suchmiracles | IC; Deerington Inbox

IC; Deerington Inbox

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Kurt leaves his hand on his stomach after Wrench releases him, fingertips brushing over the rough fabric of the bandages, his face hidden for a moment under a fall of increasingly unruly dark curls as he looks down at himself. Blue, white, blue, then the soft flannel check of the pyjama pants rescued from the thrift shop and darned into usefulness, mostly in the tail area. He passes his hand across the site where Laura's claws had killed him, for a moment, and wonders if there will be a scar or two. Not that anyone will be able to see it under his fur. Like Logan, he can hide the cost of his bravado. Or his foolishness.

He lifts his head and looks at Wrench, already smiling. O-K, he replies. Thank you.

The gratitude is wholehearted, and though he thinks the words aren't necessarily required every time Wrench does something for him, he says them anyway. Fastening them in his memory, so the gestures become as fluid as a tumbling trick.

Now you. This, he knows, will be trickier. The man hasn't so much as shifted his shirt since arriving, at least not in front of anyone except himself. He doesn't give Wrench room to argue, pointing at his shoulder, where he had touched and felt the other man flinch away when Fern had arrived. You're hurt. Let me see.

Edited 2019-09-04 23:37 (UTC)

There's no sign to say "you're welcome" in American Sign Language. There's an expression to welcome someone, or to make them feel welcomed in your space. But to excuse someone's gratitude from them takes a different kind of pronouncement. A thumbs-up, perhaps, or a wave of a hand to dismiss the very gesture. Or, in Wrench's case, the same amount of thanks given back. He expresses it no less earnestly, the touch of his fingers under his chin and the extension outward. Thank you, he says in turn. For trusting me, for not turning me out. For seeing in me something more than I feel capable of showing.

Wench means to move away. Perhaps to the table, to clear their mugs or to deal a hand of cards. Or maybe to the couch, where he's left The Art of War opened to chapter nine: the movement of troops through enemy territory. Kurt's hands stop him, and he watches with curiosity as the man shapes the vocabulary he's learned into sentences. The gesture towards himself makes Wrench seize up. He draws back, turning his shoulder protectively away from the other man. As eagerly as he's wanted to help and as quick as he's been to take up the job on Kurt's behalf, he struggles here. Wrench's reflex is still that of a skittish animal, poised to oppose to quick a movement over its own head.

I'm fine, his hands say, but Kurt's finger is still held there, gesturing to his shoulder like he knows better. Wrench pins him in his steady, unblinking gaze for several seconds before finally relenting. He unbuttons the long sleeved shirt and slings it over the back of a near chair. Again at the thermal top he hesitates, but that comes over his head eventually as well. The man underneath the garments is not so broad after all. His skin still holds the color of the sun, radiating a golden warmth save for the places where the scarring has taken hold. There worst of it is centered around his abdomen, where the skin puckers just northeast of his navel. It's a wound that could have only been caused by the entry point of a hollow-tipped bullet. The embedding and expansion still lives there in the hollow. Other spots of scarring are faded -- patches of light across a tan landscape -- but numerous nonetheless. Along his right bicep, one of the newest stretches and is pieced together with a dozen stitches of fishing wire. At his back, near the shoulder Kurt's grasp meant to reassure, another laceration is haphazardly patched.

Wrench watches Kurt watch him, and can only think of one thing to say: It doesn't matter. Tools aren't meant to be revered.

The way Wrench backs up away from Kurt's reaching hand is familiar. Kurt has seen it before, in friends and strangers alike, mutants and humans who have found their way to the care of the X-Men. Heroes who refuse to peel back the layers of their uniform so their friends don't have to see the extent of the bruising rippling around their ribcage; children who cry when asked to show the burns that their new powers have made on their hands. It is the movement of a scared, hurt animal, who fears to be hurt again.

Kurt's heart aches to see it -- aches worse to be the cause of it -- but he steels himself with the necessity and ignores Wrench's attempt at a lie that his face betrays as easily as his hands say it. He glances away, though, as the man begins to undress, turning slightly to the table to arrange and examine the medical supplies. He's no Hank McCoy or Dr. Reyes, but he is a trained field medic -- they all had to be, in those early days, all of Xavier's children -- and deftly sorts through what he judges he needs.

When he turns back, Wrench is undressed, somehow taller and less so without the layers of fabric bulking him out. Kurt's gaze travels over his scars, not hiding the concern and unhappiness in his expression at seeing the man's body so torn about. The cut along his arm looks bad and Kurt almost recognises those stitches -- another unasked question answered by the ghost of the man whose space they inhabit -- and the slice across his back is worse, if only for being so clearly worked on by someone who can't quite see what he's doing.

