All You Know (Luke Hemmings x Reader)
Part Six - Final Part (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five)
Blurb: When Luke Hemmings returns to your hometown the same time you do, you are forced to address the greatest heartbreak of your life: being left behind by your best-friend.
Warnings: language; alcohol; yearning; smut: fingering, sex, alluding to oral sex
Notes: Oh my God. I can't believe this is over. When I started this, I did not expect for it to turn into what it has. Thank you for reading. Thank you for crying. Thank you for leaving your love. I'm crying as I write this right now because I'm very emotional. Also, it is officially July 16th right now in Australia, so happy birthday to Luke.
Taglist: @julie-must-die @startovercal @uhmmjayla @angrylilangel @mjskeetz @shouldakissedyouanyway
*********************************************************************
You and Luke are great at pretending.
You spend the following days pantomiming belonging to each other. Acting like the time that has passed and the lives you created separately isn't another divide you may not be able to cross.
But the pretending feels so real. When you and Luke cook dinners together in the kitchen with Liz and the three of you end up dancing to music from the 80s. When you grab take-away late at night and eat it in your car in front of the old school just to see if the place still looks as miserable. The way Luke laughs, eyes shining and grinning wide, when you say it does still look like a penitentiary.
How he leans across the console after and kisses you hard, greasy mouths and all without grimacing. Calls you, "my crazy girl." How the use of "my" doesn't make your skin crawl, doesn't feel like a claim being staked. It feels like hoping. Feels like speaking aloud what you both know.
You spend every night together. You talk about being kids, reliving the origin story of you approaching him at school when the other eight-year-olds were making fun of Luke for being a bit chubby. He tells you how you saved him that school year. You don't need to tell him how he had saved you from your Mum's after. How so much of your life you had credited to Luke saving you until he pushed you away and forced you to rescue yourself.
You kiss and hold each other. You have sex, sex that leaves you breathless and aching and satisfied in ways you never knew to be possible. It's so good, so intimate, that just calling it sex feels like a bastardization.
You both know what you're doing, what you're feeling, but just like the pretending, you don't talk about it. As far as Luke seems concerned, there is no elephant in the room. There is no hailstorm and no, you're not sheltering yourselves in a glass house. There's just you two in the liminal space of Liz' home. In the hometown you both left. In Luke's bedroom.
The sixteenth night of your stay, you lay in Luke's bed, head on his bare chest, hand resting on the patch of hair that's grown there. You're both covered in a thin sheen of sweat and the stickiness between your thighs from Luke's mouth is fresh. You smell like each other. He smells like you. You don't care anymore if his scent clings to you. You welcome it.
The room is quiet except for your breathing, the sighs escaping Luke's mouth.
"What if you came back with me?"
Luke's question breaks the stillness. The tension in your chest, the familiar one, flares as you shift your body to look at him. The dark tendrils of his curls are stuck to his forehead, cheeks slightly flushed still, his eyes clear. Nervous. Hopeful.
"What?" you ask, although there's no real question of what he's asking. You're just caught off guard.
"What if you came back to LA with me?" Luke repeats, gaining his voice. "I could move you out there. We'd figure out the citizenship. I could take care of us both."
He means it. You've known him long enough to know he's thought about what he asks you. It hurts. It hurts because a part of you wants it. It hurts because Luke knows you, should know you enough to understand why you can't.
"Luke, I have my job here," you say, sitting up. "I've worked for so long to get where I'm at."
There's a shift in Luke's gaze as he adjusts himself to sit up with you. It's a look you recognize but haven't seen in a while. You catch him trying to reel it in, the reaction you know he wants to give to his feeling of being rejected.
"You're talented. You could get another job out there. I'm sure I know people I can connect you to," he says.
"I don't want to have my job because you got me in," you say. You do your best to not feel insulted by him thinking that's something you'd want. You tell yourself he's trying to be helpful, to keep you both together, to have a reason for you to stay with him, but the most debase part of you believes he still sees you as the fourteen year old who needs saving. "I want my job because I worked for it, because I created that stability for myself. You should know I wouldn't want that."
You realize too late that you sound sharp, more accusing than you mean. You sound the way you did when you had convinced yourself that you hated him. Luke picks up on it immediately, and his tone alters with yours.
"I'm not trying to insult you," he says, jaw tightening.
