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.

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It took Allison very little time to parse the squealing child and even less to recognize the way Luther tensed, then freeze, like he was about to throw himself headlong into the small child, only to then see it was a small child.

Allison's hand had very suddenly found Luther's shoulder in the middle of his statement. A small but certain pressure squeezed there, her voice dropping to a quiet near-whisper of an octave she hasn't used in years, without much thought to that part. "It's fine."

Her hand seemed to lift quickly and smoothly as it landed, as though Allison had only briefly touched him as she walked past him. However, it would have taken someone standing at least as close as both of them in that passing second to have realized she'd actively said anything.

It's still new, this, and it still takes a creative amount of balance to figure out how to squat down in heels this tall, but she does at least know what she should do. Which is figure out how to balance, gracefully, as she lowers herself until her knees are parallel flush with her chest and her toes are very certain they should not be supporting her like this, and smile, saying only, "Hello, there."

Luther does his best to fade into the background, in his seat at that patio table. And unlike the interaction with the fan earlier, it actually works here, because the little girl has eyes for nothing else but Allison: she's starry-eyed, her entire face lit up as the princess elegantly sinks down to be closer to her level. Balanced perfectly on those heels, and wielding poise as if she'd taken posture lessons, had walked down long corridors with books balanced perfectly on her head. (And with Grace as their mother, really, who knew what sort of life lessons were doled out?)

And he sits there with his spoon forgotten in the ice cream, twisted sideways with one arm over the back of his chair, just watching the interaction play out. Something in Luther's crisp blue eyes softens as he sees the way she smiles, the patient and effortless way she handles this exchange. (He, too, has eyes for nothing else but Allison.) As long as the kid isn't asking for his autograph or isn't a spider-demon in disguise, Luther isn't sure what the right move is here; so he stays quiet, trusting her to know what to do and say far better than he could.

"You're so pretty." The little girl says, the ice cream cone in her hand briefly forgotten in its entirety as she stares wide-eyed at Allison, now on her level. "Are you going to a ball? Like Cinderella?"

"Not tonight." Allison keeps her tone light and her smile curved. "We're all here--" This with a flourish toward the door she and her mother hadn't long since left to join them out here. "--for ice cream instead, aren't we?"

The girl looks a little confused and not easily persuaded in a different direction. The kind of small-expression that looks like it's flirting with whether to flutter straight into completely crestfallen. "But you could if you wanted to? Right?"

Allison considers barely a second, and her siblings more than anyone else would recognize the momentarily puckish shift of her expression, even as the girl's mother is beginning to apologize. The sharpening edges of Allison's smile shift her expression to almost being rather clearly like a dare, when Allison looks back over her bare shoulder at Luther. "I believe we have a request."

Edited 2021-03-14 22:26 (UTC)

"I," Luther begins, stammering, immediately looking a little lost and thrown for a loop. Intercepting a curveball he hadn't expected to field at all, and so the look that he sends Allison now is a quick, uncertain thing, a flicker of What do I do? behind his eyes — looking to her for cues, instructions, when ordinarily the shoe's on the other foot. Ordinarily all of the Hargreeves took their lead from him.

"I'm not sure that's exactly what she was asking, was it? She was just wondering if you could—"

Out of the mouths of babes, because the girl cuts in quick and insistent: "No, but I want you to. You're in a ball dress and everything."

Sounding plaintive, begging, the way a child might ask for a favourite dog to do a trick or, in this case, near-mythical figure to show what they're made of. Dancing isn't a party trick he's used to seeing the Rumor pull out — normally, when they were once made to jump through performing hoops in front of a crowd, it was to demonstrate their lethality. Their combat skills. Their special superpowers.

Not their footwork.

He dabs his mouth with a napkin, suddenly self-conscious, wondering if there's ice cream on his chin. He's been classically-trained in ballroom dancing; all of them had been. But he's rusty, and hasn't done it in so very long. (To dance, you need a partner.)

"Well, if it's a request," he says slowly, each syllable measured, and then looks over at Allison, and finally stands up and holds out a hand to her.

Luther's alarm shouldn't be as gratifying as it is, but it is. Instinctive. Just narrowly edging toward wide-eyed. Uncertain. Instantly arguing the brass tacks of the girl's words and not the harmless and curious longing, or her own easily upped ante in that sway. Hollywood is a world of lights. At least, it looks that way, especially to someone so young.

