#xu mo

But you only silence sharply, trying to keep echoing breaths still. But they push out, filling the channel of space between you with your breaking agony.

There's a short moment of silence before you feel the tug of his hand on your shoulder, forcing you to turn into his gaze.

"Who did this to you?" the first question snaps from his mouth, the threat underlying in his voice as his cool, kind fingers dare to trace the air above your cheek, an apology written in nothing but grief.

You shake, unable to find words, tears spilling from your eyes and suddenly you are clinging to him. Despite the fear that stashed away in your heart, you wanted him to hold you back.

"Oh my precious girl, come inside." his hand sweeps over your head, like a wing of a cradle, and holds you gently.

His fingers trace your hair, as you refuse to move, legs like ice-picks frozen in place.

"It's okay now, you're here." he murmured, "You're safe." his nose brushed your hair as you begin to cry harder, sobs clawing through your spine. He allows you to cry, you two huddled in his doorway until your breath finally wavers, and then halts.

"Can we go inside? I would like to make you some tea." his voice murmurs, and if you wanted to stay in place for minute longer, you knew he would if you asked.

You minutely nod your head into his chest, and he slowly separates from you. He allows you to look down at the floorboards as his arm coalesce around your shoulders like a settling firefly, guiding you inside.

He would have liked to take you to sit on his sofa, but the way you cling to his bubble of space, he is worried that if he allows you to drift away from him now, you wouldn't return.

And the very thought terrifies him. More than anything else.

So he keeps his arm around you, slides to lightly keep a hand on your arm as he flicks on the kettle, and to adjust your positions as he fetches two mugs from the cupboard. The ones you said were your favourites, and had bought for him months before with a grin he had tried to stop remembering.

He'd never felt as if he could capture that sparkle in your eyes. The one that makes people fall in love at the most inopportune times. People like Victor, people like that insipid police officer.

And people like him, who had once thought they'd been above such vulnerabilties - and joy.

The sparkling glint that now held to him like an open flame to skin, and had left that lasting impression in his ruddy, bruised heart. The one he'd tried to crease into a hundred pages, only to find it blotted out, unattainable, like the cursed man who could never reach fruit from the tree or water from the pond - and the fear that he could never find it again in your eyes again. A wild fear if that glint in your eyes never came back.

And that glint is what made him want to sear it thousand times into the bastard who had ever dared lay a finger on you. Wanted to snap bone by bone by bone, as if that would make a difference to clear the pain from your lips. The impossible - that someone could ever dare to scrape that beautiful, trusting gleam from your tear-seeped eyes.

"I assume that we still do not enjoy the mint variety of tea?" his voice is catching your interest, because it flickers to him briefly, but your laugh is choked behind the miasma of pain in your gaze.

His hands momentarily tremble.

If it were possible, he would dig his teeth into your flesh and suck away all the poison, needle out the pain and the fear which stung the words from you.

He's grabbing the medical kit and ice pack now, thankful for the fact that they were in the kitchen, thankful his hands had something to clench before he guides you to the sofa. Carefully, he settled you down

That you don't notice the long, slow breath before he steps away, finding himself unwilling to leave, as if seconds shouldn't be just moments of sand hanging through the crux of a hourglass.

He glances at your unending stare at his projector and his throat squeezes. He kneels down, taking up your vision, as he places the medical kit down on your knees, gentle as a doe.

"I'm going to get our tea. Would you open my medical kit and get out the white tube for me, please?" he instructs, his voice a calm, bidding wave.

Much like a doctor who had faced terror for a thousand days and strode out with no wound, he walked into the kitchen, the splotches of calm leaving his heart. The thunder hounds his chest, like a dead corpse thudding itself against his ribcage.

His hands tremble, but he brushes his hair back, adjusting the cuff of his sleeve and by then, his tremors have been mastered.

Stable now, he's carried the mugs back out, and there's relief when that little white tube is being fiddled with by your fingers.

"What do you need this for?" your voice is small, still clogged with emotion.

He placed himself next to you, a thin line of air between your legs, as he wrapped the squidgy icepack in a thin tea-towel.

"It's arnica cream." he explained, keeping his voice low, and soft, as if any higher would fracture you like glass.

Your cheek was red, and he knew that it would be throbbing for a while longer. Despite the bitterness on his tongue, the desire to print out each bit of your story, and lacercate a perfectly decent book with his hands, he raised the ice pack.

You allowed him to press it against your face, despite the a small whimper at the coolness. He wove your fingers over it, so you could hold it on your own.

Then he popped open the paracetamol, the two white pills rolled in his hand like burdened snowflakes. He leant over to hold the glass of water he'd not had time to sip on before calling you earlier.

