HOT OR NOT MEME

[golisolation]

1. POST A TOP LEVEL FOR YOUR CHARACTER + PICTURES (please link images if they are large)
2. ICLY RATE OTHER CHARACTERS 1-10!
3. HAVE A VERY CRUCIAL AND IMPORTANT DISCUSSION ON SUCH RATINGS!
4. HAVE FUN!

Comments

[obediences]

I dunno. If I remember the quote from Teen Vogue right, they're already pretty "piercing" and "icy", with a "mischievous boyish twinkle".

[ Had he and Diego compared and competed over their writeups in all the mags, back then? SURE DID ]

[numberthree]

Do you really seriously still have that memorized? After a decade and a half?

How do you justify memorizing that next to battle tactics and Whitman and Dante?
Is this really just the proof you were as silly, and shallow, and shameless as Diego always said?




[ It's better than saying they were as right as they were wrong, right? That it fit the once upon a time poster boy, with his perfect wave, but that it missed everything else. It missed the hard artic iced flint of orders, and righteous, protective, mercilessness. It had missed the calm, cool blue of stumbling compassion when he tried to help people. It had missed the vibrating, biting brilliance of them when he was manically explaining one of those books, or showing off one of his meticulous crafted planes, or new records.

It had missed the quiet, longing linger, like the edge of a flame across a room,
in the middle of the night, sharing stories, and sometimes just space, even in absolute silence.



And, of course, it skipped entirely the newest one, that hadn't ever been there before.

That quiet, hungry, wary, once bitten, twice shy reserve.
All patient, quiet in the color, with so much uncertainty and promise in one. ]

[obediences]

I have a really good memory. Turns out purposefully memorizing all those verses leads to memorizing other things well, too.

[ Is that... another bit of smug pride? Luther's confidence has taken such a hit lately, in looks and in leadership, but he still has his sharp mind, at least. (And those blue eyes.) ]

Plus, you're not the only one who saved the magazine cut-outs.

[ His collection hadn't turned into a wall collage like hers, sprawling out like decoration — Luther kept his interviews stashed away in desk drawers, under tins of paint — but they were there regardless. Memorabilia. ]

[numberthree]

[ Allison hadn't made a shrine to herself in a long time, but it had been impossible to miss it suddenly spread across the walls of the childhood room she'd once dismantled entirely. All remade for her return for the funeral. Meticulously down to things she didn't even know could still be found. ]

So, really, when you convinced mom to let you study late to make up for all the time spent having to run point everything and everyone else, too, you were just up rereading your exploits? Luther Hargreeves: just another teenage superstar stroking his ego into the night. My memories are all shattered now.

[obediences]

Oh my god.

[ WORDING!!! He'd neatly sidestepped all her previous teasing, nigh-impervious to it, but now he practically dissolves in embarrassment. Game, set, and match. Thanks, Allison. ]

[numberthree]

[ Allison shouldn't be smiling. She. Really. Really. Shouldn't.
It's stupid. Dangerous, maybe even. But she can't stop. ]


What?

[obediences]

[ He's wise to your ways, Allison Hargreeves. He's not walking into that trap. Sets one of his own instead. ]

Anyway. 10, as if there's any question.

[numberthree]

[ Stupid, and silly, and dangerous as it might be, it's fun, too. Harmless, really. Which is why whatever she was expecting back for her tiny press at his barely calling her on her words, it wasn't this response. It wasn't suddenly feeling her chest hollow and her throat dry. In a snap. It wasn't a shift back to that stupid answer.

That should matter even less. But suddenly makes it feel almost impossible to breathe.
The number. And the absolutely throw way 'obviouslness' he dismisses it with.
That it takes a second to even figure out how to swallow past. ]


Flatterer.



[ Is she vain enough to care? Sure. A little. Maybe even a little too much. Because it is Luther.
But, maybe, even vainer about the fact it's the rest of her, that isn't her makeup or her clothes, that Luther sees, too. ]

[obediences]

Only to you. Don't let any of the others know.

[ Kind of a joke. Kind of not. A tip of the hat to the favouritism that he isn't supposed to display as leader; an acknowledgment of the glaring Achilles heel that they all know about anyway. ]

[numberthree]

They'd have to kill me first.

[ The bravado is easy. At least the words. Nothing else chooses to stay still. The frayed edges that burned at one end and squeezed too tight at the other. He is right in that she needs little validation to know how she looks. Movies and magazines sales in the millions proved it for over a decade, and the new contract here, too. Which still wasn't the same. Billions of people who didn't matter, weren't ever quite real.

And Luther. Whether Luther agreed. Whether it even mattered to him or was just an indispensable, ledgered fact. (And that somehow forever sore realization it really did matter to her if it did or didn't to him.) Except she knew that wasn't it entirely either. She wasn't stupid. She didn't miss the few seconds. Here and there. Still. Ornate dresses and Swear-Ins. Luther dumbfounded, Momentarily wide-eyed. Tripping over his tongue. The tension the prickled slowly tighter and tighter in the greenhouse, that was as familiar as her old costume would have been.

But it was tangled up so much deeper. It always would be. In this place. In home. In.

In whatever they were becoming. Might be so long as they were all thrown together, here, and saving the world back home. Being made, again, of the two people who had lived the lives that proved they could live without each other. The strange new shape, that they were building from, with so many ghosts of those once upon a time children around them, and so many shards of those lives that broken around them too recently to avoid stepping on easily. ]