(Young in a way that neither of them, none of them, had ever been.
But it's her job, even more now, to know and care what it is people want from her.)

She can't entirely justify why she's throwing the yoke of it on him, too. She could easily apologize and look to the girl's mother for help, diffuse this all in seconds. And yet. She doesn't know which is more appealing and unsettling by that feeling too: the nervous panic of Luther's suddenly careful movements and even slower words, or the way he holds his hand out all the same, as she lets herself take a step toward it, and him, taking it.

That hand that never left her hanging.

(Until it did.)

Is there a note of the pettiness none of her siblings would find surprising, somewhere deep inside it? A pale excuse to find herself back disastrously close to him, like in the cab, chasing that pricked longing that could only hurt her more in the end? A refusal to let him get comfortable, or anywhere near to control any of what happens here, in the place that is her world, and hers alone, now?

But all those question marks, and safer than's, are turning into smoke as her other hand settles against his shoulder, fingertips curling it only barely, and she finds herself whispering, with the edge of that smirk peeking out again. "Try not to make it look too much like you'd really rather flip the table and use it as a shootout shield."

"Even if that's exactly what I'm more used to doing?" he whispers back like a shared secret, their own joke.

And there's something in the muscle memory of a hand outstretched, an invitation granted — them moving towards each other across a divide, even if it's the small one of this outdoor cobblestoned courtyard space this time — her hand going for his shoulder — and it dislodges the memories of an abandoned greenhouse, a slammed door. These recollections were so old and dusty that they'd been buried for the most part, but they're shaking themselves loose now, and Luther pauses. Finally swallows that nostalgia which rises up like it could choke him, and when he looks at her again, he simply asks (and he tells himself that it's for the sake of the girl watching them, donning the shape of the chivalrous knight or gentleman):

"Allison Hargreeves, will you dance with me?"

And there's no real music besides the faint, top 40s background music of the ice cream shop being piped outside, but it's enough to get them moving, at least. Something to steer by. With her hand on Luther's shoulder and his floating by the small of her back, he starts moving them in a tight, controlled waltz, and Luther keeps his gaze trained on Allison's face; partially just to look at her and drink in her features all over again, and partially to remind himself not to look down. When he'd first hit that growth spurt so many years ago, he'd stepped on her toes over and over and over. It had taken a long time to stop tripping over himself, but it all comes back to him now: nimble steps and a surprisingly easy push-and pull like the balance they'd once had on the fighting mats together,

and it turns out that it really is like riding a bike. Luther's steps are just as sure and certain as ever, and he doesn't step on her very expensive shoes; he has to be more careful with the voluminous shape of her gown, but soon enough Allison's hand bunches in the fabric to hold it out of the way regardless.

The words fall into place as soon as they fall out of Luther's mouth and Allison nearly missteps because of it. She'd said those words. Those exact words. A million years ago, and maybe not even five. Never answered, and never offered again. It's hard to put her fingers on the strike of feelings it brings up. She's not sure she wanted to know it could be touched so carelessly. As part of an act. Like they might have always been.

But Allison doesn't have the leisure to think about it, when Luther starts them moving, and there's jostling and whispering starting to grow, as more people are stepping out from inside the shop and stopping walking on further ends of the sidewalk to watch this newest little streetside entertainment. She tilted her head and lifted her brows just a little at Luther's serious face, like she might have been poking her fingers at just that.

That way he maybe he could regiment himself through it. When she swears some part of her feels like she could start whispering the count she can almost see taking place in his head. The cobbles aren't as forgiving on her stilettos as they are on his dress flats, which she finds a time or two when her balance almost doesn't catch right, but they'd both learned long ago how far up their actual pain threshold from strain was.

But he never lets her fall, and she never lets the possibility flicker through her posture.

They'd already turned heads in their gala finery, but now he can see the distinctive watchful eye of phone cameras being raised and trained on them. Candid shots and videos, in comparison to the press-ready flashes at the museum. It's even more reason to keep his blue eyes trained on Allison's face: trying not to think about all the photographic evidence there'll be of the two Hargreeves having slipped away from the gala; trying not to think about how that trail of evidence might wind up back in the Monocle's lap; what sort of talking-to he might or might nor receive back home, later, afterwards. Luther's always been terrible at living in the moment — he tends to get lost in his thoughts, in plans and contingencies and fallbacks — so he has to keep reminding himself to not think about later.

