hello friend, welcome home
(tacks onto this one but i'm excessively particular about tags and titles and series and links so it's separated :)
There'd been another note to it, back before the homecoming. Oh, there had surely been clues, somewhere along the way.
"Minoth?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't you ever get lonely?"
"Are you outta your mind? You're a person, aren't you? You're right there."
"Oh." Of course. Right there. Just out of reach, or just inside it?
"Oh?"
"I didn't think I was...enough."
"You're gonna drive me straight up a wall one day, you know that?"
More deflection, as per usual.
"Aha. At least I'm enough for that."
And thereafter, Addam had done quite a lot of twiddling his thumbs and quite a little of saying anything meaningful about it, and they'd ended up here, with Minoth utterly blindsided by the notion that the pining had been somewhat mutual the entire time.
It's something inconsequential that lures them up from the hallway outside the library into the master suite's study - maybe a note about letters or bonuses to send out to the brave voyagers to Uraya for the Dragon Incense, maybe the retrieval of an odd keepsake Addam had suddenly remembered had been gifted from Marena to Flora, years ago, and is it the one I'd been thinking of after all? It is, but he yet feels unsatisfied.
Flora is elsewhere in the house, again. Perhaps that's why.
Turning around with trinket placed firmly back upon shelf, Addam spies Minoth worrying at a stray scratch on the corner of the desk.
"Don't worry about that," he says automatically, "this place has seen many a lord, and I'm sure none of them even used the desk half so well as you would. As you will, rather. Right?"
"Huh?" Minoth looks up, but his finger doesn't stop tracing, tracing, tracing. "Oh, Addam, I don't..."
Oh. Right. Of course not. Addam buries his instantaneous hurt deep in a quick swallow. "You don't have to. I just thought it would be best if I made it clear as crystal that you're more than welcome to, if you'd like."
"N-no, it's not that, I just..." Minoth trails off again, wincing at his own hopelessness. Forcibly, he picks his hand up off the table and uses it to deliver the final pronouncement: "I don't know how to do this."
Oh, Minoth. There's not a soul on Alrest, Addam thinks, who wouldn't see how lonely and broken the Flesh Eater seems at this very moment. The logical thing that, again, any soul on Alrest would spring for is a hug. Addam makes to give one, and gather up all the wayward shards into a semblance of togetherness, but Minoth flinches, instead of melting, and then he just stands there, stiff as a board.
"You can hug back, you know," Addam jokes, trying his awkward best to fit his arms underneath the ether banners without slipping them underneath the hem of the jacket wholesale.
Minoth doesn't respond. Maybe...maybe he can't. Maybe he'd never learned how. Maybe he is just so very out of his element, even in the dark spare room.
Two options, then: keep holding on, or drop him and step away.
Hm. Neither sound very good. So Addam tries a compromise.
"Come on," he says softly, letting his arm fall to within convenient hand-holding distance. Minoth accepts the offering and follows Addam back to sit at the foot of the bed, a place he somehow feels like he's been quite a few times before, repeating a similar exercise.
"Can I put my arms around you?"
Minoth considers this, and looks damnably haunted doing it. "Yes." The permission is shallow, timid.
But Addam proceeds as directed, then murmurs into the nearby ear, "Can you do the same?"
Minoth does it; he's still so stiff. Something in him quite obviously wants this so good, so bad, so everything, but it's not coming.
Closing his eyes, Addam tries to feel out what's off about their current position. Their legs aren't getting in the way, and though Minoth's holsters have flopped awkwardly between him and the bedspread, they're not a hindrance either.
"What if you angled your arms more upward, so your hands reached my shoulder blades?"
He feels Minoth shift in minute motions for several seconds until he actually responds in kind, and there...there it is.
To help things elide, Addam takes a deep breath in, squeezes as close as he can, and lets it out.
Thank the Architect, Minoth does it with him, exactly reciprocal. Addam can practically hear his relieved smile.
However. A hug is a hug, and cuddling half-upright is quite another thing entirely. Addam tests the waters by tensing his shoulders in preparation to pull back, and apparently he's stuck.
