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You ought not to leave a dog in a hot car.
Lucio has heard this saying before, though he has never owned a dog, nor a car. His old family wasn't rich enough to begin with, and vehicles like those would be in the eyes of every backstreets thug within a hundred-mile radius. If you want to be safe, you don’t show off like that. Instead, you stick yourself to the shadowed walls and ooze between the gnarled bricks. You flatten yourself to the scuffed ground and liken your soul to nothing more than the road beneath their wheels.
But sometimes, those noisy, boneheaded syndicate higher ups would use their narrow roads for street racing. Or sometimes, they'd bring those impenetrable, gaudily painted steel boxes just for show, while they shook hands behind closed doors, chucking cigarettes butts and beer bottles from out the windows.
You hardly need to guard cars like those. Anyone above the age of three in the backstreets has already drilled into their brains—you do not touch the fingers’ property. There is no ‘risk versus reward’ to consider. It is a simple fact, just like how the sky is grey, and the streets smell of smoke and death.
But what isn’t a hard fact is security.
You don’t have to be loud to attract the attention of the unkind. You don’t have to be disloyal to be punished, or betrayed. You don’t have to be the first to dirty your hands—they’ll be soiled either way by the time they’re forced to bury your kin.
That is to say—being good is not enough.
When Lucio came to this realization, he turned his attention to those flashy cars again, and stopped covering his ears when they’d run down the street. They were loud, yes. Reprehensible, yes. Murderers, warmongerers, disgusting brutes squeezing what remains out of the residents’ small lives—
But they were safe.
Judge the boy if you must, but for all the sanctity with which he conducted himself, that was his sole thought. How nice it would be to sit in that box—to live in that box, without fearing he’d be taken by a sweeper, or robbed, or killed, or kidnapped. To drink booze for water, and fill yourself on real, hearty meat. It didn’t matter where the car drove, nor its driver, nor the price to keep it running. It didn’t matter whether the AC was on—he’d adjust his blood to match the temperature, or die trying.
In that way, weren’t those rich snobs just idiots for coining such a saying? The dog should be happy if he has a car, and gets to stay in it.
Disregard that. Lucio knows better now than to mock his masters.
Lucio opens his jaw wide and breathes in, letting the lukewarm air cool his burning lungs. His cheek has been pressed to this floor for so long, he’s begun to see the ants and stray hairs between the grime of the concrete. A good sign, he thinks, if his vision is sharpening, and not blurring. In just… a little while longer, he will pick himself up. But no one is watching right now. He can rest a little while longer without them knowing he’s being a lazy piece of shit.
A sudden shuffle from behind him makes him jolt on his palms, before his body slumps back onto the floor, the jagged motion sending a sharp pain through his bones as he rolls himself over on his shoulder to face this noise, yet his stomach drops, and his chest tightens, like every limb had turned to lead.
“Do be at ease,” the pinky apprentice whispers, barely audible amidst the pounding of Lucio’s head. “You needn’t fear any meddling from my humble self.”
Ren?
Lucio’s mouth opens to speak, before his breath catches on a sharp cough, coating the hand over his mouth with a pinkish, red spotted froth—whatever came out when Valencina kicked him in the stomach. He heaves and holds his chest, trying to mimic the absolute stillness that seemed so comfortable moments ago.
The apprentice blankly inches closer, before speaking up again. “Forgive me, but…” He waits for the slow, delayed recognition of Lucio’s eyes meeting his own before continuing. “You look terrible.”
“Why are you here?” Lucio slurs, his mouth wet, jaw throbbing. “How long…” He almost sounds offended by Ren’s sudden appearance, which is unheard of for him.
“It was Kira,” Ren sighs. “She’d scampered about Master’s Corridor in a panic, looking for my lowly self after she’d heard of your most recent training session. Only, she was too afraid to step into the thumb nursefather’s presence and investigate your condition on her own.”
“Hahh?”
“If I’m to relay what she said, quote: “That lady was seriously beating the shit out of him today, way more than usual! Like I’m scared he’s gonna die. I even heard him screaming!”, and so forth.”
“I wasn’t screaming.” Lucio’s expression knits into a scowl, not to the girl herself, but the gross insinuation about his own character.