"I know," you say. "I'm sorry, let me just--" You stop yourself, run your hand through your sweaty hair, take a shaky breath. Your fingers itch for a cigarette, but you force yourself to continue. "I know you mean well. I know you're asking with good intentions--"
"Fuck, intentions, Angel. I'm asking because I love you."
Your breathing stops, which you tell yourself is stupid. You've known that you love Luke. You've ascertained that he loves you, at least in some way. But Luke saying it so outright, that rips the air from your lungs. All you can do is look at him, into the eyes that haven't changed in many ways except the sadness in them. Into the face that is the same yet so different.
He's still your Luke. But he's also transformed, so much more heavy than you ever remember him to be. His emotional gravity draws you in. You don't see how you could have ever avoided it, even if you had never forgiven him.
"I love you, too," you say.
Luke's jaw unclenches and he sighs. His hand works anxiously in his lap and he breaks his stare from your face. Focuses on the connection of his forefinger and thumb.
"Then why aren't I-- isn't that enough?" he asks, catching himself.
You reach across and grab his hand to still it, to comfort despite your heart also wrenching. Your hand can't even cover his, but he stops moving.
"Luke, we both know why I can't. It has nothing to do with you not being enough. It has nothing to do with me not loving you."
You swallow hard, realizing what you're about to say. Realizing that the teenage version of you who had no dreams for herself outside of Luke would be raging at you right now, screaming that you're messing it up.
But the version of you now, the one who carried you through your mother's death, losing your best friend, and moving to another city by yourself despite the all-encapsulating grief, she knows you're doing the right thing.
"It has to deal with me not throwing away my goals to follow after yours, even if you're someone I want," you continue. "Even if you're the only person I've ever wanted."
Luke looks up from your hands. You see the fresh tears there, the pink rim of his waterline. It makes your chest ache, seeing your boy like that. And yes, even now, Luke is your boy.
"Will I still be if you leave?" he asks, his voice steady but broken.
"You still were even after you did."
The look he gives you, you can tell he understands your decision. That him begging you to go with him would only disrespect you, would crumble what you've built. Would eviscerate any amends he had made with you.
"Would you let me fly you out when you have holiday?" he asks. "If that's something you want. I don't want to go years without seeing you, again."
"Of course," you say, your thumb brushing the knuckles of his fingers, swallowing the lump resting in your throat, looking down at your hands. The words you plan to say next threaten to break your voice. "Just please tell me if you have someone, okay? If someone else comes along, I want you to be happy, but I want to know."
"There's not going to be."
"You don't know that," you say looking up to him, the briefest bit of your own insecurity coming out, and you hate it. But you know the reality of what Luke does. Of how many people want him.
"I do," he says, grief bleeding from his irises. "It's one of the only things I know."
"Do you hate me?" you ask.
"Never," Luke says, taking his hand from yours and wrapping his arms around you, pulling you back into his body. You meld into his shape, and let his warmth settle around you both, the way he smells like cigarettes and sandalwood and you. You sit in the silence of him. In the heaviness of your decision, in the quiet of his.
Finally, you ask a question you shouldn't.
"Do you really plan on waiting for me? Even if neither of us ever stay?"
For a moment, you think Luke won't answer, the stillness of the room intensifying, the dark seeming to enshroud you both as time ticks on, as the days you have left together grow fewer.
You try to take what you can get from your time with Luke without it being tainted by the fact that you're leaving him. That's the reality of it. In a twisted act of the universe, all you ever wanted for years was to be able to leave Luke Hemmings in the same way he left you. Now that you are, that you're making the active choice to leave when he's asked you to stay, you want anything but.
You focus on what you can do with him, with his family. You focus on coffee in the mornings, and working in the garden, and one last library trip. You do whatever you can.
When it gets to be only three days before you leave, Liz calls you into the kitchen while she's answering her daily crossword. Usually, Luke helps her, but this morning he insisted on running to the servo to grab more cigarettes. You had asked if he wanted you to go, but he had only sent you a soft smile, kissed you on the mouth and squeezed your hip saying he'd be right back.
"I just can't get this one," Liz says once you get to the table.
You read over the question frame, immediately knowing the answer. You also know there is no way that Liz doesn't know it, either.
"What?" she asks, looking up at you from her seat, feigning innocence.
You sigh, slide the chair out from beneath the table and sit.
"If you want to talk about it, just ask me."
