Fletcher shook his head slowly. Was it in disagreement? Was it in warning? He didn't know. Theo had thrown all of this at him so fast, and he hadn't been expecting it, and now the man had gone in for the kill, too, with something that hit dead center. Fletch took in a breath and let it out like a kettle under pressure. He remembered his cigarette and plucked it from his lips. "Would you just — would you stop complicating things — and putting words in my mouth — for one bloody minute? Can I just — can I just have a minute to think?"

He shook his head again and began to pace. "First: don't you dare pretend like you don't see it in every little fucking thing I do. I think you know exactly how I feel about you. It doesn't matter if I'm ready for it. We're here now. Second? Stop trying to twist this into some inevitable failure where I leave you. Just stop. What if I said the same thing to you, ey? What if, days into us doing something about this, I kept going on and on about you pushing me away ten years down the road because of the chance that I'm not what you want anymore? Yeah, it hurts, doesn't it? It's a shit thing to say. Stop saying it."

He stopped pacing. He shook his head again. He stared intensely and longingly across the balcony as he tried to form the words, but they still wouldn't come. So he popped the smoke back where it belonged and signed it instead. "Fuck you for making me say it like this. Fuck you, Theo. I love you, too. So fucking much."

He nodded. Yes, Fletcher had seen what he had thought he had seen. "I love you," Theo signed again, more gently. "Whether you say it back or not. Whether you feel it or not. Whether you are ready for it or not. This is how I feel."

Theo flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette and took another small pull. "I don't think this about whether I think you'll leave or not. It's about whether you think you can belong at my side while doing whatever it is that makes you happy. And instead of wanting to face it, you'd rather be my shadow and let me choose. And I care for you too much to allow you to make that same mistake.

"Because I love you, deeply and you have more than every right to be happy finally."

He could barely keep up with the man, and his shock at where this had suddenly gone meant that for a few seconds, he didn't even try to. Then he was stumbling over his own hurried answers, not even certain if the man read them.

"Theo, no. That's not what I said, and you know it — it has nothing to do with that, would you just listen for one second — would you just stop? Can we not fight about this?"

Fletcher groaned and ran a hand over his hair and rolled his eye and nearly missed it. But there it was: slow enough that he couldn't mistake what the man had said for anything else. He froze with his arm up and the cigarette hanging on for dear life to parted lips. He glanced from Theo's hands to his eyes. A thousand little wounds made their way to the surface as disbelief and anguish and regret and anger, and for that moment, he was every part of him that had never heard those words. He was the beaten child, the posturing young man, the broken older one. Why did it hurt so much to be told something beautiful, by someone beautiful? His mouth twisted as he fought it back for Theo's sake. He should have said something in return. He should have told him then. But it was all suddenly locked up tight behind the hurt, and his words left him altogether. His arm dropped to his side, and all he could give the man was that forlorn look of every painful and unfulfilled minute that had led to this moment.

Morthil listened to her story with a lot of sympathy.
"I'm so sorry that happened to you...seems that Goblinda has helped a lot of people."
"My clan...it was close knit, but very strict on customs and tradition. I-I pushed the village witch doctor too far. He had a short fuse, I shouldn't have done what I did..." Morthil trailed off, regretful of the past. 
"So how long have you and Goblinda known each other, then?"
"It's ok....not many people I've met have even heard of the type of magic I was cursed with...someday I hope to find a cure—all of a sudden, he felt Goblinda bite him AGAIN! But this time on the head.
Wonderful. He desperately wanted to clean his head.
He let out a very strong, long string of his clan language, cursing up a storm.
"Excuse me," he apologized to Lin.
And then, half out of retaliation and half out of desperation, he bit her arm. Hard enough to hopefully wake her up. 

"I'm not allowed to know when you've found your path and happiness? You will not give me that? I decide to walk with you to share my life and you will not let me in?"

He huffed and threw his hands, taking several angry puffs that shrouded himself in a cloud of smoke. His hands shook as he rested them on the rail and clung tightly.

"You tell me to trust you will stay. I do. You protect me. You keep me safe. I trust it. Why am I not enough? Why am I not worthy of knowing when you do? I promise to wait and give you all the time you need and I cannot have this?"

Theo looked then to Fletcher, his face contorted in pain and frustration. "I am greedy. You were warned of this. Whether you like it or not. Whether you accept me or not. It is too late to change. I. Love. You," he signed in aggressive punctuated jerky motions with a furrowed brow. This was not how he wanted his love confession to go but his frustration won out over his romantic heart. 

Fletch let him take it, though not without a defanged scowl. "You're a shit," he grunted, but a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he fished another smoke out and lit it. He leaned against the balcony and watched the man in silence, drinking him in, still bothered but clearly not bothered enough to stop looking. Finally, he balanced the cigarette between his lips and signed. "I'm not promising that. Don't make me say a thing like that. I know what I've got and I'm not losing it. Can't that be good enough?"