Ren ignores Lucio’s insignificant pride. “Nonetheless, are you dying?” He steps around the Lucio and checks him from the other side. “Your wounds look far more gruesome than appropriate for a training session.”
Nonsense. Valencina was kind enough to use the blunt of her blade on him. The bruises, ruptures, and cracked ribs are a mercy compared to even her single, unrestrained slash.
“You may take your leave.” Lucio turns on his back, propped up by his elbows for the slightest dignity one could have while speaking to someone from the floor. “You’ve heard that child’s ramblings more than enough; she fixates on the wrong things. I was about to take care of these wounds myself.”
“Then can you stand?” Ren leans down, his passive tone becoming the slightest bit provocative.
Lucio’s palms slide against the floor’s grit. He hitches his weight upwards, torn muscles screaming, his fingers flexing against the cold concrete.
Then, he simply stopped. He untenses and lays back on the floor again. That laying still, in his mind, would be less shameful than trying and immediately flailing back to the ground in pain. If it were Kira here, perhaps he would rise and stagger off to quiet her fretting. If it were Valencina, he would snap to attention, fix his limp, and swallow the iron in his mouth. But with the ever detached Ren, he merely rests his skull on the concrete again, looking as if he wants to sleep.
Ren outstretches his gloved hand to the man on the floor. “Though I predict you are too stubborn to allow yourself to be carried, would you at least allow me to support your stride?”
Lucio’s eyes guiltily track the limb, before darting away in fear as if he never needed it. “My… I shouldn’t leave from where my master has left me. She still must retrieve the means of my wounds’ treatment. She has never left me to die for a mere training session,” he reassures.
He doesn’t enjoy the fact that he let slip the fact he was going to die, but if this apprentice would just leave already, he could remedy all these blunders.
“Lucio.” Ren visibly frowns at him, unable to hide his pity. Lucio almost wants to cut him off before he expresses whatever thought he’s about to say. “The reason I passed these halls without fuss is because she’d been passed out on the couch. It would serve your memory well enough to assume she was intoxicated, correct?”
A chill runs through Lucio’s bones, though his face remains a rigid mask. “My misjudgement then. She would not reasonably be expected to attend to me in this state.”
Ren centers himself at Lucio’s feet, crouching now with both arms outstretched. “Indeed. So allow yourself my humble assistance. With the meager supplies Kira will have rounded up, we may halt the development of your most grievous wounds. Furthermore, my lowly self shall acquiesce a more surefire method of treatment from the Dihui Star. Regeneration would be more favorable than healing with permanent damage.”
The casual mention of the Star’s name makes Lucio’s heart skip. “Will she not punish you for this? How will the debt be paid?”
“She won’t. There will be no debt. And I forbid you from speaking further on that matter.” Almost irritated, Ren reaches down and grabs Lucio’s hands himself. “What use will a dead textbook have? Allow yourself the virtue of ‘selfishness’ as you see it, if it will let you live.”
Ren no longer waits for a yes, because at this rate, he thinks Lucio will just pass away by the time he ever budges willingly. He pulls up.
The world flips over, and Lucio tries to carry it on his shaking knees. Not wanting to fall backwards, nor wanting to fall into Ren’s shoulder, he grasps tightly at the apprentice’s robes, wobbling as if he were on ice. Ren notices his left side is weaker than his right, so he slides Lucio’s arm over his neck and holds him by the waist. Unwittingly, Lucio has been forced to go along with him.
“If she wakes…” he breathes.
“It is Valencina’s utter ineptitude that led to your condition. If she cannot swallow that to recognize your need for assistance, then she has no right to call herself a nursefather.”
Lucio exhales through his nose. It’s the closest thing to a laugh that he’s had in a while—she really must have knocked the sense out of him to be disrespecting her with him here. Ren didn’t much see the humor in it, but he likes seeing Lucio defiant like that, if only it didn’t take such a beating to achieve. It's a small, stubborn fire resting in his soul that’ll never let him truly become the textbook he so wishes to be.
The longer Lucio walks, the more fever-like his vision becomes, the overhead lights flickering in a blur, the limp of his step like dragging his leg through molasses.
He doesn’t realize they’d reached their destination until the air changes, colder, and more sterile. A faucet turns, and water sprouts.
