Logs:Safety

Safety
cn: references to murder, some complicated trauma, allusions to rape/incest, some almost-but-not-quite fucking.
Dramatis Personae Fury, Lucien
In Absentia	2024-05-31 "I don't hardly let nobody in, you know this." (set a short while after running into matt.)
Location <NYC> Fury's Apartment - Hell's Kitchen
An easy walk from Times Square, this is a two-bedroom penthouse apartment in a carefully restored historic building, its southern exposure affording an excellent view and letting in as much natural light as the season allows. It's sparsely decorated -- a scattering of framed historical photographs of the city on the pale gray walls -- but comfortably appointed in chic monochrome. The kitchen is definitely the focus of this residence, its black marble and steel kept scrupulously clean and well-provisioned. The master bedroom is capacious, with a queen sized bed and its own bath to boot, but to the observant eye it shows few signs of regular use. The smaller bedroom is set up as an office with a twin bed and entirely too much advanced computer equipment, its door usually kept closed when there are visitors. Fury closes the door behind them and locks it -- all three locks, then two more frame bolts that had been hidden in the door molding. He enters some numbers on the home security system panel beside the door, and the motorized curtains draw themselves while a white noise generator kicks in, hissing softly from all directions. He shucks his jacket, pulls a Colt 1911 from under one of the couch cushions, and pours a generous measure of Scotch for his guest. It's a slightly more complicated operation to perform one-handed, but he does not put the gun down and in fact looks as though he has some practice doing this. Only when he has offered the glass to Lucien -- one-handed, still, the gun held loosely at his side -- does he ask, "The fuck's going on?" In a previous life, perhaps, Lucien might at the very least have summoned up a raised eyebrow for Fury's paranoia. Tonight, the subtle unease that has clung to him since shortly before departing the afterparty is only now leaving, as he watches the locks locked and curtains closed and gun in hand. Through Fury's precautions he has just been drifting slow into the room -- not far, stopping halfway between the door and the couch. When he takes the Scotch the brush of his fingers comes with a warm flush of relief, and though his hand lingers just a moment longer than necessary he's pulling back soon enough. "I am sorry we have not had -- more of a chance to catch up," he is saying this mild and with a self-effacing kind of contrition that suggests the fault is somehow that he's been neglectful with his time and not that they have both had weeks of current-and-future cataclysm to deal with. His eyes have lingered long and thoughtful in examination of the floor, the walls, the ceiling, while he speaks, and is only when no new alien vortex opens up to swallow them both that he continues further in to perch cautious on the end of the couch. "{I do pay some small attentions, you know, to --}" His eyes flick quick to Fury's gun, up to the older man's face. "{... those elders I have much to learn from. I did. Have protocols for. Surviving my own murder. }" He's turning his glass slowly between his fingers, head tipping slightly down to shift his gaze into the gently sloshing liquid. "I simply -- gravely misjudged what quarter it would come from." Fury huffs a single harsh breath of laughter. "See, this is why I got trust issues." He retrieves his (trusty) concealed carry harness and duster from the coat closet, shrugs into both, holsters the 1911, then goes to the kitchen counter and slides his fingers along the underside of what looks very much like a decorative panel. The gun rack that slides out does not look quite so decorative, and from it he produces a heavily modified Sig Sauer Legion, which he proceeds to systematically check over. "Wish you didn't have to get stabbed in the back to learn, but errybody thinks they crew won't betray 'em until it happens. Who was it? Hella dangerous motherfuckers in your crew, but you know I don't play, an' I got safe houses like the day is long." He's eyeing Lucien somewhat skeptically, now. "{Don't tell Barton I said this, but can you shoot a proper weapon?}" He holds up the (proper) (tactical) pistol he's been fussing over, pulls the slide back to chamber a round, then holsters that one as well. "There is really only one person alive I truly believed would never." Lucien's eyes are still fixed on his Scotch. "Foolish, I know. Still one person too many." He starts to lift his glass, finally, but sets it back down on his knee without drinking. He looks up at the gun, a faint amused twitch pulling brief at his mouth. "I suspect you would mislike to be on the wrong end of his bow far more so than on the wrong end of the average man's pistol." It's a sort of reflexive defensiveness that doesn't carry over to his actual answer: "{Not nearly as well as I shoot an elegant one, but I am no slouch with a gun.