Wrench's hands rise and fall; Kurt watches him and sighs. "Oh, mein Freund."

He takes a step forward, then brings his right hand to his chest, extending his left to hover near the other man's arm. Not touching, not yet, not without permission. Please.

Wrench knows what he fears and what he hates when he sees the expression cross the face of his friend. The scars themselves are a fact, and each one tells a story in the long and meandering take of his short but brutal life. It's not the sight of them that turns his stomach or makes him naturally want to fold his arms across a hollow and hungry chest. Wrench doesn't care much about the sight of himself laid bare, except that what he feels Kurt sees when he looks at him is a veil of inability.

He's not sorry for his old scars. The puckered wound he earned being gunned down in the blanket of a snowstorm. The punctures and slices from scuffles won, doubts squashed, and tasks accomplished. But twice now since his arrival he's been patched up by hands he should not have put to the task. The first of those belonged to a man who hadn't asked Wrench to darken his doorstep. The second, worse yet, to a child. He feels the hard knot of disgust moving up from the pit of his belly and settling heavily at the base of his throat. It's his own foolishness that shames him, and the fear he feels in the face of another man's tender pity that tells him he's failing himself.

In service of the other man, he's gone to Kurt easily. Wrench has reached for him without being asked and folded himself into the spaces at his back. He's tended to wounds, fixed meals, and rubbed the man's feet with no hesitation or sense of need for reciprocity. In fact, he's been glad to do it. It's given him the opportunity to feel useful. More than that, to feel as though he belongs to something. To someone even. But now he shivers under the evaluating gaze and measures a step toward the hand that reaches for him.

I'm fine, Wrench insists again. I will be fine.

It's a hard thing for someone like Kurt, who places so much store in making others happy, to have to force his way past barriers of pain and fear when they stand so vulnerable in front of him. His heart tells him to stop and to let go, to accept the easier lies that Wrench offers, to do whatever is needed to make the little space they've created comfortable again. Once, perhaps, he might have done it. Might have allowed the other man to put his shirt back on and cover up those jaggedly healing cuts. But that would have been long ago, before he met Logan and the X-Men, and learned the value of doing what's difficult and necessary. And what it costs you to look away.

No, you're hurt, he insists right back, more complex arguments falling victim to his lack of vocabulary. With a frustrated twitch of his tail, he turns back to the table and takes up the pad and pencil, writing quickly before turning back and presenting it to Wrench:

Do not make me watch you die too.

So little time has passed, it doesn't seem right that Wrench should forget what it's felt like to need this method. He watches Kurt take up the pencil, and there's enough earnest interest in the tall man's expression that his feet shuffle forward almost involuntarily. He's leaning in to read those words even as his companion is putting them on the page, and when the pad of paper is offered up towards him, Wrench's motion towards it only seems to increase the velocity with which those words hit him squarely in the gut. They lack none of Kurt's sentiment. Static and flat on the page, they still somehow sing with all the earnest force of his plea.

I won't die, Wrench refuses. It's another vocabulary word in their bank. Two flattened hands presented out, one palm-up and the other palm-down. He flips them so the palms face opposite of where they started, like the shovel of a gravedigger turning the soil. Distance closed, Wrench presents himself in front of the man with arms raised gently from his sides in a gesture of uncertain defeat. He doesn't seem put out by the earnest request for his cooperation, but Wrench has the look of someone who scarcely knows what to make of himself, or how to fashion himself into something useful for Kurt. He thinks on it for a moment and finally settles into a chair at the table where they've passed so much of their time, where he can take up the pad of paper and the pencil.

It's blunt distraction, too overt to be anything but. Just a means of soothing himself by ignoring some immediacy. Wrench puts the pencil to the pad and sketches something out:

____
|
|
|
|
|
|
|_______

-- --- --- ----

That fact that it works so well makes Kurt feel more than a little ashamed to have used such a tactic on his new friend, however honestly meant the words are. It feels like a hollow victory; Kurt sets the pad back down on the table with a troubled crease between his brows, even as he is grateful to see Wrench lower himself gingerly into the chair.

As the man reaches over to pick up the pencil, Kurt busies himself with his own form of escape from the bramble thicket of his thoughts. The kettle has been set aside to keep warm on the stove; Kurt digs through the cupboards until he finds a shallow bowl, then pours off a little of the water and sets the rest to boil again. A clean mug and a bottle of one of the stronger outcomes of Logan's distillation experiments also find their way back to the table.

