{Hazy sunshine over the hill

[deadlycurves]

WHO: Hargreeves + YOU

WHERE: Krakoa; various

WHEN: Varies, specified by thread

WHAT: Varies, specified by thread

WARNINGS: Warnings will be updated where necessary

Comments

[obediences]

It's the creak of a floorboard that alerts him, and shakes him out of his reverie, away from the distant barren deserts of another planet and back to this house. Not all the buildings in Krakoa are professionally-built, and their still-growing residences are a particular hodgepodge: a product of Luther and Diego hammering floorboards into place and bickering, while Five directed them, and Klaus floated nearby sipping a drink and offering (not-so-)helpful commentary. So the floorboards are uneven, and they creak when she moves further into the room, and Luther finally looks up over the edge of his book (a battered paperback copy of Dune), and he sees her in the doorway looking thoughtful.

Luther slides a thumb into the crease of the book, holds his spot as he lets it drift and lie flat on his chest. "Is she asleep?" he asks; unable, for the moment, to parse whatever that expression is passing across Allison's face, because even she isn't entirely certain what to do with it either.

[numberthree]

It's a habit, instinct, something more profound than thought that brings her two or three feet further into the room, at the sound of his voice. The easy curl of the question. The easy way he holds his book, lets it go level on his chest, holding his place, looking both like he really does care about the answer and like he might go right back to reading once he had it. Nothing about the pause, even a reason to move from being sprawled across the whole couch to sitting. Just enough to meet her gaze and ask that question.

But something in her head, something she can't name, something that does involve thought stops her before she even gets properly into the livingroom. A hand reaching out to land on the back of the chair she's still at the corner of, like somehow the girl who could easily face down anyone at a White Tower party, even now with every line crossed, maybe couldn't do this.

When she hasn't even defined what this is in her head. Because it doesn't need defining, she knows it, without words. Thought. The way panic knows the fight or flight response without a second-stop check-in. She doesn't think she can do this. She doesn't think it's a choice. It was never supposed to be a choice. It was never supposed to be either-or.

But for all that ease, and for all of how well they've all fit into Krakoa, they know what the diaster of their childhood did to them. Does to them. May forever go on doing to them. The choices of someone who didn't care ever enough to put them first. There is no either-or. She already made her decision. She signed it on a dotted line only a few months ago. Made it official. But it wasn't supposed to be this, too.

"What are we doing?"

The question finds air, like it's tasting the air itself, half like it's questioning itself.

Like the words don't even quite know how to knit together properly. Past a wall of silence deeper than a decade and never touched for all that nearness brushed fingers with it frequently. There is no safe path for this because there is no path for this. She doesn't have the vaguest clue how to do this -- she can't lose him; Allison doesn't know how to breathe getting to those words the first time as a thought -- only the hamstring knowledge she has to do it.

Because she might have to break her own heart to make sure she doesn't break Claire's.

[obediences]

He doesn't miss the fact that Allison hasn't answered the question, even small and rote and standard as it was. There's the faintest crease between Luther's brows, his other arm moving from its spot as pillow in order to rest against the top of the book instead. A tilt of his head, an expression of puzzlement flickering in his blue eyes.

"I mean, I'm reading my book, in the deserts of Arrakis," he says, a touch dryly. ('I say to you still that man remains on trial, each man in his own dock. Each man is a little war.')

"I finished the dishes, though, so you don't have to worry about that. You've got a Council meeting early tomorrow morning, but my next training session isn't until afternoon?"

Answering the question, but from entirely the wrong angle, because he doesn't realise. He doesn't even know the other angle exists; hasn't ever stopped to consider it, to allow himself to even think of it as a viable option. It's just been this, for the past year: the comfortable rhythm of life on the island, sedate when it wasn't packed to the gills, oddly peaceful compared to everything else they'd known before, the two of them perpetually by each others' sides and settling into each others' lives. Unquestioning. Unthinking. Undefined.

[numberthree]

He says it so casually. So easily. A light bit of joking, about his book, and that comment about having already taken care of her chores (and how often has he done that? Too many times to count?), and he continues into tomorrow smoothly, with her morning and his afternoon (like it's something he keeps track of, can hand back to her, gently; how many times has he done that now, too? She knows she needed it a year ago, when she was barely sleeping, but now and still).

And he still doesn't even move from there.
Resolute ease, hanging feet, dry humor.

Her lips tremble, but she pushes out, "No."

And the breath she pulls in is noticeable, as is the way she shakes her head, because she has to do better than that. More words. More sense. Make him understand. Her eyes close briefly before she forces her eyes back open, and it already feels worse than losing her arm. There's no definable comparison she can reach for, even as she says it, "No. Luther."