(About tomorrow. About how there's a limited span on the amount of time they have together. About how the hours are shrinking and shrinking, the more that time goes on.)

His steps so far are perfect, like the dance has been taken right from the instructional record or the illustrative diagrams, but it has something of a stern Prussian ballroom to it: it's meter-perfect but emotionless as a metronome.

But then Allison's arm shifts, curves even closer around the broad span of his shoulders — her fingers splayed against the nape of his neck — and the touch sends a convulsive shiver down Luther's spine, a ripple that melts him into her touch as it goes. The stiff cage of his arms loosens, and his feet start to stray slightly from the textbook. Improvising, going off-book, and he turns her in a slow spin across the courtyard and then back towards him — and she can see his stern, studious expression softening, too, a small smile flickering on his mouth.

It's the smile more than anything else.

More than the way she can feel it as the muscles in his arm and shoulder finally start relaxing more. More than the way her heart goes light and she finds a tiny laugh slipping her lips when he sends her twirling out suddenly, only one hand keeping her anchored for coming back, when she'll find the end of that snap. Never pausing, only trusting, following, becoming a fluid extension of his arm, theirs, a seamless extension of both of them, like this was something perfectly perfected spectacle.

But it's the smile -- when she spins back in, a rustling spiral of red silk stopped only by his body -- more than anything else.

Maybe it's the only thing even.

She can't make herself pause before she's a reflection of it, an unfettered glow of an answering smile, broad and bright, at least three or four years out of practice and somehow utterly uncracked for it long time packed away. Slipping on like the glove of her bone-deep, life-long, ever-uncheckered delight anytime Luther finally let himself go, and then somewhere amid that, realizes-without-realizing he actually likes doing just that.

Getting lost. Having fun.

Allison can't help it. It makes her steps lighter. The shift of her hand against his lighter. Her expression turning, without any announcement to even her, playful. That would involve stopping too much, thinking further than the next step, the next time their hands meet, looking away from those blue blue eyes. Keeping up with him, as much as pushing him to let himself just fall into it, even though it just drags her further in a string.

Somewhere behind them, there's the click of cameras taking pictures and the little girl is delighted, too, but he doesn't even notice, doesn't realise. It's his self-control loosening as they dance to a pop song rather than strictly-metered classical, and so other unscripted moves start to slip in: silly cheeky things, a sashay right out of Pulp Fiction, doing the twist, biting back an obvious laugh as their faces light up.

And after a moment, impulsively, Luther just leans down and scoops her up into his arms with a dramatic spin, his stance surefooted on the stones, unflinching at the added weight. He lifts her like she's a feather; like she can fly. It's yet more close contact like they'd had in the cab, except now it's his arms bracketed under her thighs, her hips, hugging the edge of her gown. He whirls her around in a flurry of voluminous fabric, both of them near-drowning in it, before he sets her delicately back down on the ground just as the song peters out.

His hands are still settled on Allison's hips, and he's looking down at her, and their faces are too close. There's absolutely zero chance that the physical strain could've made his heart work double-time, but there's a hitch in his lungs regardless. (It's not the physical strain.)

He's looking too long at her, at the laughing twist to her mouth, the bright light in her eyes, and—

And the spell is broken when he hears a few people around them clap. Luther seems to jolt awake, and takes a genteel step back and away from her. He has to resist the urge to take a bow, and maybe salute.

Actually, fuck it. He does turn to their inadvertent audience and executes a stiff bow. The girl who asked about Cinderella's ball is practically aglow.

(So is he. So is Allison.)

Everything becomes light and giddy, and Allison can't remember the last time it felt good to be acting foolish, but to find herself perfectly in-step with someone. But everything slides into places, effortlessly like matching tumblers and locks, and whenever one of them switches something up, the other follows almost effortlessly. Allison can't look away from the laughter in Luther's eyes and the sudden dash of light, that is Luther getting an idea, that suddenly sends her up through the air.

Anyone else, anywhere else, and her first instinct would be to punch someone either before or during rumoring them, but she only laughs as the air and velocity of the spin sends her tumble of skirts spinning out around them, the way it tugs at her hair. But she's settled firmly against his chest, cradled with arms under her legs and one across her back, hand at her side, and never once in her life has she ever been afraid of Luther's strength or that he might drop her.

