Ocean Eye
If Core Crystals didn't resemble jewels, intricate gemstones, they might look like eyes, or lips, or orifices in general. An interface to what a Blade is, mounted on the outside - and what if they didn't have the Core? What if it wasn't external?
Having the Core present and visible doesn't exactly present any material advantages to the Blade's function. It's just a vulnerability. The weapon isn't pulled from there, the resonance isn't affected by proximity to the point. Easily, one can tell, that's a Blade, if the Blade had been having a fine enough time disguising themselves from the same impend of harm by all other accounts.
But they are, regardless, available. And if they weren't orifices, they might also be a scar. A marking that something went in, there, incised and shaped and changed. An interruption in the skin, and a place of intrigue. For Blades that look humanoid, and none too fantastical, that is.
All this to say: Minoth has a scar on his face, and a crystal on his symmetrical heart-that-isn't. He bleeds from both, aches from both, becomes himself in totality from both.
And all Addam can do is touch, because he's a feeble human who doesn't know any better than grasping at what's beautiful and shiny.
Minoth lets him, though. A human hand, flesh on its variation, feels good. Feels intimate. Feels like even if he turns out to not be a Blade at all, anymore, because the human blood has crawled up into his veins and died there, at least he'll have Addam.
"At least I have you," he murmurs, feeling sweeter than he should.
"Hm?" Addam is drowsy, affected, beyond contention. If Minoth has the figure of it right, the point of his Core is hitting Addam right in the sternum, and Addam's just taking it like his bones aren't being assaulted by the strange shape.
Unless...unless the point has dulled, for one who'd beg to reach it. Minoth supposes he'd believe that. And how long until the dulling actually comes because he can't feel it anymore, and it falls right off?
Firm hands stroke along his sides, feeling the taut regions between the ether lines that demarcate his abdomen. Down there, all the way to determined culmination in the bold lines of his hips and pelvis, there's not a single imperfection. No, no, down there, it's all model Blade. Male Blades don't very often go bare-legged, and Minoth's not about to try it, but judged as a specimen, you'd never know that the boots that walk support a chest littered with scars from incisions abandoned not so many years ago.
They'd been cut at a range of angles from shallow to steep; some skin-deep, some fuller. Peeks had been taken. Knowledge had been gained. And then they'd fed him blood and grafted his skin and stitched him back up again to see what'd make him tick now, now that he was different.
Thank the Architect the Core was on the outside, huh? So more Blades hadn't suffered at the hands of scientists gone digging for 'em, inside.
"Addam?"
"Mmh?"
"Do you think you'd recognize me, if I wasn't a Blade?"
One arm slips underneath him and bodily rotates him to one side. Addam looks in his eyes, searching for the fear.
"I don't see why not." His thumb toys at the edge of chapped lips (most of the way through the cycle, soon they'll be healed again, and then he'll chew them off again). "You have a very distinctive face."
"Most humans don't have birthmarks half the size of their face."
Rather than reproach about the fact that he's never properly, seriously been told whether it is or it isn't, Addam leans in to kiss the same corner where the pad of his thumb had been, and then a soft trail up and away to his right, Minoth's left.
"Would you still care for me if you weren't a Flesh Eater?"
"Probably not," Minoth answers readily.
"And it's nothing about me."
"It's not."
"We complete each other just the way we are."
"I wouldn't say that..."
Addam snickers, diving back down for another kiss. "It's true! It's true, and I know because my heart told me so. Tell me, what did yours tell you?"
He leans back and props himself up on his fist and elbow, leaving their thighs touching along the length of them. Rephrased, the question becomes, would you still need me if the very fact of you didn't strip away your dressings and pull me in, directly?
And the answer is, of course, no.
Lying here, staring up at the ceiling of Addam's abandoned bedroom in the Tornan royal palace, Minoth could almost forget that he has that extra facet. What would be the point of it, though?
"I'm my own, whole person, with or without you."
"It's funny how that is, isn't it?" Addam says, free hand now lingering freely over Minoth's flat crotch. "Because that would be the same whether or not you were a Flesh Eater. And unless I haven't the right of it, that's not how it usually is, for Blades."
"I'm independent, am I?"
"Let me put it this way." Suddenly Addam is straddling Minoth's chest, up so close that...
Well. Speaking of orifices, and all.
"I'm shocked, terrified, and thrilled by how well we complement each other. I'm even more shocked, terrified, and thrilled by the fact that you are accessible to me at all."
"And if I didn't have these..." Minoth gestures. Then he reaches his hands around the small of Addam's back, for good measure. Looking up, up, up.
"It'd make it harder for an indecisive man like me to know where to put myself, and all constituent parts. But the scar, and the crystal..."
"An indecipherable map of how to find me."
"From your core, to mine, and then I learn how to read."
Minoth uses his grasp for leverage, while Addam's palm, hot and heavy, swallows his cheek.