Didn't I, My Dear? [ LUCIEN ]

tagged: kun shui. time: may 14th, 8am. notes: notes.

Lucien felt like his life had collapsed around him. He had thought, at least for a while, that things would be okay. That he'd settle into his life well and be able to enjoy it. That he'd have been able to be friends with Kun Shui, to casually chat with him out on the porch. To make smalltalk and consider him a friend, even if the gap between their positions was an impossible chasm to surmount.

Now he'd come crashing back to reality. Kun Shui had hurt him, both physically and emotionally, and he couldn't see himself going back to the way things had been. Even if Kun Shui had come to him to apologize, he still found himself unable to simply accept it and move on. There was no way for him to pretend that it hadn't happened, and when he woke he found his scalp still stung with phantom pain that had really faded hours before. He forced himself through his morning routine, going through the motions until he found himself in the shower. Then he scrubbed--scrubbed until his skin was red and painful, and only then did he let himself out.

The thought of breakfast hadn't occurred to him. He simply didn't feel hungry, and he was lost in his own thoughts as he returned to his bed, sitting on it as he dressed himself slowly. He knew that eventually he'd have to emerge--he just expected he'd do so at lunch or dinner for another silent meal, another quiet 'you may go', and then he'd return to his books and stories.

His books never betrayed him.

He was reading through a book sitting up on his bed when there was a knock at the door, and his head snapped up, suddenly worried. Probably a maid come to find him for breakfast. Maybe Kun Shui was annoyed he hadn't come down. He stared sullenly at the door for a minute before standing up, approaching the door and pulling it open.

It wasn't a made. He froze, eyes widening suddenly and then took a step back to clear the door way. Kun Shui had brought him food. Not just sent it up with a maid--but he'd brought it himself, personally. He wasn't sure what to make of it, but he was fairly sure that Kun Shui would want to set it down.

"Kun Shui..." He hesitated, trying to think of the right way to word it. "I didn't think you'd come." Or send anything, or anything else.

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In some ways, it seemed alarming that Kun Shui would go so far out of his way to bring him food. That was work for staff, for the maids or the chef. It wasn't work for the dragonhead. It wasn't work for a triad member at all.

He supposed that meant that Kun Shui wasn't there as a the dragonhead. He was there as Kun Shui, the man who lived with him and probably considered it an unnecessary burden and annoyance if Lucien was going to make trouble. He might have been Jun Shi's twin, but it didn't occur to Lucien that he might be there to put him down if he was going to make trouble. It simply wasn't like Kun Shui to do that. Kun Shui had his own little sense of honor, his own code of conduct. He wouldn't sneak in with food and false concern, only to slit his throat.

If he was going to come and kill Lucien, he'd do so far more obviously then he was.

Lucien gave him a small smile, eyes wandering over to the food. He hadn't been hungry, but he wasn't rude enough to outright ignore the food. He would eat, although he likely wouldn't start until Kun Shui was gone. He didn't expect him to linger for long, and he moved carefully over to his bed, sitting down at the food of it, his hands in his lap. He must have looked strange--ruddy red, with clean straight red hair. As if nothing the day before had ever happened. He was static, stuck in place, and to Lucien it seemed like he'd always be like that.

It almost made him want to escape, but Lucien knew himself, and he knew that he was far too much of a coward to even try, no matter the method.

"Thank you." He said with a small smile, eyes flicking over to the food. "I'm sorry about all the trouble yesterday." His voice was whisper soft, and it was unlikely he'd raise it even to normal speaking volume for the rest of the conversation.

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The whole thing had been an awkward and painful experience, and Lucien had no desire to repeat it. He was staying quiet, speaking very little and generally only when spoken to, and he was second guessing every word out of his mouth. He was afraid that he'd trip up, that he'd say something to upset him and ruin the general quietness and apologetic nature of the conversation. He kept his eyes down, hovering at chest height, but never let them wander up to Kun Shui's face properly.

It was an unfortunate side effect of his upbringing that he knew exactly what someone in Kun Shui's position would likely want. It had served him well enough with Jun Shi once he'd gotten used to it, preventing the majority of the pain that would have befallen him. It was too late to go back to that, but it had still stopped the situation from escalating for too long.