There's only laughter, light, and speed in it, bubbling up in her blood everywhere when he's setting her back on her feet, and she can't stop smiling enough even to catch her breath and breathe in because he's right there above her. Blue eyes burning electric bright, drilling down into her own, into her very center, and this is what's been missing from every breath in the last million month. These eyes. So close, and so bright, and so blue in the way she rarely gets to see when he always has his mask on for interviews.

This is the way it's supposed to be. The only way it was.
(Take off the mask when you talk to me.)
Her heart is going too fast, and the lights are caught up in his hair and the curve of his mouth, and there's that impulse to lean closer, starting to press into her toes, and she doesn't know if she's going to laugh or tease him or ki-- right as Luther jolts suddenly. Still.

Then, backward. And Allison swallows it like an unexpected blow, a sudden stupidity for her thoughts a second earlier, for letting herself get swept up. Because he's bowing and she's looking at the crowd, and if she faltered, just for a second there, she strong-arms her smiles back into place, and extends a hand like a declaration of showing him off to everyone.

He stretches out his own arm in return (the great Rumor, ladies and gents, here she is), the pair of them smoothly-executed in mirroring each other and granting the metaphorical stage. The dance itself as well-synchronised as if they'd practiced it, as if it hasn't been a whole two-plus years since the last time they practiced ballroom in the parlour of the Hargreeves manor. Falling back into old and comfortable rhythms again, as easy as a fight, as easy as always having each others' back.

With his attention on the small crowd — Luther's always concerned with appearances, and how people watch him — he doesn't catch her falter, that tiny tremble to her smile before she gets her own mask back in place.

But he does shoot her a sidelong look, and he still looks bright, entertained. (Oblivious.) "I think it passed muster," he says.

Luther is flinging a matching hand toward her as the people applaud, laughing and smiling, and Allison wishes for all her worth that he wasn't and they weren't -- but she keeps smiling. She learned how to smile like sunshine seconds after glaring at her father for a camera before she was fifteen, and the last years have only been another, different kind of lesson in that.

(Even if it suddenly feels like she's learned nothing.

Like she's still the girl in that cab,
blinking tears at the closed doors.)

"Good enough for government work," Allison says airily, without looking sideways toward Luther, while the beat of her heart has suddenly slowed. The very instant of her words. Not because she'd naturally calmed from the dancing, but because it had refused to stop stumble-racing from the second she caught herself being stupid. Because she wants to control something, and she hates that she lost control of herself for even that moment. Like that.

No one has the right to take that from her anymore.
Not anyone. (Not even, or especially, him.)

Instead of looking at Luther, she lets the cool ease of her posture hold her, and her smile dazzles into something like personal as she settles her gaze back on the awestruck little girl who looks like she's been granted the wish of her dreams. "I hope you enjoy the rest of your night and your ice cream."

"I will, I will, I will," the girl is gushing, bobbing up and down on her feet, nearly buoyant with her joy. And peering down at that exchange between them, Luther still feels like he's watching it from outside himself, tongue-tied.

But he does know something about that joy, the way it fizzes and bubbles up inside your chest, like you've swallowed a whole mouthful of champagne. He hadn't felt it in years, so it's gone rusty, but that spark keeps catching fire with each little stolen glance at Allison, or another inside joke between them taken off the shelf and dusted off.

Ever since that drunken postcard, addressed and sent where she thought she shouldn't have.

The awareness curdles in the back of his throat: those shrinking minutes and hours, that countdown ticking until he has to leave. It feels like the sword of Damocles hanging over him, over them both — that ever-shrinking territory before he'll have to be on a plane heading east and back to that lonely house —

(that place he can't bear to think of, right about now)

so he extends another gentlemanly arm, ever the knight, still playing a role for their watching audience. But Luther's blue gaze softens when it lands on her again. This evening was supposed to be coffee, but then she'd surprised him with this, and now he doesn't know where they're headed next.

"Your chariot awaits," he says. "Unless there's somewhere in walking distance that you had in mind? I'm pretty much entirely yours, at this point. You're the local expert."