More seriously. His name. Needing his attention. Needing him to -- to not do whatever this is, whatever they've let it become, that she can't even lay a finger on when started, how long it's been going on, how it's become so much a part of this house, of her every day. Needing him to stop looking so. Himself. Comfortable. Concerned. Helpful. Handsome. No. She pushes herself harder, pictures Claire in her bed, tries to remember just how soft her cheek was when she kissed it only seconds ago:

"What are--" And she raises the hand that isn't on the chair to gesture between just them, as though there were nothing else around or between them. "--we doing?"

She lets her nails dig into the cloth of the chair. "What is this?"

Makes herself ask what she maybe never would have for herself. "What are we?"

[obediences]

And it feels, oddly, somehow, like all the air's been drained out of the room and sucked into vacuum. His comfortable sprawl on the sofa isn't comfortable any longer, and Luther finds himself finally having straightened (you can't have a serious conversation lying down like a man at leisure, while Allison's wound up all uncharacteristic straight angles and hanging onto that chair like she needs it to stay standing). He's seated upright now without remembering having done it, leaning forward and elbows propped against his knees, watching her somberly.

If he were more like Klaus or Diego, maybe he could brush it off with levity, with a wisecracking joke to hold this at bay. But Luther is Luther, and her suddenly— ripping open— this subject means it needs the appropriate focus and gravitas, even as he can feel the tell-tale prickle of panic down his spine, tight in his throat, clenched in his chest. What brought this on, he could ask. Almost asks, as a way to buy himself time.

Because they've never discussed it before. It had been so easy to fall into that undefined routine, in fact. So easy that it hadn't begged the question, and as long as the question wasn't asked, then neither of them risked losing it. (Never risked losing, nor gaining more. A cowardice, of sorts.)

"I don't know," is what he says in the end; plainly, honestly. Looking up at her with a steady gaze. "It's— I mean. It's... It can be what you want it to be. Whatever you need me to be."

Still terribly vague. But it's an attempt at addressing it, and it's a start. Touching on what's been unwaveringly, steadfast true for the past year anyhow: whatever she needed, if it was babysitting help so she could get at least a couple hour's uninterrupted sleep, or someone to chase away the distracting students, or take care of dinners when she was too tired to cook, or build a cradle for Claire even if it meant accidentally banging his thumb with a hammer and peppering the room with quaintly old-fashioned curses... whatever it was, Luther had done his best to provide. To simply be that quiet foundation she could rest on.

[numberthree]

Luther finally moves, and it's like the world comes to a screeching halt.

Like everything she said a second ago could have been something she only dreamed up, a brushed quasi-reality, until nothing exists except the book that ends up on the couch, and Luther finally staring at her like she sucker-punched him. She watches the freeze in his expression, the minute alarmed shifts, the gravity of the realization slap down walls, and that thing in her chest, that thing without thoughts and a name a second ago, it's suddenly developed claws and is trying to fight its way right out through the front of her rib cage suddenly.

Because it's suddenly so, so very real. It's happening.

It's a wild, scrabbling thing, trapped in too little space, with no room to breathe in around it, that goes the wrong direction at the seriousness on his face. Because she was never supposed to lose him. Leave him. Vanya went off to school, and Klaus got kicked out, and Diego left in the middle of the night, and they were never never never going to leave except together. And they had. Even if it was this world, instead of the world outside the Academy. When it was the White Tower instead of Hollywood, or Nasa, or wherever the road went. When it was Krakoa. This house.

The ice is too thin, and his first words hurt about as much she'd always thought it might. If she'd just tried. Had ever pushed it. Asked. Considered only to fall back into the fact she couldn't risk it. Backed out of the thought time and time and time again.

There's something that's almost a laugh, but it's so much closer to soundless because her breath doesn't catch in it, that he might not even realize it happens first—hooking on the wrong word. The word that has plagued her life since the second she knew what it meant. What it cost. (Want.) "That's not how it works."

She doesn't get what she wants. She doesn't want to ask this. She doesn't want him looking at her like this. She doesn't want more of those first three words. She doesn't want to feel like the floor is alternating ice and fire under her bare feet. She doesn't want this. Doesn't want to lose this.

Coming home too early, to find music streaming out the windows and Luther waltzing Claire around a room in his arms as she giggled at the turns. Luther as the sounding board of all her thoughts, always too late into the night, when the day's meetings were playing out in her head, again, now that the distraction of Claire's chatter was done, and she needed to talk the ones she could through. Never once feeling like she'd ever had to be alone here; ever would have to be.

[obediences]

Luther never bullshits her, or at least tries not to. Not purposefully.

And the answer is right there, even though she can't see it either, can't see it past how those first three words tripped her up. Handing her whatever she wants, and not because of her powers, but because he'd carve out his heart and hand it to her on a platter even without them. Without a single delicate application of her abilities.

He didn't know it was possible to be this frightened of what ought to be a simple conversation. (But it isn't.) He's never had to do something like this before, let alone with Allison, his oldest and best friend. The one who matters most. This— whatever she is—

(And isn't that part of the problem?)

