Luther fic: The Road Runner
Trawling for story ideas for yuletide treats, I read evilhippo's request for Alice's travels around the world, got a mental image of Alice learning to flamenco dance, and took it from there!
Title: The Road Runner
Fandom: Luther
Characters: Alice, John, Mark (canon-level hint of Alice/John)
Rating: teen
Word count: 1,603
Notes: Thanks to Lenore for the superfast beta. Also available on AO3.
"They're Wile E. Coyote, and I'm The Road Runner. Meep, meep."
Alice learns to flamenco dance in Seville.
She spends two days searching for the right teacher. She finds him eventually, in a little downtown tablao with a single classroom upstairs. Abejundio is tall, dark and handsome, and very intense. In her head she calls him John. Out loud too, sometimes. He treats it as the English foible of a tourist unable to pronounce Spanish names, and she doesn't bother to enlighten him and tell him she can speak Spanish fluently. She learned the basics in a month when she was thirteen and off school with chicken pox, became fluent at fifteen when she was determined to read Camilo José Cela and Carmen Laforet in the original language.
She tells him her name is Sienna. It's a warm name, sun-baked. It suits her here, bare-armed in the sun, freckles on her nose. Abejundio makes it sound exotic, whispers it in her ears when he tries to seduce her in a mixture of Spanish and broken English.
It's a dancer's name.
She loves the rhythm of flamenco, the palmas, stamping her feet, the way her hair flies around her face. The scars on her wrist show when she handclaps, and it amuses her to see other dancers stare then pretend they were looking for someone across the room. She dares them to ask, flicking her wrists in temptation, but no one ever does. A pity, she has so many different stories ready; she might even have told the truth if she were in the mood.
She likes the castinets too, though Abejundio despises them. The click-clack sound they make is deliciously annoying. She practices them late at night, when even Spaniards have gone to bed. She stares at the other guests over breakfast the next morning, daring them to complain. None do.
She sleeps with Abejundio her last night in Seville. She lets him fall asleep before she slips away.
*
She wins big in Bonita Springs. Not cards, or roulette, or even horses. Nothing glamorous. She wins at the dog track. It's a mix of skill and luck, and she finds it hilarious.
She wants to tell someone about it, but John doesn't like her phoning him up in the middle of the night, and nine in the evening in Florida is two in the morning in London.
So she phones Mark. He picks up after three rings, quick enough that she knows she hasn't woken him up.
"Guess who?" she says, pitching her voice low, flirting, just for the sake of it.
"Bloody hell, Alice, do you know what time it is?"
"Well," she drags out the word as though it's ten letters rather than four, "it's 2 am in London, so it must be 11 am in Tokyo, lunchtime in Adelaide and 6 pm on a no doubt gloriously sunny afternoon in Los Angeles. Question answered. My turn."
"I'm not in the mood for games," he says, but she thinks he is, really. Games are a distraction, and if he's awake at two o'clock in the morning, he needs a distraction.
"Imagine, hypothetically of course, that someone, me for example, suddenly came into possession of a rather large sum of money. Say, $15,000. How do you think said hypothetical recipient should spend it?" she asks.
"Don't tell me you've taken to robbery now. Isn't that a bit of a come down from murder? Serial killer to petty thief?" he says scornfully.
Alice doesn't rise to the insult. She laughs. "Don't be silly. I earned the money. Which we won't bother to keep pretending is hypothetical. Well, to be precise, I won it, but there was some skill involved, so that's quite as satisfactory as earning it. The problem is, I can't decide what to buy. I don't want to be practical. I want something fun. Something expensive."
"A work of art," Mark says immediately, and Alice bites her bottom lip with sheer pleasure. Of course. A perfect idea.
"Something modern and enigmatic and utterly meaningless," she muses. A David Armitage, perhaps, or a Jon Braley. "I can hang it upside down and wait to see if anyone notices."
There's a snort of laughter down the other end of the phone. "Glad to be of help," he says. "Now, piss off and don't phone me again."
Alice blows a kiss down the line, but he's hung up on her.
