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“You’re back early?” Deceit noted as Roman wandered through the mindscape hall, heading for the kitchen. The space usually transformed around him, imagination spilling from him and soaking into the adoring fabric of their world like a Disney princess through a magical forest, but today the room felt flat, bland and beige. It greyed and tried to shrink away from Roman, shuddering under his fingertips when he opened a cupboard and mechanically went through the motions of making a cup of cocoa. He didn’t respond to Deceit.
Where was Patton when you needed him?
“Roman?” Deceit tried again uncertainly, trying to get a feel for what had happened to Thomas, but the strength of the repression and denial shut it out from even hi- wait. There had been an audition? Not The Callback, nothing like that fiasco, but a good opportunity nonetheless. Something with singing, more than dancing, which should’ve been their forte... “Did something go wrong at the audition?”
“What didn’t?” Roman muttered, his shoulders tense. “It- I just- we tried-” he broke off with a harsh sigh, shaking his head as the words escaped him. Something else that just Did Not Happen.
This was a code bad, in Deceit’s book, but he wasn’t sure what he of all sides could offer. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Roman’s eyes were almost as red as his sash when he turned around and nodded, something small and desperate flitting across his expression. They’d always been closer than some, especially once they’d had a quiet and private conversation about honest compliments and insecurities, and how much Roman had been relying on what he’d thought to be real praise... Deceit still said the same things now, but they made Roman blush with the undercurrent of real feeling, rather than just boosting his ego, plain and simple.
So he ushered Roman out to the couch with his cocoa, and he tentatively offered an arm around his shoulders as the other side spoke, slowly and then faster and faster, shoving the feelings out into the air.
It all came to a stuttering halt when Roman’s sobs overtook his words, and Deceit rubbed his back as he shuddered and tried to pull himself together. “Roman, can I-” Should he be offering? Make a joke, that’s what Thomas would do. “I have a whole bunch of arms here, they make for good hugs, you know, so...”
"If you don’t hug me right now I think I might fall apart,” Roman said, half laughing as he sniffed and wiped his eyes. He burrowed straight into Deceit’s arms with a grateful sigh when they all wrapped around him, holding him protectively tight and close, one making it’s way to his hair to stroke it gently.
Neither of them needed to say a word when a set of lips joined that hand for a secret kiss to the crown of the prince’s head, but Roman did press a shaky smile of his own to Deceit’s shoulder in return as they sat there in comfortable silence.