[Crookytail had fallen quite asleep in her warm, familiar spot beneath the table. She snorts awake at Cerise's keening, sticking first her antennae and then the rest of her out of hiding, before trundling after the distressed Phylax. They are--on so many axes--not the same sort of being at all, but the wormipede's catholic in her choice of Herdmates, and Cerise is Herd, and her Herd is upset and needs company.
There is some kind of metaphor here being acted out by their companions, here, that Myr's head is too heart-bludgeoned to work through.]
You needn't apologize for that. [For the kiss. And L hadn't, not really, at least not tacitly. Implicitly, beneath the explanation... Myr clarifies:] I liked it; and even had I not, [because this isn't a matter merely of what he liked and didn't; if it were, they'd never have made it as a Bond,] I understood, and we're Bonded. I am yours.
[Even if there were still one or two parts of himself he was withholding out of concern for his Bonded's wellbeing. L's fear of manipulating him is quite reciprocal in this way; once Myr had realized how much easier certain things would be if they were lovers in truth--
...Perhaps that bore saying aloud. But first, softly,] Not wanting to be a burden or a cost to others--I do understand that, amatus. [L knew, L had seen, L could put together how much of how Myr pushed himself had roots in the black and fearful soil of his mother's earliest rejection. Love suddenly became a conditional thing, that day, and though Myr had, in Hasmal Circle, set aside for a time his obsession with balancing service rendered against affection received, it hadn't ever left him.] There's something noble in worrying after your friends that way.
But what, [he puts out the hand he'd been petting Cerise with, open-palmed, extended in his Bonded's direction,] if I want to be affected? If I want to know I helped you buy a little piece of happiness for yourself?
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There is some kind of metaphor here being acted out by their companions, here, that Myr's head is too heart-bludgeoned to work through.]
You needn't apologize for that. [For the kiss. And L hadn't, not really, at least not tacitly. Implicitly, beneath the explanation... Myr clarifies:] I liked it; and even had I not, [because this isn't a matter merely of what he liked and didn't; if it were, they'd never have made it as a Bond,] I understood, and we're Bonded. I am yours.
[Even if there were still one or two parts of himself he was withholding out of concern for his Bonded's wellbeing. L's fear of manipulating him is quite reciprocal in this way; once Myr had realized how much easier certain things would be if they were lovers in truth--
...Perhaps that bore saying aloud. But first, softly,] Not wanting to be a burden or a cost to others--I do understand that, amatus. [L knew, L had seen, L could put together how much of how Myr pushed himself had roots in the black and fearful soil of his mother's earliest rejection. Love suddenly became a conditional thing, that day, and though Myr had, in Hasmal Circle, set aside for a time his obsession with balancing service rendered against affection received, it hadn't ever left him.] There's something noble in worrying after your friends that way.
But what, [he puts out the hand he'd been petting Cerise with, open-palmed, extended in his Bonded's direction,] if I want to be affected? If I want to know I helped you buy a little piece of happiness for yourself?