#00.02 Diego Hargreeves 🔪 The Kraken (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
deadlycurves) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
f20202020-09-08 07:05 am
deadlycurves) wrote in f20202020-09-08 07:05 am
deadlycurves) wrote in f20202020-09-08 07:05 am
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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(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.
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His hands, all heavy palms and long fingers wrapped on the opposing sides her hips. The relief, that's only relief before it catches back into fire, when he's kissing her again. When it's the slide of his mouth, and the taste of him on her tongue, and the way air is the least inconsequential thing to keeping her tethered to existence.
Her hands, suddenly with so much of him, his chest, and his sides, and his back under the soft lightweight of his sweater. The solid pressure of his legs pressing into hers. The one ankle she ends up hooking around his lower leg, as she loses anything but following and falling into, through, whatever number kiss this is.
The racing tension in her chest when his breath ghosts against her cheek, before there's a soft, sharp noise climbing into her throat when his teeth scrape the edge of her earlobe. And this, this was not how she saw this night or this talk going. Nothing about this, about the way he's leaning into her, and she has to put a hand out, to find the table, to balance and shift her weight, as her head falls to the opposite side, to accommodate his mouth traveling down her neck, her other fingers digging into his side for purchases, as she shivers and her legs tighten reflexively against him.
But the words that come are so Luther. Part apology, part wonder, part remorse. It's the only reason she can bring herself to move, and move him, to find his face, and pull it back closer, into hers, except not to kiss him this time. To shake her forehead against his, and find his eyes.
And it's a different kind of shushing, "That's done now."
They can't change it. They can't rearrange it.
(She could. She can. She won't. There's too much that could change, or erase, if she did.
Part of her still wishes, fiercely she could. Just say the words. Erase every day without him.
Except there's never been a day without him, has there, just without this.
Luther has always been here, and she hears it again so clear in her head.
That's what I've been doing. Every day of this year. Picking you. )
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Except it's not anymore.
With that metaphorical door thrown open, of course they're bullrushing through it; of course all the walls are collapsing between them one by one by one, an impregnable castle falling. But she seizes a second to get the message across to him; and while Allison's shaking her head, Luther nods, accepting what she's saying, a half-murmured Yeah on his lips. Their foreheads resting against each other, a momentary pause and a second to catch their breath and remember how to make their lungs work, even while heart and pulse are still thundering onwards.
"Should we, uh," Luther says, starts, trying to figure out how to broach this. "I mean, we can take it slow, if you need to. We don't have to rush this."
But a second later, he's already answering himself with the words tripping over themselves — he suddenly knew what he wanted as soon as he'd said it, like stating it aloud made it all become clear in an instant: "I don't especially want to stop, though."
They've already taken it so painfully, painfully slow over the past decade. They've somehow wound up half-living together and raising a child together and practically married, for all intents and purposes, before they ever even put their hands on each other. And now that he finally can, he's not sure he knows how to stop this avalanche. Now that he's kissing her, he doesn't ever, ever want to stop.
"But if you, uh. Need some time. To figure this out. That's totally fine. I can wait—"
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When he looks nothing like he wants to step away (and how is that, this, all still possible), his hair mussed and his eyes blown a little darker shade than usual, and the edge of his mouth has some of her lipstick. The irresistible urge, undenied, she lets one of her hands on the side of his head, from pulling him down, slide to rub it off his lip with the side of her thumb (the way her heart trips at the fact she can; while part of her wants to leave there, like a scarlet mark saying that did happen).
She knows he would, too. It's not even a question.
It's Luther. She knows Luther. And he'd let her.
If it was too much. If she was confused. If she wasn't sure.
No pressure. No pleading. No avoiding putting it out there between them.
It makes her heart ache only fiercer for this man, her hands holding his face, and she tries to think of something like sense. When it'd be so much easier to pull him back in. To go back to kissing him as though nothing else in the world existed except the feel of his hands, his mouth. But she can try for a second.
