♪♬ Tis the season for some makeouts ♫ Fa-la-la-la-la la-la-la-la ♬♪

[memed]

the mistletoe meme
Huh... There's a mistletoe right above you... T'is the season-- almost. And it looks like you got stuck right under that mistletoe with someone else. And you both can't move until you kiss one another (Of course, not specifying where that kiss needs to happen).

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»POST with your character and their canon.
»SPECIFY Prefs, if any.
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[obediences]

He's not good at parties.

They'd come here together, but when she politely excuses herself, Luther takes up residence in the corner with his best impression of the world's largest wallflower. There's the typical low-grade anxiety of being at a soiree where you don't really know most people; it's a shindig for Allison's work, and so everyone's a model or an actor and they are all so very good-looking. Luther lets the conversation wash over and through him, only half-paying attention to it, while he stays rooted to the floor and takes a few quiet sips of his drink instead, waiting for Allison to return and rescue him. After a while, he glances at his wristwatch.

She really has been gone a while.

By the time he's finished his next drink, there's the faint uptick of alarm — she wouldn't leave him to the wolves for an entire evening like this — and so he goes roaming, searching the building. He eventually finds her in a stray hallway: not talking to anyone, not working on a drink or hors d'oeuvres, and not even distracted by her phone (but also, faintly, fuming).

"Thought for a minute you'd made a discreet getaway," he says, but she can hear the relief beneath his voice.

[numberthree]

Fuming.

Fuming was at least twelve shades ago.

Fuming was when she realized no one could hear her from here.

Fuming was when she realized she couldn't rumor whatever this was.

Fuming was when she realized there was no possible way to reach anything nearby to help try to lever herself out of whatever godforsaken joke someone had thought this was. Every chair and table was just out of reach, even in the heels, even when she could lean disproportionately far as almost tipping over, except she couldn't tip because of being stuck.

"Finally," snaps out of her mouth, more anger than relief (even if she can feel it as it ebbs a step back already, against the faith always in him, the one instilled from childhood and hundred training practices and real battlegrounds). She doesn't have anything to smack her hand on, and so mostly, they get thrown up. "What kept you?"

There's not even a second to answer that sharp dart before it flips just as naturally and bite-quick to "Help me already," as she held a hand out that was far more demand than it was a request. Even if that might be a bit strange to hear, given it looks like she's just standing there in the middle of a hallway.

[obediences]

He looks down at her outstretched hand, puzzled. All of Allison's posture is tensed-up like she has to be dragged out of quicksand (also a familiar situation: age fifteen, a clash in the Amazon rainforest, a smog-spewing villain).

"I figured I'd let you have some privacy to, y'know, powder your nose and all," Luther says, a little primly — he doesn't even want to be crass enough to say take a piss or go to the bathroom — but he does reach out hesitantly to catch her palm. "Why are you..." he starts, but once she starts tugging on his hand, he instinctively braces back and tries using his prodigious strength to tug her closer.

In all rationale, realistically, that should've done the trick. She's just standing in the middle of the corridor. There is literally nothing visibly keeping Allison stuck where she is, no vines entwined around her calves, no sucking tar pulling on her shoes (age twelve: the La Brea tar pits, fielding an attack by a monster made of fossilised bone). Luther pulling her out, as he's done so many times before, should've practically had Allison flying across the room. And yet her foot doesn't move.

His brow crinkles, confused. "What's going on?"

[numberthree]

Luther's every paused second (as he stares at her hand, as he roundaboutly answers her question, as he does anything but step closer) aggravates every single nerve already alight in Allison's body. Candles already well burst into roman candles made of molotav, with no patience for anything that isn't his already jumping to and helping her out of whatever the hell this is.

His hand closes over hers, light and placating more than anything like the grip it should be, but Allison's finger and handgrip tight, and she's already trying to figure out if there's a direction she can pull with him as new fulcrum spot. Which is when he finally actually does the first useful thing since rounding the corner and arriving. His hand tightens, and he braces back, pulling her in his direction instead.

She can feel it even more than normal—hyper-aware of her muscles and bones.

The strength in that small move, even when she knows it's only an incredibly moderate whispered fraction of his capability. Her muscles giving in to the rebounded pull in his direction. Up her arm, over her shoulder, down her back, all of her sways forward except that it hits her knees, and even at his lightest strength that should send her forward, maybe half-stumbling, maybe with a jump, needing to catch her balance, but well trained at that from childhood, too. How to work in tandem with Luther in action.

But the muscles above her knees give a whine, momentum slamming a block that beneath the place she stopped she couldn't even feel. And she gave a disgusted sound of annoyance as she couldn't even feel it in her knees, and nothing below them shifted even the most infinitesimally. "Are you finally paying attention?"

He doesn't deserve it, but Luther has been putting up with the brunt of her anger since she was born. At least since she became a teenager and stopped even attempting to keep it in longer than it took to close a door. He was the best at letting it do what it did. Letting her use it, or blow through it, as battlefield or attic had made their very different places for it blaze and settle out.

"I have no clue." There's more annoyance in that admission than helplessness still. The Monocle did not raise his children to be helpless, and his disgust at any sign of helplessness had been an acid monster to crawl into all of them. But One, and Two, and Three had been the best to take that lesson to heart. Never be helpless. Never be caught. Never stop, and don't hold back.

