take me out (like, all the way out)
Here it is, folks, the alternate edition of me wanting these two guys to kiss and saying "if you want something done (and right, possibly), gosh darn it, you've got to do it yourself." Upon first drafting I slapped a mature label on it and then for whatever reason was determined to finish it that way - it may not, in fact, even merit that rating, but there it is.
Chapter 01: we, out here [2021-08-14]
Chapter 02: you, in there [2021-08-16]
Chapter 03: us, at home [2021-08-17]
What was that he'd thought, about Minoth not being a liar, certainly not, but telling...convenient truths, sometimes? So was it convenient that he was here propping his cheek in his palm and holding Addam's hand as casually as anything in the curved fingers of not his gloves but his bare own? No, quite honestly, it was a little inconvenient, because, Addam thought to himself, I'm married. Like an impotent fool, oh, I'm married.
No one was around. With varying degrees of disinterest, or a mild opposite, they'd drifted off to other corners of Auresco to do their own necessary victual-rustling and frivolous window-shopping and cheering sundry do-gooding. In between the surge of the hunt for Malos, they really had a very peaceable life. It was pleasant enough in its own right - and that, Addam realized, was the very crux of it all. He so dearly preferred being on this mission over the drudge of keeping accounts and allocating soldiers to details and detailed details back at Aletta.
And there again: oh, I'm married. The thought of this juxtaposing itself against that by sheer dint of his little philosophical reflection made Addam squirm in his seat, again, just as much as Minoth's initial grasp had. Because it wasn't so sketchy or staving as all that, he was simply trying to reconcile the scatterbrain corners of his ever-scattered brain. And speaking of reconciling something peculiar...
"Is this really all you want? To sit here and eat dinner with me?"
Minoth hummed. "You're asking me to be blunt, my prince."
"You're always blunt." Not that...not that the roundness of the end of that precious single syllable was very harsh. It was, all in all, probably the softest thing Minoth ever said, habitually or not.
Now their very wordsmith hummed again, lower. "That you're right. What you're asking me to be is not honest, but open. And I find that I like to keep myself pretty well closed."
Cloaking desires in innuendo wasn't really Minoth's style. Indeed, he kept himself closed. To invite honesty, then, one must be honest first. Addam reciprocated the hand-holding, truly, at last, and Minoth pursed his lips, looking suddenly confounded. Like he knew for damn sure that this and everything else only went one way. Tides change, my friend. Times change. My dear, dear friend.
"Is there a reason for that? And is it something I might be able to help with?"
Minoth drew back his hand with the reluctance of a blind man closing the shutters before the sun consumed him. "You know my reasons."
Yes, he knew the reasons, and the reasons made him sick. "Supposing I do. If I asked you to tell me about them again, how would that make you feel?" The Flesh Eater's grimace was more than sufficient answer.
Addam tapped his fingers on the table, minding Minoth's sudden hunch as the waitress returned with their meals. The stray lock of hair drifted like a hung head - whether guilted or gallowsed guillotined, one could not and could never say. When he straightened up again, he brushed a hand over the mottled Core, as if he could brush away the anxiety, brush it off and clear over his broad shoulder.
And there were better things to do with hands than let them facilitate a fester in your own fidgeting. Addam knew that firsthand. "If I asked you to hold my hand again, how would that make you feel?"
If there were not already a jagged line working its way across the gently molded facets of Minoth's Core Crystal, Addam would have sworn that it had cracked in two then and there, the expression on Minoth's face was so haunted. "Why would you do that?"
Why, indeed? There didn't hardly seem to need to be a reason, but still. "Because you're such fine company, and it seemed to serve us better than what we were doing. What we are doing."
Minoth grimaced again. "I'm not fine company, Prince. I'm just sociable enough to get along, and that's all." The only thing flushing his cheeks was the steam rising from his soup; everything else about him was shaded gray.
"I don't think going on a dinner date with your Driver has to qualify you as being sociable. If, that is," Addam amended, not at any sudden sight but just in his own course, because Minoth remained steely, even stony, "that's not what you want. But if there is something you do want, I'd like you to tell me."
"That's not..."
"That's not what a Driver should do, or has to do? Forgive me for being blunt myself, Minoth, but I don't think you've had a very good example of what that is. And even if you have...well, I'll flatter myself a little different, really. From him, or from, say, Hugo."
"Of course you're different from Hugo," Minoth retorted, staring uselessly into his soup as his elbows splayed out and off the edges of the table. "You're a whole foot taller than he is."
When Minoth started making petulant little observations about things that served no symbolism in the least, that, Addam had learned, was when he really just wanted to be alone. A sad thing, yes, even morose, but he had no mind to be disrespectful, to be encroaching. Difficult to encroach on a gaze turned firmly down and away, yes, but there it was.
"I can go eat with the others, you know. We don't have to do this, any more. Again..." He bit his lip, hesitating. "Not if it's not what you want."
Minoth was silent.
"Do you see what I mean?"
Something jerked around those telltale elbows, the stuttering and stavement of motion all in one. "Of course I see," Minoth snapped, and now he was looking Addam hard in the eye, "you're making it so damned easy. You care so much, and you feel so bad, and you're treating me like an Architect-damned child. And I know," his tone juddered, "I know plenty of children who haven't even gotten the chances I've had. Shouldn't even say know. They're dead."
"Minoth..." Addam Origo wasn't a prince for no good reason. He knew how to command the militia, he knew how to direct teammates for a strategized attack, he knew how to intercede in political whiplash to just get the damn thing settled, if it wasn't already well over his head. Here, no, he wasn't drowning. It was time for action.
300G spilled out of a prince's pocket far too easily; most people didn't have the luxury of parting with that much money in the shape of only three coins, but...ah, well. There it was. "Come on."
Petulant pouting paused. "What?"
"Let me be the cryptic one for once, alright? Just follow me."
Minoth was still seated. He cracked his neck slowly to one side, then the other.
"Please."
The tendons craned back, and there was the proud, feral, fearful animal. Was that a sage symbolism? Of any positive kind, anyway?
Addam's hand was extended. Perhaps that had been subconscious, but whatever the case, Minoth stood with a sudden, uncharacteristic air of hurry and reached for the open palm with every ounce of abandoned determination he had.
Shoulder to shoulder. Hand in hand. And isn't that how a Blade is supposed to be with a Driver, their Driver? The way a Driver is supposed to be with their Blade? Addam walked, strode, through and out of the commercial district with his eyes on his path and on the already-set shine of the horizon, but something else in his heart looked to his right, at Minoth.
The Driver took the lead, always, and even if Aegaeon, and Brighid, too, had and took longer stride than Hugo, they followed behind with reverence, Jin and Haze the same with compassion. Addam was taller than Mythra, and she was uncertain of their goal for any longer treks. But Minoth...
I used my own initiative, I strike my own path. He was taller than Addam, if only by a paltry couple of inches, and there was no reason for him to walk behind. As Addam felt his presence, both in the ether and outside of it because his Core had suddenly signaled something open and longing, he found himself wondering what they looked like now to those who watched them leave the city. Their hips and thus their hands were close, hidden, but Addam's heart soared all the same at the thought.
They climbed up the rocks outside the glen of the forest trail like yet-teenage boys, stoic at first as Addam pointed to their destination atop, then gaudy, giggly. Minoth stumbled and Addam shoved at the back of his pants with a true nigh-decade of easy familiarity to keep him from tumbling all the way down on that very very admirable attribute; Addam leaned to the side and then all the way over on his back to take a breather and Minoth knelt as well and laid a playful hand on the far side of his jaw and then he was closer and then he was very close--
"Minoth."
"I'm here, Prince." Indeed. I noticed that.
"Can you answer my question now? Are you, you know...open?"
The navigating nose, such a noble nose, pressed with undue weight into Addam's cheek. "Open for business. Sure. Whatcha want?" What do I want? What do you want? In fact...in fact. Indeed.
"Is that really all you wanted? To sit there at the restaurant and make cow eyes at me and pretend like you didn't have a care in the world?"
Minoth snorted, and like the basest cliché his breath was warm at Addam's ear. "As if that's what I did."
"Okay," Addam conceded, "maybe not the pretending, but you were making eyes."
"Well...you're very nice to look at."
"As are you."
"But you're not looking at me, Addam."
"I'm looking at the stars." It wasn't quite dusk yet.
"I think," Minoth started, heaving himself up and then hefting Addam upright just the same, "the stars are in your eyes." Oh, how those eyes blinked. Cow eyes? Doe eyes. "Get up. I'm not gonna lie down on a rock slide to make out with you."
