{ take everything I am; until it's just your voice in my head

[numberthree]

Oh you're in my veins
And I cannot get you out

Oh you're all I taste
At night inside of my mouth





Allison Hargreeves loves her life.

She loves the power that hovers at the tip of her tongue, ready to spring into any words she might need it for. She loves being The Rumor. She loves saving the day, and taking out the trash of the world and putting it where it belongs. She loves the dazed and doting faces that peer at her and her brothers, pushing, shoving, beating signs as their father’s car returns them to the Academy.

She loves the simplicity, and straightforwardness of it all. She loves the hard fights, that light up every nerve in her body, when her foot or fist or elbow connects with the solidness of bones, and men twice her size crumple in the wake of a pain she washed away paying attention at the age when other children were learning to tie their shoes and write in cursive letters.

She loves the moments when she stands there, a swish of skirts or a gliding shadow of perfect fitting leather, while it’s only the whisper of words that brings a crowd crashing to its knees. Flung to her bidding like the breeze stirring the leaves in the trees. She loves the seamlessness with which all her siblings breathe in and out of each other on a battlefield, less individual people and more like breathlessly synchronized thoughts.

She loves the way that Luther goes first, first in all things, and always, and stations himself at the door, holding it for them, as her brothers slide out of their seats, all neatened socks and straightened ties, most blood and stains wiped away between being picked up in costumes and emerging again in uniforms. The only one of them who truly has trouble with that one, at times, is Ben.

She loves the feeling that anything and everything is possible, is at her fingertips, laced into her fingers, when saving the world is child's play, and they are the only children, though they are far from being just children anymore, who can. Who do. Who can't be stopped. Who are begged for the mercy of the grace of coming to their rescue the world over.

But what she loves most of all, sliding out last of the car, in reaching up so easily to catch her weight and help her stand with the help of the top of the car door, is letting her fingertips glide just so against the edge of Luther’s hand, briefly catching like a skipped stone on two of his last knuckles as her hand falls away with the need for the door, while she gives him the flick of a dangerous smirk, part dare, and part promise, and all reckless heady fearlessness, that anyone else watching might simply find vaingloriously pert.

Before she passes on by, turning her smile on the crowd like a returning queen. Dark fingers linking behind her back, lighter than the black of her jacket, and the smallest floated-skip to her matched and measured Mary-Jane steps, falling in line behind her other three brothers as the car door closes behind her and she knows Luther will fall in right behind her, too.

Comments

[obediences]

"I gave you enough time." As if it was hide-and-seek or tag, as if he was standing there running a countdown along with his pulse, each beat of his heart measuring out another second before he could turn around and go for her. "You're a terror."

True. Accurate. Out of all of them, with their terrifying powers, hers are actually the deadliest.

His grip tightens even further, riding that knife's edge where it almost hurts but he knows, from long practice and careful restraint, that it won't harm. Just enough that he can feel her pulse rattling along beneath his fingertips too— good. Okay. Not just him, then.

Finally, another inhale and exhale and then Luther turns around, twisting in her arms until he's switched hands and they're standing so, so close, his head bowing to look down at her. Still domino-masked, his blue gaze now running up and down Allison's clothed body. Catching on the bare arc of her shoulder, that artfully-arranged careless angle of her shirt falling. His mouth twists under that mask. A smirk.

"We have some time until dinner. I could read that flight manual later."

A small rebellion, all things told, but he has a bigger rebellion in mind: his eyes are riveted on the curve of her jaw, her answering smirk.

[numberthree]

Allison doesn't fight him when he moves. Doesn't flinch or step away or even duck her head. All shameless delight as she watches the faintest shadows of thoughts play on the little of his face visible, as only the tilt of his face, and the hold of his mouth as he breathes and the swallow of his throat, gives away the clues to the way she knows his eyes have fallen down across all of her, to be sure of which way the real answer she hadn't given was.

It's in that, the intensity of it, the psychology of stripping away the gateway of human connection with someone's eyes, that leaves it bleeding, blinding intensity only. They all have it — the Umbrella Academy. But none of them have it the way Space does. It's the thing, all careless, arrogant smile that sends people running the first second they catch sight of it, not knowing it's already too late. Sends a shiver down spines.

Something in the animal hindbrain that knows better.
That screams the electrical impulse for flight before a predator.

One Allison has never in her life felt looking up at him. Hesitation, once upon a time, had existed for entirely different reasons. Still, it had cast itself on forgotten shores, and she'd stopped caring about its foreign whisper on that day it cracked forever.

It's why even though she wants to start at his mouth, at the sharp dangerous promise that curves profanely around the angelic suggestion of being good they are still toying with, she reaches up, up, up, until her fingers can catch the edges of his mask and push it up, up, up, over his forehead, into his hair, until she can see the blue lightning of his eyes, chiding with played-up disapproval, "You aren't supposed to wear this with me."

[obediences]

"I didn't have time to change." He should've, really; he was supposed to stop by his room first, neatly hang up his Academy blazer, and send the tidily-pressed trousers and rumpled white shirt downstairs for Grace to soak out the bloodstains.