“Look up,” Ren directs.
They’re standing in front of the sink, face-to-face with a cracked and dirty mirror. Lucio is almost glad it's so fragmented, seeing as Ren was more than right—he looked like complete shit. His hair tie must have fallen loose at some point, his long, tassled locks making him look haggard. And the mixture of dirt, blood and swelling more likens him to the victim of an explosion. He can imagine Valencina tossing a rag into his hands, telling him to clean that up, because even she would feel bad seeing him like this.
Lucio was… a little bit excited for when he’d get to go to her sober, his body broken, just to hear her say that she went too far. There was something vindictive in taking in the microexpression of pity on her brow. Because when you deserved it from her, then you were allowed to finally lay back, and frown. She’d never help him herself, though. Not like… Wait—
Ren wets a rag in cold water, and produces a disinfectant to mix into it. Lucio only realizes the command to ‘look up’ was not an invitation for his introspection, but an angling so that Ren could clean his face off.
“I–I have my hands…” Lucio trails off, mouth snapping shut at the freezing sting once the rag dabs at his face. Later, he’ll make his stance clear. Later, he’ll take back his dignity and clean himself off like he should, but…
“Turn to the right,” Ren says, as if he hadn’t heard Lucio.
Lucio meekly tucks his hands together in front himself on the ceramic. “..okay.”
It's so cold, and wet and sudden. His heart begins to pound in a way that makes him want to kick the wall, if his legs weren’t aching so badly. Ren brushes over him broadly, like peeling the paint off of a canvas. Lucio digs his nails into his hand, discovering some to be broken, in order to take this gift without flinching. The motion wasn’t all that gentle, and it scratched at his wounds a number of times, but he was entranced, tracking the steadiness of Ren’s eyes as he could in the shards of the mirror, just marvelling at how someone might see him. This was gross. He felt gross about it, like he was some no-good thief, stealing from Ren right under his nose, but he couldn’t grasp what he was taking.
“To where has your sense vanished?” Ren sighs. “You were to let all this dust and dirt into your wounds had you laid there any longer.”
“Sorry.” Lucio mumbles, regretting the words the moment they left his lips.
Ren only switches his attention, steadying Lucio’s chin with the tip of his fingers, and dutifully scrubbing away the red and pinkish stains at the corners of his mouth, then washing the cloth again. What Lucio must have been stealing is warmth. He’s trapped between the pinky apprentice and the sink, smothered in a heat in sharp contrast to the towel sweeping over him. Eventually, every breath begins to smell like Ren too—clean and ink-like. Calm and serene. And it was a real calm, not the one Lucio had ground out of his old, desperate bones.
Lucio knew better than to believe in an ideal like trust. You need only be logical to discern who wants to keep you, and who has no reason to. That is what makes you safe. That is why he knows his master did not mean to kill him, even if she nearly did.
Nothing made sense in this way when it came to Ren, but he was still rather a decent person, in a vacuum at least. The best Lucio could assume was that he was a ‘good’ man, a lofty term he knows better than to rely on to judge anyone, really. The apprentice had no reason to sabotage him, nor any need to keep him around. So Lucio takes this kindness for as long as he could get it, because there was no logic within it, and he knows not when it will run dry.
A strange thought crosses Lucio’s mind.
If I asked him to, would Ren flee this place with me?
Kira, Albina and Sora are all too attached to their mentors—there is no hope of them leaving any time soon. It is only Ren that floats free to wherever he pleases, never crushed under his master's thumb. That is his best quality, yet also the reason that they differ so utterly. That is why Lucio doesn't need him—in that, he cannot save him—and he does not need Lucio. But Lucio likes him, more than he does Valencina, he thinks. Just for the simple ways he's treated him, talked to him, understood him, and never pushed him. You don’t need to enjoy the car you sit in to cherish and guard it. And yet this sudden longing in his heart, for what strays outside the window, makes Lucio grasp at whatever thread might just pull Ren inside.
“Had she cut through any flesh covered by your clothes?”
“Mm.” Lucio obediently raises his hands, pulling back the sleeves to reveal more bruising, cuts and dried blood.