Addam wrinkled disdain through every fold of cartilage in his nose (but, then, he didn't have many, did he, the way his was shaped). "You don't have to make it sound so crude. Ah, no, that's not even what I mean. When you say that, it seems like you're not understanding."
"I'm understanding," Minoth said with a roll of his shoulders. "I understand a lot of things. Realize a lot of 'em too."
"Things like how I'm your Driver for real now?" And now the eyes were puppy-dog, a cliché again.
"Oh, that one..." Minoth grinned, breathy and relieved. "Yeah, that one's probably my favorite."
Swallowing all his and their erstwhile destination, Addam tucked his head up close to the tainted - no, not tainted, splendid - Core Crystal. The rocks beneath them weren't comfortable, but they didn't need to be. "Not that grand a distinction for me to be your favorite Driver, eh? Not in comparison."
"Hey, hey." Minoth's hand, still minus the glove - or no, again minus the glove because he'd put it back on for their little quarry-climbing-like endeavor - reached in and stroked the side of Addam's chin so slowly and carefully it was quite definitely and even definitionally reverent. "You'd be my favorite even if I'd come from the auspices of the greatest hero Torna had ever seen."
"Torna? Not Alrest?"
Now he shoved the chin and attached head aside, flicking at the miniature braid as it swung. "Oh come on, I can't say something poetic about every little quibble you've got."
Swatting at sideburns himself, Addam grinned in kind as well. "Yes you can. I happen to know you can." Knowledge is power, and all that.
"Okay, funny man." And before the prince could protest the pronouncement, Minoth had swung him fully up into his arms and braved the rest of the clime.
They sat for a long while like that, Addam with one leg slung over Minoth's and the other dangling in between and Minoth with his arms circled around Addam's waist.
"I feel very...small," Addam hazarded at last.
Surprisingly, Minoth's grip gave no cue. His conversational rejoinder was, indeed, casual. "Small like what? Like physically, you're a pretty little prince? Like mentally, you've been petty?"
"Both, I suppose." He stared at his shoes, silly and pointed next to Minoth's worn, capable boots. "Should I thank you for the compliment?"
Ah, and now Minoth blushed. Or flushed, maybe. That sounds more masculine, after all. "Now, well, I just meant pretty like an intensifier. You know, with the-- Eh, no, you're right."
"Hmm?" Addam prodded with all the insouciance of, yes, petty triumph.
"I do think you're pretty pretty."
"Oh? Intensifier and all?"
"And all. And how! That's just about the weakest intensifier I could have used."
"Oh, shove the semantics. Come on, lie down, won't you? Or, no, wait a moment." So saying, Addam prised himself out of Minoth's clinging arms and circled around behind him, the Blade's nose again following his movements like the needle in a compass.
"Sorry, that's a bit of semantics from me, isn't it, but anyway. Now you can lie down."
Minoth squinted incredulously at the prince and the cluttered, inconspicuous ground surrounding him. "What did you do? I thought maybe you were gonna lay out that little cape of yours so I didn't get dust all over my ass, or some other clown nonsense."
Oh, Minoth. Addam tilted his head and tried to make a sympathetic face that included all the requisite emotions of their evening together so far. "I suppose I don't really know what I'm doing here. Lend me a hand, won't you?"
The squint turned into a furrow, both on cheeks and between eyebrows. "That ain't gonna cut it, Prince. I need a stage direction."
A cue. Of course. "Would you lay your head in my lap?"
Addam's hands were inviting in gesture and in posture, and his loose pants that only clipped off below the knee with the top of his boots didn't have a sharp edge to them or their nonexistent name. Still... "I think we're missing a bit of context, first."
"Alright then. Could you explain to me why you were so...the way you were at dinner."
"So difficult?" Minoth offered, going back to fill in the blank even though neither man needed him to. Addam nodded, and he huffed a laugh, lowering his head down into his Driver's lap contrary to his first words. Too low now for a shrug, actually. Huh. "Can't have comedy without a little tragedy."
"And do you think this is a joke? Was it a joke, when you asked this afternoon?"
"No, it..." Minoth felt back with his left hand for one of Addam's, and upon finding it pulled it down to rest in his hair. "It couldn't have been farther from it. Truths that you disguise as jokes, because you're too afraid to say them any other way...those are the most dangerous ones."
"Do you feel endangered now?" Addam asked mildly. The pulled hand began to stroke through the strands of hair, tight though they were as they arced over the scalp beneath, and then the other joined it. Minoth shuddered, closed his eyes, fell silent. And, well, this time Addam would take that silence for an answer.
Seconds passed, then minutes, then hours. In that all-important filling in of context, Addam rather thought he should have asked Minoth how long he was okay with staying out here. The night was clear, the air was brisk but not chill, the sand shifted lazily. The others all knew they were having this silly date, but then of course they hadn't known, and neither had the crucial two, that it would have included something like this on the itinerary. On the menu, really, because they hadn't intended to be so mobile.
"Minoth?"
"Mmm...yeah?"
"How are you?"
Ocean blue eyes fluttered open, jolted focus when they met the unexpected gift of golden ones. "I'm okay," was the anticlimactic reply.
"Can I do anything to make you better than okay?"
The eyes wobbled, searched, wavered. Stuttered, even. "You're already you, Addam. You couldn't hardly do anything else."
Addam gave a light laugh, one that in most circumstances would be parsed by observers as slightly uncomfortable but in these in fact indicated fondness, caring, relief. "I suppose that must be true. You're not starting up and away at the thought of me taking care of you."
Minoth smiled then, and it was with a fresh wave of shock that Addam realized he'd never quite seen what could be termed as a toothy grin out of the Flesh Eater. Despite how endeared, even enamored, he felt, he couldn't help but be sorrowful too. Not that there was anything to be done about it. Anything much.
"Since you're definitely awake, I should ask - when did you want to get back to the inn?"
"Oh, Addam. My dear, sweet clown prince." As he said it, Minoth reached up and attempted to run his thumb along Addam's jaw, much in the same way as he'd started to do before the meat of this whole affair had begun. Attempted, that is, because he failed, spatial awareness skewed somewhat by the upside-down-ness of...of it all.
"Do you think I particularly want to go back to the inn, instead of being able to lie here with you, alone?"
"You've got something against our companions?" Addam asked playfully, but there was a tremble of uncertainty in his voice.
His thumb found Addam's earlobe, then the space behind. "Not a thing. But you know I like you best."
"I...I know." Any more astute remark or remarks found it hard to escape around the verbal stilting the intimate touch caused.
Here an awkward pas de deux, there a joint soliloquy. Minoth bent up to catch Addam's lips as his head bowed further and further down, hands found purchase in hair on both sides, the brown mane of hair came unhitched and the gray tuft was released itself.
"Who wouldn't want to go out with a prince, you said," Addam mumbled from the ground as he watched Minoth pick himself up and rearrange their portrait to be less like that of a playing card and more like a song sung in single-take tandem, the two voices and their issuers solidly intertwined. He was still wearing his armor, leather guards studded with spangling stars and all, because who would have thought this would have gone the way it had? Not he.
Minoth's answer to the rhetorical quip came at last when he'd pulled Addam's chest up close to his, Core pressed to sternum, and bowed his forehead to the same mirror. "That's right. But I was only referring to myself. I hope nobody else particularly wants to."
Like an impotent fool, "Oh, I'm married." He could have been more artful, oh, worlds more. Something like, "Oh, well I do happen to know a girl," or, "Well, my wife already has." Like a damned fool. "That would change things, wouldn't it."
"Oh, I don't know," Minoth said idly, appearing very obviously to be considering something like his life depended on it and like he very much did, in fact, know. "I'm here with you now. Might it be possible that I end up...there with her, and you, later?"
Oh, I'm married. Once in slightly stiff formal legality, and the other in grandest common law. Addam smiled despite himself - well, maybe not even. "If that's what you'd like, I'm sure something could be arranged."
As for arrangements, the kisses Minoth pressed to his forehead were far more than simple currency in the exchange for the asylum that was a new Driver. If he were just a Blade, and not a Flesh Eater, would he even feel this way? Very human and conventional, it was.
"And how long have you...wanted to do all this with a prince? Your prince," he couldn't help but add.
"Don't think I ever let myself think about it," Minoth murmured in answer, following a makeshift path down to the tip of Addam's nose, then seeming to be overcome by something and hiding his eyes beyond the pale of Addam's cheek, unscarred right to ever-fair anti-left. "Just sorta...snuck up on me."