}" Fury's eye narrows. Then widens."Matt?! Goddammit, I knew that sumbitch weren't right in the head." He reaches into the drawer and starts pulling out extra magazines in several sizes and colors, which disappear one by one into his duster. "Well, I was prepared for much worse --" He looks at Lucien again, his lips compressing. "I mean...tactically. Can't imagine what you must be going through. Now sit yo skinny ass down." He ducks into the office, returning with a Glock 19 which he sets on the coffee table along with a lightweight holster and harness. "{Barton's not the average man. Not saying you're average, but you're not Hawkeye, either.}" Two of the smaller magazines he'd stashed in his duster re-materialize. "Hollow points," he says, setting down the black clip, and then the blue one beside it. "Fluted armor-piercing. {Not expecting you to need either, though. I can think of half a dozen ways to take care of this and some of them don't even involve guns. Why didn't you just tell -- }" His jaw tightens and his nostrils flare. "{You're protecting him.}" Lucien settles himself a little more -- maybe not comfortably, but he does look a little less now like he is on the verge of getting up and flitting off again. "{I don't think --}" is what he starts to say, slow, but he breaks this off at Fury's conclusion. He drags his eyes up from the drink to rest, long, on the magazines in front of him. "I am very much a creature of habit." He sets his drink aside still undrunk, and picks up the gun instead. The rote efficiency with which he checks the chamber and loads one of the magazines (armor-piercing) suggests that as promised he has done this plenty before. "I had rather hoped to get to the bottom of why before I attempted the Herculean task of breaking the first one I ever really formed." He checks the safety, sets the gun back down where it had been. His hands fold, tight. "Also foolish, perhaps." Fury gives the smallest of reluctantly impressed nods. "Shit, maybe I oughta give you a fancier piece. That one ain't modded for special rounds like this." He taps the Sig he's carrying on the left. "Though again, I don't see any reason to put you in a position where you might need it." He raises his right eyebrow which, being less scarred, is usually the More Skeptical one to raise. "Now, I don't think there's much to get to the bottom of here. But if you do it ain't all that foolish neither, long as you do it smart. I can look into it on your behalf, find someone else he don't already know to do it, or just bring him in and you can question him all you like once he's safely in custody. Speaking of which, now might be the time to tell me what the fuck his power actually does." He leans forward and braces his elbows on his knees, his gruff voice gentling. "This all about what you need. If what you need is to not deal with this right now? I'll use my own discretion, and you may have noticed I am a very discreet man." "I would be quite grateful. If you could look into it. And on his own, he does -- nothing. He is what is sometimes called a metamutant. A power that operates only on others' mutations. In his particular case, he can suppress, augment or --" Lucien has gone just a touch paler, his hands clasping just a bit tighter. "Just outright control our abilities. I would never have survived manifesting were he not there to give some equilibrium while my brain was very set on killing me." Somewhat deliberately he unlaces his fingers, resting his hands on his knees. "I spent my entire life protecting him." His voice is low, here, but steady. "But he spent all his protecting me, too. In the recent past I have had to accept tears in the fabric of reality and Viking gods stepping out of the past and ravening swarms of alien bugs. If I must, I am sure I will accept this, too." His head shakes, very small. "Just -- not quite yet." Fury nods slowly, stroking his beard. "That explains a lot..." There's a small hitch in his trail-off. "...like why the hell he was on Holland and Black's team. Moral support my ass." He hasn't actually stopped frowning at any point, but his expression of disapproving contemplation intensifies. "Aight. What about your ma, then? He wears her on his arm practically everywhere. Is that on account of -- she's got a dangerous power he uses? Or she's using him as...goddamn mutant social dynamics are insane." He studies Lucien uncertainly, not very much like someone who's just stopped himself from saying "I didn't mean you" and has no idea what to say instead. "This is pretty solidly in my wheelhouse. Ain't no way to live, but it's kept me alive. I will handle this," he reassures him. Then, more hesitantly, "And I don't have to work out a battle plan quite yet, either. You..." He glances toward the kitchen, then back. "...want something to eat?" He