Naturally Gifted
"So, you're..."
"Well, you know." Addam smiled apologetically, almost as if even he didn't know what it was to which he was referring. While he wasn't implying that Minoth would know via personal experience, because he was neither quite that bold nor quite that clever, it just felt like something they shared. The acceptance of the abnormality - rather, the deviance from normative expression - that simply was.
"Hormone therapy administered by Blades," Addam began again once he'd gathered his thoughts, "is able to target just the secondary sex characteristics, rather than the reproductive organs. So I can look the way I'd like, be as tall and as broad and so forth, but Flora and I can still have children."
It obviated the specific logistical need for any large-scale surgeries, anyway.
The thought prompted Minoth to whistle, long and low. "Pretty neat stuff there, Prince. And Tornan doctors just figure all this out in their spare time?" Or had there just been a stray hypothesis about Blades lacking proper reproductive organs, and some guileless guinea pig had stepped up to see?
Minoth was voting for the latter. Addam nodded emphatically, impressed that Minoth should have grasped the thrust of it so quickly.
"And you want to have those kids, when the war is over?"
"As soon as we're able. Oh, Minoth, there's nothing I want more."
"You're not...disappointed?"
It was an impotent brand of question at any time, but Minoth scoffed with particular relish to hear it now. "Permission to be crass, my prince?"
Addam rolled his eyes. "You never have to ask. You never do ask, actually."
"Maybe I should," replied Minoth thoughtfully, pretending to really consider it with all due gravitas. "But while I'm doing that, let me explain my thinking, which - as ever - seems to elude your pretty little head."
Addam scowled. He did this so often, when in conversation with Minoth. He couldn't change. He didn't want to.
"You think I'm gonna be disappointed because you don't have the equipment. Newsflash, Prince, and one I think you already suspect: I don't have it either. Never did."
Few as they were, Blades of the male persuasion that weren't transgender had nothing more elaborate than the form of a packer. It said something about how all queer theory was rooted in feminism, for the positive propulsion of the movement but for the negative figuring of who to demonize, when the patriarchy got riled. So all, or most of, the rest of them who'd crossed the dichotomous and stormy sea weren't too bothered not to strike the same outline.
(Minoth didn't need it, of course, to merit his absurd measure of wry confidence.)
"So it's alright, then." Addam gave that weak, confused smile again.
"Of course it's alright. It's just body parts, I'd be a clown to condemn you."
"But..."
"But, I will admit, if I had my choice of who was gonna rail me into next week, it'd be Flora."
Addam was too scandalized even to scowl.
"What? ...why?"
"Mommy kink, I guess?" Minoth shrugged. Oh, he was horrible. "Maybe once she knocks you up I'll let you strap me."
"Next week, he said? Well, what in the Architect's name is wrong with this one?"
"Maybe he's taken a scientific bent, like his old Driver, and he's thinking of inventing time travel."
Addam mused about it with infinite fondness, wordlessly grateful for the space in which to contemplate such foolish and frivolous illusions. Minoth, travel forward or back in time? Minoth, unmake himself a Flesh Eater and be bonded to Amalthus forever?
Or perhaps, then, by this token, Minoth would travel back in time, hang on a loop just long enough to locate the unawakened Core-Crystal form of his own current self, and...and do something with it. Him. Give it, or him (himself), to Addam and Flora.
The thought made Addam frown again, again, again.
If he had his choice...
"Addam?"
Flora's concerned voice made him blink, straighten up.
"Are you alright, love?"
"I suppose so. I was just realizing that if Minoth had his choice of Driver, he wouldn't actually pick me. It's a sobering thought."
"What? How do you mean that? Hasn't he picked you already, with the choice he has got?"
"Well, yes, but obviously he prefers you."
Flora made a noncommittal whistling sound, lips puckered together. "I thought, obviously, he prefers men."
Men, which proverbially do the railing - although it did have a womanly sort of sound. Or maybe Addam's principles were confused, twisted about, by his extreme desire to understand the intersectional plights of Blades and queer people, at once.