He'd latched onto every plausible reason for Kun Shui's action, and in the end two stood out. He'd spoken out of turn, of course, but the main thing had obviously been questioning him. People hated to be questioned by someone who was a lower rank then them, and it didn't get much lower then Lucien's present rank. Was that what Kun Shui was looking for? For him to admit that, to promise to never do it again? Because he never would.

Like it or not, Lucien had mentally put Kun Shui back in terms of Jun Shi.

"I shouldn't have spoken out of turn. I shouldn't have second guessed you either." He'd said no, and no meant no. Not 'maybe'. Not anything else. Just no, and he could have saved himself a good deal of pain and humiliation if he'd accepted that sooner.

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When the question came, Lucien wasn't sure how to handle it. For most of his life he'd been able to respond to such things almost instantaneously. Even if he hadn't had something planned, he could still wing it and come up with something that was more than adequate for the situation.

Those days were long passed, and it took Lucien several silent minutes of thinking to compose himself and prepare a proper explanation. He couldn't have blurted out an answer if he tried. He knew he was afraid, and knew there was no point in trying to deny it. If he did, Kun Shui would call him on it, because the possibility of Lucien not being afraid was even less then the possibility of Kun Shui not being stressed. They were simply true.

Why he was afraid was a complicated mess of things. There were a lot of things that were contributing to it, not all of which were immediately obvious. He had no power, no freedom. He had a man living a floor below him who desired to torture him until he died. He had no friends, no family, and only a single person to speak to. None of those were the most prominent reasons though, and after a bit of thought, Lucien settled on the two biggest ones. Even knowing them though, it was a struggle to explain them properly, and he picked his words carefully as he worked through it.

"I'm afraid-" He cut himself off, a bad start as he tried to recompose himself. "Your brother never... he didn't start by hitting me. He started by being nice, and visiting me when I was alone." And Lucien had clung to that interaction desperately. "And then he became more critical, and then he started to... he would punish me. At first it was for normal enough things, for speaking out of turn or questioning him, and I told myself that he was helping, so that I wouldn't anger anyone else in the future. But then it got worse and worse. If I didn't tell him things, I was punished for not telling him. If I did, I was punished for speaking out of turn. No matter what I did, he would find a reason to hurt me for it, and..." Even if he realized now that nothing he could have done would have satisfied Jun Shi, and that Jun Shi was simply making things up to punish him for, the conditioning was still there. He still hesitated to do things like lie or speak out of turn, simply because Jun Shi had done such a thorough job with discouraging those behaviors, even if in the end his training had fallen to pieces. "And I'm just - just afraid that'll happen again." That Kun Shui would walk down hat same road of punishing him for the tiniest missteps, no matter how good he'd been at the start. After all, Jun Shi had been kind at the start too, and Lucien had let himself forget that, letting hope lead him down the only path available to him.

There was another part though, and his voice got even softer as he added it on. "And I'm - I'm afraid you'll get bored of me. Or decide that I'm not worth the effort." Because if he did, death would be the best possible option. Kun Shui slitting his throat would be a mercy compared to letting Jun Shi have him. Jun Shi would drag his death out for weeks, if not months, and it would be nothing but pain. If Kun Shui got bored of him, Lucien could only hope he'd be kind enough to kill him himself.

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In a lot of ways, it was the worst possible answer. Not 'we'll work through this' or 'I'll do my best not to pull at your hair in the future'. Just dismissal. Being with Kun Shui was not the right place for him, which meant he'd go elsewhere.

A part of Lucien was screaming, because there was really only one place where Kun Shui could send him. He couldn't free him, couldn't send him back to Hong Kong. The only place he could go was the floor below, to stay with someone who had already expressed an interest in taking Lucien for himself. That part of him had started screaming and showed no signs of stopping, but Lucien shoved it down harshly, face impassive but cold.

He didn't have it in him to break down and cry anymore. That was the end. Kun Shui would give him to Jun Shi, and then he'd suffer. The only possible out he saw was still a bad one--it still ended in his death, but it ended in a few hours, rather then a few weeks. His eyes stayed down, gazing at nothing at all for a moment before he responded. The pause wasn't so long that time around.

