You should see your bed hair!

Minoth well knew about the "there was only one bed" trope. Oh, how he knew. Every trashy marketplace serial he'd ever dryly skimmed in Indol had latched onto it with morbid gusto, painting close to the idea that such scandalous accidents could happen all too easily as a result of halfbaked (well, more halfcocked and underbaked combined) necessity, and isn't it such a thrill to titter about those who aren't so morally upright as you, as would concede to the notion of sharing a bed simply because there wasn't another. Preposterous! And oh so titillating, don't you think?

It wasn't that he was sworn off of it, personally - if he found occasion to use it, he would, and reclaim it from sordid layabout portrayals. Anything Minoth did, he did well; that wasn't the point.

The point was that he never fell prey to it in real life, outside of fictional fantasia. Did sharing a room with Addam to begin with happen to count?

Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. He didn't quite feel like sleeping on the floor of the palace, anyway. So it was less "there was only one bed" as a spectacle to be observed after the fact and more "these is only one bed" as a fact to be noted in the present moment.

There is only one bed. You and Addam are going to sleep in it. But how might that go?

Minoth had never removed his armor, more than just gloves and boots and maybe holsters and well, that's quite a bit already, but you know what I mean, he wears so much, when bedding down in any other resting place. For a Blade, that was normal. It was just that most Blades weren't so...bulky.

I'll spare you any further expository preamble; we all understand who and what Minoth is and was. To wit: he was still lounging in the desk chair the simple guest room afforded him, but by this point it was with Addam settled across his legs, arms looped around his neck - which is to say, his collar.

"We have to sleep," said Minoth quietly, trying to ignore the conspicious presence of Addam's nose nestled in his hair.

"I suppose we do," answered Addam.

"And that's different from this."

"I suppose it is."

"You're cute."

"I suppose I am."

"Can I kiss you again?"

"Mhm."

Beneath silent gratitude for the fact of not having received a fourth pathetic entry into the ridiculously parallel series of responses, Minoth wondered what, in fact, Addam had been so seemingly apprehensive about just a few minutes earlier, when he'd stood there flashing crimson upon being accused of the cardinal sin of, in so many words, cuteness.

Because that was another key element to those stories, after all: one got into trouble with one's lover in the criminally shared bed because one was confessing feelings by way of action that one would never have admitted to by way of words. But Addam knew that he loved Minoth, and Minoth knew that too.

So it wasn't anything like the tabloid stories in the least.

It was much sweeter than that. Much softer. Much more real. Just as Addam's delicate blush was when Minoth grazed careful lips over the apple of his cheek.

But enough about that - I'm sure that's embarrassing for all of us, you and me and the both of them makes four and that's far too many to be gathered around at such an affair. Before long, we'll be circled back around to the trope again, and then where will we be?

So then. To the men. Reluctantly, Minoth nudged Addam to his feet, and the prince went obligingly to check the room's door and turn back the covers while the Flesh Eater capped up his pen and pulled the marking ribbon in his notebook into proper place.

"Which side do you want?" came Addam's damnably timid question.

"Side?" Minoth echoed, and there it was. If they were just coworkers, colleagues, they would take opposite sides of the mattress and turn their backs to each other and call it done (like adults, I tell you, like adults!). But they were not just that. They were at least a touch sillier, I should think - and you should as well, really.

"Unless you'd like to...share the middle?"

That was the obvious answer, anyway. But it didn't make sense - even Lora and Haze likely weren't planning such a thing. You didn't plan such things unless you were married, and when you were married, you didn't have to, it just happened.

"This is turning out to be more effort than it's worth," muttered Minoth, unsure as to whether he meant himself to be heard. Addam, non-ocular senses heightened to fine attunement in the dark, heard him.

"I don't think so. Important things are bound to be a little difficult, at first. It's what makes them seem all the more worthwhile."

Oh, Architect, what a mental diatribe Minoth could beat on that topic. One would start from salvation, then work to providence and provenance, then dive into self-investment and identity and worth and by all that's holy, Addam, do I really deserve you?

But he didn't want to think about that now, of course, so he mustered up his mental fortitude and didn't. "D'you care which side of your body you sleep on?"

Addam frowned, cocked his head, and Minoth caught the flash of silver in the darkness. "I don't see what that's got to do with anything."

Minoth deliberated for only a moment on the decision of sword arm versus mounting point of shielding pauldrons. Addam was stood on the far side of the bed, so he approached from the near (that is to say, right and left, irrespectively) and quietly unbuckled his chestpiece and the most significant portion of his collar before sitting down and patting the middle of the mattress.

"Everything alright, Minoth?"

But Minoth didn't respond until Addam had acknowledged his request and climbed closer, at which point the Flesh Eater wrapped his arms around his prince and held him as tight to his chest as possible.

"Couldn't be better," he murmured at last.

"Not even if I pulled the covers up?"

The question came muffled and dreamy-content, overall, from the space just between the crest of Minoth's shoulder and his Core Crystal. It sounded like they'd made the right decision, anyway. Not much of a decision, when there's only one answer, but...well. So they'd made a mountain out of a molehill. It wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last.

"Okay, wiseguy. Sure, I don't want to catch a chill. Have at it."

Sticking a wayward arm out to feel for the top hem of the duvet, Addam had soon gotten them cocooned in the most traditional part of their sleeping arrangement, and then he became very still against Minoth's chest, arms wriggled to the most unobtrusive positions behind the Blade's back that he could think of.

"Thinking hard, Prince?"

It wasn't...disconcerting how fast he was able to flip between tender and trepidated, casual and cavalier, no (at least not to Minoth himself), but it didn't help solidify anything about the general uncertainty of their situation.

"You're very warm," Addam allowed at last. "Almost like..."

"Almost like a real person? What, you thought I was all synthetic like Amalthus wanted me to be? Tch. Not a chance."

"No, not that." With each word, Addam's voice got quieter. "Almost like you're exactly how I'd always dreamed you'd be. Warm, and close, and so very real."

Huh. Those were, indeed, the very words Minoth had always thought to himself would best describe Addam. He'd berated himself for it, of course - both the very thinking, and the fact that if Addam was so close, and real, and warm and right and true, what was all the dithering about? The man had never met a person he didn't love, except the people he absolutely hated, because they held in contempt people whom he did love. It was all very simple, with Mr. Origo here. It always had been.

"That so? I feel the same."

All at once, the pressure Minoth felt in his Core increased to what he felt was damn near a bursting point, but then just as quickly it relaxed; Addam had answered the confession with an earnest hug. His final gesture before nodding off completely was to nudge a kiss up at the underside of Minoth's jaw.

No, it didn't need to be like this. It felt pretty juvenile that it was, in fact, like this. But it also felt like the right thing to do, even if turning their backs to each other wouldn't have been so wrong.

Drifting off to sleep, Addam's hands tangled in his still-ponytailed hair, Minoth thought that maybe tropes weren't so bad, in the end. After all, how else would he describe the fact that he had fallen in love?

(Certainly not with the ill-advised scowl he wore when Addam gave a faux gasp of shock the following morning at how apparently atrocious his usually moderately-well-kempt hair looked. No, no, certainly not that.)