"I'm not a very sneaky person, Minoth," Addam chided him. "And where have you gone?"
"Gone fishing," Minoth drawled. His hands worked over Addam's back, feeling the shoulder blades and the inset ridge down the middle, evident even through the chain mail. "Where's Aegaeon?"
"I'm sure Aegaeon's asleep by now, darling." He was half asleep himself, after all, and-- Oh, Titan's foot. "Did I just say what I think I said?"
"Mhm." Minoth's confirmation was practically a purr. "And thank you for it. Not that Aegaeon ever sleeps, but thank you anyway."
"You're very welcome," was Addam's reply given without a scratch of supposing to be found. The bygone head returned now, eyes full of something wondrous, something wonderful, shining their long-held gratitude. Then it smudged up a frown.
"I know none of our little group would know about this, but do you ever-- Hmm. No, never mind."
"I'm minding." And Addam expressed as much with his own kisses laid upon Minoth's cheek, up over the bottom of the scar, on the very eye itself and then away over the browbone. A great many awesome things hidden up inside your handsome head, Minoth. Please, won't you tell me?
Yes, in fact. Eventually, Minoth got done processing the rush of exquisite feeling that came from Addam's touch, and studied up his words.
"When Blades are awakened, the first thing they know, besides their own name, is that they have to protect their Driver. Don't have to love 'em, don't have to hate 'em, just have to protect them. I don't really know, or think, anyway, that many of them actually do decide that they love them in any way different than the way it's given to them. Something familial, maybe a little bit of adoration. Not romantic love."
Rude and possibly unfeeling though it may have been, Addam found himself chuckling. "Well that doesn't bother me one bit! Do you somehow regret that you didn't lust after Amalthus while you lived in Indol?"
Minoth scowled, but it was without malice or even any true annoyance. "Not a chance - leave that to your uncle, he hangs all over my dear old Driver enough."
"Minoth." Addam bumped the tip of his nose with his own. "Don't say that. Or rather, you don't have to say that. I'm here."
The scowl melted, and so did Minoth. "Damn right you are." Oh, not so fast; eyebrows set again. "But anyway, my point: I don't know if Blades ever think, are ever supposed to think, about having an ether link for something besides fighting and that one specific brand of mutual support."
The thought had, quite honestly, never occurred to Addam. He had Mythra, and the care he did feel for her, and tried to show to her, fit very well inside the classical model of a Driver-Blade relationship. They fought together, and did a mutual managing there, but didn't need to keep moral support within it outside of battle. (Yes, Addam is being quite stupid here, but never you mind it. That's a tale for a different time.)
Jin and Lora had that much more intensely familial bond that came drawn from literal years of depending on each other and only each other, especially before Haze. Still, he couldn't quite see them casually flaring an ether link, except perhaps when Lora had been quite young and was fascinated with the phenomenon. Should girls not yet even teenagers have to be subject to the immediacy trauma - in the most objective, academic sense, here - of this non-human thing?
Hugo was an entirely different story, bonded for status as much as logistics, and though he doubtless depended heartily on Brighid and Aegaeon, it wasn't hard to posit that that had nothing at all to do with the ether and everything to do with the humane, tradition-invested devotion. Oh, Minoth, you're a rare one.
"You can think about it," Addam allowed quietly. "If it would help you."
"If it would help me. Tch. I may be a Flesh Eater, Addam, I may be all of this composition that makes me not really a Blade anymore, and even if I'm not you know I say it to myself every morning when I wake up and every night when I go to sleep. I'm not really a Blade. Maybe I never really was, because with Amalthus as a Driver I don't think anyone could ever feel real and reach their true potential."
Malos's name went unspoken except inside of Addam's head. Minoth wasn't loud about this theory of his, but Addam knew he'd met the Dark Aegis in passing on Indol, and had formed some complex opinions yet drenched in nuanced sympathy - no, empathy. The prince waited patiently, arms still laid over Minoth's back below where the ether lines pulsed and the banners flapped, for this most recent conclusion to simmer itself out.
"I might not be a Blade, but think of it this way: I'm a being who has the chance to form an unintelligible bond with the first person who ever truly cared about me, the first person who ever did stop and ask me what I wanted, and who I wanted to be. That, Addam, is bar none everything. In this world, it goddamn has to be."
Their foreheads were again drawn together, Minoth's jagged brows knit a deadly concentration as he bared his soul and then his Core to that very singular individual. Addam guessed that he cherished the way their affinity could turn gold, a pass towards Addam, rather than the Indoline-reminiscent blue. He surely must have cherished something, the way his chest heaved and he pulled back to grasp at Addam's fingertips and pepper rapid kisses over the backs of his prince's hands.
"It's a lot to think, all in one evening, but sometimes I think..." Minoth paused, lifted his eyebrows for visibility's sake, stared into Addam's eyes like something very wild had possessed him. "Sometimes I think you love me too much, Minoth."
Now it was hands to forehead, and yes, of course, hands were the very instrument of care in any and every situation. "So be it. I'd rather that than not love you at all." Oh. Indeed. With that in mind, Addam let Minoth deliver his affections to everywhere else he wanted, and gave thanks for every last one.
He let Minoth carry him back to the inn, too - who would see, at two o'clock in the morning? Not that he saw anything much himself, buried as his eyes were under the veritable curtain of ashy brown. His fingers, too, massaging and reassuring and saying without saying that I want to give you everything you need, I want to be everything you need, oh, Architect, how am I everything that you need?
When Minoth reluctantly shooed away the caressing fingers, set his charge down inside the lobby of the inn, and gave one last brush of his knuckles over Addam's cheekbone and kissed the path he'd traced before loping back out into the moonlight again, the princely shoulders sagged with the lifting of a little bit of burden, because yes, it had been a maudlin draw-out, and he wasn't quite everything. But hand in hand and all, and never mind if it was inconvenient...well, that was still quite a lot.
Of course, Minoth didn't know exactly what he expected to find when he knocked on the front door of what was almost like a sanctum within the garrison at Aletta. Sanctum within the garrison. No angel's garrison was or had been Indol, but...well. Well, well, well. Ain't that funny.
No, it wasn't funny. He wasn't laughing. Maybe he was smiling, somewhere, inside, for the turnabout that this was and that it represented, but he wasn't laughing, because he was a little bit too afraid to be doing that. He didn't tell himself truths disguised as jokes. He either told himself the truth, or he lied.
And then what was not knowing something? Neither the truth nor lying. Well, no, if you agreed with yourself that you didn't know, if you admitted that, that was truth-telling. So he was an honest sort. That's nice to know, isn't it, Minoth, but nobody really cares.
That was what he'd said to Addam, the prince slung up supine over his arms with his head tucked into the crook of the Blade's shoulder.
"It bothers you, doesn't it, that we did all that." Not a question, something flat.
"Mmm, no, not really. Why? Should it?"
"You know, about your wife, and all."
"Oh, well." The hint of a smile and the blush of a nose nuzzled at Minoth's jaw. "We don't need to worry about that just yet."
Minoth shifted his grip, jostled Addam upwards, and the hands gripped about his collar were sweaty. How would he have known that? Ah, yes. They were inside the collar, on his neck. This could choke you, Minoth. How do you like breathing? You're breathing air now like a fish breathes water. No, no, not quite. You're breathing air like a fish breathes air. The water...you're breathing love. Sometimes I think you love him too much. Too much and you'll drown. Too much and you'll...drown.
"What if I'm worried? It's not much more than twelve hours back to Aletta, at my pace, I could be there by tomorrow afternoon. Not like anybody'd care if I left."
"I care," came the semi-relieved semi-victorious semi-shamefaced mumble. Look, math doesn't apply when the moon is white on the sand.
"Hey, c'mere. Come out of there." Silver-gray tousle emerged, expression below decorated not wily but unassuming, unassumed. "Damn. Fix your hair, will you?"
Addam frowned, but did as asked. Just as the tips of his fingers were about to leave the tips of the last strands, Minoth made a halting noise, eyebrows lifted like shafted stone. "Hold that pose."
He leaned forward to press his lips to Addam's forehead, hoping his prince would have the presence of mind to lean forward himself, into the gesture, and not just let himself be pushed back so as to upset their entire center of gravity.
Center of gravity. Shifted expectations. Yes, he didn't know what he'd expected. Probably someone taller, not that most Tornan women he'd met were tall, with a pointy nose like Addam and dark eyebrows, blue eyes, and stiff dark hair in some bland bob. Dress equally as bland, probably.