Crossing back to the sink to wash his hands, he catches sight of the figure sketched out in Wrench's brusque lines on the pad and pauses thoughtfully. The game immediately appeals to him, not only as a way to distract each other, but as a test of his newfound language.

A, he offers as his first guess, then D as he makes his way back over to Wrench, shaking water from his fingertips.

He studies the other man for a moment, the critical remove of his training allowing him to assess where attention is needed most. The gash in Wrench's arm is red, the skin drawn and painful around the stitches which have been with him for too long, but it doesn't seem to be infected despite the depth of the cut. Vielen dank, Logan. The injury on his back is obscured by haphazard bits of tape and gauze, which don't look as clean as they should be. That first, then.

Kurt touches the man's shoulder lightly with a fingertip to draw his attention, then spools a loop of his tail into his own hand. With the other, he points to his tail, then mimes first an open and closed fist, then a flat palm held out. Squeeze means stop. He reaches down and lifts Wrench's hand, setting his fingers around the length of soft blue fur and hard muscle. It won't hurt me, he adds.

That settled, he moves behind Wrench and starts to tug away the bits of tape, removing the bits and pieces of Wrench's attempt at healing himself as quickly and gently as possible.

He starts with the head, etching a lopsided oval into the imagined space beneath the hangman's noose. Kurt's second guess is met with some thought more, and he turns his attention to the page, silently mouthing something unintelligible as the pencil tracks his movements across the hatches. Eventually, Wrench adds something above one.

-- --- --- ---D.

When the other man comes back around, he offers the page hopefully, as if a child waiting to be told he's done good on an assignment. But he knows that Kurt isn't so foolish. The man must see clean through his paltry attempts to distract, the imagined game that spells violence even in its simplicity. Hangman. The more wrong answers you give, the further you commit an imagined person to their demise. He used to love this game as a child, but Wrench sees it now in a different context. The new, inescapable light of fate and circumstance and chance. While Kurt pours out the water, he adds a few scraps of hair to the bald head. Tight circles cascading down the blank space, like he means to make their personhood unignorable.

It's the gentle touch that brings his attention around once more, and Wrench abandons the pencil at the other man's behest. Finding it replaced by a tail, he naturally follows the gestures he's shown, squeezing experimentally along the spade. It tightens his lips into a hard line across his face, but Wrench nods even as he silently promises himself not to ask for any mercy. I don't want to hurt you, he agrees. He wants to believe the other man knows this, but he feels raw and exposed in front of him. Wrench knows his isn't the body of an innocent man; his skin tells a different story altogether. Brutality is second nature, and as much as he wants to believe in the second chances the other man has promised, he wonders how far he'd have to go to find them. How fast does a man have to run to escape his own skin?

The touch lights a warmth along his back like the flames of a fire, a sensitive heat that wants to insist him away from the help he's being given. Wrench looks at the spade of the tail in his fingers, focuses on the contrast of golden skin against deep blue, and closes his throat around his breaths so as not to make a sound.

Edited 2019-09-05 22:04 (UTC)

Kurt feels a small and electric thrill run up his spine as Wrench's fingertips close around the spade of his tail. As an appendage, it's probably the sturdiest of those available to him, well able to withstand being -- among other things -- grabbed, stepped on, yanked, bitten, used to support any number of tumbling tricks, and once, memorably, severed entirely from his body. It's strong and flexible and its presence has saved his life any number of times. Kurt had been honest in his reminder to Wrench; there's little that one mortal man, wounded and tired, could do to hurt him.

Still, in the same way that there are differences between having a hand gripped by an enemy and held softly by a loved one, so there are forms of touch which remind Kurt he is still, very much, a mortal creature as well. Behind Wrench's back, he takes a steadying breath, pushing away the shiver that crawls up his body to settle somewhere behind his ribs, focusing on the task in front of him.

The cut on Wrench's back is in a difficult place; it seems to follow his shoulder blade, long but thankfully shallow, tissues within already healing. Kurt balls tape and gauze in his fist and sets it aside, then reaches for the pack of sterile wipes. He knows a warning would be pointless and that Wrench is well aware of what he's trusting him to do, so instead he aims to work as efficiently as possible -- limiting the pain as much as he can, if he cannot stop it. He settles one hand on the opposite shoulder, as much to keep the tall man still as to offer comfort, as he sets about first cleaning the wound, then applying antiseptic, ignoring as best he can any small signs of discomfort from his friend. It's in an awkward place for any sort of bandaging to remain still and not cause further harm, so Kurt just places a large pad of gauze over it and tapes it in place.