pushes himself out of the armchair before Lucien has a chance to answer. Then, still before he has time to answer, resettles himself on the couch next to him. Then curls his arm around Lucien, kind of hesitantly. "Just tell me what you need." "She is a mutant herself, but what exactly her power is, Prometheus was unable to discover. If she has one, that is. Most carriers do not. Unsurprisingly, my brother has a lot of cachet in Prometheus communities. She has some skill at capitalizing on that sort of thing." Lucien doesn't look particularly put out by Fury's comment, probably because mutant social dynamics are goddamn insane. He shakes his head at the offer of food, though he's giving his still-untouched glass a hungry look. "I've -- not much appetite." But his eyes lift -- still just as hungry, really -- to drink in Fury when the older man sits by him. He's slow to shift himself, turning in towards Fury. Though his touch his tentative, too, lips only barely brushing against the other man's, the flood of relief that comes with the contact is not. "-- Not for food, at any rate." Fury's baseline level of frowning continues to rise. "Is everyone in your family just like this?" This is probably rhetorical, but if not he doesn't pursue it any further. Perhaps he might have, if Lucien's touch hadn't obliterated whatever line of questioning he was definitely at least considering. His entire nervous system is still keyed up, a snarl of hypervigilance and rage jangling against a dull background of exhaustion. He pulls Lucien tighter against him, echoing that relief along with a shiver of desire that does not care how much he aches through the fading adrenaline. He pulls back with a soft gasp, his profound embarrassment forgotten in the very next instant when he kisses Lucien hard, then drags him to his feet and toward the bedroom. Lucien sheds his outer layer as he rises, the elegant tuxedo jacket dropped to the couch in a heap. The rest of his clothes will have to wait; he's pressing hard into the kiss, one arm curling around Fury's waist. He doesn't make it all the way into the bedroom, fumbling at the door handle but then just dropping back against the closed door with a soft moan. His other hand curls against the back of the older man's head. The shivering breath he pulls in against Fury's mouth is quiet, but the next touch of his lips comes with a surge of desire. It twists hard into the other man with an intensity that hasn't been there in any of Lucien's previous biokinetic touches; not a carefully measured sensuality but a raw and desperate need that is oddly only accented rather than eclipsed by the also strong fear that accompanies it. He's breaking off a moment later, head thumping back against the door and his hand dropping to Fury's shoulder, fingers curling hard against the crisp black shirt. His eyes close, brief. "Chu désolé." His whisper is a little rough, but his breath has steadied again by the time he opens his eyes. "It is just. Good to see you again, Director Fury." Fury is much more coordinated, but his hand falters mid-reach for the door hand as Lucien's desire crashes into him. He curls that arm around the younger man's waist and pulls him close, his breath hitching with the effort of suppressing whatever sound his body has just tried to make. He does not let go, after Lucien pulls away, and his brows are furrowed deep. "It's good to see you, too, Mister Tessier." He says this deadpan in a way that suggests he is diligently keeping something else out of his tone. "You been through hell and you ain't gotta apologize for nothing. But this place is pretty damn secure. It'd take a professional breaching team at least 90 seconds to get through that front door." He opens the bedroom door, steers Lucien through it, and locks it behind them. "This door ain't shit, but I got a panic room with its own exit. If you don't feel safe here, I can take you to a safehouse even S.H.I.E.L.D. don't know about." He sits Lucien down on the edge of the bed, starts to stoop down, then thinks better of it and sits beside him, instead. "I won't let nothing happen to you." Lucien sits where he's directed. When Fury sits beside him he starts to reach for the other man, then instead folds his hands tightly together in his lap. His breath hitches on that last sentence. Very deliberately evens back out. It's a moment longer before he replies. "Professional breaching." His tone is dry and amused, though his expression is flatter and blanker than his typical quiet calm. He rummages up a small twitch of smile as he glances up to Fury. "Always striking how much overlap there is in our respective spheres of work." "Professional," Fury repeats emphatically. "Take the NYPD 'bout two hours, if they didn't get embarrassed and give up first." His eye bores into Lucien and his jaw tightens. "You tryna insinuate my security is theatre? I ain't even mad though, on account of how hilariously wrong