What he didn't expect was someone tiny with freckles and a button nose and brown hair that strayed something like mahogany in two braids in front of her ears, with the rest swept up with a navy tie behind her back. Her eyes were blue, yes, and her eyebrows were slightly darker than her hair, but she was...well, she was very pretty. And she was also pregnant. Why the hell, Minoth thought, why the very hell did I even come here?
The round nose scrunched, the rosy lips pinched as she shoved one foot against the left door of the double, which she'd opened, to prop it while she pried at the right. Her boots carried similar design elements to Addam's, with the four-pointed gold brooch binding over more navy straps, but the predominance of the material was brown leather, with pink insets. The toes were rounded but not worn, the heels shining with gold plate. Her dress was pink as well, with darker details in diamond shapes and navy shorts underneath a slit dividing the front.
It was only Minoth's whip-quick eye for costuming that made it even half permissible for him to do all this...ogling, so in due time he'd reached his own much longer arm out to pull open the second door, towards him. She blinked surprise and appraisal, but let him do it. There was a distinct air of "who are you, that I'm going to all this trouble for, because I feel somehow that there's a reason" in her movement then. Make your introduction, Minoth. Don't blow your cue.
"I'm, uh..." Huh. "Addam's my Driver. Are you his wife?"
"That's me," she answered, peering interestedly, perhaps testily, up at the ease with which he kept the door ajar. "Who are you?"
Ah. He wasn't much in the practice of introducing himself. Mercenaries and those who handed out the writs didn't care about your name, only your knife, or your gun, or whichever. Both, of course. And then Addam had done all the introduction to this new group that he'd ever need. More than he'd ever need. Probably.
"My name is Minoth. And you are?" Back and forth already. Delightful.
"Flora. Well, Flora Origo, and all that, but I don't need to tell you."
Me. "I'm not, uh...the other one. Or no, I am the other one. I'm...me."
"You're you," she repeated with a nod. "Now would whoever it is you are like to come inside, or did you come all the way out here just to ogle a pregnant lady from her threshold without even so much as a prior thought about getting the door for her?"
The threshold. Something was off about that. Oh, right. They'd seen Vez off on his leave to see his grandmother shortly after Minoth had joined up with the group. Flora wasn't meant to get the door, but certainly she didn't seem to act like the task was below her. Yes, she was testing him. Must have been.
Half of Minoth wanted to keep silent as the dead as he followed Flora through that pesky door, down the steps, and into a long corridor, perhaps even be the very dead themselves, or join them, would be the phrase...! And the other half was pushing him to ask more questions, get more of his voice heard - oh, ingratiate, would be the term here. Great.
Jugular first. The breathing, the beating, the cruciality. "Has Addam ever talked about me?"
Flora didn't turn around or stop walking. "Mm-mm. But I've seen Mythra, and obviously you're not her. Not so uncommon for someone to have two Blades - Hugo has two, as you surely must know." But anyone would know that. Everyone knew about the Jewels of Mor Ardain.
Now she turned around. "If Addam's your Driver."
Somehow, Minoth found it in himself to crack a grin. "What, don't you believe me?"
"I believe what I see. You and Addam together isn't something I've seen. Now, I can't think of any reason for you to lie, but..."
They banked to the left, into a dining room, and Flora pointed out a chair for Minoth to take at one end of the table. Once he'd sat, she took the cattycorner position. If she made bones about him not pulling out the chair for her, well. Something in her eyes flashed as she watched him watch her. Well, he'd really be up a creek then, was all.
She sat at the very edge of her seat, so that her feet wouldn't dangle above the floor, which made it all the more painfully obvious how far back her chair was in relation to the table, to allow for that very special little wildcard. I'm putting you out, am I? Of course I literally am.
"Addam and I went on a date last night," Minoth said without an ounce of further pretense, and he wanted to think he'd been careful, deliberate, well-spoken about the revelation, but he knew that, however unfortunately, he just came off like a scampering rat.
"Oh." Flora laid arms over elbows on the table in front of her and smiled. Beguiling, yet so down-home innocent. "That's nice. I'm glad to see that one of Addam's Blades is taking care of him, and not the other way around."
"I wouldn't exactly call it taking care of him," Minoth allowed with a wince. And why wouldn't you? She was more right than you'd planned her to be, so why didn't you just roll with it?
"Oh?" she started again, chin tilting and brow quirking with intrigue. "What, did you hold his hand?" Younger than her husband by at least a year, she wasn't misplaced in her teasing. But, Minoth didn't answer, just squirmed in his seat a touch.
"This isn't Indol, you don't have to confess your sins." Oh. Um.
She'd said it with a smile, a laugh, a lightness that Minoth most certainly did not have. Instead of squirming more, he chewed his lip, drew a shallow breath.
"I, ah...I came from Indol. Have you heard of Quaestor Amalthus?"
"I've heard of him," Flora returned just as lightly, if a little more slowly. "He's Malos's Driver, isn't he?"
"He is. And he was...also mine." Oh, Architect, the power of that "was".
"Interesting that you'd know that. You're not supposed to know that, are you? That is, not so obviously intimately as you do."
Obviously? "It shouldn't matter much, is what I mean. Not to you yourself, anyway."
How to...how to explain this. Does Addam mind? That was what he'd expected her to say. Next, perhaps, or already.
"Why don't I try again, from the-" Wait. Oh. He'd never had to explain this to anyone who'd need to know it, anyone at all, really.
"I'm a playwright." Are you? You write plays. You're no playwright. A playwright has a theater, a theatre, a stage of his own, an owned space. You're an itinerant. You're not a playwright. You're just gay.
"Oh, are you?" So Flora was saying what he was thinking now. A little telepathy might have been helpful, actually. Easier than explaining out loud.
"I try to be, at least. But then I don't suppose you need me to explain the idiom of 'from the top'."
He looked expectantly at her, unwanted pleading in his eyes. "No, you don't. It's cute that you thought you needed to, though. I'm no idiot. But you know that."
But I know that. Well. "If you're no idiot, then I'm no Blade." Something was backwards about that analogy. Whatever. "I'm a Flesh Eater. Didn't you wonder why my Core looks like this?"
She glanced at it, offhand and even disinterested, as if she hadn't even seen it there before. "Not particularly. I just imagined Blades must come in all shapes and sizes. If Addam got himself an odd enough first one, the second could be just as distinctive. It wouldn't surprise me."
First one? Mythra, his first? No, Minoth thought selfishly, I was the first. It was always me. It was...it was always me. And how so?
"Since I'm a Flesh Eater," he began to answer the damnably unspoken question, "I can choose my Driver." And that was because of the human cells keeping him upright on his own, and so on and so on, and- wait a minute.
Minoth squinted at Flora, and she squinted obligingly back. "Why didn't you ask me what a Flesh Eater is?"
Flora knit her fingers together, stretched them in a bridge underneath her chin, elbows planted firmly on the table. "If you're a playwright, then probably you're also some kind of orator. You like to talk, I can tell. You have a very nice voice, by the way." By the way. "I figured you'd get around to explaining it eventually. I'm not much for all the intricacies, so if you just want to say that you're Addam's Blade, I'll believe you."
Minoth leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. He studied this fascinating woman - a girl, even, if Addam was a boy, and he all but was. "That's not what you were making out like before. Will you believe me, or won't you?"
"I'll believe you," Flora pronounced with sudden simultaneous temerity and timidity. "I was teasing you when I said that you needn't confess your sins, and that was a little mean of me, but it seems like you really do feel that way."
Squirming didn't exactly befit such an orator. Such a figurehead of the arts. But he wasn't. He was just some creep from Indol hanging around a prince, and then getting a crush on him, and then going to his wife to confess his sins. Pathetic.
You know what? "Never you mind. One shouldn't believe a liar. There'd be a kind of double treachery to it if I let you." And he stood, and stifled some kind of abstract, again pathetic, bowing motion, and started to turn away.
"Minoth." Oh. She had a very nice way of saying his name. A very nice voice, herself. Not quite the same as Addam's, but welcome in its difference. "Are you feeling alright?"
Last night he'd pouted his way through a date, and this afternoon he was walking out of one. A date. In Addam's, whichever Lord of Aletta's, manor's dining room, and no food or ambiance or anything, but Addam's wife had taken him out to tea, and now he was turning into a no-show. You bought your ticket already, cowboy. It just so happens that, unluckily for you, you're also the main course of entertainment. Don't sit there, or stand here, and spectate like a fool.
