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There are a lot of heavy things that you must lift sometime in your life, regardless of your strength. Too-big sacks of food, furniture for your future home, or possibly even your child. But the heaviest things are often the ones you can’t carry with physical strength. For a god, the heaviest thing they’ll lift in their long lifetimes is the weight of their kingdom.
That fact rang ever the more true for the Pale King. Ever since he had transformed into a bug, he’d lost a lot of his physical strength. However, that didn’t matter. Because he didn’t need to be strong to run his kingdom. Even if he did have that strength… He still would have collapsed under his own kingdom.
He hated being vulnerable. Absolutely despised it. He was the king, he was a god; he was supposed to be the perfect ruler. A perfect ruler is one who solves problems in a timely fashion, who is there to listen to all of his citizens’ needs, who is someone everyone can look to for anything, someone who never falters. People should feel like they can depend on him, and someone vulnerable cannot be depended on.
So whenever he was overcome with emotion, the Pale King hid himself away, so he could easily stuff all of those ugly, unwanted feelings deep in his mind where nobody had to see them. His servants always knew when he struggled, but they were frustratedly unaware of what he was struggling with.
It always went the same way. The Pale King would finish what he was doing at his desk, get up, tell his staff that he was just going to ‘freshen up’, and lock himself in his quarters until no one could tell that anything had happened at all. As soon as his maids, butlers, and guards heard those words, they knew to steer clear. It was easier that way.
Unfortunately for one of the Pale King’s butlers, Cremn, he hadn’t been informed of the Pale King’s ‘freshening up’, so he went up to his room as scheduled to bring him his afternoon tea. And unfortunately for the Pale King, he had left his door unlocked, forgetting to lock it in his mental distress. So that meant Cremn simply opened the door and announced himself with the tea and biscuits as the Pale King was sitting on the floor, breathing hard, fast, and rattling, trying not to cry.
“Your majesty, your afternoon tea is—!”
As soon as the king’s head snapped towards Cremn, staring at him like a spooked animal, he knew that he had made a grave mistake.
“You should leave. Now.”
The Pale King’s voice was almost a snarl for how hoarse it was. This was precisely what he didn’t want people to see. Him crumpled on the ground, growling like a beast, behaving as if he were wounded. He was not a beast. He was not an animal. He was a god, a perfect higher being. He should act like it, especially in front of those who needed him.
All he wanted right now was for Cremn to leave, to never speak a word of this to anyone. To forget about everything that had just happened here. To simply brush it off as another bad day or an ailment, like everyone else did.
Instead, Cremn closed the door behind him and locked it with a small, barely audible click. He set the tray down gently on the nightstand and began to approach him silently, betraying none of his intentions.
“I said you should leave,” the Pale King tried to intimidate him, but his trembling voice made it hard to. “So leave. I demand it.”
“I’m sorry, your majesty, my orders are to fulfill your needs in full. I cannot leave until I have done so,” Cremn said, keeping his tone even and professional, despite his underlying fear. “My work is not done until you are well.”
“I am well!” The Pale King spat. “I’m always well! If I weren’t, what kind of king would I be?!”
“You’d just be a king in need, sire.”
“N— No…! No, that's completely wrong!” The Pale King was completely taken aback. “The correct answer is not one at all! You common bugs are so foolish and naive! You can’t help what doesn’t need to be helped!”
Those words should hurt, hearing his king talk down about his kind. But something prevented that insult from leaving any marks. That was the fact that the Pale King didn’t actually believe it. Anyone who’d interacted with him knew that. This was all just a frankly kind of pathetic, desperate attempt to drive Cremn away, to discourage his attempt at emotional support.
Cremn had to admit, it was sobering to see that his worshipped god-king put on this painfully mortal display of raw emotion.
As Cremn got closer, the faux fury faded, and the Pale King changed tactics. A tactic that made Cremn’s heart twist even more than the earlier anger.
“Please, please just leave me alone…”
It felt so viscerally, intrinsically wrong to see his master beg, to him of all people as well, someone who is all by means below him.
The king’s voice, the king’s posture, everything just felt so small. So weak.
So weak that he couldn’t bring himself to resist when his butler got down on the floor with him, and reached his claws to curl around his form to pull him as close as he could manage.
The Pale King was quiet, the only sound from him being his shaky breaths.
No one had ever gotten this close a look at the king before, which was probably intentional. Because up close, you could see the imperfections. The dark circles under his eyes that he tried to hide with white powder, the thin cracks in his mask from being assaulted by various bugs, and his body that was so shockingly frail.
Cremn could hear his master’s breath catch multiple times, and his shoulders twitch. He was still trying not to cry, even in his position right now.
“You don’t need to be afraid, your majesty,” Cremn murmured. “I’ve already seen everything. Crying isn’t going to make it any worse.”
Until then, the Pale King’s arms remained curled around his folded legs, and he was as stiff as a board. But after those words were spoken, his chilly hands slowly crept around Cremn’s shell, and hesitantly, the king leaned on his shoulder.
It started with a sniffle, then a hiccup, and finally… The floodgates were opened. His face was buried in Cremn’s neck, his horns barely out of the way of Cremn’s head, tucked in that little spot as he just wept.
His cries came from something deep within the king’s body, a gutturally miserable sound. His sobs were loud, his tears made a mess of his butler’s clothing, and he couldn’t stop it. Every attempt to clamp the gates shut was met with more cries.
Everything about this made him feel vile, disgusting. Relying on his butler for comfort when it should be the other way around. His emotions being as messy as a newborn bug’s, when in his eyes, they had no right to be. And all of this being about— What? His own failings? What an utter wretch he’s making of himself.
He would have kept going with that inner monologue, fueled by deep, inescapable shame, if not for the dissonance felt when he heard Cremn’s own words to him.
“Oh, king beloved…” Cremn’s spoken word was paired with caring claws, caressing his back and his head. “You must feel so isolated from us, but you’re more like us than you think. I know you likely see that as a bad thing, but… no one else does. We want to feel connected to you, and I myself cannot express how pleased I am that I see this part of you. Please don’t hide from us, Pale King… You might not think so, but you are indeed loved. By us, and your kingdom.”
“No… That’s wrong…” the Pale King’s voice had heightened to a whine. “I’m not someone to just… love… My purpose is to take care of you… How can I be loved when I can’t do that one damn thing?”
“Love does not come from service, sire,” Cremn replied. “You’re valuable to us, whether you’re servicing us or not. Your failures are not a reason to take that love away.”
“But I’m not supposed to fail! I’m supposed to be perfect! I owe it to you to be perfect!”
“And yet… Here we are. You’re imperfect; it’s all but obvious. Yet I’m still here. And I always will be. We all will. You’re not alone at the top of the world. You’re among us, among friends. The sooner that you realize that… the better.”
This time, the Pale King had no rebuttal.
His only response was a strangled wail, and burying himself deeper into Cremn’s embrace.