"When you're ready, you can take this." he fought back the desire to question you as you clutched onto the icepack. Patience today had been like gripping a knife, and with each moment he spent tending to you, the more time he couldn't figure out what had gone so horribly wrong, who he needed to punish.

When you gingerly set down the ice-pack, you took the pills with relieved gratitude, and he hated that it brought more tears to your eyes.

He breathed out again, little more than a sigh, and this time, you caught him.

"What's wrong?" you whispered, peering at him like a child, worry pressing in your lips.

"You worried me." he raised the icepack back up to your cheek, and even though your wince was there, you laced your fingers on his like a good girl.

"I'm sorry." your words creak out, teary.

He looked up, a crease between his brows, and his eyes flickered, "Don't apologise. You have no need to." without meaning to, he asked the other question that bit him warningly, "Did you intend to not tell me of this? Had I not called, would you have even knocked?"

His voice is scalding, hotter than he intended, and he somehow doesn't know why it was so hard to remain neutral.

And it's all the worse when you flinch. He drops his hands like a pin.

"I apologise - that was unkind of me." he breathed, looking at the white bottle that had ended up in his lap, and he shook his head.

Was it shame that lingered in his chest, now?

He twists the lid off the bottle, biting his tongue before deciding to tend to the other wound on you.

It was far easier to tend to himself, than it was to you. The pain, while localised when on himself, had never burnt as much as when it was you.

He pooled some of the white cream onto his fingers, the strange heady smell of the herb wafting in the air.

"May I tend to your wrist?" he subtly indicated to the side where your arm, that wasn't holding the icepack, lay curled against you.

You blink, eyes widening as your gaze fell to your wrist, as if you had forgotten the dull throbbing it emmitted.

And you had, when your cheek had stung and throbbed harder.

You nod, watching as he carefully takes your hand, and places it on his knee. You freeze as he begins to brush cream on your reddened skin, the cool, soothing herbal smell almost tingling against the red heat of your wrist. His pressure is just there, only dipping to turn your wrist over, and brushing over the lighter coloured rash.

"I would like to know who did this to you,..." his voice brushes the air, tender as the moon kissing the sea with its beams, as his fingers brushed over your wrist with the last smudges of cream disappearing.

Your name on his lips is a plea within a question, and guilt curls against your stomach protectively.

You don't want to answer.

"Please, it's nothing." your voice hovers. You don't want to think about it.

Lucien's eyes flickered, and the light wavered in his eyes. His lips curved downwards.

The sight had the guilt growing. The look on his face made you feel worse, as if you had robbed him of something far more precious than a simple explanation.

You press your face into the ice pack, the gel inside merging to your face as you hid. You couldn't look at his face, not while he was looking so upset.

"How am I supposed not to worry, when I don't know what hurt you?" his voice sighed, like a disappointed teacher.

"Stop. Please, Lucien. It's over now. It won't happen again." your voice muffled, and the feeling of his sad, glinting eyes made you want to curl into his sofa.

He tentatively pulled away the ice pack from your eyes, and he peers at you as if you were one of the kids he worked with at the orphanage - the time he sorted out that argument between Josi and Marco. The patience of a tiger, but the compassion of a saint.

He finally pulled away, and the distance fell between you two like a landslide, the fear of him leaving snagged against your heart.

"Lucien - I -" you grasped the edge of his sleeve, and he looks back at you passively.

"Please, don't leave. I'm sorry -" you whisper, head hanging, and you shift your weight with the icepack, feeling your arm tiring.

"I'm here for as long as you need me to be, silly girl." his voice coaxed back the warmth into the room, "I'm here." he gently stroked a knuckle down your hand.

You shiver, but not in fear, and worrying that he would misunderstand, you grasp onto his hand, preventing him from leaning away. It was so cool, his hand, and part of you worried that he should hold something warmer, like his mug. You squeezed it, as if you could send him your warmth, and focused your gaze on the backs of his fine-boned knuckles

"It was at work, and we had this new singer in." you start, finding your, gaze focused on the light blue veins under the skin of his hands, "He's this big thing over in Europe, and we managed to snag him for an interview before his show today." you stop, your voice having gained a tremble - and you force yourself to breathe out - just like Lucien had taught you, once.

The calm, proud squeeze of his hand made you smile despite the throb of your cheek.

"So, so - we could have a fifteen minute slot whilst he's waiting to go on, in between tech rehearsals." and you could feel it in Lucien's hand, when he found the hypothesis laid in the words you didn't say.

