good night, sweet prince

Lora falls asleep against his shoulder, and he shoves her by the pauldron and she snorts an ungraceful smile through her snore and starts laughing until she finally wakes up and shoves his shoulder back and goes to actually lie down. He doesn't mind it. What's to mind? She's sweet and she's sensible. Good Lady Lora, indeed.

Jin doesn't lean when he sleeps, but his back hunches and slumps if his hands aren't anchored on his knees, and eventually he'll collapse through the space in between his legs and Minoth has to catch him before the horns on his mask cause a blunt force trauma and smash his Core Crystal. Cripes' sake. He smiles, nods, and moves towards their corralled-up resting area.

Haze is a frequent candidate for cowboy leaning, especially after he's finished a particularly long-winded tale with a whisper-quiet finish, and when he shakes her gently her halo just flutters and her breathing hitches. Eventually he has to pick her up and put her somewhere more hospitable, and she's heavier than she looks.

Hugo is lighter than he looks, owing most likely to all the armor that he's hardly ever seen without, and his back is even straighter than Jin's as he looks perpetually serene, like he's just resting his eyes. Minoth pats him on the back and leaves him there. He can take care of himself.

Brighid too can take care of herself, and the only thing that signals her unwakefulness is the slight dimming of her flames, because ever-watchful eyes wide shut and all that, she's inmitable. He considers laying a gentle hand over her shoulder, but decides against it and moves away himself.

Aegaeon, like Jin, is prone to falling prone, only he's more easily suited to it because his protruding attachment is on the back of his head. Minoth jerks him up by that very handle, looks his still-blank face over, and grips him by his sides to wrestle him over to a blanket where he can faceplant in peace, just as the Architect must have intended.

Mythra's a fun one, or perhaps just a funny one. Minoth pokes her side when he sees her diadem about to slip off, and however it is she truly feels about him, whether jealous, envious, or admiring, she looks appropriately bed-heady and embarrassed as he gives his most conciliatory, not to say victorious, grin and she scampers away.

Milton and Mikhail tumble snoring on top of each other, and he leaves them, afraid to ruffle either head because ears and bang are telltale and they still don't seem to be quite happy that he's around.

Why is Minoth never the one to fall asleep first? It's not some trumped-up Bladeness, because...well, I needn't retread the same old, old same tale. Just wary, cagey, worn in the ruts of his lonely existence made less lonely by the literally physical closeness of all these people. Boundaries and repression and scars, oh my, he's certainly a complicated archetype no matter how we boil it down.

But here I've left someone out - the most important troupe member of all (depending on context, of course - I play no favorites)!

When Addam falls asleep on his shoulder, Minoth rolls his own (if just the other) and worries his lip and thinks how ridiculous it is that the silly little prince needs to lean on him, of all people.

Not that Addam has so much discretion as he snores loudest of them all. He'd lay his tousled head upon any available buoy just the same. Minoth wouldn't, though.

Here and now he leans back, reciprocates, head over head, arm over arm, heart over heart. Addam smiles in his sleep, and even if Minoth can't see it, he feels it, in heart or Core or otherwise.

Probably, on other days, other nights, he'll do and have done all of the same actions so requisite for the others. This, however...this isn't so routine. It isn't the same old story. As Minoth pulls his prince closer and finds himself losing the edge, he yet thinks, maybe I'd like it to be.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, to trust. They all trust so easily - warriors all but there's no qualm about letting their guard down, once in the count of falling asleep at all and twice in the measure of doing it fairly well on top of someone else.

Minoth is always cautious never to flanderize, never to string out tropes until they become cliché and there's no nuance of the original scene left over. Addam nestles in closer and he reminds himself that the prince is cuddly, but he's not soft, he's not stupid, he's not perfect, none of them least he himself are.

But he is here. He is kind. He does care, and he won't stop no matter how many times Minoth shoves him away in a manner far more physical than Mythra probably ever had or has.

He is patient. If he wasn't, he wouldn't care half so much. Well, maybe he's not patient, but a depth of love will serve just the same in a pinch. Out of one, even.

It has to be love, because there's no duty binding him to give his wits and ends for a Blade, a Flesh Eater, who's not his. And what's keeping Minoth here? Not duty, not responsibility, not intrigue (if he wanted that he'd have started tailing Malos).

When he thinks it for himself, it's a massively four-lettered L-word, and mentally he scolds himself for shrinking up into the easy, hackneyed thing, but...later. When Addam's not asleep, for one thing.

So good night, sweet prince, and not-so-sweet cowboy. If you're bitter, maybe he can warm you, and maybe sometime soon it'll be you snuggling your weary head up to his chest. After all, I'm sure he wouldn't mind - would you?