Here he comes! He’s running, coming to a halt a mere hair’s breadth from Oswald. Before the other has any time to react, he throws his arms around him, nearly lifting him off the ground as he squeezes him tightly, cheek pressed against cheek.
“Oswald!! Oz! Ozzy!!”
Someone is clearly happy to see him.
unpromted asks / always accepting / @farspirit
oswald registers movement before he registers intent, a shift in air, the rapid approach of footsteps without hesitation or caution, a presence that does not slow as it enters his space but accelerates into it. his posture tightens a fraction, instinct aligning into readiness (not yet defense, but the prelude to it ) and then the impact comes, not as a strike, but as warmth.
arms around him, force enough to shift his balance, not quite lifting him, but threatening the boundary of toppling him. his hand moves on reflex, fingers half-curled as if to catch, restrain, redirect —— and stops. not because he cannot act, but because the situation refuses to align with any known category of threat.
the nicknames arrive in rapid succession, bright, unmeasured, entirely unconcerned with propriety or distance.
(even his niece doesn't call him that —— sure she named her toy rabbit oz but that is not the same !)
oswald does not return the embrace but he does not immediately push it away either. for a moment, he simply stands there, held, his body rigid in the way of a man who has spent years ensuring that contact is always deliberate, always controlled, never taken without consent. his gaze lowers slightly, not toward the prince’s face —— that is too close, too immediate —— but somewhere past his shoulder, as if attempting to reestablish orientation through distance that no longer exists. the cheek pressed to his own is… warm. distractingly so. alive in a way that does not ask permission to be noticed.
“ … your highness, ” oswald says in greeting at last, voice even, though a fraction slower than usual. his hand, still hovering uselessly at his side, shifts —— not quite rising, not quite settling —— before it comes to rest, carefully, against the prince’s shoulder. not returning the embrace, not rejecting it, simply acknowledging the point of contact as something that exists. there is a faint tension in his posture still, but it has altered, no longer the readiness of defense, but something more uncertain, recalibrating around a variable he had not accounted for.
“ … you should be more careful, ” he notes after a moment, as if that is the most relevant conclusion to draw from this. the justification is that the sun prince of the kingdom being in such proximity to the lord of the less than trusted, and frankly feared dukedom may look suspicious to others. oswald also suspects that his highness does not care one bit about that.
his fingers press once, lightly, against the prince’s shoulder before stilling again. he does not call him by name, but he does not remove him either. he is reported to him when it comes to rank, after all. or that is the justification, at least.