With those words, there's a shift to how she's talking, though. There's no space for bitterness and biting arrogance in the intrinsic, instinctual way they all pull together in the field. It's straight to details, to honesty, crisp report, even edged with fire.

"I'm just--" Allison gripped even tighter on Luther's arm, easily leaning into the fact he'd barely feel it as such at all, and tried with all her strength to pull her whole body toward him. "--stuck. I can't move."

[obediences]

As the tone of her voice shifts, moving from unhelpful anger to more helpful sitrep, then Luther — having felt some of that inexplicable twist of muscle and how it did nothing — feels his own tone change. She can practically watch it sweep over his face, like a gust of wind brushing aside the gentle teasing, the confusion, and it leaves something crisp and machine-like and to-the-point in its place. Unflinching and unhesitating, Number One steps into her personal space (the realm typically only reserved for battle) and then drops to his haunches, examining her shoes and the spot where she's stuck to the floor.

She has very nice ankles, he thinks. And then drags his attention back to point. Once again, though, there's nothing: Allison should be able to tilt herself aside, take one step and leave this area; he should be able to lift her into his arms and simply sweep her away; and yet it simply isn't budging. She should be able to step out of those elegant heels, but it's like they're impossibly glued to her. Nothing moves an inch.

He reaches out and fingers flutter across the turn of her calf, a butterfly-gentle touch, searching for something horrendously wrong, some invisible barrier. Nothing.

Finally, Luther rises back to his feet, shoots back to full height— and suddenly all 6'5" of him is right under her chin, then in front of her nose, then above her and standing far, far too close in Allison's face. He clears his throat, "Ah, sorry," and tries to step away, impose a little bit of genteel space again—

And
he
cannot
move.

Luther's knee twists, flexes; he tries to backpedal away but now he can't take a step, either. A different kind of panic surges up: he can see the deep brown of her eyes, the furrowed anger in her brow, he can smell her perfume, he stepped close enough to examine her shoes but now this is way too close.

"What the," he sputters. Almost loses his balance in his futile attempt to get away, but then a touch from Allison to his arm steadies him, like stopping a redwood from toppling.

[numberthree]

Allison is bothered by all of it. Everything. Even Luther down at her feet, doing who knows what, but she knows it's just the rolling boil, and he actually is trying to help. Which leaves her leaning over a little, crossing her arms tight, trying to look and see if anything he does will be any better than anything she'd tried in the first five minutes of this happening.

He checks her shoes and rests his fingers, briefly against her leg, and there's a foreign wrongness to even that. She can feel his fingertips, but she can't tighten or release any of the muscles it briefly touches over in search of whatever this is. Searching for who knows what. Barrier, or invisible shackle of some kind. And yet she couldn't feel anything that wasn't her shoes and her dress, and the floor beneath her.

Allison's gaze sweeps the hallway as Luther keeps at it, but it's as desolate as it was. Light Christmas music and far away chatter at a low tune from here still. Her focus snaps back when Luther starts to stand, not with anything like a solution on his expression, and she sways back just a little. Not a flinch. Only readjusting, almost without a single thought to it even, at his shooting back upward again.

Though, also, impossibly because,
since she can't move, she can't shift far at all.
Has to readjust back because she can't change her posture.

Not that it's thought long when Luther suddenly looks like he's going to take a nosedive back to her shoes and the annoyingly plush Christmas carpet, and she's uncrossing her arms to catch at his arms. A familiar jerkiness under her fingers even as the two words fall out and her fingers dig in a little on his sleeve.

"No, no, no, no," Allison was shaking her head. "Tell me you did not."

[obediences]

"I don't even know what I did," he says, and some of that contagious frustration is leaching into his voice, while he cranes his head and tries to look downwards (past her chin, past the broad expanse of his chest) down to their feet. As if this time he'll finally see some webbing or tar lodging his heel to the floor, the tips of his wing-tip shoes to the carpet. She'd helped him pick out those shoes.

"This makes literally no sense." They once fought monsters and villains and weird science like the day was long, but there was a kind of order to it. Mad megalomaniacal speeches before their enemies unleashed whatever strangeness they were about to unleash. Whereas this is just... an empty hallway. Allison's hand catches at his arms and she can feel, more than see, Luther trying to lean away from the touch, like her fingertips burn, or like they're two magnets of similar polarity. Shying like a skittish horse, except he can't fidget or step away or regain any of those precious feet of distance between them.

"When did this start? Did you do anything immediately beforehand? Did anyone pass by?"

Details. Logistics. Sitrep. Anything that Luther can latch onto as safe harbour (rather than let himself think about her proximity, her hand just barely touching him, the smell of her perfume).

[numberthree]

Luther's tone tenses up as he starts pulling back, defensive in the non-admission to her assumption being right, and Allison lets go with a huff. Grimacing as she tries her best to move her toes, while Luther finally starts asking questions he hadn't gotten to before he'd gotten himself stuck.

It's an effort to bite her tongue when he's saying the things she's been thinking for an endless number of minutes while hoping he'd appear already. Except that this had gone in the absolute opposite direction of anything she'd hazily pictured happening. He was supposed to pull her out and either find out why/what it was or never talk about her being glued down by absolutely nothing at all ever again.

"No, and no." There's a wave of her hand toward the hallway behind her, with its select number of doors. Two discretely with signs and subtle greenery around them. "I used the ladies' room, and I came out back here. No people, or magical glowing spots, or weird music. Everything was normal, and I was heading back, just walking, and then suddenly I couldn't move past here."