"I just..." Scratch that opening. "A Flesh Eater is part Blade, part human." There. If that wasn't strong and compelling enough, nothing would be.
The intuitive prop was the back of the chair, hands clasped over one another over the wooden ridge, the performative barre, of the back. But here was the date, and polite company and all. Fine company, he was. He took his seat again. Flora watched him with her own hands clasped over her stomach. Convenient, that.
Then, Minoth continued. Always finish what you start, after all. He was quite sure, in fact, that Flora would eagerly parrot the very phrase. Well, no, not eagerly. She wasn't quite that young. "And those don't just come growing on trees, or out of Core Crystals, as it were." Young. Ha!
Flora, just like Minoth, wasn't laughing. She nodded. "I suppose not." One supposes not.
"I started as a normal Blade. Lived in Indol, worked with my Driver, the whole nine yards." Except not, because the whole nine yards includes caring about the other person, and he hadn't. Neither of them had. Whether or not Amalthus had even thought of him as a person, whether before the experiment or after, or did to this day, was a different story.
"And then?" Flora prodded. No, she prompted. Ah, a mind for the dialogue, this one had. Her tentative smile was encouraging, and he let himself be cheered. Charmed, even.
"And then he said he was going to perform an experiment to test the limits of Blades' potential. Would I want to volunteer or wouldn't I? He'd just take one of the common Blades from around the Praetorium if I didn't want to go."
"I take it he wasn't a liar."
"He wasn't. I went."
"And now you're here."
"And now I'm here."
"And how do you feel about that?" How do I feel about that. What was with these Origos and always talking about feelings?
Minoth looked down, to indicate pensiveness. Not thoughtfulness, quite, because pensivity was a far more inward-looking mood. Inward-looking even though he was doing it for an audience. He looked down, and Flora's hand was laid offeringly on a pleasant diagonal over the bottom of the table runner. Again, what was with these Origos?
He took the hand. Since we're on about hands, his glove was still on. If it had really been tea and crumpets, he might have taken it off. But as it was, and since it wasn't, he hadn't, yet. She squeezed affirmation, and Minoth suddenly wished so dearly that he was actually feeling it with the skin-not-skin of his bare palm.
"I hate it. Flora, I hate it." Hers was a very nice name to say, too.
Her other hand joined the first, and after all she needed both because he was nearly two meters tall and she was the very definition of petite. "You hate being here?"
"Oh...no. No, I love being here." Did he? It's a lot to think, all in one evening, and it's a lot to love, all in one afternoon. "That's...not quite what I mean." So many ellipses today. Architect, bless me with the absence of hesitance, would you? I'll take hubris over this brutal broil any day, but especially on this one.
Now Flora pulled on his hand so that he'd look into her eyes. They shone not with pity but with fierce, educated understanding. "You hate what happened to you, but you also love it because it allowed you to be with Addam. Have I read that right?"
Well, don't jump either at or to the conclusions. She shouldn't have understood. Was he so transparent? Was it so simple as all that?
The pull came again. "Aren't you going to stay a while? Or does Addam need you?" Does Addam need me? Like an echo chamber, your ponytailed head is, Minoth.
Oh, but she wants you to stay a while. "Can't it be both?" Flora gave a brisk nod and stood up. "Of course. That's what I was hoping for."
Minoth, however, had not stood, and she tugged on his hands yet again. "Come on. Did you have lunch yet?"
"Flora, I...you don't have to do that." Don't have to take me on a date, even or perhaps especially not in your own house.
"Do what? I haven't eaten, and I think you can understand that I do have to, so I'm not going to not invite you."
He lifted his hands limply from where they lay in her grasp, and of course her clutching fingers followed. "I'm not really dressed for something like that."
Oh, and the way her eyes twinkled with delight... "I can tell. Here, why don't you take those gloves off?"
Not straying from her intensity for a second, Flora shuffled, tugged, strained against the leather, but it wouldn't budge. "Well, you're a tough one, aren't you."
Minoth had to bite his lip to keep from chuckling at the sight of her effort. Only a girl, and all. He let her keep trying, and waited until she caught his gaze searching for hers. When she did, she bit her lip just the same, and narrowed her eyes like a cat spotting prey.
"Are you toying with me, you silly Blade? Or not a Blade, or whichever - I really don't care."
But of course, Minoth cared quite a lot to know that she didn't care. "Mmm...you see those blue lines on my wrist?"
She nodded. "I see them. They're very pretty, you know. And they match your eyes so well."
"Flora, are you flirting with me?" Up turned her nose, and out came a scoff. "Apparently I'm allowed to, if Addam is."
And now Minoth had to laugh full scale. "You're adorable. Flirt away, if you like."
Again, again, again she shook at his hands. "I don't care to do that right now, since you've got me in such a tizzy about these gloves of yours!"
Ah. "It's not the gloves, it's the gauntlets. You're a smart girl, Flora, surely you can see that those get in the way."
"You get in my way," Flora retorted with a viciously playful roll of the Y. "What do the blue lines have to do with it?"
"Well, I suppose not much. The gold circle in between - press down, and then twist it counter-clockwise."
With an absolute dearth of trepidation, Flora did as bid, cheeks tensed and ears flattened. Minoth stifled the automatic sigh that rose up at the pressure, and then the lack of it, and then he laid his other hand over the main filigreed portion of the armor and cast it off where it had come unhitched from the other two parts. Off slid the glove, revealing a hand not quite as brown but just as worn, ether lines glowing, pulsing at his wrist just underneath the cuff of his sleeve. Something rather glossed over the night before, because it was patently obvious that Addam wasn't half so meticulous about...about much.
"There, now you've got me half stripped. Are you satisfied?"
"You're making me out to be some minx, Minoth. I like things to be symmetrical, we'll say."
Symmetrical like Addam would be with Flora on one arm and Minoth on the other. Or, no, like Minoth would be with Addam at one side and Flora at the other. Or, no, no, no, Flora with Addam towering over her on one side and Minoth towering over her on the other. Yes, that was symmetry. By gender and by height, but not by species or complexion. Oh, hell. Screw the composition. Another careful touch, and there went the other glove. Symmetry.
Reluctantly, he stood up, uncomfortable with the knowledge that their level playing field would be far and away tipped out of balance. She craned her neck up at him for the briefest second, swinging her insistence through his dangling arm, and then frowned, tipped her head to the side, and leaned in to kiss his Core Crystal. He didn't even bother to ask why; truly, he thought he knew.
Not that knowing stopped the sheer influx of radiating heat that that tiniest gesture brought. "I've known Addam for eight years. He's never done something like that." Not even last night had he done something like that. Very human, very conventional. Because he knew that was who and how Minoth was.
"No?" Flora was angled back now, seeming to observe the way Minoth looked against the backdrop of the china cabinet. "Then he's an idiot."
"I've got a feeling you knew he was an idiot when you married him."
"Mmm, no, not really. He's taken care of you for eight years, has he? And that makes enough sense. It's what I would have done, and I fancy myself pretty smart." Her focused stare returned to his face. "I know Addam. And I can tell that you know him too."
I know Addam. Meaning, I love Addam. And I can tell that you love him too. Ah, is knowing loving? Is loving knowing? Seeing believing, and believing seeing, and all that. Who wouldn't want to go out with a prince? Who wouldn't want to know a prince? Who wouldn't want to love a prince, especially one who loves you? Not even loves you back, just plain and out loves you.
There wasn't any soup about today, to make up for the ditched quantity from the prior night, but there was leftover vegetable stew, which was a close enough approximation, and Flora giggled at him and his jokes over her bowl, and Minoth grinned at her and hers over his, and they held hands behind the both, and eventually he trotted out the question of the hour. Of the day. Of the week. Of the year. Of the decade. Of the lifetime. Shut up and ask it already.
"So, is this our date, then?"
Flora giggled again. "I think so. How's that? Is it everything you dreamed of?"
"Hmm..." Minoth put a hand to his chin to stroke it and consider. "Didn't quite have time. I haven't slept since...ah. Well."
"Since?"
"Since I fell asleep with my head in Addam's lap and his hands in my hair. How's that? Is it everything you suspected?"
Flora didn't answer, just scraped her spoon around the bottom ridges of the bowl and sipped out the last of her stew.
"Flora?" At the delicate address, her freckles flushed, and oh, she was so pretty. So pretty.
