even a single shred of hope anywhere, to begin with. Not a decade later, without a single word sewn between them after Goodbye.

"It wasn't like here." She can't tell if she rushes those words a little to make them sound saner, and yet somehow, they sound a little like an apology in her ears, too. "Not every night. The bad ones mostly. The worst of the worst after--" The ones were she stole away to windows and darkened back porches, to steal a cigarette or nurse countless scotch glasses, or she'd cried herself empty in that empty, empty, echoing littler house, and the moon just happened to be there already, too, and she couldn't help wondering.

About the boy up there, watching over all of them. Keeping them safe.

(Before it was when he was dicked over by their father in the last, greatest way he could.)

"And then after we all came home--" And she means, but the words don't force themselves: after I saw you, heard you, you were so real, so you, again. "--and you were there, and then I was here, and--" She's never been prosaic or poetic unless she memorized the lines to be that on a screen (and even that part of her life is so long ago it's half-dream). She's all emotion that only comes out cutting straight or couched in lies that never will.

"--I don't know." A beat. A frown. Because she can't make it make sense for him.
"I guess. It was the only echo I had left of you. That I could see. To hold on to."

That even Ray hadn't been enough to hold on to all those days.

He hadn't been the first thing she'd reach for getting here.
And she hadn't been able to stop even once he was there.

(She didn't deserve to be loved by any of them.)

[obediences]

And the dam's finally broken open and he's finally getting a flood of more words from her, something more for Luther to work off, even if Allison's sentences are stilted and half-abandoned and keep veering all over the place. He empathises; he knows what that feels like, to choke on all your emotions and for them to clot your tongue, to be far too big for words, unable to summarise or pin them down.

But what she says. What she's saying. It makes his chest warm from the inside out, a soaring dizzying heat like his heart is going to leap right out of his chest. Like it's going to palpitate and give him a heart attack.

"I wish I could've been there for you. On the worse nights," Luther murmurs. That's a safer thing to admit, because it comes after Claire. Because if a message could have made it up to the moon base, somehow, some way, he's certain he would have come down. He could have been there for there. He would have.

Even so, though, it's useless wanting and wishing for what hadn't happened. But Luther's well-accustomed to that longing regardless; it's taken up residence inside him like a persistent weed, gnarled roots curling into all the cracks and crevices of his heart, tightening like a noose. His hand slides down her arm, the line of her forearm, the turn of her wrist, then down to the curl of her fingers, where two of his fingers hook into hers.

"I didn't have anything to hold onto. Nothing that I recognised. I just— kept thinking I saw you, all around town, every time I saw a woman out of the corner of my eye who had even a passing resemblance to you, I'd do a double-take. I literally tripped over my own feet when I turned to look and faceplanted on the ground, because I wanted her to be you so badly."

Everything he hadn't ever actually wanted her to know, the things about him that had felt sad and foolish and pathetic, they're spilling off his tongue.

[numberthree]

It's the asp of uncertainty, the doubt of two years under too many thumbs, that wonders how rare that would have to be. To even be in the place to see someone from the corner of his eyes who would be the right color, with all of them basically cordoned off and exiled into South Dallas, like it was a second city trying not to be a bristling, slowly angrier, barely tolerated sixties suburban slum.

How often, when the only thought afterward, was that he was looking for a ghost of someone he'd thought was dead. The idea of Luther. Thinking she was dead. The utter absent black space in her mind that didn't know how to consider that, hold on to it, expand it, how to word the question, form the thoughts. How he was. What did he. With that. Then. When he thought she was. For how long. How soon after.

His fingers are sliding into hers, and it's not exactly the easiest of things between their gloves, but it's probably the least problematic of things to stand between them. Ever. Supple layers of leather. Her fingers curling firmer against his, against the looseness and the still too present divide between them, even that small, as she looks up into those eyes blue eyes of his.

"Well. You have me now." Alive. Here. Battered and bruised in ways that had nothing to do with her bones and blood and skin (even the soreness in her ribs, her lungs, has already subsided away). And maybe she means that she's here. Alive. Right here in this room. And maybe she means. Anything he wants it to mean.

Everything that it will always be no matter where she goes or what she does.

[obediences]

"Do I," Luther asks, and this time he doesn't sound stunned and disbelieving anymore; instead it comes out warmer, with a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Perhaps almost teasing again, at last, as his confidence bricks itself back together. It's a fragile patchwork thing at best, but with Allison's hand in his and her eyes meeting his gaze, he can pull together those shreds of bravery even if his pulse is going haywire in his throat, in his chest.

He hasn't really been happy in years. Over a decade.

There was the occasional satisfaction of a job well-done and a mission accomplished, sure, but nothing like this: the sheer, uncomplicated joy that he can feel cracking himself open around Allison, like basking in the glow of a radiant sun. It's still going to be hopelessly complicated and convoluted, because everything they touch is, but at least this— this moment— isn't. Because all Luther needs to hear is those four words (You have me now), and it turns the entire goddamned world upside down. Flips it under his feet until he's foundering; until he reaches for solid land, which means tightening his grasp on her hand and tugging her closer as he steps into her.

Close enough for his other hand to catch the line of her cheek in this dim, dark, ruined kitchen (an inversion of Allison's perfect, tidy kitchen glowing in the sunlight), close enough for him to duck his head low and kiss her, finally, for the second time in his life.

[numberthree]

She shouldn't have the right to this. The way Luther's voice goes a pitch lower hitching her stomach into an unexpectedly tighter coil, as his mouth starts to smile. Less shock and something more. Something she doesn't have a word for. But she's not sure she wants to worry about words.

Not when Luther's fingers are tightening further on hers, and he's pulling her closer, and her heart has the sputtering second of seeing it coming this time. Not just her throwing herself forward. Amused. Exhausted. Every nerve screaming. Done with waiting another second. Not even the ones for thinking first. Crashing into him like the air crashed back into her. Like a wave returning to the ocean.

This isn't that. This feels like. Like every second is strung all delicately on a line. The soft tug of his hand. The step that brings her closer to him. The step that brings him closer to her. The soft leather that finds her cheek now, too, for the second time. Fingers at the side of her face, across her cheek and her jaw, and there's a whisper of her that wants to lean into it and close her eyes --

(the only place she's ever known how to breathe;
how to lay down her grief and her shame;
how to scream out all her fire;


and still, be accepted)

-- but it's the tiniest shred beside the bonfire starting to catch under her breastbone, and the way her eyes can't close, can't look away. Because Luther is leaning toward her. Luther is going to kiss her. Which is different. Even if he kissed her back earlier. Shocked stillness and then apocalyptic shifting. But this isn't that. This is still, and quiet, and slow in the silent darkness of this broken house.

The touch of his lips and how she can't quite place when her other hand found the flat of his chest, or she pushed up on her toes. Only that the whole world flattens out again, entirely, against the texture of his lips, on his fingers in her hand, on her cheek. When this should have been the first kiss. Theirs, and of her entire life, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care that she's been waiting every second of her entire life for this moment.

Because it's happening right now, as her eyes close,
and her fingers ball into his shiny jacket, pulling him closer.