Logs:Vincible

Vincible
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Steve
In Absentia	2021-07-17 "Sometimes I do wish you would remember you are not made of vibranium."
Location <DC> AKA White House - Lucien's Suite
This one-room residence suite has more in common with a small luxury apartment than any hotel room. Bright and airy, it is tastefully appointed with a wealth of mirrors, and furnished in understated earth tones. Just inside the entryway, the dining area sports a round table in smokey glass, three chairs, and one long bench against the wall. The kitchen is small but efficiently designed with steel appliances and a full set of cookware, utensils, elegant if utilitarian tableware, and various other thoughtful homey conveniences. A long, gleaming limestone counter separates the kitchen from the living room with its perhaps surprising variety of seating options, from tall stools at the counter to classic armchairs to the soft, comfortable couch facing a widescreen TV across a smoky glass coffee table. A set of french doors in the living room open onto a balcony with a breathtaking view of the cityscape. Opposite that, a short hallway accesses the half bath, linen closet, laundry machines, and the frosted glass sliding doors to the bedroom. This last, while admitted cozy, does not skimp on luxury. A king size bed takes up a good deal of the floor space, a long closet much of one wall, with an integrated chest of drawers, and the adjoining full bath is perhaps startlingly spacious with a generous soaking tub, rainwater shower, and a counter with two sinks. The view here is even more spectacular at night, the city glittering and peaceful below. It's quiet right now, late, only a few cars going by at intervals. A bottle of whiskey and two squat glasses stand on the balcony table together with small cheese-and-apple tarts. Lucien is dressed for comfort, fitted jeans and a soft blue tee that fits snug on a frame more muscular than it was last season. More of the bottle has already vanished than probably ought while drinking alone, and though he has an e-ink tablet out on the table that he has nominally been writing in he's distracting himself from that by checking his phone at almost compulsive intervals. At length another text lights up Lucien's phone: (Steve --> Luci): Sorry I'm so late, but I'm coming up. There's a sharp series of raps at the door a couple of minutes later. Steve is is also dressed comfortably, a bright yellow t-shirt with a cartoon T-rex skeleton dancing above the words 'FOSSIL' spelled out in bones, soft worn blue jeans, and black combat boots. He's got a blue Montréal Canadiens ballcap trimmed in red and white pulled down low over his brow, but probably whatever anonymity the the headgear offers is made moot by the also red, white, and blue shield slung over one shoulder. There's a certain slump to his broad, muscular shoulders that he does his best to shrug off before his host opens the door, but the tension will not leave him. Flèche makes it to the door before Lucien, whuffling eagerly at its base, her tail flagging high. Lucien is slower to follow, pulling the door open with a small dip of his head and a tip of his hand to gesture Steve inside. He shuts and locks the door, heading straight back for the balcony to pour Steve a drink before he bothers speaking. He's looking toward the dog (frisking enthusiastically around Steve's legs, occasionally leaning herself bodily up against his shins, tail a blur now.) "-- My god, I think somebody missed you." His words have been sheared of their usual soft francophone coloring, repainted instead in broad and distinct New-York-Irish flavor. Steve returns the nod as he takes off the cap. He tells Flèche to sit before stooping to give her the pets she's due and tug off his boots before following Lucien to the balcony. He sinks heavily into the unoccupied seat and leans the shield against the railing. "I missed you, too," he replies with a half-hearted twitch of a smile, then adds, "and her. Thank you." This last as he picks up his glass, though he doesn't yet drink. He's dropped his own learned General American broadcast accent, lapsing back into sharp Brooklyn vowels softened by the touch of a Connacht he's never seen. "And thanks for having me. I know you been run ragged all week, and a heck of a week to come." "Hell week only feels like being imprisoned," Lucien replies with a faint twitch at one side of his mouth. He sinks back against the balcony railing, elbow braced down against it and his whiskey glass in the other hand. "-- and has been going rather smoothly, all things considered. Your run of things, on the other hand --" He glances to where he left his phone on the table, but does not pick it back up. "Well. A bit more hitches than planned, mm?" Steve waves his free hand -- the right one, which he's still not wholly adjusted to using as his dominant hand again -- dismissively. "I've been through worse, and most of it was just waiting." He sucks in a deep breath. "Granted I never been great at that. One more strike against