His gaze drifts over Allison's shoulder, to the small crowd which coalesced around their little scene. It'd be a good idea to move on to the next location on their whistlestop Los Angeles tour, anyway, before the paparazzi show up. It's a familiar song-and-dance that both of them know well: Allison navigating that balance of dangling just enough tabloid fodder to remain relevant; Number One swooping in on a mission, staying long enough for a photo op looking heroic in the rubble, then swooping back out before they can ask him too many questions.

There's a part of her that doesn't want to take it -- the arm offered to her. Hovering there in the air. Black jacketed and to the nines. That doesn't want to touch Luther again, not so quickly after rumoring herself. After what felt overemotionally necessary and feels sorely stupid only seconds later. Because it happened. Because she can't stop it from happening.

No. That's a lie. She could. She absolutely has the power to do that.

But same as any hundred times she might have contemplated it, she knows it couldn't be undone. And she doesn't know how much of the past would be unstitched and reknit entirely differently to make that lie a truth that all of Capital "R" reality acknowledges. It might be shattered fragments of a once complete picture, but they were her shattered fragments. The last of everything she has left.

Until suddenly he was here. Still here. Holding his handout.
Literal Super-Hero-Boy-America. And everyone is watching them.
Delighted by the entirety of the last few minutes.

Allison smiles, pretty as the picture she's learning to make of herself no matter her mood or role, but she's still young, and there's something that's so wholly still Rumor in the black glitter of her eyes that doesn't quite match her smile. Game and partner in this charade, but nothing else beyond it. Her hand lands and curls into his elbow, looking up at him dutifully like one would expect.

"Home, maybe." She is quiet enough not to carry as she watches him look at those watching them. "Before the natives think to ask for an encore?"

Edited 2021-12-04 21:22 (UTC)

"Oh, yeah, please. I've run out of dance moves. I'd have to start repeating myself." With her arm in his, they start walking down the street and away; gods who graced those civilian mortals with their presence, just for a little while, and then they're off again to be swallowed up into the night and the warm, hazy sodium-yellow streetlights.

But it's only partially down the street that Luther's brain finally catches up to his mouth and this conversation and he realises: Home, maybe. And remembers that she doesn't know where his hotel is, so there's only one place they could be going.

Hers. Allison's home. Her new home. He's never had any other home himself. The knowledge kicks itself into place with a stranglehold panic-slash-anticipation. Wanting to know everything — picture everything — he finds himself wondering if this is the only apartment she's ever had in Los Angeles, or if she's flitted in and out of several ones by now, a rotating cast of roommates, a rotating assortment of sets to live in. All while he stood stationary guard in an empty mansion, waiting. Just waiting.

(For what? For this? This trip?)

"What's your apartment like?" Luther asks, and there's a strange plaintiveness to it, a wistful curiosity. He's never actually been inside a regular person's home— just a home, nothing more, nothing less. "And is it just Bea or is the new roommate, Jennifer, still living with you?"

It's like pressing your face against the window: a lonely matchstick child out in the cold, trying to catch a glimpse of something real.

There's the catch and follow of silence as they walk away, and Allison's a little sad that they've lost the rest of their ice cream and left the small mess of it on the table now abandoned, but there's no time now to turn around and rumor someone to clear it away. Someone will, anyway eventually. Plus, there's more in the freezer at home if she has to have it. They both know this part too well. You can't fold everything into the box and pretend to be normal after deciding to be anything but normal.

(And many ways does that fit Luther.

She tries not to glance to the side.)

The silence lingers, as does the cloud that's tugged itself around her shoulders, recriminating in her stupidity, ashamed for the way she almost wishes she could slip back into those moments. Into not thinking. In the girl who knew once where she belonged without question or doubt. Into the girl who had someone who was always there, a partner perfectly in step with her every move, every waking hour. It's weak, and she hates that a part of her burns more painfully to slip into forgetting, and having it back, than to stop herself for being overwhelming, idiotically swept up in what shattered all of that to begin with.

It makes her relieved when Luther breaks the spell of their silence.

"Just Bea," Allison said with a slight nod. "Jennifer was only there a few weeks. We'll probably have someone else in there in the next few months, whether passing through or sticking it out a few months or years." Or eventually, they'd find someone else who'd move in and stay. "And the place is--" She scrunched her nose up thinking finally, "--not exactly the best version of itself at this second."

Bea was probably a bit annoyed about that.
Distracting her from so many truths she can't ignore.

