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]

With Luther ghosting hot words into her skin, Allison feels like something too tight and too strained is finally just snapping in her head. Because the first urge is to tell him whatever it is he might step on or run into, she can replace it, and if she can't, she doesn't care so long as he doesn't stop.

"Nothing important." Even as it catches in some back of her throat, her spine, the all too clear thought no one's ever been in this room for this. She chose not to do this in the house. The Synod, sure, once or twice after the founding. But not the house, not here, and no one convenient from Krakoa, on this tiny island, where any of it could affect the Council. Or Claire.

It makes it feel -- as she's pushing his head back and searching for his mouth again, having to be kissing him again, the new-dark blurred-shape of him left from the light being left on the other side of the door latching -- like it's always been waiting for him. She has. (She has.) The one person who already existed inside all of her walls. Every part of her head. And her heart. And this house.

"Back. Back. To the right. It's not like you haven't been in here before."
But not like this. Never like this. For this. God, were they really going to do this.

[obediences]

"This is different, I don't know, maybe you've changed things arou—"

Before Luther can keep half-protesting, though, she's already caught his mouth again and he's muffling a laugh against her lips. He's strong enough that he's cradling Allison with just an arm against the curve of her thighs, while his other hand hovers into the darkness to feel his way towards the bed, to hopefully not knock over or break any lamps.

But in their eagerness, he's still moving too quickly; his shins collide with the edge of the bed sooner than expected, and it trips both of them onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs and the breath being knocked out of them as they land on each other. He shifts his weight onto an elbow, trying not to crush her, a hand splayed apologetically against her stomach. "Shit. I'm sorry."

Even at the best of times, Luther hasn't been especially interested in sex (and a small internal voice is too-knowing, realising, it wasn't the what but rather the who). But it turns out a single right word or touch or heated look from Allison is, apparently, enough to drive him to absolute distraction; he already feels too-aware of everything, the warmth in his cheeks, the patter of his frantic giddy heartbeat, his skin too hot on the frame of his body, too desperately conscious of how close their bodies are pressed against each other now, even with all these layers between them.

[numberthree]

One second she's grinning triumphantly against Luther's mouth, letting himself be silenced into kissing her, laughing into it, but not fighting her off having done it at all. The next, she's falling into the bed, with the unexpected rebound of the bed bouncing back up and Luther tumbling right down into her, too, all too long arms and legs everywhere.

There's not even enough time for Allison to fully take it all in, except that her heart is hammering in her ears, and Luther's hand is not warm and wide across the expanse of her stomach. While he apologizes. Like her entire mind isn't still three paces back caught like she'd been socked in the teeth with the idea of that hand there, without her shirt in the way. Luther's hand on her skin.

"Are you, though?" Thrown up at him above her, like the last thing in the world she could suppose him to ever be at the moment, or that he should ever even consider being at the moment, is sorry. It's more amusing than it is anything else. There's a bubble of laughter still caught up in her chest, even though it's deep-fried and burning along the edges in the feel of her mattress and blankets actually under her now, while Luther is close but not close enough anymore.

Allison hooked her heel on the bedframe and pushed on it, wiggling up over more of her bed, tugging him further on to it with her.

[obediences]

There's a smile wreathed on his mouth. "Okay, you got me. I'm not. Not one bit."

He trails along after her, following the line of Allison's hand and arm, the bend of her elbow as she pulls him further up onto the bed. There's a muddle of sheets and blankets and pillows underneath them — a stuffed rabbit trapped somewhere under his knee, one of Claire's, which Luther finds, extricates, and then moves it gingerly to the floor — before he leans back down to kiss her again. One elbow is still holding himself up, while the hand on her stomach starts to wander: he finds the arch of Allison's thigh where she's hooked it against his legs, slides upwards and follows the dipping curve of her side, the small of her back, before his thumb slips beneath the hem of her shirt and traces a line across her hip.

It's the smallest first encroachment beneath their clothes, the raging-hot warmth of bare skin blazing beneath his touch. One inch of Allison Hargreeves' hip beneath his fingers is going to kill him. This is going to be the death of him.

[numberthree]

Allison doesn't need to be able to see his smile, to hear it in his voice as he admits it, and the words, and his tone, alone, make the already frenetic beat of her pulse skip further. (And how strange and normal, that without adjusted dark vision, she could estimate already and still exactly where she'd need to curl her knee up to kick out at someone and roll them at the general location he's at to take someone ot.)

It'll fill in as her eyes get used to the dark, but she's hardly thinking of that at all when Luther is leaning back down into her, and his mouth is warm and willing and how had it all changed so fast and not for the worst. How was this even possible. She'd maxed out on whatever she deserved in this and every and any world with Claire and the Council.