Before he steps away, his fingertips lightly trace the direction of the wound, thoughtful, before touching gently the ghosts of other scars on his back. It must have been a truly distressing way for someone like Wrench to be attacked, he surmises, and realises belatedly just how much of the man's trust he's been given, unasked for. The thought of it swells in his chest, in that place near to his heart, and the scents of the medicine and the fire in the grate take on notes of the holiest censers as he breathes in around it.

O-K? He signs as he steps back into Wrench's line of sight, his gaze searching the other man's face.

It's no great revelation for Wrench to admit no desire for harm. Life has necessitated certain actions, but no amount of breaking a boy's spirit and building something up from the bitter ash can give him a taste for blood. It may serve him better if he could find some enjoyment or desire for the destruction, but he's not a wild animal with the flesh of man hanging from his lips. He doesn't want the pain that he causes any more than an accountant desires an abacus or a bricklayer years for a trowel. They're simply tools in a job.

Wrench thinks of men flinching under his touch, and that feels markedly different. He's had plenty of time in his short but lonesome life to interrogate his own intentions. He doesn't need to ask himself again the reasons why he leaves one startle in search of another. What spark it ignites to see someone overcome by his grasp. Wrench feels the burn in his lungs and across his own throat and knows he needs to breathe, but the control he asserts makes him forget the rake of the sterile cloth against the arcing wound. He doesn't forget the tail in his hand, though, and Wrench measures the weight of the spade and Kurt's reflex to the gentle movement of his hand further in his lap. From his vantage point he can see the length of it disappear up and around his back and he insists his own stillness.

When he focuses like this, Wrench can find quiet that's almost uncanny. He can slow himself into a stillness that seems to oppose his own long limbs, his efficient energy, and his restless spirit. Until Kurt moves around him, the air in the room scarcely belongs to his own lungs. But when the man moves into his line of sight, Wrench sucks in the breath of a drowned man and squeezes Kurt's tail reflexively. He knows what he's being asked. Rather than answer, he picks up his pencil and draws the straight line of a torso, and a single splayed arm.

His own joke draws the light back into his eyes, and he nods to Kurt slowly. Thank you. I'm fine.

Kurt's tail twitches a little in Wrench's lap when squeezed, shortening his indrawn breath just slightly. His gaze goes from hands to drawing to Wrench's face and his expression becomes distinctly unimpressed, lamplit eyes narrowing.

L-I-A-R, he replies with an arch to his eyebrows, then points at the game, fully able to give as good as he gets. That done, he gently reclaims his tail in order to use it to pull the other chair closer, so he can sit down opposite Wrench, and pulls over the supplies needed to work on the man's arm.

There's a certain bullishness, he discovers as he works, to his desire to break through those walls he sees behind Wrench's eyes. He knows all to well that it's neither his place or his right to try and force his way through them, but their recent circumstances have ignited a desperation in him that feels close enough to fear to make him clumsy, inelegant. Liable to make mistakes. Wrench has been there for him over these last few days as few people have been, though a stranger to him and his unique physiology both, who hadn't flinched to touch the long furred insteps of his feet or gather his tail in his hands like a precious thing. With the ability to teleport safely taken from him, Kurt is starting to realise the perils of being earthbound. When you're thin air waiting to happen it's easier to accept the risk of trying and falling, but now the ground is too solid beneath his feet, waiting patiently for the bodies of the people he can't save.

You already chose A. I'm punishing you.

Another arm joins the sketch, and a leg follows. The being hangs perilously, and Wrench thinks briefly of how sad it must be to become fully actualized in just enough time to witness one's own death. He thinks if it comes to it, he'll add a tail before another leg. Give this little stick figure a fighting chance of making it out of the bounds of its own captivity. Then he thinks again, and realizes he can't stand to give it an appendage that might cause it to bear any resemblance to the tender-hearted man who sits knee-to-knee with him.

Deerington is full of folks who look unlike himself. Who have systematically and pointedly pitched Wrench's worldview into confusion. What it means to be a person is something he no longer feels he can answer with such certainty, but it's the least of what haunts him now. As he adds the letters carefully, still mouthing the alphabet to himself to help him remember, Wrench decides instead he'll add horns. Perhaps a set of wings.

How many other creatures can he help condemn to their demise, now that he's learned of their existence?

-- --- -IR L-ID.

Kurt watches Wrench's quick pencil strokes over the angled pad as he tears open a packet of gauze and dips it in the warm water. His eyebrows tick upwards as Wrench fills out the gaps in the phrase, then a smile crooks the corners of his mouth as understanding dawns. So he has not been the only one making efforts to learn. He squeezes the water out of the gauze and sets it on the edge of the bowl, then reaches across to gently take the pencil out of Wrench's hand.