His breath hitches. There was little reason to be so surprised when Ren takes his hands into his own and scrubs the grime from his sensitive palms, or pulls them both to the sink, and runs that cold water over them. Something strange has come over him, to be biting back a frantic smile in his wound care.
“Let that worry leave your mind,” Ren soothes.
He looks back to the mirror to watch Ren, leaning over his shoulder, so close, holding him in his hands, boxing him in. It was more touch than he needed to complete this task—more touch than Lucio deserved. Lucio wasn't much into art’s analysis like Albina, but he finds it almost rude on fates’ part, how the mirror fractures in shards over his own silhouette, and leaves Ren in the tranquil, solidity he deserves.
“F-fuck…” Lucio stutters under his breath, realizing something horrible.
“Hm? Is there somewhere causing you pain?”
“Um.” Lucio takes the edges of the sink in a white-knuckled grip.
The blood that should have been clotting his wounds shut and helping his battered muscles stay upright had rushed south with a humiliating insistence, pooling with heat.
He was hard.
Lucio bounds forward, abdomen pressed to the ceramic in an effort to hide it. The suddenness draws more attention, but Ren doesn't notice what's truly wrong. Ren doesn't notice because he isn't gross in the way Lucio is, who's pants strain from a simple act of goodwill.
“I am fine.” Lucio coughs. “I will clean out my mouth. Look away, please.”
Ren obliges, setting the rag down on the small counter. Lucio, finally in control of his hands again, splashes himself in cold water. It doesn't feel so freezing anymore. Blood and other fluids he can't name spill slowly from his mouth, making his eyes dart to the mirror in a split second—Ren is looking away, good. His gums are sensitive, and his teeth aching. Spitting will only aggravate the wounds further, so he's forced to let it slowly drain out from him, like slobber on his chin
Lucio feels a sudden touch to his hair and tenses.
“Here,” Ren says, his warning delayed.
Ren gently sweeps the stray hairs from Lucio’s forehead and smoothes them back. Then he grasps it all in one hand, helping keep the hair out of Lucio's face while he works. Nothing hurts. No pulling. Grossly, Lucio's mind drifts to how cool the thumb pressed to his skull feels. He didn't like it when Valencina touched or complimented his hair, not one bit. The whiplash of this tenderness is not helping Lucio calm down.
He drowns his face in more cold water, taking longer than he needs to clean himself, until a chill radiates from his skin, and his sorry arousal no longer tugs against his pants.
Lucio awkwardly gestures with his arm, and Ren takes it over his shoulder again, the closeness that shook Lucio reading as nothing more than a necessity to the apprentice.
Lucio doesn't even know where they're going. Only that it's getting quiet, and much darker, a midnight blue shining past the walls the further down the corridor they roam. He shouldn't be afraid of the dark, nor any eeriness of the house he's lived in for so long, but he always did feel odd intruding to the other domains of the other fingers. Well, it's not like being in the thumb's domain eased his mind either. At least Ren was with him, for now. Lucio knows that's a terribly clingy, childish feeling to have. But for as long as he's allowed to indulge in it, he will.
Ren sits him down at the training room's cushioned bench.
“H-here ya go.” Kira's voice is uncharacteristically small. She quickly lays out the supplies, looks at Lucio, then to the floor.
“Thank you, Kira. Your assistance in this matter has been invaluable.” Ren bows deeply to the shorter girl. He makes eye contact with Lucio, clearly nudging him to say something.
“Yes. I will recover shortly, so there is no need to worry about my condition any longer, Kira,” he rasps.
Kira nods, her mouth closed.
Ren covertly flicks Lucio’s arm with a finger. Does he wish for me to say more?
“Ah right, and… thank you for your… concern. And supplies. And call to action. Thank you very much.”
Kira doesn’t laugh, or make a joke, or anything that signifies it’s really her. She looks like she’s seen a ghost, and that ghost is Lucio’s swelling face.
“Kay… I'm gonna dip, but tell me if you guys need anything.” Kira gives an awkward thumbs up before leaving.
Ren clears his throat and turns back to Lucio. He neatly organizes the supplies. High quality gauze, thread and needle, splints, medical tape, bag of ice, a comic book, high proof alcohol… And also drinking alcohol? Lucio’s face scrunches at the sight of it.