But Luther's fingers suddenly brush her bare skin, instead of continuing the broadly painted palm of her side or her back, and everything becomes surprisingly electric. Her breath catching still in her throat, and her stomach feeling like it dropped two to three unexpected feet through the air, half bottoming out from her in a way that is patently too much like she's never been touched.

"Good," comes out a stuttered set of seconds from his words, but not forgotten.

[obediences]

"You sure?" he finds himself asking, the words tripping out almost accidentally. One more check. Because they're crossing boundaries and closed doors and breaking down walls, slamming into uncharted (and til-now-forbidden) territory, into her bed, and so Luther can't help but ask. Make sure. That they're not going too quick, not biting off more than they can chew, not taking that one last step that's too suddenly and unexpectedly far for her comfort.

But then the aggrieved look he gets from Allison in return is eloquent enough alone, even completely wordless: a sort of if you stop now, Luther Hargreeves, I am going to murder you and bury your body in the garden, and so he laughs into the crook of her neck, mouthing at the angle of her jaw, following the thread of her pulse. He wonders if he could leave marks on her neck if he tried. Probably could, but shouldn't. (Even so many years on, discretion still feels like the watchword.)

"Okay, okay," Luther says, bemused, as his hand slides further under her shirt. Exploring the curve of her stomach, the dip of her belly-button, even as all her muscles tense underneath him like a bow-string going taut at the contact. "But if you ever do. Reach a point of wanting to stop for the night. You know that's okay."

[numberthree]

If she weren't predisposed to the entire world of possibility trying to boil her ability to think straight about anything at this point, she'd probably take it more to task. But she is, isn't, can't. Because his mouth is on her throat, and he's laughing into her skin, and she thinks that will be tattooed into her skin longer than any mouth that pressed a kiss or pressed teeth in there.

She doesn't even entirely know how to hold more than the thought (Luther laughing, in her bed, against her skin) as it dissolves against the slide of his hand when Luther decides he'd like to play madness himself. His words all soft, placating, a joke, reminding her with nothing-like-done-yet predictably patient nobility that makes her wants to shove her pillow into his face for, that she's allowed to stop at any moment.

As though somehow she's not a) entirely aware at this point in her life, especially while having to figure how to one day have those conversations with her own growing daughter somehow, and b) full capable of stopping anyone from ever doing anything to her she disapproved of. (Or. Fine. And. C. That it's just as disastrously endearing still, and she wants to kiss him again, until he can't breathe, just for saying it. For being the kind of man who still does say it, just so it is said, even after being threatened with death before he got laid for not shutting up.)

Except his fingers are skating fire across the delicate skin of her stomach, her side, at the same time, catching her breath against her teeth, muscles shiver as the inside of her stomach feels like it's simultaneously trying to cave in, tighten up, and push up into that hand. And it's more that than anything in his earlier words that she answers.

"You should worry far more about my never letting you stop."

There's a beat, and she lets the other words fall out, weighted, even small. "Ever."

Maybe to anyone else, it would sound shades into a threat. But there's a confession laced deep in that one word.
That she's not sure she'll ever have a clue how to stop, how to let go, of him, any of this, after this happens. She won't.

[obediences]

Those words burrow deep; they settle around his heart like a clenched fist, a lead weight in his stomach that robs him of the rest of his breath. The promise, the insinuation, the confession, the ask. Luther goes still for a second as those words land, pulling away just enough to look at her. There's a shiver of anticipation coiling tight in his abdomen. He's perhaps looking a little unexpectedly somber now, because that Ever had the sound to it of—

(He thinks, suddenly, of pinky promises. His finger hooked around hers before they were even teens.)

"Never," Luther says, agreeing. Promising. And so rather than stop, he moves downwards and rucks up some of the fabric of her shirt, rolling it up her midriff with his hands. Other people, with enough impatient hastiness, could've ripped off each others' clothes by now and been well on their way — but even after so long, after twenty years of waiting, Luther is still slow and exploratory while his mouth takes his hand's place and he presses a kiss to the curve of Allison's hip, her stomach, the arch of her ribs. Each glimpse of more exposed skin from her remains a terrifying revelation, a miracle, one he presses his lips to as if he has to memorise every inch of her this way, commit it to memory, map her with his fingertips like Braille and never forget a single minute of this.

[numberthree]

It's another small word. Only two syllables. But it's almost too big. Like his own matching admission. Like his 'I don't especially want to stop, but' only so many minutes ago. Like he understands. Like he feels it, too. All those words fluttering back.

