IT'S THE MOMENT YOU'VE WAITED FOR

Lunaths frown only deepens the more off subject Lance tries to carry them, especially at the mention of the light bulb, designed for sure to distract Lunath. Instead, he slips past the flap with a quiet rustle, his movements small and unobtrusive, like a mouse running underfoot, yet still quick and purposeful. He’s over next to Lance in a few moments, pushing himself into his space.

“I️ dont wanna heat that. Sit.”

When Lance fails to comply, Lunath steps even closer to him until they’re chest to chest, and Lunath gives him a little bump designed to push him slightly backwards. Lance doesn’t resist them, probably for Lunath’s sake, to be gentle with him, but he ends up seated on one of the storage crates behind him for all his considerations.

Lunath shoots one last disapproving look, like one might give a naughty child, before kneeling in front of the leg Lance stretches out stiffly in front of him. He feels along the metal brace, checking at key points that he knows are weak spots for all the wear and tear Lance puts on the thing.

“Its this flexor spring. It popped loose again. Wouldn’t have been able to walk this one off.”

Lunath shakes his head as he takes a more permanent seat on the ground in front of Lance, legs crossed in front of him, one hand holding the brace firmly to prevent any escape attempts from Lance as he reaches with nimble fingers behind the outer plates of the device into the inner workings on the sides.

“Sit still for just two minutes. As hard as that is for you.”

Lance sticks out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout, tapping his foot attached to his leg not currently being worked on, clearly not enjoying this sort of attention right now.

"It's just a knee. It's just really dull aching, Glasses. I've had headaches worse than this."

But, of course, Lunath doesn't stop, just keeps prying away trying to get to the spring he's determined is out of place. There's no point in fighting him now.

Instead of sit here miserable, Lance leans forward, elbow on his knee, chin resting in his palm, just gazing down at Lunath quietly for a long moment. Lunath's dark hair is even more of a mess than usual, his shirt skewed, glasses smudged. It's odd. While Lunath doesn't go out of his way to dress as the highest peak of fashion like Lance, the boy doesn't dress bad either.

Maybe it's not that odd when Lance thinks about it. And now Lance is thinking about it.

One of the metal plates pops open and Lunath immediately reaches to his side for some sort of tool that isn't there. When he notices because his hand only grasps sand, he begins to look around quickly, almost frantically. Lance sighs a quiet laugh out of his nose, reaching into his pocket to pull out a small screwdriver, handing it over to him.

"So. When are you going to tell me you're upset with me over something I did or were you planning on having me guess all day?"

Lunath feels heat spring to his face and he makes an effort to keep his gaze down and to appear hyper focused.

“It’s fine. You didnt mean anything by it anyway. You take care of important stuff around here and I️ have to just get better at not getting my feelings hurt.”

He doesn’t add the next logical progression his brain tacks on: and at not feeling bad for being the most expendable and useless one around here.

In that way, at least, he’s thankful that Lance lets him take charge of tinkering with his brace like this. Of course Lunath hates the idea of Lance being even slightly uncomfortable, probably more than Lance himself does. But it also makes him feel proud and important and like he matters around here a little to be in charge of making sure that comfort doesn’t slip.

So in that vein, he keeps fiddling around with it even after he’s finished tightening the screw in question and reattaching the spring. This feels much better than watching everyone else jump into action and being told to go sit on the sidelines because he has no real purpose or use here.

“You’re busy and you’re tired and I know you didn’t mean to snap. We can just leave it at that. Okay, take a lap and see if that did it.”

Lunath pushes himself out of the sand, dusting his hands together and then against his pants, as he nods for Lance to test out his handiwork.

"Alright, alright."

Lance stands, stretching his arms above his head as if he had been resting for hours and his body is already unaccustomed to movement. It's all really just for show, a flourish to mask his true plan to snag Lunath's wrist, jerking the other man towards him so their chests collide again.

Lunath obviously was caught completely off-guard because he lets Lance pull him into proper position to begin spinning around, dancing across the center ring.

"So. How many laps did you want me to do? You made it sound like one but damn if my leg isn't feeling like it's in tip-top shape. I think I have a few in me. What about you?"

He's grinning the way he always does, proud, pleased, because Lance himself isn't even sure he knows how to emote much more than that nowadays. Genuine or fabricated, those are always the feelings that spring up first no matter the situation. The scariest part is when even he himself can't tell if they're real or forced. Just the price to pay when you're like him, he supposes.

They continue to step in time to whatever song Lance is humming to himself, twirling this way and that, quite a show if anyone were watching.

"You kind of interrupted my little solo when you walked in. Now I have to start over. Let's hope your old man doesn't walk in before I'm finished, huh?"

“Stop it, stoooooop.”

Lunath is blushing in earnest now, trying to wriggle away but only enough to be giving slight resistance and not actually break his way out of the embrace.

“I’m not mad, you don’t have to.”

He taps a little against Lance’s chest, trying to look down more at the brace to observe how its moving. At least, until Lance makes the comment about Lunath’s dad and his head swings toward the tent flap in a paranoid, desperate search.

“Just, you’ll snap it out of place again.”

Lunath is murmuring now, placated at seeing the tent entrance empty and unused. Enough so that he lets some of the tension melt, his childish hurt feelings and all, as he rests his head gently down on Lance’s shoulder, an inaudible sigh escaping him at how much he’d missed feeling secure like this, like at least one person in the world think he’s worth a damn.

“And if you let it get that way again without telling me, no more dancing. Or anything else.”

He glances up at Lance without moving his head to emphasize his meaning with slightly raised brows.