Because there was only one thing to do or say, and the wording didn't matter so much. "If there's no difference for you, I'd... I'd prefer that you killed me. Or the guards. Just not Jun Shi." Anything but Jun Shi. And if Kun Shui said no, and said that he was going to go back to Jun Shi? Well, then there was a perfectly fine balcony in the apartment.

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He didn't know. It sunk in then, even if he should have been able to realize it before. Kun Shui didn't realize what his twin brother had done. Even after finding him choking Lucien, even after the mess he'd made of Lucien's still aching pinky, he still didn't know. He hadn't connected the dots in the only possible way. Lucien had little doubt that it was because they were family. If Jun Shi had been a guard, he'd have figured it out all on his own. But Jun Shi was family, and that had left Kun Shui with a blind spot big enough to drive a train through.

Lucien wasn't going to hide it. A few weeks ago he might have dodged around the point out of fear of retaliation, but there was no more of that. Jun Shi wouldn't come after him any harder then he already was. Such a thing wasn't possible. All he could do was tell the truth, and then hope that Kun Shui was as horrified as he should have been. Because it was a horrifying thing, and it had been his life for the past year.

So he explained. He took his time and he picked through it all, but he still explained it, word by word. And when he was done he sat there on the edge of his bed, hands clenched and pinkie twinging with pain.

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Silence was possibly the worst thing Kun Shui could have done to him. A tiny part of Lucien was hopeful, clinging desperately to the minute possibility that Kun Shui might feel pity for him, might realize what what his twin had done was horrible, and that he was in need of help, not murder.

That possibility was a tiny flickering light in a dark cave, surrounded by monsters in the dark. The chance that Kun Shui would accept that his brother had done a horrible thing--that he wouldn't just call Lucien a liar, or ignore him outright, or worse of all, say that he'd known all along was a tiny remote possibility. That tiny flicker of hope was hurting him more then anything, and he could only sit there and wait. He simply sat there, saying nothing, and every second he didn't, Lucien's worries escalated. He didn't know what to say, or if he should even try to break the silence, and his hands only grew tighter until he finally realized that he was bleeding, his nails dug so hard into his palm that they'd drawn blood.

He forced his hands to unclench, staring down at the trickle of blood.

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It was good that Kun Shui had chosen to go slow, because if he hadn't, Lucien would have jumped at every little movement. He was worried and paranoid, feeling like a dammed river that was about to burst. He had to know. He had to know what Kun Shui was going to say, if he'd be sympathetic or not. He had to know, because if the answer was 'no', then it'd be the last question he ever got to ask.

When Kun Shui finally spoke, the dam did break. There were no horrible wracking sobs, but he did sag, tears running down his face. There was nothing but relief. Kun Shui felt bad for him. Kun Shui would help, would keep him away from Jun Shi. Even if Kun Shui hadn't said any of those things, to Lucien they were implied. He hadn't turned against him, hadn't insulted or demeaned him. That meant he was safe, and he'd be okay, and he couldn't think of anything past that. He let his hands open, let Kun Shui touch him and check his wounds, and he tried to force himself to breath, to not devolve into ugly sobs.

He couldn't manage words, and was forced to nod instead.

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It took several minutes for the tears to stop, but finally Lucien was done. Relief still lingered in every part of his body, the tenseness of the past twenty four hours having finally eased away. He was safe. Kun Shui would protect him. Not just in Lucien's mind, but in actuality. He'd said it--said that he would keep him safe, that he'd be alright, and that everything was going to be okay.

He wasn't thinking about being proper, or about how he was supposed to be presenting himself. He sagged, leaning against Kun Shui's shoulder, head tipping to lean against him. Kun Shui had kissed at the injury, had told him it was going to be okay, and Lucien was so far beyond relieved. If it had been any later, he'd have fallen asleep where he was, but it was only the early morning, and while he was emotionally exhausted, physically he was just fine.

But for the moment he was content to rest there, letting himself finally relax, the tension gone in an instant.