Instead, he'd come right here. So Luther's still in his field attire, and it still smells a bit of gunpowder, from the shots they'd taken at him: the grey blazer with burgundy trim is unbuttoned, and his tie's slightly loosened, but that's as far as he got. It had just been too painfully important, imperative, to follow Allison's unspoken call and come to this room hot on her heels.

Her fingers comb into his hair as she pushes back the mask and he feels it send an answering shiver down his spine. She and Grace are the only ones who ever touch him kindly, or outside of fight training. He's starved for it like all of them are, so Luther tilts his head into the contact, savours the light press of Allison's nails.

And then, because while he's got that vaunted willpower and he's withstood it this long, he is still human and he's painfully aware of the timer ticking down to dinner and they need to steal these moments where they can— Number One finally cracks and caves. He closes the rest of the distance between them, lets Allison's arm settle around his neck instead, her winding him closer even as he captures her mouth in a kiss.

Their first-ever kiss had been gentle, cautious, exploratory, in case they had to rapidly backpedal and undo what they'd just done.

This one isn't; this is one of dozens, hundreds, they can't count anymore, and so Luther takes another step closer, crowding her backwards towards the wall.

[numberthree]

She shouldn't like it as much as she does. Shouldn't feel the thrill of it this deep. When Luther still feels the need to explain himself, as though missing that mark didn't somehow have to do with her (as though he couldn't have done it at any point while facing the door). The way his head just lists into her touch, and his whole body shivers just even slightly more noticeably than his fingers had. But she does, too. Like it. Watching those things happening.

Watching the moment where he trips straight over the line of how far they can both push each other before someone has to fold.

Before it's the game where all the cards fall off the table. Because they were never creatures made for patience.

They were built for the offensive, direct, and deadly aim, no second thought. Allison's never had any of those where it came to him, is the last truly sensible thought Allison has, as her hand curls the back of his head, slides to his neck, while he's already leaning in, already pushing them further from that door and the world outside of it. When she's already pushing up on to her toes, and her fingertips are digging into his neck, and he's finally kissing her, and she's only been thinking of this since he decked someone out a window.

(Or since breakfast, and the regimental silence of trying to pretend
that breakfast and the news were more interesting than snatching glances at each other.)

Which really, as her fingers slide back up into his hair, pulling him closer, pulling him further down, lips parting in a silence they've memorized all too well, while still pushing up, is basically, like saying it's every second she's breathing -- and not in the middle of fighting -- since the first time. Since the last time. Since a second ago, when a first kiss only has to be a second, a third, a forgetful, uncounting madness of fire, and close, that rule of all rules where only shoulders brush for marching lines and hands for sparring, is still nothing like close enough again, even when Luther can blanket her in seconds.

[obediences]

It's that spark she lit when she brushed against him outside (which looked so careless, but was calculated to an inch as their actions always are), but now stoked into a five-alarm fire that's burning him up from the inside. His hands go straight for the hem of Allison's loose shirt, sliding under it until he can reach soft bare skin, his hands hot against her stomach, the small of her back.

Luther's still having to tilt his head at an awkward angle to reach her lips, that growth spurt having hit with a vengeance; which elicits a frustrated little noise in the back of her throat which he answers with another laugh, briefly breaking away before his hands slide back downwards, to the back pockets of her jeans, easily lifting Allison up for her legs to wind around his hips.

They've calculated this, too. An easy familiarity with each others' bodies that transferred from the sparring mats to her bedroom, to his: the best ways for them to get as close as possible, just a little leap and he carries her effortlessly, not noticing the weight at all. All the ways they fit together like they always have, for years, until this latest iteration and variation on the theme just felt inevitable.

His mouth is against her throat, then her ear. "Where do you want me?"

[numberthree]

Allison's heart is somewhere in her throat, shot upward toward the top of her head, when Luther's hands find her skin.

Slides across it large, and long, and with no sign of anything like uncertainty in touching her any longer. Like a dam gone and broken entirely from the first crack. Until he's stopping to laugh, stopping to have to lift her, and she's only narrowly not hitting his chest with her hand, mostly because she's got one of them knotted in his tie again, and she'd have to stop longer than it takes to just those seconds.

Longer than wrapping her legs around his waist, and an arm around his neck, hand on the muscles of his upper back, than pulling him right back too disastrously close. Just as gone, and just as aware she is gone. That as much as either of them laugh and lie and play tug-a-war with who is in control, and who has lost it entirely every time any door closes, that there's only an inch of even her own smoking in the remains of this.

This thing. This want. When Allison hasn't in her whole life had to want something longer than the requesting of someone to give it to her. (Aside from her father's regard, respect, affection.) But this. This thing, where Luther's lips brush her skin, rough and soft all at once, and her heart hammers a slamming, deafening, roar at the nearness, at the offer, at the promise. This is a thing that having only makes the wanting even greater. Drags a small, unfair sound out of her mouth, against his cheek, lips tracking the edge of his jaw that she can reach.

