i am still just a rat in a cage!

"That sounds funny," Stella giggles. "I don't think I've ever seen my dad do anything clumsy." She considers her father graceful, elegant. And he is—even as his joints have begun to ache, even despite the brutality simmering underneath the surface. Also, he would probably think motorcycles are for poor people or rabble-rousers. Stella thinks it sounds kind of cool that Leo's dad rides one; she's never been near one up close. She won't press, but if the opportunity arises to see it...

"Oh! Okay, sure." He's excited, eager to leave, so Stella stands up. She hesitates; her instinct is just to walk towards the door. Instead, she throws away both of their coffee cups, leaving dark rings behind on the little table.

"Let's get tacos." She's already doing something out of her comfort zone. She might as well take it a step further and get food Daniel and their private chef rarely, if ever, make.

His uncle Tao is a little like that. In public, at least. But he has yet to make the connection that the violence that simmers in his uncle's blood might also be there, or even worse, inside Daniel Romano. He does not make the connection that it's not just his own extended family that has it's secrets, or that the Romanos' might be that much darker.

"Fuck yes!"

In all honesty, he hadn't expected her to give in so easily. Or at all. He'd been prepared to needle at her a while longer before giving up. But she had, and she really, earnestly seems excited. He doesn't want to get his hopes up that she won't change her mind before they get to his house, but it's hard not to with the progress they've made.

Before he stands with her, Leo takes one of his black sleeves and pulls it past his wrist, wiping up the coffee rings from the table despite knowing someone would come out from behind the barista station to clean shortly after they abandon the table. It's not the worst thing in the world if the material smells a little like dark roast and caramel. Or vanilla. Or whatever it is that he can't exactly pinpoint.

People buy candles and sprays and plug ins to make their houses smell like that, after all.

"It's the worst! Does your brother not do shit like that to piss you off?"

He is dramatic when he continues groaning beleaguredly about the last burrito--which by all rights was actually Mira's; he'd had four of the eight burritos in the box they'd split the cost on--but Stella should be used to his dramatics at this point. He's always dramatic, always larger than life. Which is easy to be when he's so short.

He's pretty sure his contact information is listed in his sister's phone as "napoLEOn syndrome." Maybe he won't get tacos for her, actually. Or he will, but he'll eat them before she gets home and dump the foil they come in just inside her bedroom door.

"Not hard to believe, truly."

Flirtation comes from Darcy like comments on the weather, like easy exchanges of niceties, like how are you and have a good one. She suspects with Evan that it's much the same -- except, maybe (and she would never confess this), he's a little smoother than she is.

This series of thoughts evaporates in the discovery following, and Evan's loss for words, bordering on a mild panic built of disbelief, ratchets Darcy's heart rate up. Bones could have scars, in calluses in the bone (often only seen, rather than felt) and in the muscle and tissue around the fracture. But Darcy knows what that can feel like, and she's felt enough broken bones to know what this feels like. Her mouth drops open, wondering for a brief heartbeat if she's just... not great at her job. A failure.

She'd dropped out of political science to chase after Jane and Thor for some time, after all. And even that hadn't amounted to anything, falling out of hard math-aligned science back into university for medical, where things and people made the work worthwhile.

But, no-- she knows this. She's done the work, and maybe mutants had different physiology depending on manifestations of genes and dna, but... But.

This was broken. Without a doubt, she is certain of this.

Slowly, her tongue drags across her lips, suddenly so dry. Her lipstick, Darcy knows, will return to life and maybe smudge, but this is suddenly not a considerable concern.

"Daniel..."

She hasn't met the circus's benefactor, their payroll and management-- all of the work of setting up her free clinic for the performers had been done with Rhett as the middle man. But the circus is full of gossip, if a social yapper like Darcy knows what to offer in exchange, and she's heard plenty.

What was his mutation? There's a lot of talk about him healing minor injuries, some with dark looks in their eyes. Whispers about being grateful to him, for saving their jobs when no one else could, how bad it was before.