"You could have said dreamed, you know. Because now I rather think I deserve to get even. And you deserve to get some sleep."
Getting even? Architect, what a day. The bowls dropped into the sink with a clatter, and as the noise echoed through the almost-industrial-sized kitchen, Minoth wondered for the first time where everyone else was. There must have been staff at a manor like this - or was the militia's the only roll call they ever bothered with? Apparently it was.
On the other side of the corridor they'd traveled through initially, there was another set of doors, one leading into a study, another into a bedroom, and a third into what looked like it had been a sitting room until very recently. The furniture was sparse, bolstered mostly by a crib, dresser, and rocking chair. There was a couch shoved into one corner, too, and that was to be their destination, it seemed.
"Oh, I guess I should say congratulations, huh?" An idiot are you, in fact, Minoth, said his inner dialogue. Of course you should. Not half the poetry his night with Addam had been, was this in comparison. Despite her name, Flora tended far less to flowering than her husband did.
Even here. "I guess you should," she said with a squeeze of his hand, "and thank you for doing so. Now, sit." Okay then. Whatever you say, Lady Origo.
Minoth sat, and flopped his hands ungracefully on his splayed-out knees as if to say, "What, are you just gonna stand there and watch me sleep?" He didn't say it with his mouth, you see, because he was rather afraid of the answer.
"No." Her hands were propped on her hips, only her hips weren't quite visible or even extant at this point in time. "I can sit with you, or I can go putter around the house somewhere else, but I'm not going to stand here and watch you sleep."
Oh. He had said it out loud after all. What was next, another accidental "darling"? Heaven forbid.
Heaven forbid, also, Minoth's hangdog beckoning of Flora to sit next to him, and then put a wholesale cross on the event of her ignoring his invitation and settling directly into his lap herself.
"I told you I was going to get even, didn't I? So here I am. I think it's only economical, after all."
"Flora, you're..." You're you. I'm me. She's her. He's him. Shove the pronouns. Shove the semantics.
Except no, don't shove them, because his hands were still hovering over his knees, or at least trying to, and even if the right went about her shoulder, over the keyhole in her dress's sleeve, the left was fair to floundering with nowhere to beach or dive. Familiarity was a hell of a safeguard against the fretting.
"You could just hold my hand again, you know." You know. Of course you know. Or I could just leave my arm hanging over by itself, like a normal person. Well, maybe not like a normal person. Like a sane person. Like a not-insane person.
"Flora, I think you're crazy."
"And I think you seem to like saying my name an awful lot."
Tit for tat. So... "I think I like being with you an awful lot."
"And I think you can put your hand on my stomach if that's what's comfortable, I'm not going to blow up if you touch me."
"I thought..."
"You thought that I was going to hiss at you and say how dare you even lay a finger on Addam, he's mine? Silly."
Silly. He did not, in fact, lay his hand over her stomach, because he was busy wrapping it around the same far shoulder and burying his nose in the crown of her head, which smelled like strawberries and was deceptively soft. Hands and care and silly things.
Malos, for some ungodly reason, could wait. Minoth knew he was only going to stay there for a few hours, but he felt as if he could have stayed forever. Sanctum within the garrison, indeed. Love won't drown you, darling, if you only make sure to come up for air.
You and Addam together isn't something I've seen, she'd said. Maybe seeing is believing, he'd thought. And if that's what you'd like, of course something could be arranged.
Now, Flora only knew the first of these two, but as she sat cuddled under Minoth's more reassured than reassuring arms and his solace-seeking nose with eyes half-lidded and boots flung helter-skelter over the side of his thigh, listening to Addam call her name and then watching him find them and his face light up at the sight of them together - no, of Minoth, mostly, and then her secondarily and then the two of them together with brightest beam of all - well, she could concoct her own conclusions.
His lean in to brush aside her bangs and kiss her forehead was automatic and strongly suggested that he didn't quite know she was awake, as did his irresolute gaze at Minoth, his vacillation on whether or not to repeat that tender action for the benefit of the second soul present. Or perhaps for his own benefit, but still not for Flora's.
"I think you should."
True to form, Addam jumped at the sudden sound. "Flora! You're awake?"
Flora nodded, shrugged, as much as her shoulders could move without upsetting her current caretaker. "Why not? I'm not the one who was out in the middle of the night with you, having my hair played with and my world expanded."
Now, it was indeed as she'd said; Minoth hadn't related the entirety of the event to her, and it's possible he could have been just as flustered the night before as he had been with her that afternoon. But somehow...somehow she doubted that.
"Are...are you angry?" Silly. "No, I'm not angry. I'm quite happy to be sitting here with him now. He's very pleasant." Please, Addam, take the equality as implicit. You so rarely come home, and I don't want to waste the precious time arguing about supposed fluffed-up infidelity.
"And you've just been...sitting there with him ever since this afternoon?" Count the hours back one, two, three, four, five since about four o'clock when they'd finished lunch and all and settled down. "Since this afternoon, yes, but not since he arrived. We talked, and we had lunch, and we talked some more, and then I found out he hadn't slept."
Just as Minoth had squirmed when confronted with the idea of being someplace different, someplace simpler, than Indol, so did Addam squirm at the thought that one of his team had been left lacking of a basic human (human?) necessity, even right. Possibly, the most important member.
As for Addam himself, he must have slept for some six or seven hours, and then had called off from the regular Auresco questing regime to take care of some business back at the militia camp. Some business. Some...well, something much nicer than business.
"It was his idea," he offered lamely at last. "He wanted to come see you, so that I wouldn't feel guilty about what we did."
Guilty or not, Minoth was still trapping Flora in his unencumbered semi-conscious embrace. "And what did you do?" She might as well ask.
"Mostly we, ah, kissed. A lot." The smile that blossomed at the thought was twice as descriptive and four or eightfold as goofy, but then Addam frowned. "Oh, no. No, I don't think we ever actually kissed, like...well, you know." He frowned again, double the magnitude of puzzling. "No, there was one. Maybe there were more. I can't remember."
"Addam, I'll tell you what I told him. You needn't confess your sins to me, it's alright. Quite obviously he was compulsed to make the whole thing into something other than a tryst, if he came here to visit with me. I'm sure he even misses you." Already? Already. "Say hello, won't you? If only so I can get up, I've got to use the restroom sooner or later."
Ah, see, and if you made it logistics the fair Mr. Origo would just about literally spring into action. He was still hesitating, bless or perhaps curse his silly soul, but now it appeared to be over whether he'd announce himself first. One iteration doesn't make a pattern, and so he had to consider if it was even right to be so romantic, at this stage or any other. Can't have a comedy without a little tragedy. But it wasn't a comedy, or if it was it was a decidedly romantic one. Ah.
No. "Well, wait just a moment. I don't know if you've even got half the context, and if we're all fragmented then that serves nobody."
"I'm listening," Flora offered, leaning her head back over the gold bands that delineated Minoth's shoulder, top from side, and keeping mindful of how his head followed hers like the most crucial axial pivot.
"His whole thing, the entire time he's been with us for the past several weeks, has been that I worry too much, and that a Driver doesn't need to hang all over their Blade, and probably that we don't even need to care about him. That we shouldn't."
And there he was, still out like a light. So considerate of him, really. He was yielding the stage, and all. You don't need to do that, but she had. He had. It wasn't like he made caring about him particularly difficult, intrinsically. It wasn't just a pity thing, either. Must have been someone else who installed the poisonous idea.
"Because of Amalthus," said Flora then. "Because of Amalthus," Addam repeated back to her, and to the air of the empty room. Wasn't quite homey in here, was it.
Oh, it couldn't all have been the Quaestor's fault, no one is that blithe and alienating, but who hurts a Blade, in this world? Did, or rather had, Minoth come out of the Core Crystal determined to be self-defeating every braggadocious step of his bumbling way? The glimmers of comfort and daring said no, no he hadn't, and in general he didn't. So the logic proves itself out.
"And then I asked him, truly," Addam continued, and he was still standing awkwardly somewhere off the center of the room, "was there anything I could do for him? Anything he'd let me do, really. It's not like I was ever in much of a position to do anything of the sort, all the other times I'd met him."
Flora motioned down to the empty space beside her (beside Minoth, really, because she wasn't taking up any lateral space of her own), and prepared her teasing rejoinder: "And he said oh Addam, I've got a crush on you, I've had one for the longest time, can't we go spend some time together, just the two of us?" Or something like that.