Never daring to define it due to this fear of assumption, of presuming too much. Overstepping. Staking a claim on her that he isn't owed, and therefore would never dream of asking for. So how in the world can he even begin to answer that question? What are we?

The silence drags on a bit too long, the gears almost visibly turning behind his careful expression. It feels like they're stepping on thin ice and if Luther moves just wrong, says the wrong thing, he's going to go plummeting right through and this whole damned thing will break. This fragile peace they've had. This life. He knows what it's like to accidentally break things; to apply too much pressure unthinkingly and unknowingly, leave nothing but splinters and fragments in his wake.

He never wanted to break this.

"I just mean," Luther says slowly, each syllable dragging as he tries to arrange them in place before he speaks, "that I'd do anything for you. I, uh. Think that's probably pretty obvious by now. So I just..."

It's been easy, too, to spin up endless excuses for himself. She's a single mother raising a war orphan. She's a council member of a harried island nation. She has too many things on her mind; he shouldn't add one more complication to her plate. But in so doing, it's evolved into a nebulous complication anyway. (It just took longer.)

He swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing. "'This'. It's— whatever it is, it's important. You're important. I don't want to ruin it."

[numberthree]

Luther sits there silent and still, and Allison's pretty sure whatever she had to break, it's started. It's a thing she can't stop, the way she can't look away from him. Wants to will him to say something. Wants to will him to say nothing at all. Has to push down too hard on both. Almost bites the inside of her cheek over it, rather than risk words as desperation bleeds through every thought, every cell, to take it all back.

Bury it down. Pretend she didn't. Undo it, undo it, just undo it.

But then Luther starts. Slow as molasses. Like he's digging them out of somewhere they don't want to come from. Like he doesn't want to say them. To answer her. Things that are both too stark and too cool all at once. That he'd do anything for her. That she's important. That he doesn't want to ruin this. Them. And she wonders how it's possible to feel like she's thirteen in too-tight saddle shoes, a world and a decade away from it. The exact same kind of lines she'd throw popcorn at a screen for while watching one of Ivy's terrible network dramas.

The last words just repeat. Too much.

I don't want to ruin it.
I don't want to ruin it.
I don't want to ruin it.

"I think we already did," comes out before she can stop it, with barely more than two or three seconds pause from those words, and she doesn't want to say that. But she does, and it's agonized reticence in five words. Everything in her chest is seizing. Like the ice on the ground is finding a way to slowly, steadily freeze the thing in the middle of her chest. Because she can't not say it, not tell him.

Not if she's already admitted that much, because it's her fault -- their fault? It doesn't matter who is to blame now, only that she has to fix it. Her eyes end up on her hand on the chair, lips pressing only for a moment, not quite sure about even looking in his direction. "Claire just asked if you were her dad."

But somehow, she can't stop herself from glancing toward him even then.

[obediences]

Those five words are a terror, are the pair of them plummeting through the ice, and Luther suddenly feels like he's drowning. His whole body flushing hot-blooded like a fight-or-flight syndrome, like Doctor Terminal's about to peel back the roof of this building and Luther's going to have to go in swinging. He doesn't know how else to process this kind of feeling. It's like he's going to war with his own heart, his own emotions strangling as they seize up in his throat.

It's over, it's ruined, he's about to lose his best friend—

But then, thank god, Allison keeps talking. And he's not going to have to just die right here on the spot after all.

Because when she mentions Claire, suddenly this starts to make a kind of sense. Why here. Why now. Why tonight. Why now, after they've been existing in this comfortable limbo for an entire year, more, longer. When Allison looks up and towards him, Luther's expression is blown open and surprised, and all he says at first is, "Oh."

It makes enough sense. He's been a father to her this whole time, after all, or the closest thing to. So of course she'd wonder. Of course—

"What did you answer?" he asks, mouth dry. "You didn't just— say I was her uncle, or something?"

Uncles Diego, Klaus, Five. They've consistently referred to all of them as uncle, but never Luther. Never used that word for him. So somehow they've been doing this all along, and never noticed. Or maybe they had noticed, but had chosen not to look at it too closely. For fear that looking directly at it would make the whole thing vanish.

He knows what answer he's hoping for. What he wants to hear. What he wants to ask for. But doesn't, yet, know how to do it.

[numberthree]

"The truth."

The only thing she's supposed to. Even if it's not enough, and she knows it. Even if Claire's not old enough to understand, which somehow doesn't, also actually make her too young to ask, to be trying to figure out her world. That's part of why she had to ask, isn't it?

They've been doing this. They're always doing this. They've always been doing it. Somehow more than it should be, and also less than what anyone might guess or has joked about before. With nothing to risk and nothing to gain, and no one else who got in the way for long. For a million little reasons that were always the same one for her. The one that sat right there, all too wide, too clear, too readable expression as always.

