Ansel made no reaction as Lucio began cleaning his wound, preferring to just sit and ramble aimlessly as his lover wiped away at blood, dust and bits of broken skin. When he had finished, however, it seemed that his ranting had done more harm than good, as Lucio was on the verge of tears, his eyes glittering. He listened quietly, obediently as Lucio spoke, arguing against his feelings. It was sad, extremely so, but Ansel couldn’t help but find a kind of ironic hilarity in Lucio’s words. All the reasons Lucio said he could never be his were all reasons Ansel knew that Lucio was<i>meant </i>to be his. Never one to subscribe to ideas of God or destiny, preferring to maintain an atheistic, chaotic perspective, Ansel could never completely rid himself of his inner romantic. Forty years of fucking, sleeping around, wasting his time with shallow relationships had led him here, to the moment, with this young man. He had no doubts that is right where he was supposed to be.<br/><br/>The professor smiled sweetly at Lucio and stood up, taking steps toward the sobbing young man. “Lucio, you cannot change my mind. If you are broken, I’ll be broken with you and we will help fix one another. If you are lost, I will find you. If you are dirty, then I’ll pull you into the shower with me and scrub every last inch of that beautiful body of yours until you’re sparkling. There is nothing you can say that will deter me from caring about you with every old bone in my body.”<br/><br/>He reached out with his injured hand and caressed the unbruised side of Lucio’s tear-stained face with a tenderness one wouldn’t expect from typically rough drunk. But the inebriation did not dull his true feelings for Lucio, nor did they enhance them to a hyperbolic degree. They simply made Ansel more honest, and with that honesty came the desire to treat Lucio like the precious piece of art he believed him to be. “If you don’t want to be with me, that’s one thing. I would have no choice but to accept that. But if you are holding yourself back from me because you think we<i>can’t</i>be together, then you should know, Mr. Bane, that I will dedicate every waking moment of my life to proving you wrong. And I assure you, I can be very stubborn.”<br/><br/>Ansel stepped even closer now, his free hand delicately finding a patch of skin on the small of Lucio’s back that remained unharmed. He rested it there, his fingers slowly dancing along the base of Lucio’s spine. The injured hand, still on Lucio’s cheek, wiped away at the tears that had run down the young man’s face. Lucio’s eyes looked like heavy, turbulent storm clouds, and all Ansel wanted to do in that moment was get lost in them. “You’re even pretty when you cry, you know that?” Ansel laughed, shaking his head in mild disbelief. “You don’t have to fuck me, Lucio. Just stay with me.”<br/><br/>The professor leaned forward and pressed his lips against his darling’s, taking in Lucio’s natural flavor, though now Lucio tasted of salt and sadness. But Ansel didn’t care. They were there, together, and Ansel silently promised Lucio with every movement of his lips that he wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Ansel was his, even if Lucio couldn’t quite reciprocate just yet.