[obediences]

"Not for the first time, I find myself thinking— what I wouldn't give for Five's teleportation powers."

He exhales, long and slow, as if with that single breath he can shove his composure back together, gather it back up again. Because as far as dangers go, this is really quite banal. Mostly harmless. It shouldn't be a problem. It's not life-threatening; surely it'll wear off eventually, or someone else will eventually come along to use the bathrooms and they'll be able to saw them out of the floor, or...

When Allison gestures to the hallway, Luther peers over her shoulder and tries to take it in for himself. Sizing up their surroundings, that automatic searching for threats in the vicinity, for anything out-of-order. He looks at the floor, the doors, the wreaths of fake holly on them (and that starts to ping a faint thought, barely-there in the back of his mind—).

He's taller than her. His head is closer to the ceiling. Finally, Luther's gaze drifts upwards, and he sees it, and he feels another red-hot spike of anxiety flood through him, pooling in his fingertips, the tips of his ears.

"Allison," he says slowly, carefully, with the same delicacy as when you've spotted a tarantula on someone's shoulder and you're trying not to spook them. "Uh. What... does mistletoe look like?"

[numberthree]

"They might not work on it either," Allison hazard's, knowing she sounds unhelpful and not being able to stop herself, all the while suddenly thinking about the idea of someone teleporting out at only the knees up. A grizzly thing she'd rather not happen to any of the three of them. "I couldn't rumor it away. I tried."

Several different combinations, once Luther hadn't appeared.

She's trying to find where exactly to put her hands, given the suddenly close quarters makes it feel like there's really not quite enough room to go back to standing here with her hands crossed. Just because they could all go on standing somewhere sentry for days, as they'd been tested through many times, did not mean she wanted to. Ever again.

Luther's voice becomes a sudden crisp-careful on her name that has Allison looking to both of their sides, and behind her suddenly, expecting something with large teeth, or crazy glowing, or someone with a weapon to have appeared somewhere. Which may be why it takes her a second, as he's finally getting to the question for her to look up.

And there is, as he pointed.

"Luther." There's a tartly sharp admonishment in her tone. Ludicrous at the distraction from the problem by decorations of all things. This was not the time for things Luther did not know, or have seen, etc., etc., etc. "There's no way that a piece of mistletoe is the--"

But Allison never makes it to the word 'problem' because overhead the dainty little clump of leaves and white seeds shimmers noticeably with an edged warm light and while they're watching, it proceeds to sprouts a few more tendrils, growing itself more leaves and little pearled berries as they watch, like somehow it's pleased to have been noticed finally.

[obediences]

"Oh," he says, a little dumbly, still looking up. He'd only ever seen it in illustrations, so he'd been half-hoping he was wrong about the innocuous-looking sprig of green up there — but it's insidious and growing, and Luther stares at it agog like he's watching a predator come stalking closer.

Besides, having his chin tipped upwards and focusing on the maybe-sort-of-threat-after-all? is safer than letting himself look over at Allison, where she is still standing far too close to his chest and the crook of his neck. Whenever she huffs in irritation, he can practically feel it against his exposed throat over the white collar of his dress-shirt. He should've worn a turtleneck.

"I was kind of hoping I was wrong," he adds, because from all accounts and from the only thing he knows about mistletoe, there is one hypothesis about what might solve this particular predicament, but he is absolutely not ever going to be the one to suggest it. He will die here of starvation instead. That's fine. That is preferable.

This is so stupid.

"Maybe it's... some kind of... alien flora."

[numberthree]

"You cannot be serious," Allison says still staring up at the ceiling.
Allison would really like to go back to saying this is impossible.

Because. This is impossible. Sure, ghosts and death trains and gods from alternate universes trying to eat the planet while they are still trapped on it were all in the realm of probable and likely now. Fine. Yes. Whatever. But this? This was idiotic. It was the most ridiculous thing since the shower of crystals that made you high. Weaponized to a standstill, resistant to powers, and -- why was it glowing? And was it humming now, too?

Or maybe it was more like purring.

Mistletoe did not glow. Or grow like that. Or make noise. Also. Just no. No. No. This was stupid. She didn't want to be party to this game. But. Also. She didn't want to be stuck in this god damn hallway for another half hour. They were adults. Right? Totally. Absolutely. Adults. It was just a theory. And it's a very simple thing if it works. They'd done far more masochistic things for their father's hoops.

"You know what? Fine. Whatever." Allison is beyond done with all of this crazy, and that makes the click of the decision slot sharp, hard, and definitive in her mind. Shifting her focus from the ceiling to Luther. Her hands gestured flippantly at herself. "Kiss me."

It's sharp, straightforward, and said with all the hesitationless aplomb that her thirteen-year-old self would have -- and had, when needed -- said punch me, ready to take on whoever her father decided to put her against this time or any person stupid enough to take her for harmlessly innocent in her schoolgirl skirt in the field.

[obediences]

He's about to splutter out some kind of disavowal, a stuttering What? No, that's absurd, except he's already been pondering that as a solution, hasn't he? And except that those two simple words have already driven a hole through his chest like she's punched right through him herself, leaving him struggling for breath, to scrape together some kind of response.

(Item the first, this is not how he ever expected his first kiss with Allison Hargreeves to go.)