She looks to you, eyes glazing over your face, as if deciding to continue playing like she doesn't know what you're alluding to. When she sets her pencil down and shifts in her seat, you know you've opened the conversation.
"Luke told me he asked you to go back to Los Angeles with him," she says.
"He did," you say, seeing where she is going to take it.
"He said that you can't go with him because of your work."
The way Liz says it, lips forming around the words with precision, you understand that she doesn't agree with your choice. You're not shocked. Liz is the reason you reconnected in the first place. You both would have never stepped foot in the same building, otherwise.
"I've built a life for myself, here," you say. "I know you don't know the full story of what happened between us, but you know how I struggled to function after. My work, going after what I wanted is the only thing that kept me going."
You wait for Liz to say something, but when she doesn't, you continue.
"It's no surprise I love Luke--"
"And he loves you," she says, only interrupting then.
"Yes," you say, nodding. "But I can't leave just to be someone's partner. I want my own things, my own work. I don't want to lose myself in just being his. I love him terribly, but I've learned what making your entire life a single person does."
Liz watches you, staying silent. Then she swallows, takes a sip of coffee, puts the mug down gently.
"I understand, Doll. I do." She twists the mug in her hands, traces the mouth piece with her finger. "I also understand that Luke has never been comfortable with anyone but you. I see the way you look at him, the way you always have. As someone who's been in love with the same man for over thirty years, I know what you have is rare."
"But," she continues. "I know that you're doing what you need and that you owe it to yourself. I support that. I'm just asking, as a mother, as someone who raised you and loves you both, to try if the opportunity arises."
She looks back up to you, those familiar eyes both full of love and tinged with sadness.
"Don't shut out the idea forever. Give him the chance," she says. "Give yourself the chance to actually be happy."
You want to answer, to tell her that you following your job is giving you the chance to be happy, to create something for yourself. You do love your job. The work, the people, the little flat in Brisbane that it gives you. It's the only happiness you've known the last nine years.
But you can't answer, because the smallest part of you knows the truth and also, Luke comes through the front door. The bag from the servo in his hands, his basketball shorts hanging low on his hips, stained band t-shirt clinging to his broad frame.
He looks casual when he smiles toward you, but Liz' words are echoing in your mind so it takes you a moment to return it. He comes next to you both, squeezes your shoulders, presses a kiss to your temple when he sits.
"What are my gals doing?" he asks.
Liz sends a look to you, gives him a smile.
"Just talking over this cross-word, but we solved it," she says.
She take's her pencil and goes to the 59. across frame: ____ ____'s kiss.
She scratches the answer into the space.
Your last evening there, you're on the back porch getting ready to smoke when Luke steps onto the hardwood, a football in his hands. You cock an eyebrow at him, a smirk playing on your lips.
"What do you have there?"
A surprised laugh escapes you.
"I haven't played in years," you say.
"Neither have I, so it's fair."
You sigh in falsified frustration, but smile at him, take the ball from his hands.
"Fine, loser owes winner a cigarette."
"Deal," Luke says, following you to step off the porch and into the yard. You toss the ball to your feet, shoot Luke a smile. You spot the same two bushes you had set as make-shift goal posts as kids. The ones that Luke had crashed into one time when he was running too fast to stop himself. He had scratched his legs up so badly, and after you stopped laughing, you had helped doctor the wounds. You were twelve and it was the first time you had wondered what kissing Luke would be like.
"Same posts," you say. "First to three?"
Luke nods across from you.
"You're gonna lose, Hemmings," you say.
Luke just smiles at you, lowering his body to be eye level in a spread-leg stance.
"Whatever you say, Angel."
And then you take off, moving the ball between your feet with surprising agility. You can tell it catches Luke by surprise at the speed you still have, and he tries to chase after you when you out-maneuver him.
"How the fuck are you still so fast?" he yells, already laughing through his panting.
He attempts to intercept you, but you cross the ball through his legs, retrieving it on the other side of him as you race down the yard. You easily kick the ball through the bushes, throw your arms up in the air in victory, admittedly breathless.
You turn to him, smiling.
"Maybe you should work on your speed," you tease.
He shakes his head, curls falling over his forehead.
"I won't be so easy on you next."
"Whatever helps you sleep at night," you say, jogging back to the middle of the yard, the blood rushing through your veins, heart thumping from the cardio and the way Luke's eyes land on the sweat dripping down your neck.