But still...

"Is he... in his office?" All fun, playful dialogue is gone. Even Professional Doctor mode has switched off in favor of a cold, distant Darcy Lewis. There is anger thrumming just beneath the surface, building through her veins as adrenaline, and the feeling is so foreign even Darcy doesn't know what will come of it.

At over six foot and with a physique he's bulked and cut for years to attain, he very rarely feels small. But he does in this moment. But worse than that, he feels guilt--and fear--clutching at him like brambles against skin.

Daniel had tried to help him. Daniel had tried to help him, and Evan had failed him. Evan had failed him, and he'd made him look bad in Darcy's eyes. It's his fault that he hadn't healed correctly, and Darcy doesn't know that.

Mr. Romano won't be happy about this.

In a hurry to stop Darcy from going to find Daniel, Evan hops down off the massage-table-turned-exam-table, and while it doesn't hurt and it's not a huge distance to cross, he loses his footing as he lands, stumbling to his good knee. His palms smart from the impact, but not much else does.

"Hey, Doc! Wait up," he calls after her, his splayed hand bracing the top of his thigh as he pushes through the canvas tent flap after her.

He's not even sure Mr. Romano is even on the premises. He comes and goes without a lot of fanfare unless there's a reason for it, and that's a part of what keeps the troupe on their best behavior even on rehearsal days. But if he is, he will not take kindly to any interruption, let alone this.

"We shouldn't bother him," he asserts, just barely keeping his tone even for reasons he hasn't come to terms with. "We should... make an appointment. He's always so busy, and he doesn't like distractions."

All of this comes out loud enough to catch Meryem's attention, and her icy glare pins him from a distance, her lips pulled out into a fine line of disapproval as she watches him hobble after Darcy until he's able to grab her wrist. Both to stop her from heading any further toward the pair of managerial trailers out back, and to use her to help him balance himself again.

I'm fine, he tells himself with laughably little conviction.

"If it's broken--" If, he continues to say. To think. "Let's just fix it. He doesn't need to be involved. What do I need? Just a good resetting and a cast?"

In that, there's a confession he doesn't realize he's making. He obviously knows that he should have had some sort of cast, or splint, or crutch when he'd had nothing of the sort.

His grips firms up on Darcy's wrist. It's not painfully tight, but it's clear he doesn't want to let her go.

Aria shrugs. So?, Vincent asks, to which she has nothing to say. Why is it so hot in here?, he asks, to which she, again, has nothing to say.

When Stella was here, frigid and uncomfortable and crying for no urgent reason whatsoever, she'd asked if Aria had a fan. Aria had stared at her, and then she had stared at Vincent, and that had been the end of that particular conversation.

It seems they're gonna have to have it eventually, though. Especially if Vincent's gonna be all curled up on her lumpy couch. He'll probably have night sweats. He'll probably have nightmares. She tries not to think about her own ghoulish encounters with Vincent's father, the pain that's branded her subconscious. She tries not to imagine Vincent shivering and shuddering and moaning in her living room, but she's never been good at denying her impulses.

She's red from shame. Confusion. All of it.

"Dude."

Muscle memory means she's used to pouring the rice into the measuring cup until she fills it up an exact amount. Her concern for Vincent's bowels and health means she hesitates when she has half a cup of rice. She pours another half of a cup, glares at Vincent like he knows what he's doing to her, and hastily tosses the rice into a pot.

He goes on while she repeats this process for measuring water.

"If you ask me one more question, I'm gonna go crazy. I'm gonna rip out all my hair and then rip out all of your hair, and then I'm gonna hang us both with nooses I made out of our hair."

She is barely kidding.

"We're not getting fresh fruit. That's not gonna be a thing. That's your first lesson. You're welcome." His enrollment into Aria Bastard's School of Hard Knocks starts NOW.