When here and now and even the bed are all things that logically should not populate into her head, and the fourth one is even worse. If she were one for blushing, it would have crept up her throat for that one. Because these rooms and their layouts are so perfectly set up, so a single swing of any door down the hallway gives a clear view of the room in question. They all do. Just like their Father likes. Just like their Mother makes a careful sweep of all the area of when she checks on them.

Except that hers has one small thing, one no one else's does the same way: that alcove.

The one she hadn't hidden in any part of it changing. That had edges and corners she spent childhood nights of covered from view, curled up near the window of with a cup and a string in her hand, whispering through the night. And maybe she hates hiding, hates that it's the urge, but when she pulls back for a second (lips shiny and pinked from friction, gaze crossing his face too fast, before she's leaning in to kiss him, a little harder for the fluke of a faint actual frustration) she may hate the rules, and sometimes their Dad's standoffishness, but she never hates Luther. Only.

Only wants more of him. Which is just an endless cascading thing when he's like this. Again. Finally.

"Back." That with a hand thrown above her shoulder and in the right direction, even when she's not looking that direction, and her weight is not something she's even thinking of, as her hands are starting to peel back the jacket that had been under her hands. Him and his far too many layers of his uniform that still existed, especially when her bare skin still felt burned everywhere he’d touched it.

[obediences]

She sheds the jacket from Luther's shoulders and he shrugs it off, making sure to deposit it on her bed rather than the floor — he's too well-trained still — but then Allison says Back, and Luther obeys, arms looped around the small of her spine. Walking them both forward and forward to the little nook where she's holed up so many times, painting her nails or reading magazines or cracking open the window to whisper to him after lights-out.

It's a cozy little alcove: where Luther's room is dull greys and blues and browns, blandly-checkered rug and tartan curtains, Allison's is an exercise in delicate femininity like something out of the housekeeping magazines. Sheer billowing curtains that make the dimming afternoon light soft and diffuse, fluffy pillows that cushion her landing as he deposits them in the alcove in a pile of muffled laughter and her shushing him with a kiss.

His equivalent of the alcove, he'd wasted on setting up a boxing bag. More fool him. So Allison's room is the only place with a scrap of privacy, with a place where she can sprawl back on the pillows and Luther can follow after, his long lean body pressed against hers as he kisses her, hungrily, his thumb tracing the line of her cheek. He could do this forever. They could do this for hours.

They don't have hours.

So his hands are already roaming again: not pulling off her shirt because they're well-versed in this, in treading around the lines, in forever having that voice in the back of their heads that says plausible deniability. That's prepared to stamp a foot on the brakes at the sound of footsteps down the hall and pretend that they were only studying, despite Luther's flushed skin and Allison's ragged breath, suddenly having to rearrange their faces into practiced innocence (she's better at that part than he is). For now, though, there's no one, it's just them, just them and Luther's spry fingers sliding up her stomach, under the edge of her bra as he bites at her lip.

[numberthree]

All the differences Luther is with her — the teasing, the laughter that brushes warm against her cheek as they drop in not quite a heap, that causes elation more than the worry she never actually has with him — is all part of this. All the multifaceted sides that only seem to spool out on her fingers, against her lips, when she’s kissing that laughter like it was something she could taste, pure in itself. 



“Stop, stop, stop.” They are silly words to choose, when her whole body is a bowstring of movement, a crescent straining into his, following that laughter, pretending she’s not smiling sharp and insane—almost laughing herself, just from the sound of it. Dissolving on the sound of it from Luther from all people. That she can do this. That he freely lets himself. Or as freely as they can. There are still some lines they don’t cross. Know they can’t.

Don’t know what the cost would be. Or punishment.

Only that it would pull them apart, which feels as impossible as not breathing when they are this close. “And you say I like to play it dangerous.”

Because she does, she always has. In a more dangerous way than Space and Kraken both, too. Pressing their Father’s rules as far as they can go. Disregarding him, insulting him, commenting on his choices, actions, to his face, in front of their mother, in front of the rest of the team. She’s never learned to hold her tongue. Not really. Especially where it comes to their Father.

There’s a small, sharp inhale against Luther’s teeth (a success in itself, the sounds of surprise they’ve all trained themselves never to have) when his fingers slide up her ribs. She can’t, doesn’t try to, stop her spine from arching, pushing herself into him, into his hands, this madness that feels like the truest thing she’s ever known.

Where she wants his hands all over her. Where she wants to undo every button and discover every inch of him she can, that they’ve all seen in snippets, seen in training, in the worst of missions, felt beneath the thinnest veneer of cloth. Wants to break all the last rules they don’t. That they don’t have time for. Cover for. They shouldn’t. But how could she ever not want?

(It might be the truest thing about her.
The wanting. The way she takes those things.)

The logic, knowing it, only makes her want it more.

Has her kissing him harder, tugging his tie looser, if not undone entirely, and the first of his buttons, if not all of them. Wanting more of him against her fingers tips, her mouth, when she contorts slightly, pulling some of it askance, to find the place where her lips can meet the space where his neck and his shoulder connect. The even softer skin just below there, right above his collar bone.