Except there was now.

A risk. Someone caught in the middle of it.
Someone she couldn't ignore until they wandered away.

"That her real parents aren't here." Even if she knows it will never involve the words that match that memory—smoking rubble. Ozone, burning, and blood, in the back of her throat so clear she can still taste it right now—devastation for miles. And Claire, alone, crying in the middle of half blown-out house, with bodies on the ground. What was left of them.

The impossibility of knowing if they were part of the cell or just careless collateral.
The way it hadn't matter either way when she'd been looking down into that small face.

"But that she's mine, and I'm hers. That I love her. That I'm never leaving her." It's all still stupid, still lead up, still rust and stardust, and the words their Father never said, and trying to push herself to say the words that were the other side of that question. That she'd already spoken to Claire, without this second of hesitation here. A promise to keep forever.

"That I would do-" Her throat closes for a second, and she has to push through it, has to mean it, even as it feels like stabbing herself, apology and accusation, rolled into one. "-anything-" anything at all; anything that, suddenly, included Luther. For the first time in her entire life. "-to keep her from being hurt again."

[obediences]

It's an answer to Claire's question, the most important answer she could have mustered, the main thing that matters — and yet it's still Allison necessarily sidestepping the other half of the equation. Because how else could she have done it? She didn't have the answer yet. Even Luther himself didn't.

But he's starting to follow the train of thought now, catches on the implication of what she's saying. Allison protecting Claire from anything that might wind up hurting her. Even if it's him.

"I would never hurt her," Luther blurts out, immediately, ferociously. And then amends a moment later, because he also knows how good intentions don't always promise followthrough: "I don't want to hurt her."

He surges to his feet then; he can't stand just sitting there on the sofa looking up at her anymore, trying to keep himself still and motionless through that restlessness and that punchiness (each man is a little war). He stands up and moves closer, standing a couple feet away from her, having to crane his head to look down slightly. His whole body feels like a live-wire, jangling down his nerves, to the ends of his fingertips. Desperation. Fear. Thick and cloying on his tongue.

"Look, I. I don't know what we are. I don't know what we're doing. But— I know she's the most important thing to you, and she should be, but if there's any way—" He swallows again. "—to share that with you. I just want to be there for you, and for her."

And then his gaze is darting all over her, drinking Allison in as if he's trying to memorise the sight of her, as if he won't be able (allowed) to look at her again after this. The stiff line of her arm, the tightness in her shoulders, the twist in her lips and the angle of her jaw, her dark eyes on his. He's staring at her mouth before he looks up again to meet her eye. Gathers every shred of his courage he's ever had to scrape together, and says:

"In whatever way you'll have me."

[numberthree]

Luther surges to his feet suddenly, those too-long legs crossing the living room so quickly, a train wreck heading directly at her, only to halt, fast, hard, right there, only feet away. Allison feels her heart jams into the too-small space of her throat, and she knows with a kind of terror that no fight can put in her, this is why she didn't get closer to him when she came into the room.

When he does. When his voice is. His face. The flash of determined desperation in his eyes. The uncertain curl of his hands. When every part of her body reacts, from her heart to the whipcrack tightening tension that makes her spine straighten and her shoulders flatten out, rather than crumble, at the idea of the onslaught, the disastrous movement toward.

Because the problem is right there. Right in the middle of his words. Right on the head of that one word, she didn't choose. Because she's not sure if they would be true, and she tries not to lie to Claire anymore than people say is normal for her age. And she tries not to lie to Luther ... because he's Luther. And the words start falling off her lips, her voice slightly cracking, incapable of keeping them in suddenly.

"I don't know that she is," and there's so much torn pain in that. Shame. Too much honesty. Why did he have to stand up? Why did he have to be so close? Staring at her, her face, the slow drag of his eyes back to hers that looks precariously like trying to decide whether to jump off a cliff. And. That word he used just keeps pushing up her throat. "I don't know if she is the most important thing to me." No, that's -- it's not even -- "If she's the person I love most in this world."

This. This. This. Putting this into words is agony. While looking up at him.
Because it's always been him, since before she can remember. Every day.
Why no one had a chance, no matter how good or distracting.

"But, I know she should be." She does. In every one of her bones.
In the desperate want to be wrong, that knows it's not. "Has to be."

"We know what's that like. For kids. When even their parents don't pick them."

[obediences]

"Yeah," he says, agreeing, except his mouth is dry as a desert and he's still reeling and trying to process what he just heard.

I don't know if she is.
The person I love most in this world.

It's still delivered askance, aside, approaching the whole thing aslant: like they're both utterly incapable of being forthright and upfront about it, but Luther's getting a better idea now. Like a figure looming out of the fog and he's starting to see its edges better, the shape of it, the clearer lines. One of Luther's hands rises, as if he's about to reach out for her, but then he stops midway and it falls back to his side again, fingers fluttering, flattening. Still too afraid to broach that endless distance between them, this invisible barrier that's been sitting between them for years. Decades.

