#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 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."
no subject
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.