(I would do anything for you. You make me want to wake up each day, and you're in my dreams every night. You're the most important person in the world to me.

That's what I've been doing. For the past year.
Choosing you, and her, every single day that I can.

I love you. Every minute. Every year. The whole time.)

As Luther's mouth deposits these sudden dots of heats across her abdomen, that ripple outward, causing her muscles to quiver under the press of his lips, to shake when he finds a new place and her skin feels somehow like it's never been touched right, or mattered that someone was, not really, until this moment.

As Luther starts stripping her of a truth she's buried so deep in her bones so long and so deep. She had Claire. She had Krakoa. She didn't need anything else. She didn't deserve anything beyond those two miracles she already didn't deserve. She may have not wanted Luther, but she was also nowhere near the only person in the world who recognized how perfect -- how good -- he was.

She was only the first. And the one who couldn't have it.

(....who could've? This whole time? Who was? Or was about to? Always had?)

That rule, burned in as stark as her tattoo, so well known it was deeper than breathing, that was growing holes everywhere as Luther kissed his way up the rungs of her ribs like somehow they each mattered, and her back arched her body into his mouth, helplessly, one hand digging into her comforter and the other finding the back of his. Incapable of not touching him now that she could.

[obediences]

It's almost too much. He's always over-thought things, but this is something else: he can't fall into this quickly, impulsively, thoughtlessly, without feeling the years falling away beneath his touch, or the weight of all that time building up each moment his lips graze across bare skin. Luther could have spent thirty minutes on her wrist alone, running his tongue along the faded ink of her tattoo, pressing a kiss to her palm. He could be here forever, mapping every single part of her, making up for all the years they couldn't. Learning this language.

And they do have a new language to learn, a new vocabulary to add to their repertoire of all the wordless tics and habits they already know about each other, burned down into their bones. He wonders if she's ticklish anywhere. He wonders what she likes best.

Luther shifts slightly on the bed: hips pressing against hers before his knees straddle either side of her hips, giving him enough room to pull back and catch at the edge of Allison's shirt, dragging it the rest of the way; it snags on her shoulder, before she wriggles and helps him drag it off. And he looks down at her. Allison, languid beneath him, looking completely fucking irresistible. Even the plain, serviceable bra (it's the weekend, she's an overworked mother, of course it's plain) is a miracle. The curve of her shoulders, the dip of her collar-bone, her hair sprawled over her pillow, that smile in the corner of her mouth that he still wants to kiss stupid. That expanse of dark bare skin which is, technically, the same he's ever caught glimpses of when she's in a bikini on the Krakoa beach, but the context. Is so very different.

"You are so beautiful," he blurts out, brain wired to mouth, before he can even think of biting it back or measuring his words.

Okay. Some of it is impulsive.

[numberthree]

It's the kind of thing that said by anyone else would be a lie.

Not malicious by any means. People told each other casually acceptable lies in bed all the time. Things right for the moment. In the moment. That might not be later. When you never saw each other again, or not for a year. She's told her share, and she'd been content in the warmth of ones told to her, in the heat of the moment. But Luther, who lied only rarely when he could ever helping, didn't lie to her. The way she didn't lie to him. Ever.

And so he says it, and what she feels is not that shiny cat-like warmth of years ago.

It's this strange, all too real ache. Because she hardly feels that even when she goes to the nine's for a delegation event. She feels frazzled at all ends most of the time, and just narrowly keeping it together behind the mask of being untouchable so. Something she thinks her family, and Luther especially, are the only ones who truly see clear. But Luther.

Luther says those words with the rush of boyish awe she'd thought he only had left for the sky of stars he'd never gotten to go get lost in, and there's no way not to believe it. That somehow Luther still has that tone -- as disbelieving reverent as it is shoved out too fast, like he might not be allowed if he didn't get it all out now -- and Allison feels it in ... a way she can't even explain.

A way that's only Luther's. Because only Luther has really ever known her, seen her, all of her. Best and worst. The days when they make a new alliance or save another child. The days when she throws herself on the couch buries her face under a pillow and says her child can starve and Krakoa can sink into the sea. (Or that she's just going the rumor the whole lot of another faction into eating each other the next time one dares to even look in the vague direction of her, just see if she won't.)

And somehow, there's still this. Clogging up her heart unexpectedly.
On the stupidest, simplest of words like they're some kind of benediction.
The kind she never knew she needed to hear until they broke the foundation of her.

It's all she can do to smile, just a little, one side of her mouth only, knowing it would get wobbly if she tried for anything more than just that yet, and push up on her elbows, "Is that what you tell all the girls?"