"This is absurd," he finally manages to say, and he's proud of himself for those words not coming out as a helpless wheeze, or with a tremor in his voice. But Luther's still trying to lean away from her like a tree bending in a strong gust; and at his non-agreement yet non-refusal, Allison just stares at him. With that familiar stubborn set to her jaw, the familiar flintiness in her eyes of when she's made a decision.

And he can feel himself panicking. (Item the second, he never thought he'd even be able to kiss her someday.) His heartbeat pounding like a dull gong through his whole body, down into his toes in these stupidly immobile shoes, and it's like he can feel every blood-cell trapped in his veins and flaring hot in a blush. He's always tended to give way in the wake of that look from Allison, just like how she usually gives way if he just patiently waits her out long enough, except now they've pitted an unstoppable force against an immoveable object and it's unclear which one of them will give up.

In the end, he caves first.

"Fine," he says shortly, and he ducks his head low enough to reach her. It'd be easier to reach her forehead, but that feels like too much of a slippery workaround. Even he knows that probably wouldn't do the trick.

So instead, Luther's lips brush across her cheek, feather-light; his whiskery stubble scrapes across her jaw, a brief rasp and a sensation of brief pressure, everybody takes this sort of thing for granted but he has literally never in his life even kissed her on the cheek and it feels like his soul's already going to vacate his body any moment now;

but he chastely, politely presses his lips to the angle of her cheek, and then, testing, tries to take a step back again.

And fails.

[numberthree]

Expectedly, Luther blushes and flusters, staring at her with vaguely horrified wider eyes for a few seconds, while she stands there -- because what else can she do -- staring at him, willing him to see already that she's right. Because she is. Right. It's the next logical thing to mark off the list of increasingly stupid, useless things. They've all done so much worse to get out of a jam. In their childhood, in destorying their world, then saving their world, and definitely combatting the crazy crap here.

There's only the smallest inkling the flickers barely that takes the time to whisper ask herself, if that horror is at the idea of kissing her. Because it's not in the slightest like she's asking him to do something he's never done before. Just never with her. And only for the sake of getting themselves out of this incredibly annoying situation. With some version of a mutated Christmas weed. This world never ever seemed to do better for itself in her opinion.

When Luther finally relents to seeing that she is right (she is), Allison manages to hold her tongue. He starts to shift, finally, toward her (instead of every other second so far, when he's been trying to -- politely? apologetically? annoyedly? -- lean as far away from her as being stuck doesn't allow). There's a wrinkle that snags somewhere in her stomach, warm and wobbly and sharp -- and she stomps it out like any doubt facing an opponent.

No time for that. No time for -- it wasn't personal.
Focus on the objective. They just had to do what that had do.

Allison tilted her chin up, levelly ignoring the slightly faster pace of her heart. At least she had decided to wear a pair of incredibly tall heels again. More normal for much longer ago, and returning since everything propelled her further and further into the spotlight since returning. Healed. Capable. Worthwhile. It made it at least four inches he didn't have to lean down through.

She can't justify why her eyes close when his shadow centers on her, darkness close, and his body heat presses in, the nearness of him like a wall, too trained not to notice. Too. No. Focus. It'll just be a few more seconds, and then they'll be free. She's waiting for him to kiss her. For the touch of his lips against hers.

So when his lips suddenly ghost her cheeks, trailed by stubble, first feather-light and then with just enough force to be laughable to called a kiss only by literally definition on one side, and her eyes snap open. At the same second, the thing about them hums a little louder, a little sharper, like it might have been annoyed. Oh, for the love of God. She was not a plaything for a plant.

"Jesus, Luther." Her annoyance at it transmutes to him, and Allison is already moving. Because she's not even surprised she has to take this into her own hands. Which is what she does. Hands that had been at her side, reaching up for his lapels because he's already whisper-close, and it's really the easiest thing in the world with so little distance and resistance to jerk him toward her at the same time as she halls her mouth directly into his. Done with anything trivially polite when a bum rush of total, unchecked commitment to the cause might just make this end now.

[obediences]

And she drags him down and into her, and crashes her mouth into his. (And that, too, sparks a faint recollection that he hadn't been expecting, pinging faded muscle memory of the only other time Luther Hargreeves has ever been kissed. Hands shoving him against a wall, a woman on tiptoe and pressing her mouth against his—)

Luther goes perfectly still like a deer in the headlights, hands half-raised and floating uselessly in alarm at his sides, his entire body cast in stiff unpliable lines as, for a second, it seems like he's just going to stand there; let this happen to him; be kissed like she's kissing a statue, surprise and terror having frozen him into motionlessness. Because all he can feel anymore is Allison's hands on his lapels, the slight pressure pulling him downwards. The dry, firm pressure of her mouth against his. Is that enough for the mistletoe's odd magical requirements, or does he have to do something more, here?

Work the problem. Focus on the objective. Maybe this is just like CPR. A necessity. Her mouth on his mouth is simply a stark necessity, a solution, a way of escape, and that's all it is. This isn't anything more than it is. He doesn't have to overthink this. He can be neat and perfunctory and businesslike about this.

—Except he can't, he can't, he can't. Because Allison Hargreeves said Kiss me, and so this is certainly a kiss, not CPR, and her mouth is on his and everything in the world is just narrowing down to that fact, as his hands curl into fists by his sides and his shoulders stiffen under her touch and then, finally, finally, Luther kisses her back. He thaws back into motion, mouth moving against hers and one hand finding the curve of her jaw — it helps steady him, gives him a sense of how far away she is, helps him not to push back too hard with his strength. So, it's gentle: his head ducking down and the bridge of his nose against hers, and he's kissing her and kissing her.