"I'm not saying I think we should tell Claire anything new tomorrow morning--" And she doesn't know if she says that in something the ascribes itself to still protecting her daughter from the whirlwind they can't protect themselves from, or if there's something possessive to wanting to keep this, him, hers, just hers for a few seconds first. "--but for just me?"
The her that was her, that was her before Claire, and that was still her, even while having her daughter. She can't help it. It's all just there, on her face, on her tongue, coming up an out from a million days where she met that truth in the electric space between them in that house too big for seven children, thrown every which way in this world, through the White Tower rings.
"I love you, Luther." Not said like it's some grand secret. There's something foolish and fond, and maybe even a little sad to the tilt of her mouth, her eyes for a moment. Like saying an answer that was just as indelible as the sky being blue, Council doing anything to keep war from these shores, and Allison Hargreeves has loved Luther beyond sense, beyond choice or chance, since before she even knew what love was. "I've always loved you."
"Why do you think there was never anyone else?" Not really. Not for longer than a few seconds, the breeze passing through her hair, a distraction that only left the itch under her skin and the hole in her heart more, and not ever less, pronounced. Six years of only being more and more and more certain, it couldn't be anyone else, even just casually long term.
"Even when they got close enough to comparing to the--" Allison pauses, irreverent flicker at her lips. "--impossible list of the things that make you you, still --" A confession, but one she's maybe not regretting for the first time ever."-- none of them were ever you."
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But now, hearing those impossible words from her. Affection that's hard-won, and which doesn't come easily to any of them. And so once again, she blows him out of the water with the easy, true simplicity of her speech.
Luther doesn't have to be a superhuman lie detector to hear how true they are.
"I love you, too. Probably everyone knows it." He's not exactly subtle: the way he looked at her whenever he thought she couldn't notice; Diego's eyerolls whenever the pair of them presented a united front; the way all of Luther seemed to orbit around her, craning to attention, quietly attentive, the pair of them lost in that unspoken communication that kept passing between them. But what matters is that Allison knows it now, unequivocally and unambiguously, and gets to hear it. And Luther moves in again, hands moving to rest on the table on either side of her as he leans his weight against them, as he peppers each sentence with another kiss, his lips brushing against hers: "Every minute. Every year. The whole time."
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Her hand curling his jaw, as she pushed up on the table, into each. Because Allison wasn't above saying they both knew this was something more than it was supposed to be, even for the years it wasn't. That she hadn't always missed the looks people threw there way, and couldn't avoid the occasional ribbing from their family, or from those who deserved to have some clue about her existing-or-non-existing stability where it came to running Krakoa.
None of it mattered, at least not more than nettling a sore deep bruise that couldn't be fixed. It didn't matter what anyone else said or thought. It never had. They knew what they were-weren't, existing at the edges of each other, and each other's choices, never far apart, and yet never this either. The way that thought still stung to think, but slipped further from focus as she kissed him. Before: "There might have been a rumor or two about that."
There's a scrunch of her nose. Because, fine. Also:
"And maybe about this already being a thing."
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Duh, Luther.
And yet there's a difference between people reading him like the open book he is, versus actual rumours floating around the island and passing through word-of-mouth. Luther's head tilts, almost as if he's listening to some distant voice; mostly, he's reeling back through the past few months, the past year, and putting two-and-two together and piecing together all the little moments that make sense once you look at them in hindsight. Stray comments from other Krakoans that he hadn't thought too much of, at the time. His own nose crinkles, accidentally mirroring her expression in... bemusement, distaste, embarrassment. He's still standing there just inches from her, still jotted into the cradle of Allison's legs: hovering on the brink of something, right on the edge of tumbling off this cliff that they're still careening headlong towards.
"How did I miss that?" he asks, except the answer's right there: absolutely nobody on this island (except for Diego, most likely) has the nerve to even bring this up with Luther, and if they'd hinted at it, he simply hadn't noticed. Had, perhaps, chosen not to notice. Because it was easier.
But still, she's right. That's done now. He shakes his head, like a dog shaking off water, throwing aside all the times the others thought they were when they weren't. All those misconceptions. Everybody else being able to read the writing on the wall when they couldn't, when they were too close to it, their noses right up against it.
