Chapter 192: Chapter 192: Reasonable.

Max shut the door behind him with his heel and looked at Adam as if he had personally invented cruelty.

“You look terrible,” Adam said again, softer this time, because Max still hadn’t responded; he just stood there in the doorway, the expression of a man who had been held together by duty, caffeine, and escalating violence and had now reached the end of all three.

“That,” Max said at last, voice rough with fatigue, “is the nicest thing anyone has said to me all week.”

Adam’s mouth curved, small and warm and disastrously fond. “That bad?”

“A viscountess tried to start a feud over ribbon.”

Adam blinked. “Ribbon.”

“Silver versus gold. Apparently the moral future of the Empire depends on thread selection.”

A quiet laugh escaped Adam before he could stop it, and Max felt something inside him go soft in a way he deeply distrusted.

God. He had missed him.

He crossed the room without another word, all the last scraps of restraint in him collapsing on impact the second he reached Adam and put his hands on him. One at the waist. One at the small of his back.

Adam came closer easily, one hand lifting to Max’s chest.

Max bent, pressed his face into Adam’s neck, and stayed there.

Adam went very still for a second, then softened all over.

“Oh,” he murmured, one hand coming up to the back of Max’s head. “It’s that bad.”

Max made a low sound and tightened his arms around him until Adam had no room left between them at all.

The effect was immediate and almost embarrassing. The sharp edges in him did not disappear, but they stopped cutting so deep. Adam smelled warm and clean and familiar beneath the faint traces of the palace, and Max, who had spent two months being summoned, pushed, briefed, directed, and generally treated like an imperial workhorse with legal standing, discovered very suddenly that he had reached a state beyond tiredness and directly into something clingy, possessive, and entirely without dignity.

He did not care.

“I missed you,” Max said into his skin.

Adam’s fingers threaded more firmly into his hair. “I know.”

“No,” Max muttered, not lifting his head. “You don’t.”

That earned him a pause.

Then Adam’s hand slid slowly down his back, a soothing line through wrinkled fabric and tension-hardened muscle. “That sounds serious.”

“It is serious.” Max’s voice came muffled against his throat. “I’ve been forced to act like a civilized person for eight consecutive weeks. I deserve compensation.”

Adam laughed again, softer now, the sound warm against Max’s temple. “Compensation.”

“Yes.”

“What form were you imagining?”

Max finally lifted his head just enough to look at him, eyes heavy with exhaustion. “You staying exactly where you are. Preferably for the next three days.”

Adam’s expression changed, amusement gentling around the edges into something Max did not immediately know how to read.

He should have noticed it sooner. He would have, on any other day. But he was tired, and Adam was here, and Max’s brain had already begun dissolving into something sticky and unhelpful.

So instead of reading the room properly, he moved closer.

Or rather, impossible as it seemed, closer still.

He wrapped both arms fully around Adam now, drew him in until their bodies were flush from chest to knee, and then, because apparently shame had left him with the last functioning brain cell he’d had, Max hooked one leg lazily around Adam’s just to make escape even more theoretical.

Adam stared at him.

Max stared back with all the solemnity of a man making a deeply serious diplomatic point.

“Max.”

“No.”

“I didn’t say anything yet.”

“You were going to,” Max said. “I can tell.”

Adam looked down at where Max had effectively turned himself into some form of aristocratic restraint device. “What exactly is this?”

Max’s eyes narrowed with grave offense. “This is survival.”

“This,” Adam said, touching his shoulder with suspicious calm, “feels a great deal like glue.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve transformed into glue.”

“Very high-quality glue.”

Adam laughed, helpless this time, and the sound made Max tighten around him on instinct, as if Adam’s amusement itself might make him slippery enough to escape.

“Oh, no,” Adam said under his breath, realizing it immediately. “You really have.”

“I am not above becoming unbearable.”

“I never said you were.”

“Good.”

Adam rested his forehead briefly against Max’s and closed his eyes for a second as if centering himself against the force of Max’s absurdity and affection. When he opened them again, there was that same softness there, but also hesitation now.

Max noticed that one.

He knew Adam too well not to.

“What is it?” he asked.

Adam looked at him for a moment before answering. “You always know.”

“I am extremely talented.”

“You are extremely nosy.”

“That too.”

Adam exhaled. His hands settled more fully on Max now, one at the nape of his neck, one on his side, as if deciding there was no point pretending he was not equally caught.

“I need to leave the capital,” he said quietly.

Max stilled.

“For how long?”

“A few months.”

Max’s jaw tightened.

That was not a dramatic reaction, but Adam knew him, because his hands were already on him, because Max’s body answered before his mouth did.

“A few months,” Max repeated.

Adam nodded once.

“For what?”

Adam watched him carefully. “I was offered a position in the south for the season. It’s temporary. Instruction, performance consultation, and some restoration work with old canto archives.” He paused, then added, “I accepted it.”

Max took that in without speaking.

Outside the room, the palace went on breathing in distant footsteps and muffled doors and the low living hum of people with ranks and tasks and urgent nonsense. Inside, it felt very quiet.

“A few months,” Max said again, because apparently his mind had fixated on the phrase with the enthusiasm of a wounded dog.

Adam’s thumb moved slowly at the back of his neck. “I was going to tell you before I left.”

“When?”

“In the next few days.”

“I don’t like it,” Max said with a grimace.

Adam’s eyes softened further. “I know.”

“I like it less than ribbon complaints.”

“That is a severe category.”

“It is.”

Max held him in silence for another long second, then another. His fatigue made honesty easier and more difficult at once. He had less energy for pride but also less patience for pain.

Finally, he muttered, “You’re leaving for months, and you waited until I was halfway to death to tell me.”

Adam’s mouth curved faintly, though sadness touched it now. “You were already glued to me. I thought you should at least have the truth to justify the behavior.”

Max considered that, then tightened his hold with shameless emphasis.

“I hate how reasonable you are.”

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