When he moves this time, he out paces you, arms pumping at his sides as he does his best to beat you across the yard. You fight from holding back a laugh at his long strides, the way he looks like the gangly teenager you knew sprinting across the school football field. And for a moment, you feel like you're fourteen again, too, just running with your best-friend, trying to find something fun to do in this boring place that wasn't just drinking beer and smoking weed.
This time, unlike the first day here, the image flashing in your mind of skinny legs and red faces doesn't hurt.
"Goal!" Luke shouts. "C'mon baby, you just gave up on that one!" he says, turning and laughing.
"Fine," you say. "I've got you this time."
For the next twenty minutes, you chase each other across the yard. The next goals take more effort, both of you sweaty and tired, the years and numerous cartons of cigs taking its toll on you both.
When you kick your third goal through the bushes, you squeal with laughter.
"I fucking told you!" you yell, turning, only to collide with Luke who is running your direction, wrapping his arms around you, bringing you to the ground.
"There's no way you beat me!"
You're both laughing, faces red and strained, breathing ragged. Luke braces himself on top of you, not putting his entire weight on your body, kisses your face in dramatic flare to make you laugh harder.
"Get off me!" you giggle.
"Say that I won!" he says.
"Never! I won!" you retort, and you're laughing so hard that tears threaten your waterline.
Luke looks over you, his curls plastered to his forehead, cheeks tinged with pink, a smile so wide on his face. His eyes search yours, roves your face. His smile softens, his eyes moving into a different emotion.
"I've missed you," he says. "I'm going to miss you."
Your laughter slows. You don't wipe the tears from your eyes.
"I'm going to visit," you promise.
"I know," Luke says, rolling over beside you in the grass, laying face to face with you. "Still."
You notice the way the sun sets behind you both, the sky bleeding into oranges and reds and pinks. The light frames Luke's hair, casting a glow over him. You're going to remember this: Luke sweaty and red faced and laying in the yard with you.
You want to remember this.
"I'm going to miss you, too," you say.
Luke doesn't say anything, just looks at you, drinks you in as though you're the one cast in the glow of the dying day. Maybe you are, maybe in this moment you're both wrapped in light, in the gaze of each other.
"Promise me you'll tell me if you change your mind," Luke says.
"About staying?" you ask, your voice quiet.
His request makes the ache in your sternum come to life. The way his insecurity drips into his words. It reminds you that Luke is still him. Despite the stardom, the addictions, the way he carries himself with a sense of restraint, your Luke that questions himself is still there. Will probably always be there.
"I promise," you say, because you don't know how to answer any other way. You don't know how else to say that all you know when it comes to love is Luke. That you believe to the depths of your soul that even if you ever cared for someone else again, it would never be the way you love your best friend.
"I know I have a red-eye in the morning," Luke begins, "but stay with me tonight?"
"Wouldn't dream of anything else," you say.
That night, Luke pulls you into his room after Liz and Andrew have gone to bed. He kisses you hungrily, like he's a man on death-row and this is his last night alive. Your tongue meets his feverishly, letting Luke's taste burn into your mind. His large hands grip at your hips, your thighs, back to your waist, memorizing every curve of your body.
"Luke," you moan when he sucks at your neck, pushes his fingers into you, grazes his teeth down your jawline. You clench around him, already needing him, wanting Luke inside you like you've never been able to have him before. "Please," you beg, and he moves into you quickly, swallowing the way your whine spills into his mouth when you finish over his hands.
He watches your face, his eyes greedy, somber, aware of this being your last night together in however long time decides just.
"I need you," you say, hoping he hears you.
I will always need you. Even if I'm deciding this. Even if I'm the one staying away.
Luke hears you. He takes you in his arms, carries you to his childhood bed, lays you down gently. He pulls the clothes off both of you, leaving you bare, exposed, honest. He kisses your collar bone, your sternum, your stomach.
"Okay, Angel," he whispers when he's back against your mouth. "I've got you."
Luke kisses you deeply before he presses into you, as if committing it to memory. Your groans, the way your body molds into his, the way you kiss him like you mean it when you say you'll never love anyone else.
You're memorizing him, too, because on your last night together in his childhood home, Luke makes love to you.
For the first time in twelve years, you don't want to forget a single thing about Luke Hemmings.