Old habits are hard to break. Even with the years of peace and the new life they've finally had in Krakoa, there's still that lingering trepidation, as if he were to get too close to her, then someone — Sir Reginald Hargreeves, appearing unannounced from another universe, waltzing through the Porter — is going to come battering down the door to tear them apart and then tear him apart. For the trespass. For daring to want something for himself.

"But maybe... it could be both. Couldn't it? If we both pick her, and each other." He takes a deep, shaky breath, still looking levelly at her, his whole body practically trembling:

"Look. Allison. 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. So, for you, I would. If you'd let me."

[numberthree]

Luther raises his hand, and her heart does a shuddering-skip before it feels like it falls off the stairs entirely when that hand just falls back to his side, pressing into his leg, and she doesn't know, suddenly, which was worse. But there isn't even enough time to process the ache in her chest, because Luther replaces it with words that continue the job his fingers started.

Couldn't it. Be both. Couldn't they choose her, and each other.

If the ground had been interchanging fire and ice -- if her mind was already creating the frustratedly pained argument of how that would look, how would Claire ever understand this, them, if she already didn't, if they didn't -- it drops out as he doesn't stop. As the whole of this slides in a direction, her heart and her thoughts haven't more than felt a familiar ache, jealousy, longing for. Ever.

Something close enough to sometimes feel like it blurred,
but something that always pulled right back from every time, too.

Like that raised hand, except even if he doesn't move, he doesn't stop either. As he says, the words she'd only implied. As he says so much more than just that, drops into something like his occasionally read-aloud favorite poets. That he dreams of her? How is that even? What have they been doing all this time, if.

"Luther." Her voice is suddenly softer, thinner. There's something as confused as it is still trying to even. Hear that. Understand that. The almost tragic underpinning of this. If this, and when, and how long. Except even she asks that, thinks of herself that. What comes out is: "It's always been you."

Somehow that feels so small.
Tragically plain next to what he just said.

But it's all she has. "Always."

[obediences]

He's almost always bashful and tongue-tied, but the man is like an iceberg: quiet and still on the surface, while everything else lurks and roils far beneath it in hidden depths. The inside of his mind has been fed and watered on the poets, on lovelorn poetry, and it's left an imprint: every last little scrap of flowery sentiment that he'd gathered up and held close to his heart, locked up under lock and key.

Allison's simple and unornamented words, though, are worth a thousand of them.

He takes a moment to let it sink in, almost disbelieving (is this real? how is this real? how is this happening?). But then. Luther's face just lights up in a smile that transforms his usually-sober expression, breaks it open like the sun coming out behind overcast, fretful clouds. "Really?" he asks, the astonishment and surprise sweeping across his expression. Plainly still not expecting this. Anything like this.

"I didn't think—"

He bites off his words, shears off the rest of the sentence. Takes another unthinking step closer to her. "I didn't think you would."

[numberthree]

She's had a weakness for this her whole life. The way Luther's face opens suddenly, like doors cloven from stone, thrown wide open, and it's hard to explain to anyone that even if he always has his emotions on his face, there's this, too. Even deeper. The way it all goes light, surprised, and it feels like all of her skin prickles like the level of the electricity in the air suddenly switched voltages.

How her mouth twitches trying to make her mirror the turn of his lips, unexpected delight, all wondering question followed by quiet confession, as he steps even closer. The space between them beginning to vanish entirely, and she's suddenly so aware of how little that space is, and how little of it is left before it's gone. Before -- before what?

Allison finally lifted her hand from the top of the chair, except that it didn't entirely mean she had any clue what to do with it either. Only that maybe she shouldn't still be holding on to it. "Would what?"

None of it is settled. It's not.
But she can't look away from his smile.
The crease it puts in his cheeks, at the edges of his eyes.

"Have said yes if you, or we, had ever--?"

That she would have wanted him? Have done something that was like waiting, without actually choosing the idea of waiting, that just never involved picking anyone else, because no one else knew her, could handle her at her best and especially her worst, before it even got to the fact, that no one else was like him?

There never was. Especially not in White Tower.

And when would she have found the time to even look once here.
When everything was happening, and everything she needed, he was already doing.

[obediences]

They still can't say it. Cannot simply say it out loud, this unspoken thing that's been camped out between them for as long as they've been able to conceptualise wanting.

Luther has been politely unassuming with others, dates and trysts, but never shy to this extent. Never like this, where any step outside the line felt like it might superstitiously make the entire house of cards come tumbling down on their heads. Where if he even let himself stop to think of her in another light, it might be a betrayal of their friendship plus all his training; he had been taught not to allow himself that distraction. And what the hell had any of them known about normal dating, anyway, when they were younger? Where were they supposed to squeeze it in, in their thirty minutes of free time a week?

