need i say i love you? need i say i care?

Come back to Torna sometime, won't you, Addam had always said. I'm sure you'd love the desert, and the villages full of wise old folk, and the respect that we at the very least try to keep for Blades. Won't you? With me?

Nice talk, sure, for a sixteen-, seventeen-, eighteen-year-old boy who was still settling into the routine of being that, or of being not only that, all the time. He as the caitiff child couldn't make grander, nation-scaled invitations, and he didn't want to, so he just extended an open palm to the best friend he had, besides Hugo, and soon Flora. Sure. Nice talk. And Minoth was just as much a poser.

Then, too soon, or too late, Minoth wasn't a Blade, not really, anymore. Addam's pleas only redoubled in frequency and fervency. Won't you be happier with us, now that you don't even have to be with him?

Us. Yes, us. Addam is married. Flora is measured, in her gait and in her opinion. Overall, Minoth senses that she agrees intuitively with Addam's small-time refugee plan. About him in specific, though? He's...not so confident.

Addam's visits to Indol, and Minoth's own to Torna under official guise, have already become fewer and farther between. There's not much time before the senseless conflict will soon overtake Coeia's honorable bastion, and Amalthus will truly lose all hope.

In the end, the prince doesn't bring the cowboy in to paddock and pasture by his own hand. No, Minoth comes on his own. He screws up all his courage and boards a transport set to dock in Aletta itself - not Auresco, not Yanchik, not anything that requires passage through Dannagh. He's not here to waste any more time.

What does he think it'll be? Political asylum, probably, and a heartier supper, and a desk upon which to write, at least for a night or two while he gets fuller bearings.

He certainly doesn't think Addam will greet him at the door with a bear hug and tears free to flowing and a very apparent sense of wanting about him.

"I knew you'd come eventually," he says, one hand gripping Minoth bodily and the other sloppily wiping at the crest of his cheek. "I-- I wanted to believe you would, anyway."

Much as animal self-preservation instinct dictates that he should, Minoth doesn't shrug Addam off - or maybe it's the instinct that keeps him from doing so. Either way, he nods, half-winces, and responds, "It's just me, Addam. I don't see what all the fuss is about."

By now, Flora has appeared and rushes to embrace the new arrival as well. That minute interruption is crucial: it gives Addam time to study up the enormity of his next words.

Flora clears the floor, stands back and squeezes excitedly at both of their hands. There must, must, must be something Minoth's missing. Surely it was never this important, all the while. Surely...

"Just you? JUST you? Minoth, do you know how long it's been since I first met you, first knew so instinctively that you'd be so much happier getting out of Indol as fast as you could?"

Minoth scoffs. "Big talk, my prince." Not even so nice. "Who told you you were allowed to know things like that?"

(No reason he needs to be so dismissive. No reason he needs to treat Addam like he's still a kid, the five or so years it's been since he really was one. No reason except that oh, Architect, isn't this terrifying?)

(What is?)

"I only guessed, supposed, really," Addam answers softly, suddenly come down from his effusion. "I'll readily admit that I don't actually know you well enough to say, if it means that I might get to know you better now."

They finish another game of Clattertongue Ratscrew, this one with Minoth claiming a narrow victory over Flora while Addam sits on the sidelines forgetting to attempt to slap his way back in because he's so busy with his head full of nothing, as usual, and then in the aftermath of breathy smiles and shuffled piles and the lingering question of shall we have another or was that the last, a special sort of silence comes.

Addam is just sitting there, hands jumping limply over the table runner and lips parting at off angles. Keeping his eyebrows neutral, Minoth doesn't exactly bother to entertain the idle stance, instead gathering up cards to reshuffle or reorder, depending. Flora watches the both of them. They're waiting, waiting, waiting, even if they don't any of them know it.

Each time, it seems Addam is about to say something, and each time, it seems Minoth is about to say something else, to anticipate and then to snarkily cut off. What seems like half a minute is only one quarter of that time, and then Addam leans forward and kisses Minoth somewhere indeterminate - that is to say, he hardly knows what he's committed to himself.

And then he pulls back, gulps something fierce, and sits with those same fidgety digits again, caught between expectantly hawking and nervously avoiding his chance to gauge Minoth's reaction. Is this trouble? If so, is it the good type or that very, very, very-very-very bad?

Minoth, for his part, is doing little more than sitting there stunned. Some cursory social-cue check in his brain reminds him that dumpling soup doesn't leave the worst of aftertastes, so soon after dinner, so it's alright, but he hadn't been ready, still, and should he be angry at Addam? Desire aside, he's human adult enough to know that you don't just sit down and take something like that no matter how nice it might have been, and brush the issue of consent under the rug.

Trouble is, he's also adult enough to know that in all his own hesitation, he'd been waiting to reciprocate. For someone so forthright as him, in this case it really was just such that he'd wanted Addam just as much as Addam had wanted him, and signaled it not just out of awkward abstinence.

So Addam flaps his lips again one more time, fishlike, only he hadn't tasted half that bad, and he's about to say something that sounds very much like "I'm sorry" but feels very much more like "I'm scared" - but he doesn't, because Minoth cuts him off.

"Again."

"Huh?"

There's a strong, sharp pressure from down and to the left - Flora is squeezing tightly at both their hands, for the second time today, and she'd have done it while they were walking, too. She's holding on for dear life, and dear death, and dear love, and every other abstract, intangible, unconscionable precious thing that could possibly go into it.

In other words, she's rooting for them, catching at their petty little cracks and tears to ensure that if this does fall out, it doesn't do so in a bad way. Addam could say no, I'd rather not, and I truly am sorry, and I just want to be sure that it's the right time, and Minoth would hide all traces of subconscious disappointment and say sure thing, Prince, have it your way, that sounds fine to me.

But Addam isn't composed enough for that. Is that a problem? Perhaps. So Minoth waits a little longer, throws more of the crucial expression into those ever-jagged eyebrows that are turned upwards into quasi-pleading now, so surely not neutral nor ambivalent, and sets his jaw. He can handle that, after all, as long as he remembers the feeling of what he's just been given. Oh, yes, he could clench his jaw for the rest of his life, and not feel a single pain.

But, again but, if Addam were to say yes to this not-question-question, then he'd feel much more and many more better things than just pain or the absence of it. He knows that much for damned sure, no matter how much else is left up to uncertainty at this painful point in time.

"You want me to...?"

"Please, my prince."

This time I'm ready. This time I think I understand. This time I know my line, and it's I love you, I love you, I love you. I don't even have to think to know that, after all.

(He doesn't get what he's asked for, however, owing to a polite little cough from Flora, who would like to participate instead of just coaching, apparently. And so she does, and it's lovely, and Minoth realizes moreover - yes, this is forever. Ain't it grand?)