You have nothing to be sorry for, he prints carefully in the space between the unfortunate stick figure and the answer. He pauses, then adds: (Except possibly allowing Logan to stitch you.)

The outcome of that particular venture is the subject of his attention next. Leaving Wrench to consider the response on the pad, he eyes the stitches winding over the man's bicep, then considers the supplies available to him. The scissors from the medical kit are sized for normal human hands and therefore too small for his fingers, and although Logan keeps an impressive stock of knives, he's not about to use something better suited for gutting deer on something like this. He sighs, resigned to clumsiness, and returns his gaze to Wrench's face rather than his arm.

This will hurt, he points out, likely needlessly, but feeling he should at least gauge the man's thoughts on the matter.

When Deerington isn't busy inventing new horrors to maim and disturb them with -- which seems most frequent these days -- it has the propensity to appear almost normal. Restaurants, flower shops, schools, even a library... Most days since his arrival have seen Wrench wandering in a daze of confusion, but the more he's settled in and come to realize he has no ability to leave this place of his own accord, the more he's poked his head around its amenities. He knows he can't so easily repay all that Kurt has given him, but he's wanted to do something. Finding the resources has proven relatively easy, but the study itself has been something for the man to lose himself in. For all his efforts he only knows a few simple phrases. Bits of words he can't yet wrangle into much deeper meaning, but it still feels like something. He hopes it's something.

Kurt's gentle smile seems to promise the effort hasn't gone unnoticed, and Wrench leans forward to watch him add more in the empty space. His gentle admonishment encourages a laugh out of the man, a breathless and sad thing that makes him seem almost concerned. The makeshift sutures have certainly not been kind on his skin. The area around the cut is an impatient red and hot to the touch. Out of his shirt, Wrench can feel the difference in the skin on his upper arm. He casts his eyes over the puckering at the site of those stitches and nods. Jim's work is efficient and effective, but brutal. It's the hand of a man who, like most others that have treated Wrench, is more concerned with effectiveness than the look and feel of the thing.

Maybe they can stay, he bargains Kurt with a little smile. The awkward placement that forces him to use his non-dominant hand to reach out for them has kept Wrench from removing them himself, but he knows he would've been no less eager were it an easier task. Maybe he's been waiting for Jim, but it seems now that delaying might put what needs immediate attention further off still yet. Wrench nods his understanding. It's O-K. Pain doesn't last forever.

Kurt's personal sign vocabulary is steadily expanding, but there are still enough gaps that it's more the look of slightly amused acceptance in Wrench's expression than the movements of his hands that convince him he's got the man's grudging agreement. He nods, the gives into an impulse and reaches over to briefly take those fingers in his own, rubbing his thumb over Wrench's knuckles before releasing him.

O-K, he replies, before standing and moving back over to the stove. He takes up the kettle, pouring steaming water to fill up the bowl, then drops the scissors into it. A flip of his tail pours out a double measure of Logan's strong and floral-smelling gin into the mug, which he sets by Wrench's elbow. His movements are calm and efficient, falling into the routine of training and comfort. Again, he finds himself dwelling on gratitude, both concept and feeling; it reassures something within him, to be able to do this for Wrench. Not quite paying him back, since he feels Wrench would never accept such a payment, though he does undeniably owe something to the man -- but giving something, that he can and wants to give, and seeing it received. Material, measurable good.

When he returns to Wrench's side, he tries to let this feeling show in his expression. Hold still, is all the warning he gives before fishing the scissors out of the hot water with accustomed and sturdy fingers. It's awkward, but he manages, holding them with two hands as he lines the blades up with the fishing wire. Before he begins, his tail winds out and around Wrench's leg below the knee, a gentle and present pressure, as the spade once again returns to his lap.

Logan's stitches aren't, perhaps, the cleanest, but they are the product of a man who knew what he was doing, and offer little resistance to Kurt's deft fingers. He works as quickly as he can, letting the bits of wire drop onto the table, studiously ignoring the twitch and tug of Wrench's muscles. Still, he finds himself breathing a little easier once it's done, setting the scissors aside and taking up a sterile wipe to clean the red line of the wound. He holds Wrench's arm as he does so, palm supporting his elbow, feeling the smooth warmth of his skin.

He meets Wrench's eyes, hands occupied so he has to ask aloud, though with a brief squeeze of his tail to punctuate it.

"OK?"