He hadn't known where to begin. But now, picking through his words, Luther thinks of somewhere he could start. Because someone has to finally say it. Broach it. Rip down that wall and name this for what it is; what it could be.

"If I ever asked you to dance," he says. Thinking of a faraway and long-ago night, a picnic interrupted, what had felt like a branching in the crossroads and a door slammed shut that they had never, until now, dared open again. It had felt like a missed opportunity, at the time. Their only shot.

"If I ever—" a stutter-stop, his heart's forgotten how to beat, he's pretty sure it's outright just stopped dead in his chest, but somehow he manages to gather enough oxygen to squeeze out the rest,

"—asked if I could kiss you."

[numberthree]

He thinks of home, but Allison thinks of too many, too extravagant gala's in White Tower. Of their nice clothes, and the gleaming towers, and the music. Of a million chances skirted by. Of wanting to be asked. Of being brave enough to do almost anything else with her life, with her opinion, with the people there, lie to them, use them, rumor them, but not brave enough for that.

Accepting other people's requests. Watching him from a distance,
always brighter than all of the lights, than any of those people.
The eternal distraction, even when she let herself.

Maybe she should be more surprised at the words that follow it. The bare necessity. The sheer stripped simplicity. The way she doesn't even feel the need to retreat from them. A small huff, so small and nearly silently, pressed out her nose, at how innocent that sounds. Being asked for a kiss. Like it was a thimble in a story still.

"I would have said yes." She doesn't stop herself.

"I only wanted that, either of them, from something like thirteen."

Before she even knew what kissing was all about, or where it might lead. When it just this glamorous, romantic thing in her tiny window to the outside world, of her trashy teenage magazines. The only thing that even vaguely seemed to have some sort of touchstone map for how everything that left her hot and cold and confused and longing any time they were alone, so close it seemed as inevitable as breathing, until someone always came into wherever they were first.

[obediences]

Another hammer-blow of realisation, tumbling loose; almost like a cartoonish anvil landing squarely on his head, his chest, knocking the breath right out of him when Allison says that. Since thirteen. Since thirteen?

The first thought that strikes him, then, is practically comedically thunderstruck, affronted on their own behalf: god, he's an idiot. They've wasted so much time. They could've. This whole time, they could've.

Luther takes that last step and closes the last distance between them, his heart still pattering a panicky drumbeat in his chest as he crosses that invisible bubble of personal space, encroaches nearer to her than he usually does even these days (beyond propriety, beyond what's proper, Number One). Composure's an absolutely lost cause. "I hope it's not too late," he murmurs, voice quiet, but there's that smile still lurking in the corner of his mouth, irrepressible, absolutely impossible to hold back or bite back even if he wanted to.

[numberthree]

He's too close. Too close. The round of a socked foot brushing her bare toes, electric even at wholly innocuous, when his voice goes that quiet, soft enough she'd miss it from across the room and every inch of her skin can't decide if it's gone taut or tingling. A rolling warmth as undeniable as it is overwhelming, carving her lungs out, making her heart the only sound thundering in her ears, twisting knots in her stomach when she can't stop looking at that awed, boyish, curve at the corner of his mouth.

Discussing kissing was probably not the best way to avoid that.

It's too much, too loud, too close. She doesn't know what is right, and she does the thing she thinks might not be, but she does it anyway. Because it feels like her heart is going to explode. (Because she's always taken more than she should, especially from Luther, and he's always let her. This past year a million times more than ever before.)

There are barely inches, and she just tips, maybe it's not even far enough for that, perhaps just actually leans forward into him. Has to touch him. Has to stop feeling like an elastic band stretched so tight she's going to snap in half by every eradicated foot and inch. It's the wrong thing to do. It's the one she can't stop. She doesn't want to say the words pushing up. She doesn't want to be the person who cares.

She wants to go on balling her fingers into his stupid too soft sweater and let her forehead rest there against his chest for longer than a second. But it won't. She can't. It's pushing up her throat with a shake of her head into his chest when she already doesn't want to let go, and that makes this the worst decision of all, both together.

"It's not that simple." It's not. It can't be. (Can it?)

"We all saw what all of this did to Josh and David and Laurie." So entirely in love, and shattered apart like they were just a vase someone casually dropped. Spinning razor-sharp sparkling shards across the whole of the council table for months. And the lives of anyone living through the fallout. And it wasn't even like Jane or Rumiru had someone. It wasn't. It didn't.

Their job didn't contend well with more anywhere. And she already had --

"And Claire." Allison shook her head, looking up at him again. Making herself. (Too close, too close, too close; a fire she didn't know how to back away from; she needed him further away; can't let go; wants him to stop her from being allowed to touch words at all already.) His mouth. His eyes. The edge of his jaw. From right here. Close enough to be burned on the little air left between them. "She's not a five-minute decision. She's a forever decision." She was everything. The best of nothing Allison ever expected from her life; the best, purest parts of her somehow born and caught up in the word mommy and the easy, unfettered, fearless way Claire loved her, trusted her like there was nothing dangerous, or deadly, or wrong about her.

