Innamoramento (Future Luke x Reader)

Innamoramento

(Reminder: This story contains massive spoilers from 'Professor Layton and the Lost Future')

***

You can feel your muscles tense as his fingers brush your burning cheek, his other hand finding yours, lacing your fingers with his.

You cannot look away. Your eyes lock on his, and your heart skips a beat as the distance between your faces is slowly closed.

Both of you have stopped breathing. An uneasy silence fills the air.

He closes his eyes.

"Luke, stop."

He opens them again, blushing from embarrassment as you suddenly interrupt the kiss.

You cannot.

"We can't."

His eyes fill with sadness and incomprehension.

"That would be immoral."

He smiles bitterly, waiting for you to continue.

"... In the present where I'm from, Luke is... you are still a little boy... Think about the implications and consequences..."

Ah.

That is right.

Everything goes according to the plan.

You do not know. For now, that is.

But his name is actually Clive.

To ensure his revenge would be fulfilled, he has perfectly studied all of it. 

He knows all about your bond to Hershel Layton – you are one of his students from Gressenheller University. You have helped the professor countless times at the faculty and even outside, being dragged around in his crazy adventures around the globe every time you expected them the less.

He knows you are close to Flora – this is exactly the reason why you are here right now. Flora was so distressed after her dearest Professor and Luke had left her behind again that she nagged you, her best friend, into following them to this quaint Clock Shop, and thus, to future London.

But that is not all.

He also knows all about 'Little' Luke's deep affection for you. Yet, because of the significant age difference, you do not acknowledge – or are rather oblivious of – the fact he cares so much about you, as you are only tempted to consider him as a little brother. Nothing more, nothing less.

But after encountering 'Big' Luke, you began to wonder. 

To doubt.

About your blooming feelings.

And he can see it.

He has successfully trapped you inside the story.

Your arrival was unexpected, though he had acknowledged it as a possibility. 

He could not have dreamt of a better opportunity to push his role to its utmost limit by naturally getting closer to you.

Even Layton does not suspect the masquerade –  it is, after all, a normal process – the evolution from a sweet, platonic thirteen-year-old teenage boy's crush towards a more adult relationship. His interpretation of Luke's role is simply reaching a logical outcome. He gives the boy what he simply lacks of in the present and probably regrets – maturity, legality... Sensuality.

His game is flawless. This is why he does not hesitate

To conquer your heart

To torture his past 'self' by making him jealous.