"I might have left a few things between the door and heading for my bed before I found the note about having to be here on my door. There wasn't really time to clean everything up while getting into all this and running right back out the door." Bea might've, or it could all be still left where it had fallen as a message to pick up her mess.

"A mess? You?" Luther echoes, and there's some real incredulity in his voice. Some of their family members had been far more chaotic in their interior design, and Space and Rumor's bedrooms could get somewhat cluttered, but it had always been relatively clean and orderly. They'd tidied up after themselves. (Good children put their toys away, and good soldiers put their weapons away.) And if they ever forgot to clear up on rare occasion, then Mom was inevitably there on her restless daily rounds, puttering around and folding their clothes and making their beds. The mansion was orderly because they had no alternative but to be.

"I promise not to judge," he adds a moment later although, yes, that had sounded very much like judging.

The next question is inevitable, too, as he picks his way through learning more about her. This little snapshot of a life that he hadn't had any firsthand glimpses into before, only what drips and drabs of information had bled into her letters. "And so what's Bea like? You must like her enough, if you're still living together while everyone else comes and goes."

Allison can't stop herself from eying him at the laugh and then the promise that followed quickly on its heels. It's pricklingly close to an unspoken commentary on the fact she'd never been messy, even for everything she'd been allowed to put in her room and on her walls over the years. Only Klaus had decided to ignore those rules the older they got.

It wasn't a disaster, perhaps, the way anyone else might consider a place to be. She just wouldn't have left things across the apartment if she knew she'd be bringing Luther to see it only hours later. Which she couldn't have. She thought she'd be sleeping. She thought she'd be in another country.

(She never thought this would happen even if the world were going to end.)

Thankfully, Luther goes on talking toward her, giving her more reason to consider something other than that. Because. She's not sure she'd call herself and Bea friends. They were friendly, and Bea would likely call her a friend. It was complicated. Convenient. Allison probably used her powers more than she should, but what was new?

"She's nice." Allison tries to think. Racking her brain for sentences that yesterday, to anyone else, would have been so easy. They've lived together for over a year. But most of the trite things feel precisely that on her tongue, as she considers saying them to Luther of all people. Trite. But it's what she has. "Working some coffee shop role in a movie right now." Beat. "She basically owns a whole closet of just magazines and shoes."

"That fits, though, right? You always liked magazines. And magazines with shoes." He doesn't sound disparaging; it's just another thing about her that he'd found charming. The magazines had been regular little glimpses of the outside world dropped into their mailbox, her window into fashion and society, while Luther glued himself to the newspaper and articles about the latest spaceflights and aeronautics. Whenever another teen mag showed up with his face or Diego's plastered on the cover, he'd wrinkled his nose; only cared about it insofar as Number One got quoted in the interview more than Number Two did. And the shoes—

Had always been the same pairs of sensible patent leather shoes, the girls' practically indistinguishable from the boys', an unchanging uniform even as they all grew older. No such thing as Casual Fridays at the Academy: Allison could accessorise and drape a colourful scarf over her shoulders when she was in her rooms, and Luther could shuck his blazer, but the bones stayed the same.

"Are you a clothes horse now? I always figured you would be." Allison looked lovely in all the photos he'd happened to see of her after she left. (She always looked lovely.)

"I definitely don't dislike clothes," Allison says enigmatically, with almost a note of confessed challenge in it. As if the thought she's having right at that moment isn't that the dress she's wearing she picked up simply because she liked how it looked, without even having somewhere to wear it yet, and simply told someone to give it to her.

"Wearing whatever you want, whenever you want?"

"Still hasn't gotten old."

She didn't miss a lot of things, but she definitely didn't miss the rote and repetition of the uniforms. Skirts and sweaters and blazer. Mary Janes. Always the same cut. Always the same color. Always the uniform row of little children in identical clothes. That image touches the brittle crack still there down her center, merges somehow with six of them fading to one.

One boy. Still perfectly suited. As the day he was last.
There's even the brief wonder if he had it with him.

Had anything non-uniform aside from this suit.

The pause before his next remark goes on a little too long, as Luther considers whether or not to touch that particular button. In the end, he settles for honesty — it's always been the easiest action with her, instinctive like breathing.

"I still don't really know what that's like," he admits. "Wearing whatever you want. We've relaxed on the dress code a little, since..."

