Having spotted Emet laying face down and looking overall more miserable than usual, Neytam sneaks his way into the room and gently nuzzles him, worming his way under an arm and giving gentle affection he's fully aware he might not get much thanks for. Regardless, he much prefers to see Emet happy or at least having fun and so places a few sweet kisses to his cheek. <3
Father's day was a miserable affair, for Emet-Selch. The reason why was very simple, but very, very private—he told few, and generally, only a partner that had expressed a desire for a child would become aware.
Emet-Selch's aether was simply too much for a mortal, sundered child to survive. They would be born with an overabundance of aether their body would be poorly equipped to handle, and they would die young. How young had shifted over the years, his first several had died well before reaching adulthood, and for several millennia, he stopped trying at all, claiming that he was infertile when he had to, making use of surrogates or magic. Whenever there was a rejoining, or a society with great progress in medicine, he would try again, and the child would make it further, some eventually living full lives at the cost of medical experimentation and mutation, gigantism becoming very much common as their bodies grew larger than mortals should in order to better house the aether. It made sense, Amaurotines were thrice the size of a mortal and Emet-Selch's aether had never been fully contained in his body even in that form, an aura always escaping despite his every attempt to compress it within himself, but regardless, the lives of his children were difficult, and even now, the world half rejoined and incredible possibilities existing within carious nation's medicine, only one of his two most recent children had made it past their twenties.
Emet-Selch had grown bitter because of it. Mistreated the one who survived, and even the progeny of the one who passed. He could not stand to look at any of them and he had become a bitter, often absent presence in their lives. He had cared for them once, but after... He could not. And they had grown up worse for it. His fault, again. He no longer wished to try, but he knew that some thousand years in the future, he would have to, for duty, and the thought made him miserable. Even the conception of his half-Eater... *Thing* (for he could not bear to call Vauthry a son, he loathed him too deeply) was an impersonal and disgusted affair, a work of magic rather than intimacy, born of obligation. He hated the result, and refused to look at him, as well.
And so here he was. Lying face down in bed and feeling perhaps every negative emotion known to man. Primarily, hatred and disgust for himself, and profound grief, more than the usual. He was so lost in it he hardly registered Neytam entering the room, so used to this day being passed in complete and bitter solitude.
But then, his arm is lifted, nuzzled under. His face is kissed, his body held in warm arms. Emet-Selch doesn't react for a second beyond his breath hitching, but once he does, it's to wrap the arm Neytam had wriggled beneath around him properly and squeeze him tight, the other arm coming to join it as Emet-Selch shifted onto his side and curled up into a fetal position, his legs beneath Neytam's, his face buried in his shoulder as he held onto him like a lifeline, probably more tightly than was entirely comfortable. His breath left him, shuddering, before returning to normal, as he wavered on the edge between tears and dissociation.