(And any thought of working the problem or is this enough, abruptly, just like that, vanishes. Is completely forgotten.)

[numberthree]

There's the throb of impact, as logical after it's happening as disregarded before doing it, and then. Nothing. Absolute. Unwavering. Nothing. Luther's mouth is pressed against hers, and he's frozen stillness.

And somewhere in the back of her head, she's flash-brightly offended.
No one in her entire life had not kissed her back when she kissed them.

Not that these are anything remotely like 'normal kissing circumstances,' and there's a wave of frustration that has to do with the concurrent knowledge that regardless of her force, unless Luther wants to be moved and chooses to be, nothing in the world can move him. Be strong enough to. And she probably only managed to jerk him down out of his not expecting it. Which makes her want to smack his shoulder. Or say something.

Because she wants the hell out of this spot, and he's being an--

Except then his mouth moves. Soft and slow, a glacier melting against her, and the relief is staggering. But not even vaguely as suddenly disorientingly shifting as his hand that suddenly finds her cheek. Larger and heavier and warmer than expected (than expected for being professional, than anyone else; dwarfing the edge of her chin, her cheek) and something about it casts everything sideways. Upside down.

And she suddenly aware of something else. Two things. Actually.

One. There's a shiver traveling down her body that isn't just surprise.
It's the part of her brain that's screaming. (Has it been doing that for a while now?)

Two. Luther -- Luther Hargreeves, Number One, her one and only best friend, the boy she'd been in love with before she knew what love was, before she understood it couldn't be outrun or out-promised -- is kissing her. Actually kissing her. Because she ordered him to. Because she's forced him to.

Mouth shift slow, specific, as dedicated as Luther does anything in his life, and suddenly Allison knows a third thing, too. This is a mistake. This is mistake. This is a mistake. Anyone, anything else, even cutting her legs off her knees, would have been smarter. Letting him come up with other options. Someone else at the party. But she can't do anything to stop the way her hands suddenly flatten on his chest, anything but objectively professional, one sliding up, along his collar, to curl against his neck, the nape of his hair.

Her heart-beat deafening everything out entirely, at the warm, comforting, safe feeling of his hand against her skin. The sudden, soul biting want, for him to enfold all of that space he took up around all of her. The electric feeling of every smallest move of their lips. The warmth of his breath. Of the sound, weak and unready (and desperately ready and wanting since two decades ago) that she was fighting to keep from making it to her mouth. His mouth.

[obediences]

He wouldn't ordinarily have touched her — those hands undeserving of touching her skin, of being anywhere near Allison — except he'd already wasted enough time floating in awkward indecision, and Number One isn't supposed to back down from a challenge. Isn't ever supposed to flinch away from climbing the mountain set in front of him. So he leans into it, even while his contact is limited to just his mouth and the one hand bracing himself against her, and the other hand still hovers uselessly, unable to bring himself to touch her further.

Because this, it's overwhelming, it's already enough, it's more than he ever thought he'd have. Allison's melting into him and there's a small involuntary noise in the back of her throat, automatic like a grunt during a fight or a small whine of pain when they haul each other off a battlefield, except, except, except. It's something else entirely.

(Surely this is enough. Whatever hoops they've had to jump through, maybe the magic is satisfied by now?)

But he's not. Satisfied. Now that the metaphorical doors are being flung open wide, Luther's jamming his shoulder against it and can't let it close so soon; not when there's finally a chance, an opportunity. And maybe they shouldn't still be kissing like this, sequestered away in a hallway at the party (like so, so many hallways and corners they'd taken refuge in as kids: the times they had almost, when his hand had fluttered over hers at a table in the library; or his head had tilted as he looked at her on the rooftop and he had thought maybe; or Number Three had sat primly on the edge of her bed and looked at him daringly, and he'd started moving in towards her, before the slam of a door and Vanya walking in). But she's not stopping, and therefore he's not stopping, can't stop, everything boils down to where the points of their body are meeting: oh god, her fingers are splayed against his neck, digging into his hair—

And he's too painfully conscious of the exact spot where his skin transitions, where it changes from the still-softness of his throat and the back of his neck and becomes rough and coarse (again: he should've worn a turtleneck). She's too close to it. But Allison's presence, temporarily, just for once, drives out that skittish fear — because she is still kissing him.

If there were words, things he needed to say to her about this, they're gone now: blasted away, his mind scoured empty like a barren wasteland, nothing else but her. I could not / Speak, and my eyes failed, he thinks, dizzily.

[numberthree]

This is the reason she knows that she was never in charge (not that there had ever been a question of whether she would be, numbers were handed out when they were bought and brought in, not after). She's too impulsive. Too emotional. She wants too much, and she gives into what she wants more often than she resists it.

And she never wanted anything as deeply, as long as she's wanted this. Luther. Luther to care. Luther to want her. Luther leaning into her, like she's somehow become his gravity suddenly. Luther not letting go, not suddenly pulling back and away from her. And she knows he will, and she knows she isn't, but she wants this more than she wants her next breath of air. More than she wants to be free.