She sets a tiny timer for twenty minutes. She wants to watch the water boil, but Vincent moving around too much distracts her. She doesn't want to leave him to his own devices.

This is disgusting. One should not sweat inside unless it's on purpose, like at a full service spa with a sauna, or when working out at the gym. There isn't even enough room in this place that he could work up a sweat with burpees if the place was at a decent temperature. And yet, just standing here, he is sweating.

Even Aria, who lives here full time and should be used to it, looks overheated in this stuffy little abode. Her pale face is so cartoonishly red that Vincent thinks she might even be in danger of heatstroke. Or something. Fuck if he knows.

Maybe that's why she's always mean. Snappish, like a hungry dog. If he had to--has to, now--live in a sauna for any extended period of time, he'd probably be pretty unpleasant too.

"You're supposed to wash that," he tells her, which is not a question, and should not contribute to the murder-suicide by hair she had threatened. Obviously. "You didn't wash the rice."

He thinks of offering to help her, briefly, before he remembers how his father used to react to him attempting to help in the kitchen while he was cooking. As Aria is more like his father than his mother, who'd always welcomed his aid, he holds his tongue. And besides: he is still unpacking.

Vincent picks up his jacket, grimaces, and then uses the inner lining to wipe sweat from his brow. Because it is still hot, and Aria has started to use kitchen appliances that give off heat, and he is a big gigantic baby.

"Toiletries." He lifts a bag with toothpaste, a toothbrush, deodorant, and the least expensive non-3-in-1 shower supplies he could find, because he still has standards, even if that tripled the money he'd spent on them. Vincent lifts another bag and says "Something called Pasta-Roni," which he'd bought because it didn't look half bad on pictures on the boxes. "There's a flat of water in my trunk. And some more clothes. Phone charger."

He lists off a few more things, including some canned food but no can opener, because it had not occurred to him he would need one while he'd been at the store. Because he has never been in a situation where one had not been available to him on the off chance he'd needed one.

ARIA DOESN'T MAKE A HABIT OF DOING THINGS SHE MIGHT REGRET. The way she accomplishes this is by not regretting anything, which in turn she achieves by never feeling guilty or introspective over things she's responsible for.

But, yeah, maybe this was a bad idea.

Her AC was broken when Vincent barged in with his annoying-as-fuck little sister, and it's broken now. That's fine. That's not the issue. She can't afford, financially or emotionally, to be self conscious about her quality of life because a horrific beneficiary of nepotism is visiting, or living with her, or whatever.

But Vincent's become more than that. She's seen parts of his life she doesn't think anybody else has.

And his boner. She's seen his boner a lot.

And currently, she sees everything he values, presumably—everything he brought to her apartment for the forseeable future.

"Is that all you brought?"

She's trying to make herself dinner like she doesn't now have a perverted, pathetic whelp of a man crashing on her couch. She wonders what he's been eating since banishing himself from his parents' place. His bowels are probably all sorts of fucked up.

A duffel bag of gym clothes and toiletries thuds to the floor, followed by an assortment of different plastic bags.

"Yeah. So?"

Vincent is sweating, suddenly. He had not been sweating until he'd come inside. Even shucking out of his jacket isn't enough to stop sweating, just like last time.

"Why is it so hot in here?"

He could take his shirt off, but he doesn't think it would help much. It's a very breathable linen, you see. One he'd worn quite comfortably in the summer months in both Mexico City and Florence. Instead of removing it entirely, he just unbuttons the top few buttons and tries not to think about how his father does the same thing, distracting himself by fingering the gold St. Dymphna medal the shirt had hidden just moments earlier.

A few moments go by, and that hasn't helped enough, so he rolls the already short sleeves up a few times.

"What the fuck is a Campbell?"

Vincent had never considered himself a particularly picky eater. But now, on his own and trying to budget the cash he had bullied Stella into "loaning" him before she'd gone back home--because of course she had run back home to papa--he's realized that he is, actually. It had almost been fun, for a few days, to go around to fast food joints and bodegas to try all the things Daniel had never allowed him to eat.