"I think," he says, slowly, drawing out the words now, "we've got some time to make up for."
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Does she mean what people around Krakoa are saying? Does she mean that she's been asked about the subject before discreetly by someone on The Council? Neither would be precisely wrong. But neither is as simple as any of those words she said. Either of them has said.
"I'm not too worried about yesterday--"
She knows herself. She doesn't want to think about it. She will. Later. Every day. Every person. The thought that could have been her. The way it will only score in every single other person had this not when she couldn't do more than long with a quite, biting jealousy, but because she could have and she missed that. She let those happen.
"--if there's a tomorrow." It catches in her teeth, only the second after she says that last word, and it's impulsive. The word that crowds up to her tongue. Her lips. It still feels like reaching, except that it's gone electric. Because he is still pressed, so close his arms, framing her where she's sitting.
Her eyes never leave his. "Tonight."
Does she even have a clue if she means this or more? Would it matter in the slightest? Was there anything she wouldn't give to him, didn't want him already to have? Have had for all those yesterdays? Especially if she didn't have to keep pulling back, keeping reminding herself to think of Claire, and Claire's safety, Claire's happiness, instead of herself.
Getting to have all three feels almost too bigger than she could ever deserve. But she's never done well at letting go of even the things she didn't deserve. And letting go of any part of Luther was a thing she'd refused since at least eleven or twelve, narrowing her eyes at Diego, and arrogantly ending up as the one Luther chose again and again and again, Three instead of Two. Always more hers even if it never crossed that line.
It's always been always. Even tell him not to, she's stuck there, too. She doesn't want to be. Wants to be here. Lets herself tug him closer again to her. Gaze sweeping his face, settling for those just slightly longer seconds on his eyes, on his mouth. Lets herself kiss him. Not a punctuation on her sentences like his had been. Not the way they'd slammed straight front one room to another to this table. Not like that insane leap -- still too much a damn risk of ruin -- with him too close, with her will just crumbling against it.
She leans in and lets her lips touch his. Lets it be. Softer. Slower. Lets it be a statement in itself. Not a question. Not a demand. Not stolen unexpected. Just be those words she said when he gave her to out. Just that she's always loved him. Just that the door, any door, and every door, was open, was his. She was.
end or yours to wrap!
Never in the world had there been two words that could be so simple, yet also promise so much, that could make his heartbeat thunder in his ears and his words catch in his throat and his mouth go dry as he loses the ability to respond. He's still stunned into silence for a second, thinking through the implications, the possibilities.
Then: "'That I have perceived nothing completely, that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk,'" Luther says, and his voice has that gentle rhythmic cadence that she can recognise so well, which means he's quoting... something. That mental archive runs deep and she can usually recognise the classical quotations that he'd memorised from Shakespeare, from Homer, but this particular line of poetry is unfamiliar. But it doesn't matter, because the sentiment's still there, resting on another man's language to get the point across. And finally he's able to muster up two words of his own, and it's just a simple: "Can we," he asks, and she's mouthing Yes against his lips, his mouth.
They could wait. They could take this slow.
But they've waited more than long enough. Over ten years, by latest reckoning. Long past any attempt at patience to hold them back tonight (tonight, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow). All the doors and windows are slamming open, and Allison's arms are still draped around his neck, and so it's easy enough for Luther's hands to slide down and pick her up into his arms, her legs hooking around his hips. They're still kissing dizzily as he starts walking, barely able to keep their hands off each other — maneuvering through the hallway, Luther stubs his foot on an endtable, swears low and under his breath against her throat while she muffles another laugh, shushing him again, trying not to wake Claire. He's trying to navigate his way half-blind through the familiar muted darkness of Allison's house, over to the unfamiliar muted darkness of her bedroom, the place he's never gone. He nudges the door shut behind them with a foot.
There's unexplored territory behind that door, in her bed, beneath the layers of clothing that they work their way under with roaming hands.
It's the first time, and about damned time — and with years more to come.