“For not leaving you to be tortured within my reach? Oh yes,” he teases gently, those warm lips to his cool wrist and his own exhale soft as down for it, settling in some respects.
That Dante isn’t balking or bristling, that he isn’t mired deeper, that he hasn’t been lost to the spirits here— even if he can’t voice it, even if he isn’t quite sure how, it’s a relief in its own right.
And in the spirit of physicality speaking of more than anything he could eloquently reach for, he shifts forward there, slipping down into Dante’s lap without asking. Head to his shoulder, legs still perched across the armrest he’d been settled on for so long.
Doting, in other words.
But he isn’t joking in the seconds that follow, ring finger scuffing along Dante’s hand in turn.
“You should know I’ve never been....mm.” Poor start. Try again. “This has never been easy for me. Comfort, I mean. Not the real sort. Not the kind that doesn’t come from a bottle to soothe anxious nobles or—”
Or.
It hangs, that word.
“But what happened here, it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have stopped it, or altered it.” Life, wretched as it is, has a way of forcing things into place without caring for all subsequent harm. “You can’t go around blaming yourself for how things turned out.”
no subject
That Dante isn’t balking or bristling, that he isn’t mired deeper, that he hasn’t been lost to the spirits here— even if he can’t voice it, even if he isn’t quite sure how, it’s a relief in its own right.
And in the spirit of physicality speaking of more than anything he could eloquently reach for, he shifts forward there, slipping down into Dante’s lap without asking. Head to his shoulder, legs still perched across the armrest he’d been settled on for so long.
Doting, in other words.
But he isn’t joking in the seconds that follow, ring finger scuffing along Dante’s hand in turn.
“You should know I’ve never been....mm.” Poor start. Try again. “This has never been easy for me. Comfort, I mean. Not the real sort. Not the kind that doesn’t come from a bottle to soothe anxious nobles or—”
Or.
It hangs, that word.
“But what happened here, it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have stopped it, or altered it.” Life, wretched as it is, has a way of forcing things into place without caring for all subsequent harm. “You can’t go around blaming yourself for how things turned out.”