*
"Poison is far too easy. Anyone can get away with poison. Quite unsatisfying, you know," Alice says seriously, and the woman in the seat next to her giggles. Her bracelets all jangle as she laughs, and her jowls wobble.
"Oh my, I reckoned you for a hoot soon as I seen you," she drawls in a high-pitched voice that belongs to someone much younger. "That's why I said to myself, I said you just go sit down next to that girl."
"And I'm delighted you did," Alice lies with a smile.
"I'm Betsy," she says.
"Virginia," Alice says.
Alice devises three foolproof ways she could kill Betsy before they reach the bus terminal.
The bus ride is six hours and forty minutes. By the end, she's worked out satisfactory methods for getting rid of the boy with the nasal whine, the elderly couple who are trying to persuade anyone within earshot to find Jesus in their heart, and the sneezing woman behind her.
None of them are worth the effort, but it keeps her in practice.
*
Alice dreams.
She dreams she's driving a getaway car across the desert, pedal hard to the floor. The road is wide and empty, and so is the desert. Orange sand, and a slash of dusty grey tarmac splitting it in half. The sky is silver, with an old red sun falling over the horizon. There's music, the radio maybe, or a CD, she doesn't know - she didn't put it on. Maybe it's just in her head, a subconscious desire for her life to have a soundtrack. It rumbles over the sound of the engine, a heavy, hypnotic beat, bass and drums.
She doesn't know who or what she's driving from, but when she sees the end of the road ahead, she finally knows where she's going. She keeps driving, right to the end and on.
She wakes up as she's falling, before she hits the ground. She lies still, eyes closed against the car lights flashing by outside the motel window, and stretches her arms and legs out like a starfish.
Falling isn't that much different from flying. It's only the destination that's different.
*
She answers her phone on the fifth ring, protecting the screen from the sunlight with one hand so she can see the caller ID. "Do you like it?" she asks, leaning against the flimsy blue railing that separates the café from the cliff edge and the Mediterranean. It's nothing more than a few planks of wood and some nails. People are so often unaware of how little there is between them and death; Alice is always aware.
"Did you steal it?" John asks. He sounds resigned rather than angry.
Mark must have given him her new mobile number. She changes her mobile as often as she changes city and she hasn't rung him on her new number yet. She changes her name as often too; she's Violette this week. It makes her feel like a spy, lurking in the Café Hafa, wearing dark glasses and sipping mint tea. She hasn't been Zoe yet, but she will be. She's saving Zoe. That can be her swansong.
"I'm hurt," Alice says, though she really isn't. She likes the idea that she might have stolen the painting and shipped it to London, had a hot piece of art delivered right to the doorstep of a police officer. Maybe she'll do that some time. Find something he'd like. His flat needs brightening up.
"You didn't answer my question." The line's bad, crackly, and it distorts his voice. She wishes he were whispering in her ear. If he'd run away with her, they could have chosen the painting together, arm in arm in a gallery like an indolent couple with nothing better to do with their time. She would have liked that, but she thinks he would have hated it. Hated her, if he'd come. It irritates her, knowing he was right to say no to her.
"And you didn't answer mine," Alice snaps. "But no, I didn't steal it. It's all perfectly legal and above board."
"I hate it. Modern art," he says, like it's a dirty phrase. He says serial killer with less distaste. "I can't even tell which way is up."
Alice's bad mood evaporates in an instant. She can't stop laughing.
*
She travels north from Tangier, takes trains across Europe, crosses the Alps and ends up in Zurich.
She's always wanted to travel, yet she misses London. It feels like a weakness, wanting to go home. Considering anywhere home. She never meant to put down roots. She hadn't even realised she had, but she puts John's name in each new phone she buys, and sends him cryptic, anonymous postcards every time she leaves a country, tortuous word puzzles for him to work out where she's going next. Even when she doesn't phone him, she thinks about it, holds imaginary conversations.
She misses him.
If she doesn't go home, she'll drive off the end of that road one day. She'll keep going, she'll fall, and she won't wake up.
