Work Text:
Mr. Plant and Argos had decided to spend the evening relaxing and watching television together. It was one of those dark comedies Mr. Plant liked, one episodic enough that Argos wasn’t thrown blind into the middle of some convoluted plot. Argos had curled up on the couch, leaning against Mr. Plant’s side. It wasn’t one of the show’s best episodes, but it was certainly still enjoyable.
Argos was stiff, trying not to lean on Mr. Plant as heavily as normal. He hadn’t said anything about why he was so tense, though, so Mr. Plant decided to just let it be until that changed. Argos tended to be open about his troubles.
Partway through the episode, the two reached the inevitable commercial break. Argos turned to grab the remote and mute the television before shifting enough to face Mr. Plant.
“You know I love you, right? And how important you are to me, how much I care about you?” Ah. Argos was having one of those days. Mr. Plant nodded. He didn’t like having to put together proper sentences and phrases, be it via writing or signing, so he preferred simpler gestures.
“You’re-- you mean so much to me, and I don’t know how to even express all of it. And I want to make sure you know that. Right?” Again, Mr. Plant nodded. Argos’s feelings for him were astonishingly unsubtle. He just wished he’d get to whatever he was building up to.
“I’m not… I don’t…” Argos paused, struggling to put his thoughts into words. “I never had a ‘crush’ on you. Not like normal, anyways. And I don’t mean that I don’t love you! I do, you’re the most important person in my life, just… not necessarily in a… romantic way? Does that make sense?”
Mr. Plant thanked his lucky stars that Argos had said something relatively normal. Shocking no one except Argos, he nodded again. Argos’s eyes (or at least, the ones Mr. Plant could see) widened, and if his tenseness wasn’t already clear, the way he worried at his lip would’ve made it obvious. It took him a minute to figure out what he wanted to say next, though he eventually ended up on, “Is that… fine? You’re not mad?”
Mr. Plant didn’t want nodding or shaking his head to be misinterpreted, so he gave a reassuring thumbs-up instead. After a moment he signed “Same,” before bringing his hand back to where it had been. Of course he wasn’t mad. While Mr. Plant certainly had grown attached to Argos, his appreciation for the man had also never been romantic in nature. He hadn’t minded the romantic framing of their relationship, but being close to Argos was more important to him than that specific detail.
Mr. Plant could practically see Argos’s gears turning as he processed the response. “Wait, you’re saying you feel-- you also?” he asked, clearly trying not to sound too hopeful. As Mr. Plant nodded, Argos’s face twisted, mind landing on a new fear. “Oh no, have I been forcing you into too much? The, the, calling you my boyfriend, was that bad?”
He was going to have some sort of unpleasant spiral if Mr. Plant didn’t do something to interrupt. This guy was great at worrying. Mr. Plant put a hand on his partner’s arm, trying to steady him. Keep him rooted. Argos refocused, the eyes on the left side of his face being the first to look back to Mr. Plant.
“You’re OK,” he signed, “We’re fine. You’re not--” he struggled to find the right idea before settling on, “You’re not bad.”
Argos nodded along, calming down. “Okay. Yes, alright. You’re sure it’s fine?” Reassured by Mr. Plant’s next nod, he continued, “I really do like our relationship, I just… didn’t want to lie to you about how I felt. Are we okay, like, still together?”
He looked at Mr. Plant like a dog asking for scraps might, almost overwhelmingly hopeful. When Mr. Plant shrugged, he grinned, and Mr. Plant was pretty sure that if he squinted he’d be able to actually see little hearts in his boyfriend’s pupils.
Argos leaned in to kiss Mr. Plant’s shoulder, which was really just him pressing his closed mouth against it. He stayed there for a couple seconds, trying to soak up as much contact as he could, before noticing out of the corner of his right-side eyes that the commercial break was ending. Argos quickly unmuted the television and returned to curling up against his boyfriend (his boyfriend who still cared, who still wanted to be together, his boyfriend who didn’t like him romantically but neither did he) to watch the show.