Dinh [ numinousdread. ]
@starbiter // Anh : ❝ do you like me? i know you love me. i know you care about me but. do you like who i am? ❞ to Dinh
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐂𝐀𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐓 him off guard. The bodyguard, as stoic as he was unperturbed, waivered from his position behind his lord. His dark eyes fixed upon his shoulder, looking for any sign of tightness or even a tremble to convey as to where this question came from.
For his own part, his heart hardens at the question. Too far locked away are his innermost feelings, and being willed to speak on them brings a tightness to his jaw as his mouth shifts into a small line. ❝ Like you enough. ❞ Dinh’s reply doesn’t even satisfy himself to hear, but his eyes don’t leave his back. Hoping maybe that he would turn around and force more out of him.
His features remained impassive and inscrutable as his attention is affixed to the parchment before him, the fingers that have curled themselves so artfully around his brush hardly tremble. He writes a few characters in perfect script, the careful occupation of which is the most perfect foil to the terrific roiling in his stomach Dinh’s answer. It was a response inevitable to a question that ought to have been held in silence. And yet, it begged to be asked. For every act of service that Dinh performed for his sake, how much of his heart was invested in their goodwill? Anh was aware that he was a job. An appointment. An assignment. To be fought with. Fucked with. But only perhaps loved.
And if there was any question of that, it was gone now, the veracity of his bodyguard’s feelings known within the space of those dismissive words. “Never enough,” Anh countered softly, almost tenderly, his gaze unwavering from his task. “But I suppose it is all I can expect.”
𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐁𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐀 𝐅𝐈𝐒𝐓 at his side, the leather of his bracers squeaking in its efforts to contain the suddenly clench and tension of muscles all the way up Dinh's arms. Often too afraid is he to overstep the bounds of his job as a personal guard but also of his profound respect for the lord.
And yet he feels he has misspoken. His jaw tightens, the small line of his mouth twisting as his black eyes bore into the bowed features of the other through his mirror.
❝ Is my lord's expectation perhaps ... ❞ He begins in a deep but soft voice, too intimate for even maids to hear or creeping lovers, ❝ not in line with the collective expectations ? ❞
He takes a tentative step forward behind him, fists unfurling to gently caress one of Anh's pale and cascading locks of hair between two crooked fingers.
❝ Of someone in my position ... ? ❞ Dinh finishes with a sudden and secret edge to his tone, implying .... even imploring .