"She's not something you can take back in a month or a year."

As if somehow she didn't rank the same. Maybe because she already knew, cable knit in her fingers and Luther's body warm and solid against too much of her. That it wasn't, didn't, that wouldn't matter if he changed his mind about her, she'd still love him, then, too, wouldn't she? The same as when he wasn't hers at all, to begin with? One of the truest, unchangeable facts about her.

[obediences]

This should probably be more nerve-wracking than it is, hearing Allison methodically list the reasons why they shouldn't do this. But this part is somehow easier. Logic and rationale and working through a problem; that, Luther can handle. It's easier to approach it like a puzzle to be solved, sizing up the pros and cons, cracking the logistics — even if the weight of her hand in his shirt makes him want to climb out of his skin.

"That's what I've been doing. For the past year. Choosing you, and her, every single day that I can." Luther is steady as the tides; boringly predictable sometimes, and that's both one of his strengths and weaknesses. But that's what makes him loyal. Dependable. A brick wall you could prop your house against, and which could hold the weight of this new island life.

He was signing up for it. For everything. Saying yes and for you, I would, and accepting the mantle of being that missing father figure, definitively and unambiguously taking that responsibility in Claire's life.

But Luther was good at bearing responsibilities, wasn't he. Just add another one to those shoulders.

"And as for Josh and David— well. it's a good thing I'm not on the council, then. My schedule's pretty clear, in comparison." They'd seen how the others' duties had complicated things, their conflicting priorities. But Luther— He didn't have a position to wield over others here. He wasn't Number One. Hadn't been for a while. The fact that he wasn't on the council here had bristled at first in those early days, like some undefinable wrongness beneath his skin, some faint squirming unease with the fact that he was probably letting down his father's memory somehow... but he didn't mind it now.

Especially now.

"I have the time to juggle it, Allison. More than you do. I have nothing but time."

He finally reaches out, fingers fanning across her cheek, finally allowing himself this. Purposefully touching her for one of the first times not in battle, where it was always quick, perfunctory, businesslike: checking for injuries, or sweeping her over his shoulder to carry her out of a battle. He'd slipped up sometimes, with a hand against a shoulder or the small of her back— but this is shameless, selfish. Drinking in the curve of her jaw, the warmth of her skin beneath his fingertips, the nearness of her.

[numberthree]

It's not the same thing.

The words he says. The simple, solemn, serious way he says them. I'd been doing that. For the past year. Choosing you. And her. Every day. Something in Allison's throat goes too tight. Like there's a cord that's going to slice straight through her skin. He's been here. He's helped. But. She had no way to turn it down. Not sanely. Not rationally. She couldn't have done this alone. But it hadn't. He hadn't. She'd. Hadn't she?

She stares up at him, unblinking, unable to even reach the fullness of any of her impossible questions, while the silence of everything inside her is the frantic speed of her heartbeat crashing only harder and harder, true, true, true as nothing in her power caught even the smallest waver in his words. Even the vaguest doubt that might be even an unknown untruth. Anywhere. The way they hadn't this whole time.

There are words she should probably say, but they're all caught. Trapped even tighter when Luther finally raises his hand again, and this time, instead of dropping them, her whole body goes still, not rigid or frozen, but almost like it doesn't exist except for those few inches where Luther's fingers ghost along her skin. Across her chin, her jaw, her cheek, and for those second. Those few first seconds, that's all she is—those few inches.

Allison wants to turn her face into his hand. Tilt her head, raise her hand and cover the back of his against her jaw (to keep him from pulling back again), to run her cheek along the inside of his fingers, his palm, her lips. But it's not enough. Even as she thinks it, even as his hand settles into a blur at the edge of her vision, she can't look away, turn away. Stop herself. Slow down to appreciate this first small step.

She's always been reckless (and he's always been true), and she doesn't have it in her to wait anymore. (She's already waited half her life. She's a fool.) Her fingers spread for a moment against that sweater, lost flattening against his chest, one tremulous heartbeat, before she leaps. The fingers of that one hand curling into a hard fist in the knit and pulling him to her. Her other hand, reaching up, finding the side of his face, his neck and jaw, to demandingly drag him forward and down, to meet her as she was already pushing up on her toes—because she can't.

She can't not be kissing him anymore.
Not when he's this close. When he's touching her.

When he gives up forever like it was never a price to begin with.
That he'd already accepted, wanting her, picking her.

That he always has been, already, too.

[obediences]

And just like that, she's all over him: leaning up on tiptoes (the height difference is so much more pronounced whenever she's not wearing shoes), dragging his mouth against hers, pulling him down, and Luther has to lean down to meet her. His hand's still curled against one half of Allison's face, but as they crash into each other — like a slow-moving tidal wave, like something inevitable, like a rolling boulder finally colliding after so many years delayed, so many years wasted — then Luther's other hand reaches out and catches the other side of her jaw, holding her closer to him.