the alleged perfect soldier, huh?" He does finally drink, deep. Some of the tightness eases from his shoulders and he subsides further against the back of the chair with a weariness uncharacteristic with his enhanced physiology. "Good to hear things aren't going so bad with the show, but I know my hitches piled more work on in other areas." He runs a hand through his hair, leaving it not too much disarrayed. "I made a lot of bad calls in my time, but this one takes the cake. Eats the whole thing at a go, too." "A mercy you pay me so well, then." Lucien's fingers tighten faintly around his glass as a siren wails a few blocks away, drawing nearer and then fading again out of earshot. His next swallow is larger, and he turns to look out at the city beyond. "I've talked to Stark, watched all those interviews -- gods know everyone on Twitter seems to have an opinion now -- I feel as though I have everyone's perspective on what happened in Latveria but yours." Steve tenses as well, at the siren, though his expression doesn't change. "I hadn't known it'd been Tony in that flying armor. Before, I mean, not --" He waves this off, too. "Think we would've been fine, except they had power suppression tech, which I'd been told was proprietary. Guess you probably put that together way before any interviews came out." He rolls his wrist slowly and stares at the amber liquid as it changes shape within the glass. "Didn't work on me, but when that thing came down and DJ said he was in trouble I kinda." For a moment it sounds like he might just end the sentence there, but at a delay he continues. "Didn't think, didn't plan. Just went, and Herr Doktor Doom's robot mopped the very hard stone floor with me. Effortlessly." "Yes, that was -- a bit of a surprise. I cannot say I pegged him as the sort to moonlight as --" Lucien does end his sentence there, bowing his head with brow a touch furrowed. He drains the rest of his glass, turns to drop heavily into his own chair and set it down before refilling it. There's a definite unsteadiness to his hand on the bottle, some of the whiskey spilling over onto the table instead before he sets the bottle back down. Picks up his glass again, staring more through it than at it at the city lights blurred through the golden liquid. "-- I see. As tactical lapses go, it seems an eminently forgivable one. Though," this is much, much softer, "sometimes I do wish you would remember you are not made of vibranium." Steve is quiet a moment. "I know I'm not invincible, even less so now than in my day. Half my friends can trounce me with one arm tied --" He breaks off, his breath hitching. Takes a generous swig of his whiskey. "-- easy peasy." His pale blue eyes drift out over the cityscape. "Some of my recklessness is God-given and some of it is strategic, but that..." He shakes his head, quick. Then, more subdued. "I take your point. Think I got used to relying on Bucky to call my bullshit and watch my back and drag me out of fights that got too big." He drains his glass and refills it, and though his hand is steady enough, his voice when he continues is not. "But that was another life. He's gone, and it's long past time I learned some common sense of my own." His glance back at Lucien is a bit sheepish. "Maybe try listening to folks who are doing what he did, too." Lucien only answers this last with a soft hff through his nose, a hand lifting to rub forefinger and thumb at the bridge of his nose. Possibly the silent shake of his shoulders is a laugh; at the least, there's a quicksilver upward twitch of his mouth that suggests as much. "I do not think there is -- inherently -- anything wrong with outsourcing some mental processes," he murmurs with a slow shake of his head, "but perhaps relying on one person alone for the task is not the most robust of systems. A support network is -- just that, no?" Steve's smile at Lucien's laughter is warm and unreserved. If his eyes are just a touch bright, well, it's probably just the lights of Capitol Hill caught in their blue depths. "It was never just him, but at least at home, the rest of my ah...support network always wanted me to just. Stop being reckless?" His empty hand turns palm-up, fingers splaying loosely. "Buck always understood I couldn't leave well enough alone if I saw a wrong needed righting. No matter how much he groused, no matter how little he liked fighting, he was always right there with me." He swallows. Looks down into his whiskey, then back up at his friend, his smile returning only a little rueful. "But, for better or for worse, I guess most everyone who loves me now accepts there's really no keeping me from the battles I pick." "I wouldn't dream of trying to stop you, much though I might like to ease some of those." Lucien's eyes slip to the phone on the table, its notification light steadily flashing. He's a little more wry as he plucks it back up. "Since I can do little enough to keep you in one piece, I will just have to settle for picking up what pieces of your reputation I can salvage. At least you never make the task a dull one."