So she puts off Zoe (quiet and elegant - she enjoyed being Zoe, perfectly at home on Bahnhofsstrasse), buys her final train ticket, and Alice Morgan goes home.
//
Title: The Road Runner
Fandom: Luther
Characters: Alice, John, Mark (canon-level hint of Alice/John)
Rating: teen
Word count: 1,603
Notes: Thanks to Lenore for the superfast beta. Also available on AO3.
"They're Wile E. Coyote, and I'm The Road Runner. Meep, meep."
Alice learns to flamenco dance in Seville.
She spends two days searching for the right teacher. She finds him eventually, in a little downtown tablao with a single classroom upstairs. Abejundio is tall, dark and handsome, and very intense. In her head she calls him John. Out loud too, sometimes. He treats it as the English foible of a tourist unable to pronounce Spanish names, and she doesn't bother to enlighten him and tell him she can speak Spanish fluently. She learned the basics in a month when she was thirteen and off school with chicken pox, became fluent at fifteen when she was determined to read Camilo José Cela and Carmen Laforet in the original language.
She tells him her name is Sienna. It's a warm name, sun-baked. It suits her here, bare-armed in the sun, freckles on her nose. Abejundio makes it sound exotic, whispers it in her ears when he tries to seduce her in a mixture of Spanish and broken English.
It's a dancer's name.
She loves the rhythm of flamenco, the palmas, stamping her feet, the way her hair flies around her face. The scars on her wrist show when she handclaps, and it amuses her to see other dancers stare then pretend they were looking for someone across the room. She dares them to ask, flicking her wrists in temptation, but no one ever does. A pity, she has so many different stories ready; she might even have told the truth if she were in the mood.
She likes the castinets too, though Abejundio despises them. The click-clack sound they make is deliciously annoying. She practices them late at night, when even Spaniards have gone to bed. She stares at the other guests over breakfast the next morning, daring them to complain. None do.
She sleeps with Abejundio her last night in Seville. She lets him fall asleep before she slips away.
*
She wins big in Bonita Springs. Not cards, or roulette, or even horses. Nothing glamorous. She wins at the dog track. It's a mix of skill and luck, and she finds it hilarious.
She wants to tell someone about it, but John doesn't like her phoning him up in the middle of the night, and nine in the evening in Florida is two in the morning in London.
So she phones Mark. He picks up after three rings, quick enough that she knows she hasn't woken him up.
"Guess who?" she says, pitching her voice low, flirting, just for the sake of it.
"Bloody hell, Alice, do you know what time it is?"
"Well," she drags out the word as though it's ten letters rather than four, "it's 2 am in London, so it must be 11 am in Tokyo, lunchtime in Adelaide and 6 pm on a no doubt gloriously sunny afternoon in Los Angeles. Question answered. My turn."
"I'm not in the mood for games," he says, but she thinks he is, really. Games are a distraction, and if he's awake at two o'clock in the morning, he needs a distraction.
"Imagine, hypothetically of course, that someone, me for example, suddenly came into possession of a rather large sum of money. Say, $15,000. How do you think said hypothetical recipient should spend it?" she asks.
"Don't tell me you've taken to robbery now. Isn't that a bit of a come down from murder? Serial killer to petty thief?" he says scornfully.
Alice doesn't rise to the insult. She laughs. "Don't be silly. I earned the money. Which we won't bother to keep pretending is hypothetical. Well, to be precise, I won it, but there was some skill involved, so that's quite as satisfactory as earning it. The problem is, I can't decide what to buy. I don't want to be practical. I want something fun. Something expensive."
"A work of art," Mark says immediately, and Alice bites her bottom lip with sheer pleasure. Of course. A perfect idea.
"Something modern and enigmatic and utterly meaningless," she muses. A David Armitage, perhaps, or a Jon Braley. "I can hang it upside down and wait to see if anyone notices."
There's a snort of laughter down the other end of the phone. "Glad to be of help," he says. "Now, piss off and don't phone me again."
Alice blows a kiss down the line, but he's hung up on her.
*
"Poison is far too easy. Anyone can get away with poison. Quite unsatisfying, you know," Alice says seriously, and the woman in the seat next to her giggles. Her bracelets all jangle as she laughs, and her jowls wobble.