you are, and also how that is the worst acting I ever seen." "No, I was actually trying to insinuate that --" Lucien starts to explain, mild, but then reconsiders with a very small tilt of his head. "-- mmm. Well. Acting is also a good deal like whoring. Maybe this --" He's unfolding one hand to gesture between himself and Fury, "is a continuum." Fury's comment is easing some of his tension, though only slightly. He shifts on the bed, turning a little bit towards the other man, but his hand drops once more back to his lap. "I have been away. I am out of practice." "So, you was going for 'spycraft is like prostitution.'" This isn't a question, but Fury does seem to seriously consider it for a moment. "I reckon it could be a bit like, sometimes." He sounds very mildly put out by his own conclusion, shaking his head. "Anyhow, my security ain't for show, and you ain't here to act for me. You don't gotta --" He shuts his mouth against whatever he first thought to say. "-- do any of that other stuff, neither. Whatever the hell you call your thing. Neurokinesis?" He runs a hand over his smooth pate, his other hand closing around the one Lucien has just abortively reached out. His desire hasn't drowned out the anger or the hypervigilance, but it's pushed his weariness back, at least. "You a damn fine lover on skill alone. Practically a professional." "You must have some inkling how much some people are inclined to divulge, given adequate lubrication." Lucien's eyes lift when Fury cuts himself off, though he doesn't have long to puzzle over the change of tack before Fury's hand closes against his. He turns it over slow, and draws a small breath as his fingers close around the older man's. "Slightly out of practice there, too," he replies wryly. His hand is warm and steady, and though for a moment he just drinks in that desire there's no answering biokinetic flush. "I do have to. You've no idea how badly I want --" He shuts his mouth, now, squeezing Fury's hand just a little tighter. "Neurokinesis works well enough. Perhaps if I meet others who do what I do I can solicit further opinions." "Hah!" Fury's laugh is very clearly affected and yet, not without humor. "I 'spose I do have an idea or two there. Though I mostly get people to do the spying for me, these days. But we're not here to compare professional notes, and I don't really care how outta practice you are." There's a small delay, but he does squeeze Lucien's hand back. "What do you mean you have to? If you doing anything up in there I can't feel it. You said you had to hold back before, and I thought you weren't, anymore." He arches another slightly skeptical brow. "You was still holding back?" Lucien is looking down at Fury's hand, his thumb brushing slow against the back of the other man's knuckles. There's a considerable delay before he answers. "I am always holding back." Fury does an excellent job not frowning or blinking excessively here. Both his hands tighten -- one in Lucien's, the other on the (black and white) quilt spread over the bed. A sense of almost self-congratulatory dread shivers through him, and though he does not shudder outwardly, the hairs on his body prickle in readiness. This is not turning him off. "What happens if you stop?" Once again, a long pause. Somewhere in that mix of dread and desire Lucien's pupils have gone wider, and he closes his eyes against this small betrayal. Perhaps it helps; he's finding words again, if slowly, soon after. "Every time I touch someone --" This time the hesitation is brief. "I feel you. When I touch you. Not your thoughts, just -- a lot of messy electrical signals. We are such a terrible jumble of electricity. Every ache --" Now Fury can feel him working, the by-now-familiar wash of cool soothing that laps away his old pains. "-- and fear," that dread shivers again in thrilling echo, "-- every hunger." The arousal is growing, too, noticeably, though Lucien is not moving any closer. "The connection runs both ways, though. Or tries to. If I stopped -- if I were not careful, every time I touch someone they would feel the same echoes from me that I do from them." The quiet touches of his power fade back away. "It -- can be. A touch overwhelming. I have learned to manage it, of course. Work would have been somewhat unsustainable otherwise. I have had quite a few years of practice, but it can still be -- a challenge. At times. To disentangle what I am feeling from what I am feeling. Other people -- do not have that practice." He opens his eyes again, though they remain downturned. "I am always quite careful." "That is mind-reading." There's little heat behind Fury's explanation. "You just don't know..." His words trail off briefly into a soft sigh. "...the language." Though he again withholds some involuntary vocalization, it thrums inside him. "That don't feel half bad, and if we both feeling the same thing --" This time his breath catches at the pleasantly escalating