"Why don't you ask him?" Flora said then.
"Because I'm afraid of what he might say."
"But...it can't change anything."
"Flora, it would change everything."
Change everything? Certainly, it would. The budding of resentment always began with being able to ask oneself about alternatives, about preferences, about better universes to inhabit.
Addam was being woefully short-sighted and crude if he thought he could insist to himself that just ignoring those things would ameliorate the issue. No, he didn't quite think that. But, he let himself waste away in his fear a little while longer, it was true.
The other problem was that he knew he was being foolish, plain out. How could he possibly take something said so cavalierly so seriously? Flora would laugh and tweak the tip of his nose if she didn't see him worrying himself to bits.
And what was all the fuss about, well, strapping Minoth anyway? Obviously, if Addam was willing - and Titans, was he willing - to carry Flora's children, then he had no worry of being, otherwise, variously emasculated.
Actually, there were much more potent truths to be harvested, here. Much.
"You know," he tried to say it offhand, "I took what you said to heart. About our being transgender."
Minoth regarded him with a quizzical stare. "What, were you thinking about going back on it? Little bit late for that, my prince."
No, no - and he hadn't ever, to tell the truth. It had all just seemed so frightfully natural, with Flora. By himself, he might have faltered, with only Nuncle to call him by another name. Here, though, in the golden land with beautiful friends? Well, of course it all made sense.
Addam let himself smile lazily. "Too right, my friend. It's already been bought and sold, on that point. But about this railing..."
Such ridiculous things to discuss. Minoth quirked a brow, way up. Maybe he smirked.
"Yeah?"
"You love Flora, yes?"
"Of course I love Flora."
Of course. Who didn't? But Minoth, of all people, certainly wasn't the type to say so. Not unprompted, anyway, and here he had been. The smirk had disappeared.
Clever, tender eyes could perceive a trace of instability in Minoth's gaze. Not that that was a particularly attractive quality, but it could be an endearing one, on occasion. Addam liked to see it now, and he reached out to touch Minoth's arm, just above the crook of the elbow, with a gentle hand.
Minoth didn't buck. The eyebrow did, though.
"That's why you chose her, then."
Before Minoth could retort anything about not choosing anybody, Addam continued, "And I couldn't resent that. But I do wonder if you even would have found her, if not for me."
Such a soft, hazy inquisition. Such a dreamer's disease. These simple, evident consequences.
But Minoth wasn't having it. He shrugged out of the contact as a way of rearticulating his attention upon Addam and skewing the arrangement another few degrees. In other words, he scooted his boots back onto even footing. "Prince, are you putting me on?"
"I don't know how I could."
"You could," Minoth emphasized the possibility, "by pretending to forget that you're my Driver. I chose you. Flora's your wife. She chose you. And I love her because she chose you. Also," he admitted to the side, "because she's hot."
"Because she has a penis."
"Because it doesn't matter!"
Addam swallowed, with his lack of a hanging apple, and went silent. Minoth blinked a few times, himself, eroded even further from stability by his outburst, which had brought only a temporary grasp.
They weren't angry. No, no. Never angry. Or, at least, not very often. They were instead bullheadedly confused, too focused on performing the possession of testosterone to remember that it was nobility and solemnity that made the admirable man.
Too, hormones were not steroids. Addam remembered to consider that he'd done no cheating to get to where he was. Perhaps some enhancement of certain qualities, but nothing overt. Nothing wanton. And obviously, Minoth liked men!
How they knew this, Addam wasn't sure he'd ever learn. Flora knew many things about people; she liked to study them, figure them out. Minoth made his flamboyance readily apparent, even if his chivalry always seemed to shrink somewhat less so.
All this, about a perverse little comment - about a perverse little organ, as it was! Well, but we shouldn't call it names. That's not nice.
Then, "I'm not gonna tell you to grow a pair," said Minoth, "even though maybe you should." Oh, and what a loaded argument there. "Forget I said anything, how's that?"
"No!" called Flora from the hallway. "Keep going! I like where this is headed!"