Theo rolled his eyes ever so slightly and shook his head but didn't argue further. He did believe Fletcher would stay. He just also understood people can change over time and was trying to give the man freedom from him if it was needed. Only a caged man could understand the burden of being locked in place with nowhere to run. Far be it from him to do the same to another.

Still, he wordlessly climbed out of the bed after Fletcher and began to also put his clothes back on. Theo slipped out of Fletcher's room, into his own, and out onto the balcony after the other man. The lit cigarette was plucked away after the first drag and stolen for himself. He drew away with it, refusing to relinquish and settled into the corner furthest from Fletcher to give him some space. The bodyguard just wasn't the only one who required fire and smoke to calm thoughts and nerves both.

Linda quietly listened to Morthil's story— giggling a little at his dry humor and nodding acceptingly at his struggles. She wasn't one to judge others— Morthil would be quick enough to learn that, if the fact that she was caring holistically for a talking cat... elf... person, and a goblin, wasn't already proof enough.  She waited patiently for him to finish his story, before sighing a wistful sigh. Poor thing. She couldn't possibly know what sort of 'pranks' he got up to in his past life, but it was quite the punishment to be branded as something you hate.

"Trouble courts trouble, to be more accurate— Trust me, I would know." Linda explained, nodding to herself at her wise words as if rather impressed that she had said them. "My father-- may he rest in peace-- was a leviman... and a bit of a gold shark. As a younger girl, I never really understood how his tax hikes on the imported goods he traded caused a lot of the poverty in our hometown-- I was always just happy to never really want or need for anything. He'd pushed a bit too much of an outrageous price hike on wares one day... and we were chased from our homes for it. We... we were ambushed on the road to Ketra by goblins. I was captured, and he... well. He didn't make it." Linda closed her eyes, offering a momentary prayer to the departed. She had no allusions of her father now, as a grown woman; He was a corrupt man, and she had been a pampered, oblivious child because of it. But regardless of what he'd done... he was still her father. "If it wasn't for Goblinda, I probably would've spent the rest of my life in a goblin lair."

Taking a finger to her chin, Linda pivoted the subject a bit-- growing uncomfortable at the very thought. "I'm sorry to say I'm not terribly familiar with elven culture, or elven magics besides. Didn't seem like our hermit was very clear on it either... So I might not be able to help you with your little... um... kitty conundrum." She fought (and lost to) a slowly-spreading smile on her lips. Who could blame her? Unfortunate as his story was, the fact that he'd been turned into an... an orange cat, was just...

*NOM*

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Lin..."

A familiar prickling sensation set upon Morthil-- though this time not at his neck, but the back of his furry little head. Indeed; while they talked, Goblinda had finished off the steak in her mouth, and, on pure instinct, gone for another steak-- a cat steak. A cat skull, to be more precise, but it didn't seem like the little green goblin could tell the difference. Not at first, at least. But before Linda could make it to the table and back with another steak, the Goblin had already spat out the poor thing, leaving the run of the back of his head and neck covered in goblin saliva. Which was like human saliva, but... more... saliva-y.

A sigh of relief escaped Linda's mouth. Well, at least she didn't TRULY have to worry about her eating him. Just maiming, apparently. "Sorry, on her behalf... she's usually a lot better about her table manners." The woman attempted to explain, nonsensical as the explanation was.

"There you go doing that again," Fletch tutted at him. "So sure I'm going to get bored and up and leave you." He tilted his head up a little more and frowned at Theo as if to challenge the notion, eye darting back and forth between the man's. Then he shook his head resignedly and sighed, shifted, and sat up to slide off the bed. "Alright. Well. I need a smoke," he said as he began to dress himself. "Just the balcony. Won't be long."

Theo watched with his own heart hammering in his chest. He was so sure this was going to be a rejection, that he was going to be told he was a means to an end or that he was forever mean t to be a challenge, a tryst, and a secret. He hardened himself, braced and prepared for it. 

So when Fletcher admitted his uncertainty rather than his damnation, Theo needed a moment to dip his head and collect himself. His beloved did not need him gushing and throwing himself at him in this moment. He needed his own reassurance that was gentle and soft and straight to the point. It took a moment to collect those words but when the nobleman raised his gaze it was filled with conviction. 

"I am yours until I am no longer what you want. And I will wait as long as it takes for you to find what brings you peace, no matter how many different tries it takes to figure it out. I just want you to know I will not be the one to make you fight for survival each day...or bear the burden of my own happiness and path. I will not make myself into your cage, Jack. But, it's also okay to not know now, tomorrow, ten years from now. Just...promise to tell me when you know, even if I'm no longer part of it. That's all I ask of you."