desire. "-- maybe you don't need to be so careful." He lets go of the quilt, tips Lucien's chin up, and draws him into a deep kiss flush with need that drowns his reluctance and thrills in his fear. At this explanation Lucien's mouth forms a small oh that he does not voice. His brows are just starting to crease, but he glances up in surprise when Fury's breath catches. "Oh," actually makes it out this time, soft and breathy. His kiss is hard, deep, hand clutching at Fury's side to pull him closer. Given his tendency toward understatement maybe it shouldn't be surprising that when he does stop holding back it is well more than a touch overwhelming. It's one reaction crashing into another, a tangle of sensation strange and disorienting, reorienting. The kaleidoscope of feelings is as promised hard to untangle -- Fury's need pouring into Lucien, Lucien's hunger in drinking it in, the way both these things echo and magnify into something that has become altogether more heady when it's reflected back. It's feeling Lucien's mouth on his but also feeling it from Lucien's side, the flickers of fear stirring back up together with the dizzy freefall of joy that almost drowns out his still-clamoring anxieties, the intense over-reactivity of his nerves that makes each touch of Fury's skin to his feel electric. It's terrible, too -- past Lucien's own aches and deep-ingrained exhaustion there's a thousand sensory aggravations. A very faint humming from one light barely noticeable before but now an intense grating against the ears. His shirt, for all its very fine make, still a maddening rasp when it rubs Just So at his skin. The stiff collar with its tie feeling like it's chafed away at the furiously complaining nerves beneath. His other hand lifts to loosen Fury's tie, pull it off, start to unbutton the older man's shirt. All these jangling and more are not ending, not by any stretch, but though they hammer shrill for attention Lucien, at least, is content enough to ignore them, to focus instead on the warm comfort of Fury's hand at his head, on the solid muscles under his hand. There's not, initially, much Fury can do but hang onto Lucien through the devastating swell of the bio(neuro?)kinetic feedback. The groan he's been holding back finally makes it out, and though it's muffled by their kiss Lucien can feel it against his lips and all the way down through Fury's broad chest. He tries to unbutton the awful scratchy shirt, but the sensation of Lucien's fingers doing the same thing to his own throws off his already compromised fine motor coordination. In the wild shrieking tempest of his mind the fear -- his or Lucien's or perhaps both -- feels absurd and irrelevant. He gathers Lucien closer and devours him, each surge of pleasure more overwhelming than the next. His body has forgotten its own pain and exhaustion, only to scrabble inexpertly at managing Lucien's. He wants Lucien so desperately and cannot in any way articulate how. When Lucien gets his shirt unbuttoned he shrugs out of it along with his gun rig, leaving it close at hand just in case any professional breaching should occur. The next groan that rumbles through him is relieved and frustrated all at once, the caress of Lucien's hands almost too much to bear, which doesn't really help Fury's renewed attempt at undressing him. He's managed to get the tie off, but in the unfamiliar flood of sensory information his fingers keep faltering on the buttons. "Do you feel like this all the time?" he asks breathlessly, pressing his lips to Lucien's neck, frustration receding as he at last works the top button open and kisses down along the skin he just exposed. For all the blinding intensity here, Lucien is navigating the difficulties of removing clothing deftly. Fury's, at least; though his own is still a chafing irritation with every movement he's largely forgotten it. Fury's question filters only slowly through all this tumult -- though somewhere at the edge of awareness the complicated shifts of this processing are sensible, too, as Even More Noise, these signals are far less legible than the physical and emotional sensations Fury's own nerves are used to parsing. Lucien rolls his shoulder, shivers unpleasantly at the prickle of fabric that probably isn't clawing like cactus-spines into his skin but feels a lot like it right now all the same. "Yes," he replies uncertainly, and then, "-- no, everything is usually much worse." His head is rolling back, ecstasy singing through him as the horrible scrape of his collar is replaced with the intoxicating bliss of Fury's lips on his skin. "You aren't touching me all the time," is perhaps an attempt to clarify, but halfway through it just slides breathy into plea. "Touch me," stirs a faint whisper of discontent with this request, possibly because Fury is, in fact, already doing this. Given Luci's own aforementioned professional skills in this department it probably should not take as much work as it does for him to remember how to elaborate, but it seems like, feels like, a struggle. Eventually he navigates through this delirium, his murmured request eminently unsurprising except in how unprecedented it has been between them for him to make any direct expressions of such desires: "{Fuck me,}" and, in addendum, an absurdly polite: "{please.