With a rueful shake of his head, Addam sat, still slightly stiff in his armor and travel sores. An accompanying groan carried all of several relevant emotions. "No, he...he never asked. Not really. He said 'Who wouldn't want to go out with a prince?' as if to couch it, to act like it wasn't his own feeling. Dangerous truths disguised as jokes, he called it."
"He thinks being with you is dangerous?" Perhaps a little cagey, he appeared, but certainly not wild with fear. One should ask him directly, shouldn't one, because he's not a child, and again of course Flora didn't know what her thoughts were calling back to... "Addam. Your waiting moment is up. You're here, and he's here. Make us all at home." And so perhaps it was she learning from the playwright.
"Flora..." The intonement was borderline a whine, as Addam slumped his head over to the left to rest on Minoth's shoulder. "Don't I, your dearest husband, get to sleep myself?" A twelve-hour journey of his own, and all that.
Back came the expert hand, and no diminishment of spatial accuracy did Flora have in this moment or any other. "No, you don't." The floor was clear in front of the couch, and out tumbled their dear little prince, face first. "Flora!" The irony was not lost on either her or him; she'd invited him to sit, and yet was escorting him up into the higher throne of his responsibility all the same.
But, a prince was a prince was a prince, and Addam picked himself up, dusted himself off, straightened his shoulders, and set his sights on the goal. Minoth somehow managed to always pull his hair back such that the only escaping pieces gathered themselves into that singular place on the right side of his hairline, yet still the created appearance always came cloaked with and in that beautifully roguish air of devil-may-care what-have-you.
Everything with him so complex, so layered, so long-amassed. And here he was in Aletta Manor in what was about to be a baby's nursery, dozing peacefully like he hadn't been hitting the warpath for their nation to whom he had no true allegiance the very day prior. Was he directionless without Addam, truly? What you're already doing is quite enough. But is it, really? Was it, before? And will it be, going forward? No, it won't.
Flora watched with those same catlike eyes as Addam stepped closer, leaned down, cupped his hand over Flora's shoulder where Minoth's hands were laid just the same, and pressed a quiet, careful kiss to the Blade's forehead. A surprise attack, perhaps, and so does he think being with you is dangerous?
"Hello, Minoth."
Yes, Minoth's eyes snapped open with a wary fire, and his grip instinctively tightened around Flora's shoulders, but as soon as he saw who had perpetrated the invading act, his stare softened with immediacy. No, he doesn't. If anything, he just feels safe. Crucial direction of action brought off, Flora closed her own eyes and wriggled closer, thankful that now, hopefully, someone else around this house could take up the mantle of sensibility for a change.
Hopefully. "Fancy meeting you here, my prince," Minoth drawled with a lazy grin. Grinning back, Addam made for the same tried-and-true forehead-to-forehead posture, left hand still minding Flora but right hand reaching in to graze across Minoth's jaw. "Fancy indeed. You know, since you fancy me so."
Minoth's eyebrow, barely free to do much of anything, arched up his amusement. "Oh, do I, now? Don't make it so one-sided, Addam. How do you feel?"
"I feel like I missed you," Addam answered truthfully.
"What, and didn't you miss Flora? I certainly would have, if I were you." Underneath their amusing stance of connection, she blushed - still a little too young to keep coolly victorious above all, in a situation like that.
"But you're not me." Why was a nose so easy to kiss? A blessing in not so much of a disguise, then. "You're you."
Minoth rolled his eyes and jutted his chin forward to indicate that Addam should move aside. "So I've heard. Very profound, that. You're you, and I'm me, and she's her, and we're us. That last part...in consequence, and so on."
As he indeed turned out the last phrase, he stood, Flora's knees crooked over his left arm much in the same way as Addam's had been over his right the night before, and she gave a yelp of surprise before clinging close again.
"So what's your arrangement, Prince? You think one's still in store?"
"I think," Addam started with a grateful arm slung around Minoth's shoulders as they began to stroll out into the hallway once more, "that I'm damned tired. This isn't at all what I expected when you asked me to take you out, you know."
"Hey, no half measures, right? If someone's gonna take me out, they're gonna take me all the way out."
"Minoth," Flora's voice came piping up from his far right side, somewhere between his jacket and his armbands, "I don't think anyone ever has taken you out before." And again, it wasn't the pity but the fierce, fiesty advocacy of a solid hypothesis.
"Hmm," Minoth said, setting her down and pretending to consider something when there very obviously wasn't anything there to consider. "I suppose you're right. But answer me this, Flora: do you think that matters in the least, given where I happen to be standing?"
He was standing, that is, in the central corridor of his Driver's house, said man with arm braced about his neck on one side and said man's pregnant wife reaching out a hand to each of them on the other. When he'd posited his eventual arrival to Flora's finer graces of hospitality, the thought had been far more genial, much less awkward. That much even she could tell, as his sheer absolution of comfort with Addam was tempered by the tenuousness of his chivalry towards her.
"Maybe it matters in a positive way," Flora allowed. "You don't always have to put a meaning to things like that, but it's there if you want it." Oh, she knew how she was dangling the cryptic, malleable phrase out in front of him, because what else was there if he wanted it? She, apparently.
And what was a date, anyway? A chance to get to know someone, a chance to share yourself with them alone, a chance to be unafraid of the context. Eight years of context was a hell of a prerequisite. Take me out, and then again take me in. Please - no, if you please. If it please you. Oh, words, words, words. You were right, Flora. He certainly does like to talk.
"Awfully convenient of you to be so accommodating, Flora," Minoth mused, letting his head loll to the side to knock against Addam's.
"Awfully silly of you to think for some reason that I shouldn't be," she returned, and then let go of their hands, spun on capable heel, and disappeared into the bedroom.
Minoth watched her go with, yet again, an incredulous squint. "I don't understand her."
"Oh, really? That's a shame. She understands you just fine - even I haven't been able to do that quite yet."
"Oh, sure. No clown is she, and yet she's attached herself to you anyway."
Addam's smirk was that of a jackal. "And what does that make you, my friend?"
"Makes me your keeper, I think. After all, you might be an idiot yourself, but you're my idiot." Glad one of his Blades is taking care of him, instead of the other way around. Ah. "Our idiot," he corrected himself.
"What, are you allied against me, then?"
"Hey, she said it, not me." Of course, Minoth kept the reason why she'd said it to himself, at least for the time being.
"Oh, speaking of allies, I suppose we should get back to the rest. Are you ready to go?"
"Am I ready to go? Addam, you just got here." Gone, apparently, were all the prince's qualms about wanting to take his own forty winks, even though Minoth hadn't been up to hear them.
"Yes, well. I've been away the whole day, I'm not sure how much longer Lora and Hugo can manage Mythra on their own."
"Addam." Minoth stood back, pulled Addam's hooked arm to rest palm on shoulder, and mirrored the same on the other side. "Two things. First of all, Mythra doesn't need managing, she's doing just fine. And second of all...let me monopolize you. Just for one more night. Please."
If I was first, and I was, then let me have the privilege of it. Let me be selfish. If it's what I want, then give it to me. You're what I want. Give it to me. I'm saying please. And I never say please.
"Just one more night? And then you'll get all standoffish again and refuse my help?"
"That's..."
"It's upsetting, is what it is. I know you're not ambivalent. Please, don't pretend to be. Not anymore."
"Oh, Addam..." And a hug is not surrender, not necessarily, but it is giving in, to life and to love and to being held and yes, to being taken care of. So he didn't do it.
But why was he standoffish in the first place? Because it was war, and there were children dying, and Architect damn it people everywhere weren't getting the opportunity to just sit home with their wives and talk and laugh.
"I'm a Blade. I wasn't made for this." Not that he quite knew what he had been made for, anymore. Because he had been made, even if not for any good reason or even a bad one.
"I thought you said you weren't a Blade." Damn straight. And yet...
"In this case, I am. I am when there's work to be done."
"And is that something you can just decide to change, from day to day?"
Oh. Oh, hell. Why did Addam have to choose now to wise up?
"I think," Addam continued, damn it, he was still talking and still being so right, "that you choose to define yourself as whatever makes you look worst in the moment. Whatever will deny you of the most happiness. I think it's convenient for you that you've got two Minoths to choose from. The one who loves me, and the one who doesn't. But, I also think it's convenient for me. Because the Minoth who loves me is also the Minoth who loves himself."
"You're wrong." And no, it wasn't the "you're wrong" of bullish obstinance and hair hanging rebellion in your eyes as you slumped away into your corner and mind. It was almost triumphant. Almost.