You don't want to remember Luke leaving without you. He's done it twice before, and you had promised yourself you wouldn't let it happen again.
You also never would have thought you would be the one to decide to not get on a plane with him, but you are.
The morning when he leaves is melancholy, his flight leaving at four. He wakes you at one, tries to get you to go back to sleep, but you refuse. You watch him get dressed. Watch as he packs his things into Liz' car. Watch the way your hands look holding each other's in the backseat.
You watch it all. How the car pulls to the curb outside the airport. How Luke hugs Liz close to him, kisses her goodbye, promises to see him as soon as he can. You watch Andrew clap his son on the back, hugging him tight, telling him to be good. How Liz and Andrew climb back into the car, leaving you and Luke alone on the pavement.
Luke watches you, taking in your face: your eyes, your mouth, the nose-piercing.
"I'll see you," he says, giving you the space to decide how your goodbye goes.
You reach toward him and he lets the bag fall to the ground, wraps you in his arms, dwarfing you. You breathe him in, tell yourself that you will always recognize the scent of him.
He pulls from you when you hear a worker shout about Liz' idling car. He shoots them a look that they don't see and turns back to you. He presses a kiss against your mouth, quick, gentle, enough to make your stomach churn.
"I'll text you when I land," he says. "Text me back?"
With another quick kiss, he picks up his bag and turns to walk into the airport. You're about to get back into the car when you hear a, "Wait!" You turn and Luke is jogging over to you, a cigarette between his fingers.
"I never gave you this," he says.
You laugh, looking to the cig in his hand.
"Keep it. I'll come collect at some point," you say.
"Okay, Angel. Whenever you want."
Then Luke is heading into the airport and you're climbing into Liz' car, pulling away from the drop-off. Letting the one man you've ever loved leave without you.
It seems that all either one of you ever knows to do is leave.
You and Luke keep your promises.
Neither one of you goes radio silent, even with different time-zones and work schedules and book releases. You stay in touch. He FaceTimes you when he can, texts you lyrics to songs he hears that reminds him of you. You listen to 5 Seconds of Summer with a different kind of pain, one that doesn't feel like betrayal anymore.
You don't see each other again for another year. Luke flies you out to see him before the next album release. You stay in his house in LA for three weeks, Liz forgiving you for using the holiday time reserved for her to see her son. Those three weeks, you're yourselves again, the one's that grew up together. The one's who come back after being apart.
But when you leave, when Luke kisses you goodbye at the airport, asks if there's anyone back home when you both know the answer, it feels like a mistake.
A mistake you don't know how to fix.
When you get promoted to Copy Editor of your company's new international office two years and two LA trips later, Luke isn't your first call.
You knock on the double doors to the house, hoping you made the right decision by not giving a heads up.
When the door opens, Luke stands there in his sweats and t-shirt, his now blonde hair tucked behind his ears. He freezes, mouth going agape before his brain catches up with his eyes.
"Angel?" he asks, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you in through the door, into his chest. His warmth seeps through you, unchanging. He smells like he always does, even with the hint of new cologne on him.
Luke looks at you with disbelief, his hands roving over your shoulders and your face as if you're just a part of his imagination, like you're something that could disappear.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" he asks.
"I got promoted," you say.
His eyebrows scrunch up, the wrinkles more visible in his forehead at nearly thirty-four. You love being able to see him age.
"That's amazing, baby," he says. "But you flew out here to tell me you got promoted?"
"It's an international office," you say, hoping the pieces click.
When you see the way his eyes light up, the way he kisses you hard, pulls you into his body, hands finding your waist with ease, you know he understands. You don't even have to explain.
Luke pulls away from you, in his eyes, there's the love that you've held onto for the last three years, the last fifteen before that. Even when you've both denied it, it's remained.
Luke smiles so wide, and you realize that you're not the same people you were at fourteen. You're something more aged, broken and cemented back together. Something that's been made stronger, somehow.
Luke takes you by the hand and drags you up the stairs. You giggle as he pulls you along.
"What are you doing?" you laugh.
"Taking you to our room," he answers. When you get to the top of the stairs, he hooks his hands beneath you, pulling you and your legs around him. Luke kisses you and the ache in your sternum goes away for the first time in your life.
"Then after," he says. "I owe you a cigarette."
You laugh and kiss Luke. Your best friend. Your lover.
