That was especially classy of me!

"Oh, kiss my ass, Addam."

What Minoth expected was a slow, measured "I...beg your pardon?"

What Minoth got was a swift, enthusiastic "Love to."

He looked Addam's way, knowing in an instant that he had very little choice in the indulgence of a double take. The prince had, just then, an air of tremendous reality about him; as though what Minoth, once again, had been expecting was the cocksure, cockeyed grin of a lecherous, simpering true-bastard prince who'd class-clowned himself into just-too-risqué banter that basted over the entirety of their strange half-stepped relationship, or else most of the total absence of any such thing, or any thought at all, when he should have been expecting sincerity and trepidatious genuinity.

"Love to what?" Minoth asked. He tried to reflect back some of that same genuine reality - tried to ask, with his jolting eyebrows and hitching lips, a question of grounding along with clarification.

In response, Addam came over to him and put out a hand that Minoth knew for damn sure was clammy beneath the glove.

"Love to try again, actually. Start over, clean slate, without using dirty jokes to get my point across."

Minoth folded his arms, even though he knew he probably should have taken the offered hand. This was just...just a little too sketchy. He'd wait until the shading had presented itself, rendering the as-yet gaseous shapes solid, thank you very much.

"Well, do you want to kiss my ass, or don't you? I don't see why you need a take two on that. And don't tell me you need to try it to find out."

"I'd think anyone'd need to have a first go at something like that to know if it's for them," Addam replied scornfully (maybe he was scorned by the rejection of that clammy hand, after all, but wouldn't anyone be? hesitant to hold such a thing, that is). "That's not just me being a wishy-washy boy wonder."

Taking it far too literally, he was. What happened to the boisterous, joyful Addam who took everyone at their disadvantages, when it was kind to, and pulling every spare leg in sight? What happened to the jokes, the laughter? What happened to none of this mattering an Ardun's ass?

Ass again.

"Then kiss my mouth, first."

Addam blinked. If the next words out of his mouth (handsome, wasn't it? probably kissable, was the word) were-

"You what?"

Minoth shook his head. "No, not me what. You what. You kiss me on the mouth, if you don't like the other end - which I happen to know you do. I have eyes, you know." And so did Mythra, and Brighid, and Hugo, and all the rest. Were they watching now? Minoth didn't want to know.

The golden eyes of yore and lore narrowed. Minoth watched each miniature muscle control the movement of lustrous gray brows down to cover. "Supposing I do. Supposing I do take you up on this ridiculous proposition. Then what?"

"Then we'll make it recreational. Have another snog once every other day. Supposing you like it, of course."

"You seem awfully eager."

"Supposing I am."

At last, the gambit paid its quick work off: "Oh, enough supposing."

And then Addam had yanked Minoth firmly towards him by the back of his neck, gloved fingers tangling in the tightly-pulled strands that marked the division of scalp from nape with no regard for the high collar that kept Minoth walled in from the world, safe and secure as he liked.

Maybe he'd have to get a helm - perhaps armet with bevor, if he was remembering his costuming terms right - to handle his frontal facing. Maybe he was glad he didn't already have one.

Addam's kiss was rough, again shockingly genuine. When you were being kissed, Minoth soon discovered, you immediately dispatched with all notions of "good kisser" or "bad kisser" - at least, you did as much when you weren't a teenager out necking with a fellow teenager whose greasy face and palms made you instantaneously develop a metric by which to qualify and quantify how worth it, or probably not so, this experience was.

You could taste in it, the movement of chapped lips that could only be described as lovemaking, the slight edge of desperation that Addam apparently had, after so many days, weeks, months, years of botched attempts at easygoing closeness. The elation, too, and the confusion, fuzzy-hazy, that hung over a mind yet occupied with remembering just what had preceded the current fantastic event.

There was nothing else Minoth could do, besides reciprocate. His right hand covered Addam's, pinning the prince by that appendage to his waist, between bodysuit and belt just as Addam's right hand had ventured beyond the cover of the collar, and his left hand dove beneath the pinned-aside longer lock of hair, pondering once more with aggravated fervence the inconvenience that their gloves brought when all he wanted at this moment was to be able to feel the soft privacy of Addam's upper temple, back behind his ear.

Who ever touched a place like that? Who had either the point or the privilege?

Minoth still didn't want to know if anyone was watching, but he found himself less embarrassed, and thus constrained, by the thought, and more...freed.

If they were watching, as they had been all this time, then surely they were expecting this. Surely they weren't surprised that something like this would result from such a charged comment as that.

Was it stupid to say? Absolutely. This was why polite conversation existed. It relied far less on innuendo and idiom, on adult understanding of the world, and far more on directness, on mutual respect, on clarity.

As if this kiss, this embrace, wasn't all about mutual respect.

It almost got Minoth angry, thinking about it. How much time they'd wasted, because they were...stupid! Stupid, was all it was. If he and Addam did manage to maintain that "recreational" promise, they certainly wouldn't start sitting up straighter for it. They'd only dredge up a greater well of inside jokes, communication in a language all their own - the language of fond annoyance, of grim peeks into the other's insecurities and personal history, of unspoken reassurances and of blatantly acted-upon attraction.

The closeness he had with Addam right now was perfect, in isolation, and in context too. Minoth really, really didn't want to find out what had to happen next. But, he did need to use his mouth for something other than snogging, just then, so he squeezed Addam's low hand beneath his and slid out a caress along that sharp, inquisitive jaw to give fair warning.

Addam's eyes were fierce, but his mouth was soft.

"Good enough for you?"

A swallow, unguarded. "Quite."

"I'm sorry."

Now the unguardedness and the fierceness stormed together into stiff, spiky fear. "No," was all Addam said. He didn't ask why.

Minoth put up his best placating hand, but Addam had grabbed it and indignantly kissed the back, over the golden crescents that complemented the vambrace, before he had a chance to do anything else with it.

"Don't be sorry." Very nearly a command, but a command to stand down from complexity, principally.

There it was: no bout of politeness would ride supreme here. Minoth wouldn't stand - or rather, lie down - for it.

"I'm sorry it had to happen this way."

Unfortunately for Minoth, Addam caught the edge of a grin he just couldn't tamp.

"Oh, you-- You're just saying it that way to toy with me! Can't you be genuinely happy about anything, for once in your miserable life?!"

"Mean," said Minoth with a laugh. Gloved fingers were in his hair again.