"Am I?" Addam's voice carried daring, challenge, fight. Minoth had said please and Addam had said no thank you, we're going to work this out right. If Minoth didn't want to kick himself to a curb like the cretin he was, he'd even have room to be proud. But pride comes down like sick double-twisted condescension, if you're a rat.
Amalthus had never been proud of him. And Addam...Addam always had.
"Every part of me loves you. Every damn last fiber and synapse. All of it."
Addam thought a great many things, apparently. He had worlds inside his head that Minoth had never dreamed were there, because he, unlike Minoth, didn't put on the constant pretense of considering them, of considering somewhere else he wanted to be than where he was right now. Minoth had never seen a paradigm shift in action, but he saw one tonight.
And then, it was interrupted by the pad of bare feet on the hardwood between the bedroom and the rug that lined the hallway: Flora, in a loose shirt that reached midway down her thighs and hair freed from its former neat plaits.
"I just came to say good night, because I'm sure you boys will want to spend some more time together someplace quiet before you have to get going again. But, going or not, I won't be giving up the bed." So saying, Flora tiptoed up to reach Addam's lips for a quick kiss, nodded to Minoth and turned to go once more.
"Flora, wait." The words had escaped unbidden, but there she was, ever obliging.
"Hmm? Oh, did you want a kiss too? Silly. Come on, I can't reach you up there, baby or not."
The physicalitied onomatopeia made real was ridiculously satisfying even as Minoth's lips buzzed with the just-as-ever-present discomfort of being an intruder.
"Oh, that's...thank you. But that's not what I meant. Well, thank you is what I meant. I don't want to put you out, or anything. I just wanted to come see you and to let you know that...that I love Addam. And I wanted to see if that was okay."
"Oh, Minoth. That's not my decision to make. You've got to settle that with him."
"Well, maybe, but..." He'd just been trying, after all, and he wasn't sure it had worked.
"Minoth, you worry too much. I'm easygoing, aren't I? It's all already settled, I think. I love you too. Here, did you want me to say it? Flora, darling, I love Minoth. How do you feel about that?"
"I'm very glad about that. I think he needs it."
As they pondered over his status and situation, Minoth kept silent, Core and heart both too brimful with emotion for him to risk letting anything else slip.
"Minoth." Oh, but now he'd have to say something. "Yours, Flora." She smiled at the reciprocal address, and took his hands once again.
"I want you to remember to take breaks sometimes. As touching as it is that you walked all night to come see me, I don't want to see one of my boys hurt, from monsters or overwork or anything else. You have to take care of yourself. And Addam."
Minoth looked expectantly over at Addam, but the prince seemed to be understanding something that his Blade wasn't. As ever, possibly.
"And Addam? What does he have to do?"
"No, no. I meant that you have to take care of Addam. Keep him safe and happy. And come back home from time to time, if you can manage it - Addam doesn't seem to find the time to do it nearly enough. A little lady gets lonely here in the big house without any company."
"Mmm," Addam hummed his agreement. "I wasn't intending to let you be lonely in the big bed either." (Yes you were. Liar.) "Minoth, do you care to join us?"
Do you care to join us? Do you care to come home? Home. Implicitly, don't you deserve to be safe and happy, too?
"Of course. Who wouldn't want to spend the night with a prince?" And a princess, into the bargain. Every last bit.
That was what he said, but he'd somewhat lied, because once they'd walked into the bedroom again he spotted the doorway into the sitting room and made for it.
Unfortunately, Flora, halfway through her preparatory sprawl across the bed, spotted him. "Oh, did you leave something in there?"
Sigh, sigh, and sigh again. Minoth turned to face his foil. "No, I...I don't have any other clothes, and my armor has all these studs on it, see, and I wouldn't want to hurt the baby." Such rambling - maybe the hubris was a bad idea after all.
"So?" Flora's head was cocked at quite possibly the most adorable angle ever conceived. "Take it off."
I... "What?"
"Don't be embarrassed. Here, I'll give you a hint: I'm not wearing any shorts underneath this," she said, gesturing to the nightshirt.
What?
Addam, already bare of his own outer plate and inner mail, called his teasing over with admirable, damnable ease. "Won't you miss her too much over there, Minoth? Never mind me." Oh, shove the smirk, my prince. Please.
"I'm--" I'm in love with your wife, Addam Origo. Somehow I think the whole world would be if they knew she was even here.
Flora shrugged, shuffled her feet under the top hem of the covers, and began to stack pillows on her right side. "Do whatever makes you most comfortable, but I wouldn't mind having another person to cuddle me. And the baby, really."
Something wrenched in Minoth's chest. On one side, the confounding protective emotion he felt towards Flora and, yes, this incipient baby. On the other side, bravado and the need to show Addam that he wasn't going to stoop back to shamefaced self-flagellation again. Because he'd promised that when he'd said that every part of him was sworn to his prince, in battle or out of it.
So, he struck a balance. Businesslike efficiency as he unbuckled the arm guards, the chest plate, the holsters. The gauntlets were, in fact, cast aside in the sitting room, and it bothered him slightly that his kit was strewn about like that, but he could deal. You're Minoth. You're a Flesh Eater. Addam's your Driver. Flora is...hey, maybe Flora's your wife now too, if that's how commutativity goes in a thing like this. This is your house, your home, now. You can deal. It's all you do, and you're proud to do it.
Efficiency stopped, however, when he'd shucked off his jacket, folded it in half, and decidedly ignored Flora's interested glance at his biceps. She was rather immodest, pointing out her lack of pants, but he wasn't going to engage her on that front, so he turned his back to undo the snaps on his chaps. From behind him, he heard Addam remark to Flora, entirely too loudly, "See, he has a very nice ass. I like just about every part of him, but that part especially. With the pants or without."
"I what?" Being objectified in this way was something he'd never had to deal with, ever. Maybe the two of them each had in their own way, but that didn't justify it. "Have you been eyeing up my backside for long, Addam?"
Addam yawned, stretched, settled his arms one behind Flora's head and the other across her belly, and she preened in his embrace. "I think we've both been doing a lot of things for quite a long time. Luckily for us, Flora's impatient."
Luckily for us. Oh, luckily for us. Perhaps unluckily, the part of his armor with the predominance of those aforementioned studs was the bodysuit, but off it had to come, so Minoth engaged the releases, and there was his chest, open and chilled in the manor's night air, Core Crystal and scars and all. Only his undershorts remained, and yet he didn't feel all that woefully naked.
"Are you still impatient, Flora?" he asked as he strode over to the near side of the bed and nestled himself in among those pillows she'd so carefully arranged. Like symmetry, and all, and Flora liked that. And he liked Flora.
The very adored woman beamed, wholly endeared, and nodded her answer. "Go ahead, then," and she leaned over to kiss his Core Crystal once again. What wonderful, all-encompassing warmth. He wanted it always and forever.
"Can I do that?" Not Addam asking, but Minoth's voice making another ring out into the spacious room.
"You?" Flora squinted. "I haven't got one of those."
"Hmm, no, you haven't." But he did it anyway. Nose buried in Flora's bosom, which admittedly wasn't all that large even what with the pregnancy, Minoth found himself unable to keep from laughing, and Flora shook along with him from her own mirth.
"Hey, hey, what's so funny, over there?" Addam demanded, and even without looking Minoth could imagine perfectly his indignant glances to and fro. "Minoth, what are you doing planting your face on my wife's chest? I at least thought I'd get that privilege first - from her or from you!" As if it mattered. You had your time in the spotlight last night, my prince. But, it wasn't as if he wanted to hide from his ever-lovely hosts. Oh...he missed them already, even.
So, Minoth retrieved himself from his hideout, and Flora was still giggling, and he planted a very many soft kisses along the bottom of her jaw, and her hand found his to tug at it and ask, "Oh, Minoth, that was very sweet, but why did you do that?"
He paused his kissing. "Well, you know. I'm no idiot." And then Flora burst out in raucous laughter again and he threw both arms around her, probably catching Addam in the mix too, and it was quite a silly affair indeed, but he was home. In the morning, he and Addam would have to get up and kiss this wonderful little woman goodbye and leave her for another stretch of time as yet unmeasured, but for now, he was home. With them, he couldn't help but be so.
Apparently I'm utterly incapable of writing fluff without angst somewhere in the mix. Dedicated to the recipient because this has been in the works for quite a while, but something about your recent fic finally unlocked what I needed to finish it, and you're so unbelievably sweet, I needed to write SOMETHING actually for you! <3 <3 <3