☂️ All you sinners stand up

[hellogoodhigh]

WHO: The Hargreeves + Guests
WHERE: Various Cities
WHEN: Month of September
WHAT: Mass log of idiots to keep from flooding others. A log for all things Hargreeves, their Adventures, and those trying to befriend them.
WARNINGS: Obligatory CW for: drugs, alcohol, mentions of death and child abuse.

Comments

end, or yours to end?

[obediences]

It's a slight exhale of tension from him, but not a complete relaxation. It's not a happy conclusion, but it's at least an agreement. It's what he was aiming for.

He wishes they could just stay Luther-and-Allison all the time, the carefree friendship that they'd managed to carve out between everything else— but that isn't the reality they live in. Sometimes they have to be Spaceboy and the Rumor, numbers one and three, dropping semblance of family and instead turning to the hard things that needed doing.

"Thank you," he says, and he just sounds tired. He rises to his feet and dusts off his knees, feels the tension knotted tight in his shoulders, the back-breaking weight that hasn't been alleviated. Probably won't ever be.

She'd discarded her magazine, but Luther folds his book shut and lets it dangle from a hand as he reaches the doorway to leave the basement den; he pauses there, as if he's on the verge of asking her something, saying something else, an apology maybe. But he knows this was the right thing to do even if he didn't go about it the right way, and he's already asked for enough.

So he just leaves, saying at the last, "I really do appreciate it."

☂ End

[numberthree]

Allison doesn't have to look after him to know Luther's stopped at the door. It's not even, entirely, just that there is an amount of noise that is Luther moving or the weight of his steps that creak the floors and rustle carpets. She knows. Somehow else. Something in her bones that makes her hold still when he goes still. That isn't so much a cringe as that narrow line of freeze that turns into reaction and easier, faster, defensive anger.


She thinks if she had her voice, it'd happen.

She'd say, Just go.

Just go already.

But she doesn't. And she doesn't even consider writing it. Doesn't look at the door. Or him. Doesn't want his gratitude before or during or after what this might do. Doesn't want any of the exhausted, agitated, almost apologetic, gentlenesses it was said with. All the space around it, and the fact he felt he had to stop and say something still, and the very, very few words it is.

Is she supposed to just drop this in a text? In the middle of drinks next week? At their party?
Show up at Vanya's doorstep after sending some stupid 'we need to talk' message?

She listens to his steps go, listens until they are too far away, are just silence, and she hates herself for that, too. For the great divide that this is. That it feels like the half of room accented, and every step further and further away, after giving in, just points out. Hates the divide that cracks in her chest as she leans back on the chest.

The part of her screaming that she doesn't want him to go.
The part of her screaming that she doesn't want him nearby.

She hates that they are so divided. Hates that this empty room makes her feel just as lonely as this whole thing is. It's the one thing she doesn't have him at her back, her side anywhere even near her, for. That she knows she can't go tell him the good parts of; even though all the bad parts are laid out like chess pieces for them to step on in moments like this. The most she has is absolutely unspoken sort of cease fire no man's land of what isn't acceptable where it comes to her about Vanya -- and Vanya, herself.

She hates it.

She hates this.

This constant war that seems like she has both of them --

-- and yet makes her feel like she has nothing at all.