Given the option, Wrench watches with sharp green eyes. Having Kurt beside him provides a kind of relief from the anxiety of only being able to guess the man's next aim as he worked at his back. Now he keeps his companion in his line of sight as he moves with practiced efficiency about the tools. Watching the way he works the medical scissors, Wrench can't help but think how much of what seems normal to him was not designed with the man in mind. He's used to feeling like an outsider, but he sees now Kurt's need for adaptation. The way the other man has learned to utilize the tools that do little to make his job even easier. He's underestimated the man, he realizes again. Not because he's thought him any less capable, but because he hasn't wanted to let his mind play over explanations of how Kurt has come by his talents. What circumstances in life have conspired to make him so good at dressing wounds or protecting himself from danger.

He finds the end of the tail again under his fingers, and Wrench lets his curious hand fascinate over its texture. The tugging of the skin on his upper arm is enough to make him sick, but he shifts his focus to what else is tangible. The warmth of the other man leaned over him, the sturdiness of the boots on his feet, the scent of juniper and antiseptic under his nose, and Kurt's tail still moving gently under his fingers. Wrench holds the air in his throat so tightly he quiets any sound of his discomfort. Any will to grumble or complain gets stuck there, deep beneath the knot of breath waiting to be exhaled. By the end his whole arm is shaking, and the fingers that hold Kurt tremble against that appendage, but he smiles thinly and nods his head at the question.

"Okay," he mouths, and wipes tiredly at his face before reaching for the glass of gin. Wrench thinks of the tenderness inherent in the brutality. The will of them left to put one another back together again. Born out of necessity, maybe, but there's trust here too. Both he and Kurt could have turned each other away. Instead they've found it within themselves to lean in closer. To hold on that much more firmly. Mop up each other's blood, piece skin back together. Wrench shudders over his next breath and reaches for his companion's hand. Drawing it close, Wrench holds it between both of his hands a moment before settling Kurt's fingers in the space over his heart.

There's a heaviness to Wrench's silence, a tension running between his shoulders and caught in the lines on his brow and the corners of his eyes. As he brushes the antiseptic wipe over his skin, Kurt realises he can read that rigid quiet almost as easily as he can read the alphabet signs sketched out by the man's hands. The shivers that travel through Wrench's limbs are not, therefore, unexpected, the release of that held tension. Kurt finds himself wondering how often he's had to hold himself so tightly, withholding the noise and twitch of pain, whether it's a learned or instinctive response to vulnerability.

When Wrench reaches for his hand, Kurt gives it up willingly, letting his ministrations fall aside for the moment. He watches Wrench's face as his fingers are folded between warm wide palms, then pressed against soft skin and hard, working muscle. The surge of Wrench's breath fills Kurt's palm, or perhaps his hand flattens instinctively, large blunt fingers spanning across Wrench's chest. He glances down and sees dark indigo against pale. Feels the pulse and tide of him against the pads of his fingers and his palm. For a blink of time he feels, as he always does in moments like this, the full impact of that other-worldliness, the strangeness he's lived with for over thirty years, and almost pulls away, not wanting Wrench to see it as well. But Wrench's touch is light on his wrist, light as a feather, and it's enough to hold him there.

He drags his eyes back up to Wrench's face, to those eyes full of the sun in the forest, remembering the feel of the man's fingertips moving over the spade of his tail. At some point he's dropped the medicated fabric he'd been using onto the floor; he brings his other hand up to touch Wrench's cheek, brushing it softly, reverently, with the backs of his fingers.

"Liebe," he breathes, and leans forward so he doesn't have to say anything else, capturing Wrench's mouth with his.

Kurt's hand is a warm weight on Wrench's chest. An anchor, holding him firmly to two disparate realities: that the place he's found himself within is very much real, and that he -- for all his fears and anxieties -- is not so alone after all. He's consciously aware of his own heartbeat, and the way it thuds against his ribcage is enough to rattle him with every beat. Wrench doesn't feel like he's made up of quite enough substance. This place has chipped away at him and he can't quite figure the dimensions of his own hunger, his pain, and his lightheadedness. But he feels Kurt's hand on him and knows the other man feels the beat of life beneath his fingers. That they're both real and solid and bound not just by circumstance, but by will.

It would've been easy for Kurt to turn him out, or for Wrench to have walked away. Neither man had expected to find the other in this place. This isn't what either of them had been looking for. But they must have both realized that they needed it somehow, in their own ways. Not just the efficient hands checking bandages and cleansing fresh wounds, but the quiet moments reading and playing cards. The easy way Kurt's feet have found his lap, like a silent reminder that he's seen and wanted nearby. The quiet domesticity of scrounging up what they have to make a breakfast plate. Being seen, being a part of someone else's quiet movement through this strange and impossible world.