She wants to kiss him until she stops breathing entirely. Wants to kiss him as long as she can before it becomes something she can't touch without lying, without pretending it doesn't exist, without pretending she isn't thinking about it (about the press of wall of his chest, and the pressure of his mouth, and his hand) with her hand between her legs and the dark as the poorest blanket anything ever afforded her.

This might kill her, but it doesn't matter.

Nothing matters except Luther. Under her fingers. Against her lips.
Taking up her air and every thought as it melts all of it away.

She doesn't even realize it as she does it, pushing up on her toes, calf muscles straining, into him, because even this isn't close enough. It doesn't douse the fire; it only makes it hungrier. And she wants more, needs more, of him. Her hand sliding into his hair, the curve of his head, pulling him closer at the same time. But gentle this time, just a direction from her fingers, not a demand.

No that even if demand is too strong a word for it, too brash for the way her heart has turned into a thing that might take off like a rocket or just vibrate so hard it shatters in midair before it can even plummet into the rocks, is the other thing she does. The softest, smallest, what feels like inevitable and unavoidable and wrong and impossible to stop, way the tip of her tongue brushes like the softest question against the split of his lips.

(Like they said. Emotional. Impulsive.
She always, always, always wants too much.)

[obediences]

And this is around the point when the caterwauling sirens finally break through, and make him suddenly realise.

His heartbeat's going full-tilt in his throat and in his barrel-chest under one of her hands where it's splayed against his ribs, and this is perhaps (perhaps, perhaps, perhaps) the point of no return. A crossroads. Because if this was simply a problem, an objective, a necessity, a solution, then this is the point where they would disengage, take a deep breath, and step away from each other — or at least try to. Move their feet and test the limits of these strange rules and see if they've broken through them yet, if it was good enough, if they've fulfilled the requirements of whatever undocumented uncharted test they're trying to pass.

But instead. Instead it's the parting of Allison's lips and the faint press of her tongue, and it feels like a zigzag bolt of electricity running down his spine, anchoring deep in the pit of his stomach as it turns over. And there's the briefest moment of hesitation — Wile E. Coyote with his foot out, taking a step into thin air and trusting it'll carry him — before his mouth opens to hers and he follows instinct, lets her slip her way inside, and his tongue pushes back against hers. He's short of breath; each lungful of oxygen comes from the shortest pause, a small moment where they briefly break contact in order to draw in more oxygen, and each time, they go back under. They don't stop. They don't pull away. She's dragging harder on the neck of his shirt.

And as she tugs, there's the slightest shift of balance and equilibrium; Luther stumbles forward in an attempt to get even closer, and they're a jumble of steps as Allison's back hits the wall of the hallway, and the realisation seems to pass over them like a passing stormfront. They both moved. They've both taken a step, two, three, away from that spot where they were trapped. Her shoulder-blades are against the wall and her fingers still snarled in the fabric of his shirt, and his heartbeat's still thundering and Luther pulls away only just enough to look at her, now that they're free, now that it's no longer a necessity. He glances down at the arch of her four-inch heels, the line of her arm hanging onto him. Then back up to Allison's face, his own expression quiet, assessing, softening, as he pores over her expression. Trying to interpret whatever he sees there.

His mouth opens, as if he's about to say something. And for a second, she can feel that ripple of fear that Luther's going to point out something stupidly, hopelessly obvious and close the book on it, say something like Well I guess that worked or You're free now or So that's done—

But he doesn't. Instead he looks at her and looks at her, and then leans forward and catches her in a hungry kiss again, mouth and tongue and teeth.

[numberthree]

Everything, everything, everything is an uncontrollable slide into heat. In Luther letting her, matching her, meeting her, never stopping her, himself. Until she suddenly hits the wall, sharp friction and collision for her back, and the jarring shock of air that lingers when Luther's mouth isn't only the smallest pause, of desperate breathe, from back against hers, and her heart should calm, but it spikes, her throat suddenly both too full and too tight at once.

Because her eyes are open, and Luther is staring down at her. And they are free. And they just. Seconds passing as he stares, and Allison swears it might be better to eject on her life and die right here rather than make it through whatever the next five minutes might be. (Except -- Claire -- she can't.) Irrationally, from nowhere, as judgment looms toward her (fumbling pause, or stumbled apology, or professional disregard), the only first clear thought she can get to is being annoyed she's under contract to let the makeup artists do her makeup for all of these work events.

There's not a single smudge of her bright Christmas-red lipstick on him,
And somehow, she's annoyed -- and disappointed -- noticing that.

Like she wanted to see it just for a second.
Any hint. Any fact. That she'd. They'd.

It's not like he's unruffled. Luther is making the circuit of looking down at her feet, and she can't even get away from the askew mess of his shirt and jacket collar. (She did that. She shouldn't have. She wants to reach out and smooth it with her fingertips. To make it right. Or. To be certain, it's real.) Maybe, when he's only made it up to looking at her arm, hand still against him (suddenly so, so, so aware and almost jerking back from it), she can see where it's slightly pink around his mouth, feel the faint burn around her own from his slightly sheen of stubble.

Allison needs to stop looking at his mouth (but everything, everything, everything else is a liberal terror the size and shape she can't comprehend, that's stomping closer and closer with each beat of her heart), and she manages it when he gets back to her eyes. Her teeth are almost shivering as she tries to figure out how to shift anything (in her heart, in her chest, both torn and blown wide open of any cover, jagged and raw-bleeding) from whatever is about to destroy both of them.