But by day three, he was sick of it. All of it. Everything tastes fake, or too salty, or too sweet. Everything feels fake as he chews, like it's already been minced up and reformed in little molds or something. He also feels like fucking shit about fifteen minutes after eating at the fast food places, like he'd put low quality gasoline in a diesel engine.

By day five he'd stopped eating, more or less. Though he's nearly hungry enough not to care at this point; nearly ready to just wolf something down, cringe about it, and hope that satiates him for another couple days before he has to do it again.

"Do you have any fresh fruit?" Good God, he'd kill for a nice juicy orange. Fuck, even a lemon, a lime. Lime rounds, some salt, a little kick of chili... Vincent swallows before he can drool about imaginary citrus.

But what had she just said? She hadn't been grocery shopping in a while. He doubts she has fresh fruit, then.

"They didn't sell fresh fruit. At the dollar store." He frowns. "I thought it was like a grocery store. Why no fruit?"

Darcy clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth, all mock-disapproving. It's probably not too professional of her, to engage in idle flirtatious chatter while performing her duties, but there's some wiggle room involved in the Circus, she thinks. Certain people have to be approach in particular manners to ensure cooperation.

And, really, what does it hurt to let him try to rizz her up? She has to wheedle some of the other performers, had to have Rhett cajole some of them like an unserious parent cajoling his kid after they were caught cheating on a test.

Evan is easy-peasy, and a little flirtation? Whatever makes the medicine go down, or whatever the line from Mary Poppins was.

"I'll put the notation about hot pants down, don't you worry."

Rubbing her fingers against their respective palms in an attempt to warm them up, she leans in close -- a visual inspection. Knee swollen, with a little bruising.

It should hurt, and she wonders if he's putting on a face, playing up the bravado.

When her fingers touch against him, he's warm. Warmer than he should be, really, burning up.

"Do you typically run hot?"

There's a joke coming her way, and she knows it, but Darcy has taken on her Serious Business face, and there's no room for the heehees in the small closet-like spaces she's been given for her work.

Her fingers brush against bone, too close to the surface, and suddenly her heart is pounding, but not for any fun reasons.

He hasn’t seen the shift in her expression yet, not with her eyes turned away from his as she studies his leg. But when she delivers her diagnosis, he does hear it in her tone.

It knocks him off balance, the sudden seriousness of it. Enough that it takes him a moment or two to process the words and not just the shift away from their jovial, flirtatious banter.

Broken? He’d broken his leg?

Evan’s broken bones before. He was a clumsy kid with scrawny little fawn legs that didn’t work the same way everyone else’s did; who kept trying to do things one way when his body was set up to do things its own way; who had an extreme affinity for heights that was perilously combined with the recklessness of youth. He’s also a shameless showboater now, who pushes himself too hard to keep upping the ante in his routines to stay at the top of the lineup. And to stay in their benefactor’s good graces.

He’s taken his fair share of tumbles, and he can confidently say that this doesn’t feel like a break. Not anymore, at least. Not since Daniel had attended to him. He’d felt so fortunate–aside from the mortifying embarrassment of falling in front of the big boss–that Mr. Romano had been there that day to take care of him so quickly. To wipe the pain away like nothing so instantly, when they sometimes had to call him in on his leisure time to come help with these situations, after exhausting their own first aid attempts.

Evan can still walk and run, if a little gingerly. Jumping’s been more difficult–the landings have been much harder to stick lately–sure, but a break? No, that can’t be right. It’s totally just a sprain, if anything at all.

Frowning, he reaches out with one hand to touch where Darcy’s fingers are, letting her practiced hand guide his digits over where she’d felt the supposed fracture. And he takes the other hand to the same spot on the other leg to compare.