Since all the others had left. A school wasn't a school when it only consisted of one pupil.

"Well, recently. I don't have to have the blazer or tie on all the time. But it's still all dress shirts and slacks and Oxfords. My growth spurt was a headache. Mom had to tailor so many clothes."

There's some self-consciousness twisting in his gut at that admission. And after a strangled second, as if he's trying to skip on ahead and not linger on precisely how sad that truth was, the boundaries of his surprisingly small life, he adds: "How far are we from your place?"

It's not hard to picture. If anything, it's this tux that keeps throwing her. Luther looks like a normal person in it, and normal is not something Number One is. He chose not to be. He decided to stay Number One. Spaceboy. To run away from any confessions about wanting to get out, have a real life, be real people.

It's easy to picture him still there. Trapped still in amber.
A grown man still haunts that house in his child self's clothes.

Allison has thought that so many times. Angry. Hurt. Bitter. But this time, it's sad. She was glancing at him as he kept talking, entirely out of any context but that god-awful trap of a house. Other people would buy bigger clothes. Making her skip his question altogether, with a completely different one of her own, underwritten by a sudden fierce want to shake the goddamn bars of that cage until they break even if it isn't her place anymore.

"You know this city never sleeps, right?"

"I could find you somewhere to take you shopping right now."

It's more threat and promise than offer, but she can't stop it rolling out.

Ambling along beside Allison with hands-in-pockets and looking more relaxed than he has in a long, long while, Luther shoots her a startled look. It's always that surprise with him, of seeing someone else daring to colour outside the lines and then he's always scrambling after them, thinking, We can do that?

"And come back with... what, Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts?" He struggles to picture anything outside of the uniform or his formal dresscode for events like this, and so his brain goes to the most ludicrous thing he can picture. What do people wear outside of identical slacks and button-down shirts?

There was that lurking paranoia with him, entirely incorrect for Number One but lurking beneath the surface nonetheless: what if he did start choosing for himself and he got it wrong. Something as little as looking unfashionable and out-of-season, which would reflect poorly on the Academy. His perpetual slight bafflement of how to fit in with the civilians, who he didn't know at all and only associated with briefly, fleetingly, at carefully-structured events, and when he'd never been raised to associate with them. So the Academy uniforms and the dress-codes made it easier. Gave him at least one less thing to think about and to occupy his mind.

But his nose is crinkling into a grin as he adds: "But, okay, I'd trust you to be my personal shopper though. Personal stylist. Whichever. You'd be in style and you wouldn't make me look stupid."

"Not unless you did something to deserve it," comes back quippy and immediate.

She knows neither of them is serious, but this feels a lot like one of those late-stage games. When The Plan™️ was already entirely made, but there was still some waiting, and it inevitably led to dreams of what might be and how would we and what would we—like one of their father's million mission puzzles to figure out how to survive. Except it was about the real world and none of their dusty history and military stratagem books to fall back on—only their imagination.

(Hers.)

"Hhhhmmmmm." Allison draws out the sound, making it comical more than the seriousness her face is affecting as she gives him a once over from head to toe. Once. Twice. Quick, clean, economical sweeps of her gaze, and still, what she thinks most is that he's too handsome, and too All-American Golden Boy clean cut. (It's unfair. It always has been.) There were fashion designers who would drop a year's worth of projects to be the name stitched on his collars. Right this second. In the middle of the night.

"The suit can stay. It's a good cut. But I'd definitely have two or three others for you to try." She ponders upward. "Jeans, definitely. Short-sleeve shirts, fitted but not too fitted. Black or a mix of different ones in earthy tones. For something softer, maybe sweaters. A grey or a washed-out blue to pick out the color of your eyes."

Sunglasses hanging off the bottom of a row of open buttons.
A nice, crisp silver watch. It paints itself too quickly.

And she thinks that she's always been thinking about it without trying to focus on it. Always been comparing anyone she was across a stage with, set or gala, with what Luther would look like in that place. In those shoes. With that smile for her. The way they all tried, and failed, to match up. To even come close. Of course, she has.

Of course. She always has.

Because all she had was settling for what she was allowed.

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obediences - 2024-03-15 19:09 (UTC) - Expand

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numberthree - 2024-03-15 20:52 (UTC) - Expand

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