She wants to -- can't -- say anything. Can't trust herself. Her mouth. Her words, and she doesn't know which would be worse, the desperate want that is every inch of her skin on fire, or the desperate need for this stupid, stupid mistake of her heart, and her skin, and this fucking place to not have ruined the one last (and first) crucial thing in her life. It's bleeding against her tongue, her teeth, each breath, thought. His name, him, what she wants, what she can't lose. What she would be willing to do for both.

That she'll have to take whatever his judgment is. Because it very well could destroy her, but that's his right, as he opens his mouth to deliver whatever it is, and Allison tries not to breathe at all. Because she's never wanted Luther to be anything simply because she wanted it. (Only for him to actually want it, too, like a million almosts had lead her to believe he had to so long ago.)

But it doesn't come. He stands there, towering over her, a looming shadow, more wall than the one behind her. Staring and staring and staring at her face, and silence might be even worse than the many worst things he could say. Maybe she does have to say something. Have to start this. Because. Because she started all of this, didn't she? Made this all happen? Broke every single unspoken rule and bit of Luther's even more careful space between them because she hated being stuck for maybe half an hour?

Allison swallowed, wetting her lips, scrambling for the threads of her control, but before her mouth is even more than half open, Luther is moving. Forward, not backward. And his mouth is against hers, and there's nothing testing or light about it. It's sudden and intense, punching out of her chest a sound that is well over the line of embarrassing and profane. Because. Luther. Is. Kissing. Her. Not like a game of pick-up-sticks, or whatever's required to get the job done, or just ... getting carried away in the moment a little too much. He's kissing her because -- because --

She can't do logic, not when Luther is bearing down into her, and her face is tilted up to meet his. Her head digging into the wall, messing up her artfully done hair, but her hand is fisted tight back in his shirt, pulling him to her. The other on his shoulder, then wrapping around his neck, and she's kissing him back just as unwaveringly with every ounce of fire and fear in her because there never are any masks when he touches her.

And they are so far off script now that even here there be dragons has clearer coordinates, but she doesn't care. She only wants him closer. Wants more. Wants everything of whatever this suddenly is.

[obediences]

For one of the first and only moments in his life, Luther Hargreeves has to completely turn off his brain. Stop worrying and fretting over yesterday and today and tomorrow, and whether or not he can or should, or what the risks and repercussions of this could be. He's not a spontaneous person. So when he makes this choice after that ponderous silence, she knows with every inch of her being that he has thought about this, weighed it over, considered from every angle, and reached this inexorable decision. Like pieces falling into place, an avalanche tumbling.

So when all their safe excuses for this are gone, dissipated into thin air and gone out the window—

He takes it anyway, with no excuses. Lips harder now, his hand shifted to splay against the wall beside her head while his arm brackets her, and the other hand hovers and just barely ghosts the edge of her shoulder with his fingertips, hardly even touching her; he instinctively can't bring himself to do it, still, and besides she's hanging on enough for both of them, gluing herself to what she can reach of him. She doesn't stop. She pays back instead, with interest: if Luther lit the spark, then Allison's pouring on the gasoline. He swallows the sound she made in the back of her throat, that whimpering little keen, while he leans his weight against the hand and the wall, and his whole body bows downwards in order to reach her better.

Someone might come along any moment, looking for the bathrooms. He doesn't know where this road leads. Doesn't know where tomorrow goes, either. But neither of it matters: not when there's the warmth of Allison's hand against the broad arch of his neck, the weight of her half-hanging onto him, the soft warmth of her mouth. His eyes have fluttered shut again; losing himself in that by-play and push and pull of her tongue, even as the renewed kiss hitches his lungs, leaves him breathless.

Her eyes and cheeks are bright, her lips a little darkened from the bruising pressure; he'd tried to rein in his strength, but this particular activity isn't one he has much experience with, isn't used to modulating. He can pull his punches in a fight (and had, for a year, reined himself in just enough that he knew each blow could drop a man to the ground but wouldn't shatter his spine, would incapacitate but not kill).

He doesn't know how to pull this punch.

[numberthree]

Luther's hand lands heavily on the wall by her head, but she barely registers it and not much more than on the level of training that's never left her bones (the same that has some vague idea of the hallway table having been three or four feet to one direction), because something impossible is happening. Because she's still a smoldering crater from kissing Luther in the middle of this hallway until it slammed her into this wall. But now.

Now, the weight of that hand, his body, his mouth, is pressing down on her mouth, on her bones. Like a pressure storm. A mountain. Like he could press right through her, and she knows exactly what it is. That is Luther actually kissing her. The thought of which is insane. She was barely breathing before this second. Before. Earlier. But it is. Because this is a flare of that strength he can't ever be careless with, pressing her into the wall even by the small purchase of her mouth, and it's Luther being reckless in the way he never lets himself be.

Anyone sane would probably be a little concerned, at least rationally consider keeping track of it. Allison is just drowning in it. In Luther. The taste of Luther's mouth. The brush of his nose. The way, there's no leadup for this kiss. It just dives right back in, pushes deeper and harder than they'd been seconds ago like that was just a warmup example to be laughed at and bested entirely.

If it hurts, that almost doesn't matter right now. The thunder of her heart, in her ears, throbbing skin against his lips, she knows this is him. He's doing this. Luther. On purpose. Kissing her. Throwing all of himself into it, and forgetting (deciding not?) to hold anything back this time. And her heart has just gone so apoplectic between both it's hard to really tell where one ends, and the other begins. And there is no other answer.