“No– That–” 

For the first time in a long while, his silver tongue struggles with his words. It’s hard to deny what he’s feeling with his own hands, both of which are still exploring the differences in temperature, in relative swelling, and in the structure underneath the skin. But it’s harder to juxtapose that against his lack of pain that edges on a sort of euphoria.

“I’ve had a broken leg before, doc. It didn’t feel like this.” He shakes his head for good measure, lifting a hand to his beard in thought. “There’s no way it’s broken.”

And yet, he continues to finger the break line.

His mind wars with itself, going back and forth with the new information.

Because if it’s broken, he’s been training and performing on it while it's broken. He’s taken no precautions whatsoever. He’s leapt and danced and crashed around the ring until Meryem had finally had enough of his failure to perform. How much worse could that have made it? If. If it’s broken.

But it isn’t. It can’t be. Daniel had numbed him to set the bone, made him look away, and moments later all was well. He was bearing weight on it just fine without even a twinge of discomfort or residual numbness.

Darcy's put in the work; she's studied and volunteered and found herself at the aftermath of events that would shake others foundations, but found herself still standing. Running, Triaging. Pressing fingers to columns of throats and watching the hand on her watch tick by too slowly or too quickly.

The gig for the circus is easier than that, she's certain. A few sprains, a bit of over-reaching, burns and splinters and some head injuries from where set up hadn't gone exactly to plan. She'd suspected higher rates of potential STIs if all of her pop cultural knowledge of circuses, like renaissance festivals, had been true -- but so far, there'd been little to nothing. To Darcy, the Circus is easier than even The School must have been.

Granted, one of those institutions had a built-in deathroom, and it was not the Circus, so....

Atleast, she doesn't think so.

Her interactions with Evan have been limited. An introduction over dinner, a few waves here and there, but never any solid individual time. Looking over him in the dim area they've set up, she's surprised by how boyishly handsome he is, despite being stupid tall and built. He might have been intimidating, otherwise... not to Darcy, but perhaps some other woman less inclined to starting things they could not perhaps finish. Not a worry for Evan, who's big eyes and cheerful smile diminish any threatening aura his otherwise impressive build might garner.

She notices other aspects of his physique soon after -- and while the fur and hooves are unique, they don't surprise her. Darcy has taken intimate inspections of Wolverine's son, after all, and had deep, fulfilling relationships with Norse g-ds of myth. What's unnerving about a satyr?

Her notes are, woefully, inadequate. No real past medical exams or notations of vaccines administered (she was going to have to start the circus on a rotation of shots; she could not believe they were out here without tetanus boosters) -- just some comments from Rhett and a cold insistence from the beautiful and serious Meryem.

Hurt leg, but no real pain outside of occasional reinjuries.

"Oh, brother, I am sure it's totally fine. If you're not feeling it, I'm more concerned about what keeps causing it. Consider this more, like, preventative."

The clipboard with it's sparse notes (and a few chibi-styled doodles of the circus acts) clatters to a side table made up of unutilized boxes.

"You cool if I feel it up a little?"

The way she presents her hands has him picturing himself kissing the backs of them, pressing full lips against the soft hills and valleys of her knuckles. But even he has some propriety.

He sobers a little--a little!--as he pulls his eyes from Dr. Lewis and begins to pull the bottom hem of one of his custom tailored trouser legs up over the dense fur of his injured knee. It takes a bit of fussing, sometimes, to get long pants to cooperate over the extra joints of his legs, but it's even more so now: there's a moderate amount of swelling already.

"Shoulda worn shorts today," he murmurs mostly to himself as he considers pulling the pants down instead of continuing to struggle to get the bottoms pushed up. "I've got pants like these as part of my next costume though. Wanted to practice in them."

Finally, he succeeds. And he gives the swollen joint a not-so-gentle prod as if to say 'See? It doesn't hurt.'

Dmitri-as-Harry tilts his head, interested not as sickly Harry Osborne but as power-seeking Dmitri Smerdyakov. Something big. A cure for everything.

