relax (i've got it covered)

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"Minoth?"

Ah, so he'd been found. Or close enough, anyway. The chances that Addam would rumble up so close to his present location only to turn away again, hapless, weren't very high, considering where that present location was presently located: the militia garrison. Even with all the time he'd been spending not there over the past year-and-smidges, Addam knew the place well. He'd keep at it.

"Minoth!"

Just another few steps around the wall...

"Oh, there you are. Thank the Architect, I'd been looking all over."

Minoth was, of course, none too surprised to see Addam, and hadn't been even before the first shout had come, but he was surprised to see the prince in just as thorough a state of relative undress as he himself was. They were only stopping off for a couple of hours, maybe an evening, and not the whole night, so why they were both stripped down to their base layers was beyond him.

But nevertheless. The Flesh Eater stretched, almost reflexively patting the notebook lain open in his lap before he remembered that he hadn't brought one - he'd left his writing supplies with his jacket, back at the center of camp. Sort of an accidental-on-purpose clue that he was missing, but didn't exactly not want to be found.

A human foible, you might say. He was never sure quite what to do with them.

Addam, arms crossed over his chest soon after he'd diagnosed the level of awkwardness that hands on hips yielded when he was missing all the armor that usually clamored up his waist, was studying him. It wasn't amusement, and it wasn't concern, but he was yet quiet, not following up his useless introductory statements with anything more important.

So, Minoth took the cue.

"You really think the Architect had anything to do with you finally walking your princely self over to where I was? Even I know he doesn't care about anything so mundane as that."

"Even you?" Now Addam cracked a grin; the purposeful adverb was a ripe invitation for teasing, whether self-directed or otherwise. "Are you getting a little dogged, then? I thought you wanted to meet the man."

Man? And who was to say? Amalthus hadn't seen him, everybody knew that.

It all depended, anyway. Some days he thought it was spiritual. Others, it was more just a general yearning curiosity. Anybody'd be crazy not to want an eyeball on the root point of truth. Especially since what he'd supposedly given them down, god-to-man (and back to god again, but twisted), wasn't turning out to be all that great, or even any good.

And then there was Mythra. Very interesting, how differently he counted their allies and their backgrounds thereafter when he'd been the very one to suggest that she and he were the same. Was it human, that hypocrisy? Or was it only a Blade's?

"Just thinking about how I got here. Just thinking, that's all..."

"Ah."

Thank you, Addam, for that highly illuminating comment. Will you be back tomorrow with more?

Eh, it was all a sham. Addam knew that Minoth appreciated his situational reticence, and Minoth knew that he knew it. Maybe they hadn't always fit together so easily, but each compromised little by little along the way, and now they were functionally inseparable, yet still highly independent.

And how on Alrest do you come up with a thing like that?

"Can I help, at all?"

"Little early in the evening for philosophizing, Prince. I hadn't penned it into your schedule. I know you need fair warning for these things."

"Not for you."

Put another way: I'm always thinking about you. I'm always ready for you. And while I'd gladly spend the rest of the evening looking for you, I'd be even more glad to have spent the time sitting at your side.

"I'm sure I'll come out of it sooner or later. When's dinner up? Soon, or is it Aegaeon's night?" Aegaeon was the only person Minoth could think of for whom perfectionism didn't actually cover for a strangled niggle of shame.

"Soon enough," Addam agreed, but distractedly. He was looking at the scar, Minoth noticed. It was obvious from the way his eyes dragged slowly, then jagged to one side or the other, then looped back up and around again.

"Sit?"

So Addam sat.

He joined Minoth in gazing across the moor, at this Armu or that, and he fidgeted his fingers over the backs of his hands, feeling where gloves remained but strapped armor had left.

Thinking wasn't really all that. He didn't really need to go skulk off and sit alone, without even a notebook to hand, to do it. He liked practicing the solitude, though. He'd been a veritable creature of it before, and he found he didn't really want to stop of all sudden.

(He needed fair warning for these things. Things like Addam. He hadn't a lick of it.)

If Minoth had to guess, he'd say that Addam was thinking about how much he wished he really could kiss it better. But he didn't have to guess, because then Addam was saying it. As Minoth ruefully shook his head, his Driver only became more and more animated, until both his arms had ended up arrayed about the Blade's neck, one of them even curling up to cradle his chin.

"Oh, come on! Just the one - won't you let me?"

He didn't say please. Minoth wasn't sure he'd even thought about it. He did, however, pause in a solemn enough fashion to make the actual, honest query: "If you really do mind, then I won't, but I would like to. Is it alright?"

In answer, Minoth let the left corner of his mouth and his left eyebrow (features nearest Addam) drift up. Don't you know me well enough not to have to ask? When it's clear enough, it's clear.

Addam's thanks was a warm, delicate kiss placed at the curling upper extremes of Minoth's scar, and a noise of contentment so low and small that only Minoth would be able to hear it. He doubted even anyone else in his same position would know how to listen for it.

And then he just...lingered there, cheek pressed lazily against Minoth's temple, fingertips of his right hand turned down from Minoth's chin (why did you let me go, why did you let me go) and dangling almost close enough to brush Minoth's Core.

(Minoth's, Minoth's, Minoth's - all his, all his, all his.)

Despite the obstruction, Minoth could feel the errant sunlight dappling over his face even and ever more keenly than he had before. He'd be so cold if Addam peeled himself away. He was terribly sure of it.

"You're awfully content," he muttered gracelessly, with the distinct impression that for all his sardonics he was in actuality diagnosing the emotion almost analytically, as if he'd never felt it, or any others, himself before.

(Well, not quite. Like he'd imbibed on a foreign, dangerous keen what he wanted to say was once or twice but was probably really more times than he could count. And so he kept counting.)

A diligent student, indeed. It was hard to avoid. Blades were just...like that. Especially Blades who took it upon themselves to write stories, plays, about what humans did. Because Blades didn't do anything on their own. They were never, in and of themselves, history. Except when they were, as objects of it.

Students, also, had masters.

Addam was Minoth's favorite, above and after all.

"You made me so."

(I love you, so.)

Had Addam taught him expression?

Nah. Not a chance. While Minoth knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was infinitely more vibrant now than he had been since about two hours after he'd last left the Core Crystal, his capacities for sympathy, empathy, compassion and so on had been less dormant, more stifled. That was probably the only reason he'd really been able to make it through.

Addam, even Addam, probably wouldn't have reached him if he hadn't been able to feel.

He might have tried, though. Damn if he didn't try.

Just then, Addam gave a little more of his weight into the hard lines of Minoth's shoulders, and the surrounding musculature thereof. "You're still tense. Are you sure there's nothing bothering you?"

Minoth sighed, but true to form it wasn't exactly an exhalation of relaxation. "Sure as I've ever been, Prince." And the same as I've ever been, too.

Addam nodded. If he wasn't sated, he was at least satisfied. The fluffy ends of the hair gathered off to the right side of his face took a quietly flirtatious brush with the inner contours of Minoth's ear. He didn't mind it. Not too much, anyway. Not enough to get ornery.

(He didn't mind being a little like a spooked animal, now. There was a certain sort of power in it.)

"If you insist."

A beat - several measures worth of grand pause, rather.

"You gonna get off me?"

"...no." The weight pressed then again more.

"If you insist."