"Oh my, I reckoned you for a hoot soon as I seen you," she drawls in a high-pitched voice that belongs to someone much younger. "That's why I said to myself, I said you just go sit down next to that girl."
"And I'm delighted you did," Alice lies with a smile.
"I'm Betsy," she says.
"Virginia," Alice says.
Alice devises three foolproof ways she could kill Betsy before they reach the bus terminal.
The bus ride is six hours and forty minutes. By the end, she's worked out satisfactory methods for getting rid of the boy with the nasal whine, the elderly couple who are trying to persuade anyone within earshot to find Jesus in their heart, and the sneezing woman behind her.
None of them are worth the effort, but it keeps her in practice.
*
Alice dreams.
She dreams she's driving a getaway car across the desert, pedal hard to the floor. The road is wide and empty, and so is the desert. Orange sand, and a slash of dusty grey tarmac splitting it in half. The sky is silver, with an old red sun falling over the horizon. There's music, the radio maybe, or a CD, she doesn't know - she didn't put it on. Maybe it's just in her head, a subconscious desire for her life to have a soundtrack. It rumbles over the sound of the engine, a heavy, hypnotic beat, bass and drums.
She doesn't know who or what she's driving from, but when she sees the end of the road ahead, she finally knows where she's going. She keeps driving, right to the end and on.
She wakes up as she's falling, before she hits the ground. She lies still, eyes closed against the car lights flashing by outside the motel window, and stretches her arms and legs out like a starfish.
Falling isn't that much different from flying. It's only the destination that's different.
*
She answers her phone on the fifth ring, protecting the screen from the sunlight with one hand so she can see the caller ID. "Do you like it?" she asks, leaning against the flimsy blue railing that separates the café from the cliff edge and the Mediterranean. It's nothing more than a few planks of wood and some nails. People are so often unaware of how little there is between them and death; Alice is always aware.
"Did you steal it?" John asks. He sounds resigned rather than angry.
Mark must have given him her new mobile number. She changes her mobile as often as she changes city and she hasn't rung him on her new number yet. She changes her name as often too; she's Violette this week. It makes her feel like a spy, lurking in the Café Hafa, wearing dark glasses and sipping mint tea. She hasn't been Zoe yet, but she will be. She's saving Zoe. That can be her swansong.
"I'm hurt," Alice says, though she really isn't. She likes the idea that she might have stolen the painting and shipped it to London, had a hot piece of art delivered right to the doorstep of a police officer. Maybe she'll do that some time. Find something he'd like. His flat needs brightening up.
"You didn't answer my question." The line's bad, crackly, and it distorts his voice. She wishes he were whispering in her ear. If he'd run away with her, they could have chosen the painting together, arm in arm in a gallery like an indolent couple with nothing better to do with their time. She would have liked that, but she thinks he would have hated it. Hated her, if he'd come. It irritates her, knowing he was right to say no to her.
"And you didn't answer mine," Alice snaps. "But no, I didn't steal it. It's all perfectly legal and above board."
"I hate it. Modern art," he says, like it's a dirty phrase. He says serial killer with less distaste. "I can't even tell which way is up."
Alice's bad mood evaporates in an instant. She can't stop laughing.
*
She travels north from Tangier, takes trains across Europe, crosses the Alps and ends up in Zurich.
She's always wanted to travel, yet she misses London. It feels like a weakness, wanting to go home. Considering anywhere home. She never meant to put down roots. She hadn't even realised she had, but she puts John's name in each new phone she buys, and sends him cryptic, anonymous postcards every time she leaves a country, tortuous word puzzles for him to work out where she's going next. Even when she doesn't phone him, she thinks about it, holds imaginary conversations.
She misses him.
If she doesn't go home, she'll drive off the end of that road one day. She'll keep going, she'll fall, and she won't wake up.
So she puts off Zoe (quiet and elegant - she enjoyed being Zoe, perfectly at home on Bahnhofsstrasse), buys her final train ticket, and Alice Morgan goes home.
//