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[helpdesk_hero]

This is David Alleyne, I'm not available at the moment.
Please leave your name, contact information, and what this is regarding after the beep.

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[portolan]

No one has except Fran, and he's managed to tuck her into her own category. More older sibling than peer.

The tenderness of that touch, though, and David not growing impatient with him are calming him. At his words, Balthier exhales, letting more out than just his breath.

It's not going to change in one night. But he's bled off a little of the poison, and that's how healing happens, a bit at a time. Maybe more importantly, he's starting to realize David isn't going to push him away.

"I love you," Balthier says into David's neck. And what he means is, and I feel loved by you.

[helpdesk_hero]

Really, Balthier is lucky to learn today that it's okay to let some of it out. Because a carefully controlled trickle is far better than the whole damn failing later. And this might seem like a dam failure, but... Well, it's not. At all.

"I love you too," David says, his voice soft and full of suck emotion.

Love, so freely given and openly accepted. It that almost made David cry all on its own. To be so loved is intense for him too.

[portolan]

A trickle feels like a dam burst when you're used to only shedding drops. He needs to recalibrate, much more than he knows, and today has adjusted those expectations a little.

He hears the emotion in David's voice though, and it's his turn to hold the other man tight. It's as much to comfort as to affirm how safe that makes him feel, that his offer of love matters, especially right now.

Because that's the other side of not being loved: the fear that his love never mattered either. And he can tell it does to David.

When he's calmed a little more he pulls back to press his forehead to David's. "I will take you up on staying here." More like, would have to be forced out, really. "But maybe let's move to something made for sitting."

[helpdesk_hero]

It matters so much. In a lifetime of abandonment or partners who were very uncomfortable with the displays of affection, in a life time where he was rarely claimed and felt like it would hold, well... it mattered.

"Alright then," he says, slipping from under Balthier and rising to his feet. He offers his hands down to pull Balthier up.

"There's a couch in my bedroom. Or the bed."

He wasn't going to put Balthier in the living room when he was vulnerable.

I'm good to wrap this one whenever

[portolan]

Balthier has the empathy to understand why being loved would matter to David, and Scions if he doesn't want to pour that affection onto the other. He just doesn't quite have the experience or affirmation to put together that David wants to do that for him in the same way.

He nearly protests David pulling away, even though he's the one who suggested moving, but then that hand is there and he's giving David an adoring smile, even with tears bright on his face.

"I want to rinse my face, put on something soft that smells of you, and have you hold me. I don't care where." He flushes a little as he says it, because he still feels uncomfortable being so direct about his desires. But David keeps meeting openness and boldness with affirmation, so he's trying. David makes him feel safe enough to try.

here works then

[helpdesk_hero]

"You can head through to the bathroom," he suggest, "and I'll lend you my bathrobe. Then I'll hld you as long as you want."

Those desires, given so freely, will absolutely be met with action.