}" Fury, evidently, does not take any issue with the redundant request, because he pulls out the hem of Lucien's shirt to slide his hands underneath, his callouses dragging rough over the tender skin. At the second (more specific) (less redundant) request, he freezes with a sharp in-drawn breath against the hollow of Lucien's collarbone. There's hardly any time to interpret his initial reaction, because the spike of his arousal after is so dramatic that it briefly eclipses the busy clamor of first- and second-hand neurological processes. He leaves off fumbling at the placket of Lucien's shirt and just yanks it open by main force, the buttons popping off in rapid succession to scatter across the immaculate floor. He hastily tugs the literally unbuttoned shirt the rest of the way off and, luckily for Lucien's trousers, has considerably less trouble with his belt and fly. When he resumes where he had left off, his touch is firmer, more purposeful, maneuvering -- not quite lifting, though he's strong enough that it's a near thing -- Lucien to the center of the bed and bracketing the younger man's body with his own. Despite his years and the violence that characterized too many of them, Fury is startlingly fit under all his scars, and when he settles his weight the solid warmth of him presses Lucien into the mattress even without the effort of pinning him in place. He kisses his way back up his lover's neck, his wiry beard a harsh contrast to the soft caress of his lips. Lucien's breath shivers in sharply at the tug to his shirt. He's clinging now to Fury like despite the entire bed at his back he needs the other man for support, but somehow still has the presence of mind to shift accommodatingly at Fury's fumbling efforts to disrobe him. The touches, the kisses, send thrums of pleasure echoing between them. Lucien is pressing back against the other man, hand roaming up against Fury's back, until somewhat abruptly at that warm and solid weight he isn't anymore. It's brief -- a ripple of tension that clenches his muscles, hands freezing, breath stopping. The drowning flood of feeling that accompanies it isn't brief, though -- it's a shattering crush of need and terror intertwined. When a moment later the sudden freezing has passed he's still flushed, still pressing hungrily to his lover, the desire only growing, but the fear is growing, too, in strange staccato jags as he tries by main force to wrestle it back down before it slips his control and surges high again. Fury does not stop the first time Lucien freezes, though it seems likely he noticed it and simply could not get his bearings. But after the second and then third peak of terror he pulls back, shifting some of his weight off of Lucien. "Hey now." It's all he can get out for a moment, reluctant as always to sound as breathless as he is. "We don't have to do this right now if --" His eye scrunches as the fear spikes again. "And you don't have to pretend you ain't afraid, there ain't nothing wrong with --" His pause stretches on, and when it's clear he's not going to find the words he's groping for he changes tack. "Sometimes it don't catch up to you 'til you're safe. Might be good to let it do that. It will, sooner or later." At first, Fury pulling back triggers in itself a new spike of fear, this one more guilty than the previous. It doesn't so much ebb as just crash conflicted into the rest, this wave breaking too soon to allow the others space to recede. Though his fingers curl in against Fury's back it could easily just be a silent urging for more; there's little in the slightly-flushed slightly-wide-eyed cast of expression to distinguish this panicking turmoil from arousal. "Oh, goodness --" in his gentle and gently wry voice sounds indistinguishable from the beginning of a million past evasions. It makes the dissonance all the more striking here, now, with every vicissitude of his keyed-up system echoed so viscerally to his lover. His next small nuzzle at Fury's neck, next small brush of lips to the older man's skin, bridges a brief gap in which he's collecting himself just enough for further words. "Safe has felt somewhat elusive, of late." The small twitch of his smile, the quiet amusement buried in his voice now, these things are not feigned but they do seem more strikingly inadequate next to the crushing surge of terror and love that accompany them. "It feels its own new danger, how credible it sounds on your lips." Inconveniently, this isn't doing much to help the spikes of panic, or the arousal. "Apologies. I do want this, I -- just --" There's something else