He turns in towards her like a plant turning towards the sun, leaning into that blinding light, warmth. Allison's lips on his, needy and insistent and wanting. Luther doesn't hesitate, pushes back just as fiercely: stunned but rolling with the punches, making up for lost time, suddenly greedy. After so many endless times imagining this, dreaming of this — wondering what she'd feel like under his hands, the twist of her mouth under his, that small noise in the back of her throat — now he finally has a reason, an excuse, an opportunity to find out for himself.

Everything's narrowed down to just this: he's forgotten about his book, the house (even the child in the next room), the island, the world. It's all just Allison, and needing to get as close to her as possible. He stumbles a little forward in his eagerness and they bump against the dining room table, uncharacteristically clumsy — as if they haven't had a decade of practice with others in-between, as if they're suddenly fumbling teenagers again, with all the opportunities they never had before.

[numberthree]

All of the careful, slow movement of either of them -- her unavoidable shift into him, his fingers finding her face like a brand new continent -- vanishes suddenly into a flurry of movement. Luther's mouth against hers, ready and warm and reckless as the crashing sound that became her heart, until she couldn't hear it anymore. Until the only things she had were flashes of realization.

The strain of the muscles in her calves. The feeling of her face cradled in his hands, the pressure of his grip a little harder than any casual touch usually was, like he was forgetting, which went hand in hand with the sweep of space they seem to be crossing as Luther bulldozes right into her, sends them steps backward, and she doesn't care, doesn't care about any of that. Wants every real piece of it. Wants to be carried off by the storm. Him.

Allison can't even convince her hands to stops moving. Fingers curling his neck, only to find that they've slid up across the back of his head, fingertips and nails in his short blonde hair, cupping the back of his head, then, somehow dipped down against the back of his shoulder, half clinging, half uncaring, everything that is anything lost in the pressure of his mouth, the shift of his lips, the way every touch only makes her want more not less, throws open the doors on a decade of seconds longed for, in the light and the dark, all pushing into this one.

At least until there's suddenly the clatter of wood, scraping the floor, and it takes her a second. A glance that forces her to break off, and she never even makes seeing the table, only that they've somehow left the living room for the dining room, and it's hilarious. And as impossible as all of this as the fact she's kissing Luther.

She can't stop it. Any of this. She's laughing before she means to. Before she even realizes she's going to. Quiet, light, irreverent delight. Still not letting go. And Luther's impossibly there, in the space of her hands, her arms, and she's not stopping herself, saying, "Shh, shh, shh." More laugh in her voice, in the sound, than admonishment. "Stop it." Sounds nothing like an actual order. "Unless you want more company."

Which is probably absolutely not helped by the fact Allison lets go with one hand, but only to reach back and push things out of her way. It's nothing more than placemats and napkins, waiting for plates and cups to find them again at breakfast, but Allison can't care about any of that. What they are, where they go after being pushed. Can't stop herself from anything. Can't remember the last time she let herself, felt like this. (It's more than a year ago; it's never.)

Pushes herself up on the edge of the table, straight on to it, less adult than all her just-spoken words, just pulling him back into her already—the narrow line of his hips pulled into the bracket of her split knees. Even ten seconds is too long not to be kissing him now. Stupid, silly, giddiness weaving into that fire, and she can't stop the smile that's stolen all of the muscles in her cheeks even when she's trying to use them for something else. Head and face tipped up, brown eyes turned bright, pulling him right back down into another kiss.

[obediences]

They're dissolving into infectious laughter and shushing each other, which then just makes them laugh more, trying to muffle it with another kiss before the sound of their amusement carries too far and wakes up Claire. "Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry," he's whispering over and over, trying not to make any noise, even as he fails: the scratch of the table against the uneven floor, the creak of the floorboards, the rustle of placemats being swept aside.

(Like two teenagers after hours and defying curfew, trying not to get caught, hands roaming everywhere and everywhere. They'd have needed to be quiet like this if they did start this all those many years ago, too.)

But then Allison is settled on the edge of the table, her knees tucked around him and the line of one calf nudging him closer, and he can feel that sharp kick of excitement, anticipation, potential. The table's a good idea; it compensates for his height and means he can reach her face more easily, it gives him easier access to step between her legs and draw closer and settle his hands on her hips, before he falls back into the drowning kiss.

There's too much of her to explore, now that he can: it's impossible to be everywhere at once, but Luther's doing his damndest to try. When they next break for a desperate gasping breath, then he shifts slightly: his teeth grazing the shell of her ear, then against her throat.

"We should've started this ages ago," he murmurs against her neck, against her pulse-point, as she all but pins him in place with her knees, not letting go.