Wrench isn't surprised that Kurt is bolder, but he's relieved. Relieved to taste something on his lips that isn't gin, and to know the other man feels something like what he's not sure he could fashion into words even if they shared a comfortable language with which to do it. He kisses him back, deep with a need that grumbles quietly into the other man's mouth. Wrench reaches an arm around him and urges him into his lap.

Wrench tastes like pine needles and juniper, the remnants of Logan's gin. A far distant part of Kurt's mind notes how fitting that is, the product of the man whose death brought them together, and wonders what Logan would say to see them. Laugh, probably, and tell them to take it out of the kitchen. The rest of Kurt is occupied by the warmth of Wrench's body, the thud of his heartbeat beneath his palm, the rumble of his groan that seems to resonate through Kurt's chest.

He feels the weight of Wrench's arm thrown around him and makes a small noise of agreement and desire, climbing easily from his chair and into the solidity of Wrench's lap, both of his hands occupied now with sliding down over the other man's sides, the urgent need to touch as much of him as possible building in his stomach and his hips and his heart.

It feels close to grief, the other side of that dark coin. After so long, so many deaths, it's almost familiar, the need to prove that he's still alive, that they're both still alive, even if it's not clear what that means any more. In other times he's submerged the weight of it in prayer, or running Danger Room sessions until his arms won't support him any more and, once or twice, in the arms of a friend. But even the familiarity of it only gets him so far; in everything else, Wrench is an untamed sea, an unexplored map that he longs, suddenly, to know.

A part of him still expects that Kurt might not come to him so easily. Even as he grips at him, Wrench fears that too sudden a movement might knock this all out of kilter. Perhaps the other man will realize what he's doing, catch himself, and seek to part them. It makes his touch erratic, wanting all at once to hold onto the man with enough strength to make him stay, and treat him as delicately as a butterfly on an outstretched finger. When Kurt settles against him Wrench sighs into his mouth, and finds himself overcome with enough of a smile that he has to pull back briefly.

He thinks he can see it now in the other man's eyes, the weight of his wanting. Maybe they're both just chasing ghosts. Maybe he reminds Kurt of someone else, or maybe he just means to chase the cobwebs of wanting out of the hollow spaces around his heart. Wrench wonders briefly if he shouldn't stop this. If it's not his responsibility to warn the man of the things he couldn't know. Things he obviously hasn't predicted. But he can't stand the thought of how the tides would shift in those golden eyes. Wrench doesn't want to be the one to bring the darkness back in. Kurt told him this place could be his second chance, and he wants to believe that. He wants to think it may be possible after all.

Kurt's cheek is warm and soft in his hands, and Wrench realizes he'd still been expecting a different texture to his skin somehow. It's a delighting surprise, and he passes his thumb over the man's lips before trailing his own along the side of his neck, nibbling down to the hollow at his collarbone. He presses his nose there and breathes in deeply of the lather of body soap. His hands know no tender way of shaping his request, so instead he leaves it hanging in the air like an open request, to be taken and molded according to the other man's will: I want you.

Kurt allows himself to be parted from that kiss with not a little regret, finding himself washed up and wanting on the shore of Wrench's thoughtfulness. Even as he's pleased to see the smile chase across the man's mouth he longs to taste it instead, and has to hold himself back, tail stirring the humid evening air, as Wrench's thumb strokes the fur of his cheek. As easy as the man's expressions are to read, his eyes hold something unfathomable, a shadow that Kurt finds himself wanting to chase away.

Feet hooked on the rungs of the chair, Kurt spans Wrench's hips with his hands and shivers, making soft helpless noises, as the other man buries his face against him, his breath hot in Kurt's fur. Thoughts of the theoretical and metaphysical are, for the moment, discarded, everything narrowed down to the way the man under him feels and what he wants him to feel in return.

Wrench's words are a double handful of air. Craving the substantial, Kurt catches one of those hands and brings his fingertips to his mouth, tongue darting out from behind pointed teeth to taste them, following it with his lips, stringing kisses like beads down into his palm, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the knotted white lines of a scar there before closing his eyes and pressing his mouth to it in benediction.

To be seen like this should hurt or shame him. Kurt's clever interest seems, time and time again, to find every bit of himself that Wrench would sooner hide. He feels raw and exposed to the man stretched above him, reaching toward him and gathering him up into his hands. But Wrench finds no need for explanation. No question that begs immediacy in the eyes or the touch of the other man. And while he's sure his scars deserve no amount of forgiveness, he feels it in the soft pressure of the man's pursed lips and the leathery expanse of his touch.