creeping in now, too, a shame deep and nauseating. Lucien isn't allowing it much space, or is trying not to; the gentle path of his hands up Fury's back feels externally like caress and internally like grounding. As his fingers trace over knotted scarring and hard muscle it sends accompanying ripples that do not quite calm him but do provide some stable path to follow through the storm. Fury manages to check the reflex to fall into the flat look he has given to so many of Lucien's "oh, goodness" evasions. Mostly. There's no real discernable frustration behind it, though. "It be like that sometimes." He gives a single bitter laugh, light and dismissive aloud but underpinned with dull, distant heartbreak. "I recognize safety ain't really 'bout how many guns you got, and your door's only ever as secure as who you let in. You been known I'm shifty as a ten-speed and I ain't gon' insult your intelligence asking you to trust me. But so's your brother, and I ain't never trusted him, period." There is a protective anger rising in him. "More importantly, I wouldn't let him through that door even if you wanted me to. I don't hardly let nobody in, you know this." He starts running his hand down Lucien's arm, firm and soothing and not very much as if he just realized he's been too still. "Now, I won't front, I want you somethin' fierce." Concern is creeping into his anger without in any way diluting it, both washing in and around and through the desire still smoldering in him. He tenses by degrees, and perhaps he's trying to cover it by pressing up into Lucien's caress, but either way his shiver of pleasure at the touch is real enough. "And I get how this kinda thing can be helpful getting your mind off whatever's been on it. But that freezing up? Ionno if that's on account of something I could be doing different. Even if it ain't, I'd feel a lot more sanguine knowing what that's about." "Velocipedes have come a long way since your day, you know. Twelve is quite standard for a good mountain bike. Some models go up to 33." The overwhelming grip of Lucien's fear is easing to a more manageable clawing, through this dry comment, and even moreso at the firm touch. He drops his head back against the pillow, looking somewhere past Fury's shoulder as he takes a slow breath. "It's just -- that night -- the last time that I --" His expression doesn't change save for a very small press of lips, but the resurgence of that sick horrified shame is disconcertingly intense, for a moment. When it passes he just shakes his head. "I know you do not." It's softer, here, and kind of wondering, a ripple of gratitude shivering beneath the words. "I am -- also. Not." He hesitates, swallows, takes another deliberate breath. "{He was always in my head. It is not a liberty I have allowed many people and the way he misused that, I -- could not even move while he...}" This time, at least, he's ready for the flush of nausea, and wrestles it back before it can get too strong. "{I do not think you need to do something different.}" Though there's still a good deal of lingering stress, the acute edge of panic is easing away, leaving in its place a quiet grief and a less quiet joy. "{I think it's enough that if I needed it, you would.}" This "hah", on the spectrum of Fury's gruff cynical laughter, is actually mildly amused. "You whippersnappers only think you's sneakier 'cause we want you to think that." But his humor drains away rapidly at Lucien's halting explanation. "That night --" Perhaps it says something that a part of his reaction is legible on his face and not just in his neurochemistry, even if his expression shows less nuance, fixed firmly in severe perplexity while beneath it he's shifting to incredulity, disgust, horror, and finally wrath. "What kind of monster --" His jaw sets hard, his hand stills on Lucien's upper arm, and it's another tight breath before he gives up trying to formulate that presumably rhetorical question. "What he done was beyond vile. I don't use this word lightly, but that's downright evil." He's not quite trembling with rage, but might be if he allowed himself. "{Christ, you been holding that in all this whole fucking time. Goddamn him, I saw right through his charm, and if only I'd known I --}" Now he is trembling with rage and gathering Lucien just a little tighter against him. "{I won't let him hurt you again.}" There's a very cluttered churn of something happening, in the bustle of Lucien's neurological processing that Fury can feel but not quite parse. It reflects in his more legible feelings as only a muted confusion that is, slowly, carefully, teasing itself out into a deep and oddly surprised gratitude. "Oh --" sounds just a touch startled, too, and he doesn't say anything after this. He nestles his head against Fury's broad chest, his eyes closing. As Fury's arms curl tighter around him the roil of fear and hurt does not, actually, ease, but this time he doesn't try to make it.