Ren gives a soft laugh. “I suppose you'll have no partaking in that, even if it would ease your pain.”
“I would rather not.”
“That is fine then. Begin by removing your shirt.”
Lucio’s mouth snaps shut in hesitation. He doesn't want anything to go awry again.
Ren adds. “It is not the first time I've seen you humble and wounded. I will cast no judgement.”
You overestimate my composure the first time it happened.
Lucio sighs and disrobes. The air in here is too cool. There is no shock, anger nor pity in Ren's expression, but rather a pause he takes to regard each and every scar, old and new across Lucio's chest. It was a reserved, clinical interest that Lucio couldn't decide if he hated or craved.
Ren kneels before Lucio, disinfectant and cloth in hand once more.
Lucio takes a deep breath, quickly crossing his legs tight, and braces himself into a rigidity of pure, frozen focus.
It's over? It must be over, but it never really is.
Ren left. Lucio heard some murmurs of the apprentice talking with his master, but he didn't hear any yelling, so it must have gone well. And then, silence. They disappeared off to some place together. It is fine.
Lucio is waiting again, right where his benefactor left him. His top was bloody and dirty, so discarded to the ground it lay, while his pants were rolled up to his knees to accommodate the bandages. The chill in here was undeniable, and the blue hue only made the appearance of ice more convincing.
Kira’s silhouette passes by the closed door every once in a while, quite obviously sneaking a glance. If Lucio had a little less pride, maybe he’d call her over and ask her to bring a spare shirt, or even just talk to her, to cut through this eerie silence for both of them. He needs to thank her properly later. Would he do a deep bow like Ren? No, maybe he’d just buy some trinket from one of those action shows she likes.
Instead, he leans sideways, pressing his cheek to the bench to face the door, unnoticed strands of his long hair dipping to the floor. This whole block of the house of spiders runs its AC a little too high, even if you were fully clothed. Maybe that’s why Ren is always wearing gloves.
But it's no issue, really. Lucio can easily adjust his blood to a temperature like this. In fact, like an indignant child, he feels he must—that it it's his penance—or a piece of proof that he can be satisfied with nothing.
He’s been frozen, he’s been burnt. He’s been hungry, and he’s been full. He’s been dirty and clean, sheltered and rained on. But Ren draped his robes over him like a blanket before he took off, and made Lucio believe it’s more than enough to stave off all of these needs. He holds it close to his face, and expectedly, it smells as if he were standing in front of him. The outer layer is thick and dark, but the inside is insulated by a warm, soft fuzziness. Unconsciously, he almost finds himself gnawing at the hem, but he catches his own rudeness before ruining his benefactor’s gift.
His eyes begin to unfocus, regarding the blank, cubic structure of the room, like a paper yet to be marred. Wood lattice travels across the walls, dividing it into sharp bars, only a little thicker than the door. This space maintained an air-tight silence, even when the slightest shuffle could be heard down the hall with such thin, thin walls. That didn’t make it calm—it only made sure its inhabitants knew with minute detail the extent of their loneliness in full. And the way Lucio saw it, he’d rather the world pound and quake around him in his quiet box, just to assure him that his walls were working—could endure—as opposed to a box that’s held together with the gentleness by which people step around it.
If the light behind them were just a little brighter, the window of these paper walls might look like a sky. Lucio knew better than to demand a nice view from the box he stayed, but the selfish, glowing thought lingered…
How nice would that be, staying in here?
Lucio feels as though he’s standing outside on the curb again, watching the cars pass by. His utmost obedience in Valencina promised him nothing, just as he should’ve assumed the first time he was beat to a pulp.
Yet he recalls the way Ren had gently taken his hair in his hands, and he imagines looking back up in that mirror to see them, the apprentice grasping his hair like a new leash. A new house. A new car. A new ruler over his soul.
Lucio would do it. Lucio would do it, if Ren needed him, and these walls, no stronger than curtains, could offer even the hollow illusion of protection he feeds himself on. He’d leap from this window, and into the midnight glass of another.
His body shivers, but his heart tells him he’s warm.
Just for this hour, he gnaws on that daydream, a thin trail of saliva escaping past his bruised lips. The view was too brilliant. The driver was too kind. The price was too little.
What lovely places this cold, paper car might drive him.