Chapter Text
His darling Knight of Beauty couldn't seem to bear the thought of leaving the comforting embrace his covers offered. Even as the Sun rose from beyond the grasp of night to paint orange streaks of sunlight across his bed, he remained beneath the covers, unmoving. Though it would've sounded strange if said aloud, it made sense in his head: he was too still, too silent to have been asleep. Perhaps it was how Boothill had known something was wrong.
He woke at 6:34 to the sunlight streaming across his face. His systems gradually rebooted as they processed his mind was awake. With a sluggish stretch, he unplugged the charging cord. His elbow hit a lump beside him, a lump that moved, that grunted and curled away from him.
Argenti was still in bed.
"'Genti, darlin'," he slurred, voice still sleepy, "why are you still in bed?"
He got no response. Argenti laid still, head hidden by the covers, only his knotted, greasy hair escaping the confines of the blankets. Boothill moved his hand to rest on his waist to comort him, yet his musces only tensed upon feeling the contact of cold metal against his skin.
”I chose to sleep in this morning, my love,” he murmured with a strained tone, his voie soft enough to be blown away in the early morning breeze, “nothing to fret over.”
It sounded absolutely absurd. The man who shared everything - every looming worry, every miniscule anxiety, everything - was silent, pushing something away. Whatever it was, it would’ve had to have been something massively worrying.
”’Genti, pet, you can tell me anythin’,” he coerced with a gentle tone, his hand moving from his waist to his head, stroking his hair softly, “You know that, don’t you?”
As boothill’s hands carded through the man’s hair, he could see him begin to relax. His shoulders startd to drop, a deep sigh escaping parted lips, his chest falling more deeply than it had before.
”Is it your hair that’s botherin’ you so deeply?”
Argenti’s breath caught, “It’s… it’s my face.”
Boothill shifted closer so his chest touched his lover’s back, a pang of worry surging through his system.
”Your face? ‘Genti’, darlin’, I thought I’ve told you to tell me immediately if you’re in pain-“
”I’m not- not in pain, Boothill.”
It was never like him to cut in.
Boothill reached for the blanket that protected his face from the outside world, but Argenti flinched. He retreated away from his lover’s touch and curled further into his chest.
“My lover, I cannot allow you to see my face,” he mumbled, shoulders tensing further as his voice began to waive, “How… how do I allow myself the honour of the title Knight of Beauty when I am riddled with the disease of ugliness…?”
that’s when the first sob broke through the silence.
Boothill had never seen his beloved partner so utterly heartbroken. With each sorrowful sniffle and with every moment his breath hitched, a shock echoed through his system, an ache that drew him to sit up and hold his clammy hand in a tight, comforting grasp.
”Wha, exacltly, is goin’ on? Why can’t I see your face?”
It took a few breaths and sniffles to get past the rising lump in his throat.
”My skin… it’s- it’s in- infested with blemishes, c-cursing every pore on- on my face…”
Blemishes. It was the Knight’s worst fear, but… somehow he needed to calm him down. Somehow, he can convince him everything would be fine, blemishes or not.