He finds himself stirred to a hungry desire to see and touch and taste the other man in kind. To lay him bare and understand all the ways that life has shaped him, and all the things that Wrench might be able to pull from him with the right attention. He wants to play him like an instrument. Stretch him out and run his fingers across the slope of his spine and the curve of his hips until Kurt's breath sings from his chest for him and they both have to beg each other's mercy.

That giddy impatience rises in him, and Wrench takes back his hands to sling under the man's knees, until he rises from the chair and lifts Kurt all in one easy go. Not for the first time he thinks of how light the other man seems. How easy he might just slip away. Wrench knows the steps to the furnished bedroom now by heart, and he wastes no time taking them there, until he can deposit the other man onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs.

There are some things that Kurt's body knows how to do better than his mind or heart. How to leap and catch a trapeze as it swings towards him, for instance; how to transfer a sword from hand to tail and use it to meet an opponent's attack. How to disappear in a cloud of roiling smoke and a snap of rapidly displaced air. In all cases, it is a matter of trust, of giving himself up to that breath-stopping instinct. His life has depended on and been saved by that trust many times. But there are smaller moments, too, quieter moments, when he allows the animal that drives him to take over, though they are often no less giddy than falling from the height of the big top.

As Wrench's hands span and grip beneath his legs, Kurt allows himself to be lifted up, folding around the taller man with arms and ankles crossed behind him and tail sliding around his leg. He kisses and licks his way up the side of Wrench's neck, tasting salt sweat as the points of his fangs graze over his skin.

He's not surprised to end up in the bedroom again. Being dropped into the rumpled blankets twinges his newly wrapped injuries, but he ignores the pain in order to tug Wrench closer with loops of his tail and outstretched hand, eager to leave no room for hurt and regret between them.

It isn't the first time he's shared this bed with Kurt, though before now Wrench has always given space to the ghosts that haunt the memory of the quiet little room. He thinks he knows them now by all their names, though the specific weight and shape they hold is a thing yet to be discovered. Wrench is not unaware of the space he treads when he stretches Kurt across the bedsheets for his benefit. But they stretch across the space to meet each other and he doesn't need to be told that this is different. Doesn't need to tell his eager-hearted companion that he knows he's no suitable replacement. He doesn't mean to be.

Wrench can't give back Kurt what he's missing. All he can provide is what he has on him: the tender concern, the earnest interest, and a wanting that sees the man before him and not simply the reflection of an internal void he means to dam up behind superficial walls. He's plenty more than a mere distraction. Wrench touches him now for no purpose but pleasure. Not to check wounds, correct a handshape, or insist his attention. The shape and weight of the body beneath his fingers is familiar, but he's never let himself dwell on it like this before. Never granted the fascination of his hands to explore the deep V of his pelvic bone, or the pattern of swooping fur around his belly button. Wrench finds those gentle patches of looping coils where the hair grows from and he snickers to himself.

He hides his lips just beneath Kurt's navel and gnashes his teeth playfully as he reaches for the waistband of his pants.

Though it might be surprising for some to learn it, Kurt doesn't always find it easy to allow himself to be appreciated. A consummate showman he might be, but it's a part of himself he can, at least, control. The costumes, the poses, the artifice of the act are things he learned as a child to disguise himself against uncaring eyes, and the compulsion to fall back on them is strong. The mask of the player may allow him to walk the stage, but it's a mask nonetheless. To allow himself to be seen and touched, nothing except air between his body and another person, still causes a small thrill of fear, like insense smoke, to rise up inside him. That small part of him that was born in Jardine's cage and on the wet cobbles of Willendorf will always be waiting for the flinch of disgust, the hand that stops exploring and pulls away. Over time, through experiences of loving and being loved, it's become easier to ignore that voice. But it remains, and so Kurt takes a breath to steady himself as Wrench lowers himself over his body, grateful once more that the tall man seems to want no excuse to stop.

Trust and gratitude. The mingled song of both rises and falls between Kurt's heartbeats like a mantra, or a prayer.

Kurt lies back on the sheets and lets himself ease into that refrain, letting himself relax as Wrench's fingertips brush channels through his fur. His breath catches as Wrench's hand dips lower, his tail winding around to allow the tip to dance down Wrench's back, the space between heartbeats becoming too close for meditations.

Eyes heavy-lidded and glowing like pumpkin candles, he reaches out to run his fingers through Wrench's curls, lifting his hips a little in encouragement. He's already hard enough to round out the front of the flannel pyjama pants, aching to feel the heat of Wrench's breath and tongue beneath them.

Please, he signs, fingers brushing lazily through the fur on his chest.

IC; Deerington Inbox

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cw: wound care

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cw: sexual content

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