There's no stopgap. No guard. No distant tracking. Or warning.

There is only following Luther into this kiss now,
putting everything in she has in her in it.

[obediences]

He could, honestly, stay here forever. No breath, no air, no breaks, no interruptions, no responsibilities — everything else has been banished clean out of his skull until he can barely remember whose party they're at, or what time it is, or when they need to be leaving, or if there's anyone left that they had to say polite hellos to. Like handsy teenagers all over each other in some upstairs hallway at a house party, they forget that there's a world outside of themselves. Rolling back the clock to all the times they almost could've, should've, when they were nervous and fumbling and over-eager and just desperate to be with each other.

None of that has changed. The only difference is fifteen years between then and now, the fact that her movements are more skillful and his more clumsily thunderstruck, and the fact that all the doors are slamming open at once, those years and that sham of distance between them crumbling as if it never existed in the first place. Luther's fingers still run along her shoulder, bare in that holiday dress; then, somewhere between one gulping breath and his pulse thudding in his chest and him scraping together some vestige of courage, he lets his free hand drift downwards and settle on the curve of her hip.

It is, technically, nothing. People have touched more while dancing on a dance-floor. They had touched more during that impromptu, enchanted birthday dance, some magical choreography seizing control of their hands and feet for the span of a few minutes: effortless, confident, unhesitating, in perfect synchronicity.

But this time, it's because it's his choice. Because somewhere within that dizzying kiss, Luther still stopped and decided and chose to put his hand on her, to draw her closer to him, even as he presses her against that wall and the only coherent thought running on a loop in his head is: I'm kissing Allison. I'm kissing Allison Hargreeves. His mouth is on her mouth and it isn't just to breathe air into her (rather the opposite). His mouth is on her mouth and it isn't to save her life this time, although this, right here, feels like life: like each second she's pouring more of it into him, waking up all the nerves of his body, alight and sensitive and buzzing from her proximity.

[numberthree]

Allison isn't sure that she can trust anything in her head while Luther's hand, heavy and warm and solid as Luther himself, slides slowly across the line of her shoulder and down part of her arm. She doesn't know if it's a minor miracle that she doesn't make another noise because of that, or, even more detrimentally, after his fingers drop off of her arms entirely, plunging her into a free fall of afterburn and chill.

Until a second later, his hand is, just as suddenly, against her hip instead. Dwarfing the round of her hip. The friction of his skin the slip of a line of silk from her own. Not stopping at lighting a fire of awareness on that part of her skin, or the reaching of his fingers, the vague tuck of his thumb against the high crease of her leg, but instead tugging her body into his. As though half of his body pressing her into the wall wasn't enough.

And it wasn't. Isn't.

Not when this is suddenly something Luther wants, too.

No cent of space between them, and the helpless, instinctual, uncontrollable upward tip of her hips into his at the unexpected contact, while this kiss continues to erode anything from her mind, that isn't his name on high repeat, his name replacing the thunder of her heartbeat in her ears. Not imagined in the dark of her bed, not shamelessly wondered about in the far recess of her mind, as someone else touched her. When this, this, this is all she ever truly wanted most, and longest, and. Forever.

Even impossible. Even without the smallest hint to compare.
Tattoed deeper than experience or acceptance or despair or survival.

There's only the shape of Luther's mouth, and the feel of his hair, and his neck, and side of his face under her fingertips, her hand. The faintest of the spice from the hors d'oeuvres and something else, so perfectly just Luther, that she wants to follow it to the very last final shreds of her doom. That she wants to stay right here, trapped between the wall of the building, and the press of Luther, to any detriment, it might promise tomorrow.

Because all there is is this. All there is is Luther.
All there's even been had been was burning the world alive to get back to him.
And she can't be begged to care for the fact she'd turn it to ash not to stop even more.

[obediences]

Unfortunately for them, however, the world has other plans—

There's the faint tap-tap-tap of shoes walking across the hardwood floor towards them, and even somewhere in all that burn-it-down focus where nothing else matters, they are still, at the end of it all, hardwired soldiers. Who can hear the approach of a potential enemy, who have been taught to pay attention to blind spots and always notice when someone's coming from behind. And so, somewhere in that howling whirlwind of his hand on Allison's hip and the fact that he is finally kissing her, Luther suddenly finds himself breaking away without even really wanting to; he exchanges a startled look with her, blue eyes widened in surprise, like a drowning man coming back to the surface.

And old, old, old instinct kicks in, with the habit of twenty years against how many minutes — and he instantly, irrationally springs away from her as if it's Reginald who's walked in, as if they're going to get a slap to the wrist for being caught entangled, despite the fact that there is literally nobody here in this universe who would care. A hand thoughtlessly reaches up to his kiss-bruised lips, where there still isn't a smear of lipstick (he isn't entirely sure how that works; it feels like some kind of magic, maybe her lipstick's enchanted, that could honestly be the case).

And what an absolute waste, because the new arrival isn't anyone that they know, either. It's just a bemused-looking man, glancing at them with a knowing smirk. "Hey. Any idea where the restrooms are?" he asks.

"Um," Luther says, and his brain has completely short-circuited. He knows exactly where the men's restroom is (ten feet down that way, on the right), but words aren't really working right now. He's not even fully connecting the dots as the stranger keeps walking, headed towards that fated invisible spot in the middle of the corridor.