Dmitri has to remember who he is. He meets Peter's heavy, meaning-laden look in a way that indicates I read you, brother, I read you loud and clear. It could all be about his mother—he doesn't have to call Peter out for essentially just revealing that he knows Harry is ill, too. He doesn't need to go down that road.

"That's serious stuff, Peter, I mean—"

Peter goes on. Harry would be used to being cut off by Peter's excited ramblings, and Dmitri himself is quite accustomed to shrinking around more dominant personalities (though he'd never admit it), so Dmitri shuts Harry's mouth.

"Doctor Octavius?" Dmitri tries not to sneer; he smothers down the impulse smoothly.

This is Harry. THIS IS HARRY. What would Harry say that also gets Dmitri what he wants?

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Dmitri wonders, gentle but imploring. "I could help, too. I—I want to help. In any way that I can. And if you're saying what I think you're saying—"

He cuts himself off. He decides it's best to change tactics. He is constantly, constantly changing his mind.

This? Is Harry. Why is that a question? What is it that's missing; what exactly is wrong?

Peter shifts, subconsciously putting a little extra space between himself and Harry. But he's still within orbit, still sat here clinging to what he can see right there in front of him rather than what his nerves are buzzing about.

Why didn't you tell me sooner?

Guilt gnaws wickedly at him from the inside, and it distracts him from the anxiety for the time being. Harry would want to know that. Harry, potentially, could have benefitted immensely from the research the Parkers and the Brocks had done. With Osborn funding and technology, who knows how far they could take that initial research. So much of the heavy lifting had already been done.

But Peter's not the only one of the two of them to keep secrets.

"I was going to." His hands twist together in his lap, fidgety. "When we got our startup off the ground, I was going to bring it to the table."

That never happened, though. Harry had taken off abruptly to "Europe," and he'd never had the chance. And Peter hadn't known how badly Harry had needed a cure.

Why is he not bringing that up now? Is he still holding onto his own lie? The anxiety deepens, forcing its roots in further and splitting cracks open wider still.

God, he's uncomfortable. He can't stop squirming. Can't stop himself from subtly inching away until he's at the edge of his seat.

"I think--" Harry has never made him feel like this. Why does he feel like this? "--they were dreamers. And it made the wrong people nervous. That's all."

That's all. Like all of this didn't result in his orphaning.

That's all.

Given his scrutiny, his inching closer and closer, it should not be entirely unsurprising that he reaches to touch her next. She does not act quickly enough to lurch away; when she does collect herself enough to react, she still remains in his hold. (His hands are warmer than this palace, than anything else about him, and the cool metal of his several rings is a reminder of this ever-present frigidity.) His fingers are wrapped tightly. Even if she wanted to move away, could she manage?

Lady Spirit looks around to confirm that nobody bears witness to this display of impropriety. Then again—he is the king. Can't he do as he pleases, touch women he's only just met as he pleases?

There is no greater safety for you anywhere in my land than to be by my side.

She swallows, exhales a shaky and uncontrolled gulp of air. She rather likes the sound of being by his side. Being looked after, protected—after everything she endured in Coeus and after being cast out from its territory—sounds too alluring. Like a dream.

"I will stay," she affirms. "And I will tell you anything you wish to know, though I–I am afraid I do not know the right words to capture the attention of someone of your status."

The king knows all of this, and truly, he has no issue with it. It comes with the territory, and with the way this hall is set up. When he wishes for privacy, he simply turns to different areas of his fortress. Him sitting here, acting this way so publicly, is purposeful.

"You have already captured my attention, my lady," he assuages, honey in his voice like bait on a line. "Your presence alone has bewitched me."

He can feel it. A slight quaking in the pale arm under his palm. Trepidation, though maybe it is diluted by something else. Who is he to know? Still, he likes the thought of that possibility; likes the idea that this woman knows enough to be at least a little fearful of a man in his position, but also is tempted enough by something to stay when he'd made his offer.

He thinks of this rather than of his hand shackling her to his side.