"What were his requirements?" there was nothing but gentle honesty in his voice, nothing but sweet, gentle honey that would attract the birds from their nests - but inside, you had this feeling there was steel somewhere, edging around them.

You shook your head, and your throat closed up, "He -" your breaths had turned shaky, and then, all you could feel was his arms around you, pulling your body into his. The soft, plush movement of finding his chest, and allowing his arms to raise the gates of the world around you.

"Shhh. It's okay, it's all gone now." the voice uttered, and there was a soft sensation of his knuckles revrently caressing your hair, "What did he ask for?"

It was facing his chest, and in his arms, you told him of the man demanding a solo interviewer, of going in bravely, boldly, with your recorder pen, and how your blouse was stained with cold coffee when you said no. How he should help you get out of it - and tried when his fingers grasped your wrists, and when you tried to scream, how your cheek swung back into the door frame.

How you had only been able to kick him messily in the shin before you could grab onto the door, slam it into him as you scarpered - and left everything behind, apart from you clutching your phone as you cryingly told Anna the interview was a bust.

The words were like stones hitting the ground, each harder against the growing pile, clanging. The awful pounding in your head yawned wider. Your eyes teared again, spilling onto his shirt, staining it. You tried to move away, to stop wrecking his very nice, soft, expensive clothes, but his arms turned to steel around you, his comfort burying into you like the softest adornments.

"Shhh. Stay here in my arms now. It's much easier this way, my silly girl." he murmured, "I am very proud of you, not just for fighting. For returning home and for telling me." he paused, "Are you tired? Why don't you take a nap, it will be a little while longer before the painkillers take affect."

You look at him, "I should probably get back to work, - Anna will be -"

"I'll take care of that," Lucien petted your hair, and leant away for his gaze to rove over you, "You're in no fit state to work like this... You are always telling me to rest when I feel ill, so now I am telling you the same. You must follow your own advice, or else what incentive does that give me?" you can feel the seriousness of his tone, despite the tease in his voice. You look down, finding it hard to refute him.

"But I still need to - if I can't get this interview done, then it affects our monthly report - I'll need to tell Victor -" your voice stops as Lucien puts a stern finger to your lips.

"I will make all the necessary arrangements, tell me what you need - make a list, and I will bring it home for you. Victor will understand." he brushes a finger over your unblemished cheek, and gently pulls the ice-pack from you, now luke-warm.

"I'll go put this back in the freezer for later. Please, make yourself at home on the sofa, I'll come back to tuck you in." he raised a teasing eyebrow before moving from the sofa, taken his undrunk, cold tea with him.

You find yourself at a loss, and yet the pulling tiredness is at the forefront of your mind. You quickly jot a list down, sending it to him as a text for the things at the office you'd need to stay at home to do work.

The idea of walking back into your office with that slapped cheek that screamed assault to everyone - would be highly unprofessional, let alone the mortifying truth after having brushed Anna's concern off. Carrying yourself back through the streets, unable to even think of going through a subway, or getting a taxi, trying to hide under the locks of your hair from prying eyes...

You were exhausted. And a nap, tucked away in the safety of Lucien's home, with him watching over you, sent a tremor of relief through you.

The idea of nightmares seemed like too great a reality. If Lucien was around, he'd chase them away.

Sighing in defeat, and odd, helpless relief, you curl into a healthily stuffed cushion, trying to spy a blanket.

Suddenly, a warm, oblong material rained over your body, and Lucien's chuckle emenated from above, "Now you're looking cosy, kitten."

You duck, mortification in your protest, "'M not a kitten!"

"Hmm." he replied, and you suddenly find Lucien's face hovering above your own, his eyes twinkling, "I happen to find myself in disagreement. But, I think it will be better if this little kitten goes to sleep."

You huff, unable to stop your smile, and mumble thank you as you feel him graciously tuck in the blanket around, as respectful as a gentleman.

He pretends not to hear it, allowing your huffiness to tickle the air instead.

"Goodnight, little kitten. I'll be back soon." his breath kisses the air, and you watch him as he leaves, in a soft, expanding wonder as the man you had never thought would be your refuge, slips back into the world on your behalf and leaves you safe on your little planet, in his.

You don't hear about the singer again. It's Kiro himself on Instagram that you suddenly see the singer's name, that sends the rushing fear through you, when you find Kiro condemning the singer for his actions. Footage and recordings had been released from multiple sources, previous staff on his payroll, as well accounts from venue and hotel staff all claiming they had the same issue; sexual harassment and aggression. The singer was reviled by all who would speak of his name. To this day, people wondered if Key had been behind the news reveal of the singer.

But no one ever knew quite how he got his limp.

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