Der Rosenkavalier
Stages in Minoth's standard gradient of concentration included "participatory" all the way through "isolating", and there was a special shade reserved for those moments when Addam would plunk himself down beside his friend and sling an arm about the hunched shoulders.
So Minoth tensed-untensed, and waited, waited, waited, but the weight didn't come.
"You putting the squeeze on me, Prince?"
Poor choice of words. Neither of them ever got that stymied by the banter, anymore. But Addam remained silent.
Then: "I would like to be held, if you don't mind."
That pulled Minoth right off the chart.
Gently, he closed his notebook and shifted himself by degrees halfway to facing Addam head-on. The prince was less than healthily colored, and now it was his shoulders that were hunched.
"That's something new," said Minoth, because breaking the silence clumsily had to be better than leaving it fragile.
"I've known it all my life."
"But-"
And then the pieces fell into place. Addam, the bastard child of a king, split between two identities: raised on an island as a girl, brought to the mainland as a boy, shunned by his stepmother and orphaned by his own. Cast into adult dialogues, his adolescent guardian Azurda made of stone.
"It's not something I've ever really expressed. No one expects such a thing from a prince."
Only Minoth, the champion of the untouchables who never changed a thing, walked through the world with an eye to every hand, seeing where it would list, wary of his shoulders and his elbows and all the wretched space he took up.
Only Minoth, consciously, and Addam, unconsciously.
"My lot is to be the affable one, the reliable one; I allow myself no space to be anything but constant."
Minoth turned careful, considering eyes from side to side. Twice, he almost opened his mouth to say something, but instead huffed breath and paused again.
Addam sighed.
"You don't believe me."
"It's-" another breath "-it's not that I don't believe you, Addam. I know exactly where you're coming from. At least, I think I do." A wholly different experience, yet somewhat equally traumatic. "And that's why I'm so unprepared to help you."
Addam shrank somehow further. "I know, I know. It's- well, people have boundaries, we of all people should know that. But sometimes I feel so desperate, despite all my practice..."
"Is that how you think of it? Practice?"
Addam smiled a sickly grin. "How else to allow myself to be bad at things? I have to promise that I'm going to be better, eventually."
At that, Minoth couldn't help but pull Addam to him. It had no quality, no point of reference, no elegance nor choreography.
Not constant. Not practice.
Just a raw feeling.