Not so much good for practice, then, is it?
"I, ah...you can let go now, Minoth."
"I what? What was the point of all this, then?"
"Oh, well you don't have to," Addam scrambles back. "I suppose most people would, though."
"I'm not most people." He doesn't say it coyly, only entirely truthfully.
"Fair enough. You will let go eventually?"
"Prince."
Prince. Indeed. Addam clings tighter, as Minoth had implicitly requested, and digs his chin as deep as he can into the jacketed shoulder, just inside the dim golden bands.
Should he say it, now? Does it even need to be said, anymore? Did it ever?
Oh, to hell with it.
"Minoth, do you know what I think when I see you, in the purest, most earnest part of my heart?"
For the first time in a little while, Minoth laughs. His recovery from pathetic incapability had been swift but sure. "Apparently, that I'm a real dreamy guy, and you weren't joking when you offered to kiss my nonexistent wounds better. Won't say I'm not grateful, even if you are still a clown through and through."
So the answer is yes. Addam pulls back, forces Minoth to look him square in the eye.
"I think of how beautiful you are, inside and out. I think of all that you've been through, all that you push past each and every day to be such a spirited member of our group. I think what a farce it is that I'm a prince, and you're known among exactly no one, because to me you are nothing short of a king."
Try as he might, Minoth can't break the eye contact. "Come on," he mumbles, nearly indistinct. "You don't...come on, Prince." Again he's deflecting with the epithet.
"I think that I love you. And I think that I always will."
Something creaks, near the doorframe. Without even looking back, Addam can tell that it's Flora, catching sight of their silly silly practice session, and turning away because boys will be boys, won't they?
"Flora, don't go."
Addam, don't go.
"You're not busy?"
Busy. Busy like he'd been for the last year, save that singular trip when he'd come home and knocked her up on good faith and foolish promises and then left her all alone again, for thrice as long. He falls prey to miscommunication far too often. He's already done it with Mythra all the time, and that is yet another botch-job to tackle.
"No, darling, please." Please, let me make up for all that I have missed.
So she acquiesces, and as she comes closer Addam lets go of Minoth's left shoulder to grasp her hands and press the flat of his knuckles to her belly.
"In truth, I don't know that I will ever be anything more than a prince. I'm certainly prepared for the possibility that in the end, as lost to history, I will be far, far less. But here, with you..."
Cute speech. Minoth's mouth opens and closes exactly once, fish-eyed, on the start of an objection about the historical bent. It's not so important, right now, though.
"Yes, I am a prince. Here with my king-" he brings the back of Minoth's hand to his lips "-and my queen," he finishes, repeating the tender action on the other side.
Now it's Flora's turn to gape, but Addam doesn't wait to watch. Without wasting another second, he stands and hugs her, lips pressed to the crown of her head. Soon enough, Minoth stands as well and wraps his arms around the both of them, settling into the embrace as naturally as he can muster it.
Ridiculous, very nearly, that I posited he should have been so bad at it just a moment ago. But I think you'll agree that starvation always makes it a little harder to eat normally, fully, righteously again. Touch is...not such a bad addiction to have.
"I want this to be our home - I need it to be. I can't bear the thought of the three of us feeling so alone in it ever again."
Beneath the poor little prince's closed-but-leaking eyes, the sovereign monarchs twist about to share a glance.
"When you're here, Addam, I don't think we have any fear of that."
Now they all step back, just a bit, grasping hand in hand in hand in hand in hand in hand, all around the ring.
"Do you promise it?" he whispers fervently, practically unaware of his tears.
He needs certainty. Oh, how he needs certainty.
Minoth doesn't answer, just pulls Addam in to his chest again. No one ever said he knew exactly what it is that he wants, after all.
"I promise," Flora whispers, more or less to herself. She doesn't like just being a set piece either, when it comes down to something like this. When you're ready, really ready, she thinks, then...
"Oh, please come back soon, loves. I want to be able to tell my boys welcome home."
(le comique again i couldn't resist aaa :)