"Oh please, you couldn't hold out dancing or doing other things with me. You like this too much."

For his own emphasis, Lance flicks his arm out, twirling Lunath away from him before pulling and spinning him back in so they crash against each other. The red color all along Lunath's face has Lance laughing.

The mood feels light finally, the way he likes it between the two of them, it means Lunath isn't worrying like he usually does over something and is just having fun. It encourages him to pick up their dance more into a sort of swing as they begin to take up and use the entire ring for themselves.

"Well, Glasses, I guess I do need to thank you for fixing my brace, though. I'll be back in the show tonight... You going to be able to focus on your job or is the spotlight going to be stuck to me all night?"

The sand starts kicking up from their shoes and their tracks and patterns are drawn all over the place around them. In a way, it's leveling the sand back down from the night before, mixing work and play, but, more than that, they're just having fun, making a mess.

"You remember that one show, I think it was the day after our first date, and you let the light linger on me way too long? You didn't even notice, Kvanne had to make some sort of sharp 'joke' up at you to snap you out of it."

“That was an equipment malfunction!”

Lunath insists it immediately, but his face gets even hotter in his contrived self defense. He’d maintained that story since day one, but Lance had never bought it. Just like with anything else, sometimes it feels like he’s the only one who can actually see Lunath.

“And you don’t think I️ can deny you if I️ need to prove a point? How much you wanna bet?”

He finally finds his somewhat confident face, a more boyishly exuberant face than anything proud or haughty or even overtly suggestive, but he cocks an eyebrow to make the mood complete.

Of course, as with everything else, Lance is absolutely right. Lunath would be the one to cave first, long long before Lance would ever even think about it. Not only does Lance have more will power, but he has a life. Things going on to worry about, other interests and intrigues. For Lunath, it feels like Lance is his only good thing. And it would be torture to keep himself from it. No use telling Lance that though, because he obviously already knows.

“Well, I️’d still try. And I’d be very upset if you just let it break again on you without telling me. Very upset.”

He makes a pouty face now. If he can’t motivate Lance by threats of withholding, maybe he can bully him into doing the right thing with a well-placed rolled out bottom lip. Lunath knows for a fact that it’s difficult for Lance to resist those. Well, in a context different from this one. But maybe it’s time for a cross-context experiment.

"You're going to pout over me not telling you about my leg? To be fair, Glasses, it hadn't really started hurting or kicking out until today. It had been fine."

Lance tilts his head to the side, studying that sad, pathetic, endearing, heart-melting pout on Lunath's face, eyes flicking across how the various features seem to easily play into it and pull down together. Something about it looks childlike, sincere. It's the honesty of the expression and emotion behind it that always gets Lance in a way he can't explain.

"You know why I don't like to tell you."

Most of the time, he doesn't have to fight much for his side of whatever "argument" Lunath feels the need to pull a pout on, but this topic is different. It's much more personal for Lance than most anything, much more tied to insecurities he hides every day. Things that make him uncomfortable to think too long on.

"It's not a big deal, really. I can figure it out."

“You heard it make that noise and you kept right on trucking. Don’t play dumb with me, Killian. It doesnt at all become you.”

Lunaths pout melts into a grin on its own and he taps along the flap of the thin pocket along Lance’s chest, thin enough for him to feel Lance’s warmth underneath of it.

“We should revisit picking out a code word if it bothers you that much. Something random to say when it needs to be adjusted that no one will know except you and me. Like a safe word, just for your leg.”

Lunath has to take a moment of looking down to compose himself after that before he looks back up at Lance. If he had his way, he’d drag him into his tent right now, but then again, when wouldn’t he. If he wasn’t so worried about what the others would think, Lunath would be the most clingy, affectionate mess any of them had ever seen, all the time. He just can’t help it. Lance makes him feel important, like someone out there not only needs him even a little bit, but even better, wants him.

"But it's just... My own scar of stupidity. It's my fault I have this, I don't like thinking about you have to deal with the consequences of my choices all the time."

And in basically every way, Lance is right. It had been his own idiotic mistakes that bent his leg all out of place. In fact, it had actually been in the rolling cage that he had started the process of crippling it beyond repair. He decided to be flashy, let the cage throw him around a bit, and his leg had fallen through one of the openings and taken the full weight of it.

But it hadn't stopped there. Not long after that, he decided he was going to unload heavy boxes from a supply truck by himself before it had healed. That was his second mistake.

His third had been running frantically through a city a couple of weeks later, chasing after some lowlife that had decided to pickpocket Yvaine. The thief tipped over a barrel and, in any other circumstance, Lance would have been able to easily leap over. With everything leading up to it, the moment he came down on the other side, he collapsed and the change purse was lost.

The fourth and final mistake, the one he still has yet to ever even mention to Lunath, was a month or so after all of it. Lance had wandered out looking for Shand who, high off his ass, had fallen down some sort of cliff side and was unconscious on a ledge, head bleeding from hitting a rock on the way down. Of course, Shand wasn't dead, but he was still hurt. And drugged.

The climb up with Shand on his back was the final straw his knee couldn't come back from. If Lance told Lunath that, there's no doubt Lunath would hold that against Shand for, well, forever. It's not Shand's fault that Lance had done the other things leading up to it. So, that remains his secret. Honestly, Lance isn't even sure Shand remembers all of that, the man had been riding an overdose.

"One day, maybe modern medicine will advance enough that they could permanently fix my leg. Wouldn't that be wild? I'd be just like when you first met me. Dashing, nimble, athletic, charming. The perfect catch."