#thecinnaminion

Small voice. Small spark. Small hopeful entirely one-sided. One voice for the two parts.

“Kweh? Yes? Boco, look!”

It’s -- soothing enough that he bites back the obvious questions, bites back the obvious worries. At least he’s not listening to the labored gasps of a bad awakening. The building breathless wails after a nightmare.

He can worry about sleeping later, worry about the world later, because he’s too busy being caught and pinned on that small whistle of a voice, the struggle to get the words out right, out loud.

So he stops in the door, only just. Takes in the scene and immediately wants to smile, because:

Tumbledown falling hair, hopelessly mussed by pillows and turning over in sleep. Spikes and tufts and cowlicks, and stray strands framing bright bright eyes. A smile that rivals the lamp’s cheerfully embroidered lampshade, and soft star-shaped hands on the move.

One to steady the small blob of yellow, lopsided, black-beady-eyed, so it looks like it’s turning to the book on the small flat pillow.

He knows from personal experience how this little boy likes to sit, compactly, heels under his diapered bottom, and there are only a few people who are allowed to tease him about the fact that the boy sits in imitation of him, when he happens to be meditating.

So the small flat pillow serves as a table to read on, a perch for a familiar board-book, and the shades of yellow on the pages. Yellow feathers, yellow wings, yellow blobs of stylized flight, and the voice of the little boy, pointing them out to the soft toy at his side.

“Big bird, small bird, look Boco look. Family!”

He covers the laugh when the little boy pouts, tilts his head at the book and then at his toy. “Boco’s family. Right? Boco small?”

He doesn’t know what kind of communication the boy has with his toy, but it must be the right kind, because the boy pulls the plush bird into his arms and squeezes tightly, and goes back to reading.

Page, turning, and voice, rising. Pointing out the words in the book -- the ones that he understands, the ones that he can’t quite say properly. The sounds he makes for the toy, little “kweh” sounds halfway to huffs of small giggling.

After he turns the last page, the boy sets the book aside very gently, and chews on his knuckles, and says, “Boco’s family. Me and Cor. No wings. But Boco’s family. Small family.”

That’s his cue, he thinks. “Small family?”

He’s still gentle, when he comes in, and when he stops short of the bed. “May I sit?”

“Cor!” And the boy holds his hands out to him -- holds one of the soft toy’s wings out to him, too, since he doesn’t seem inclined to let go of it. “Hi!”

“Hello Prompto,” he says, “hello Boco. You’re both up early.”

“Book,” is Prompto’s entire reply, as if that were a compelling reason, and Cor laughs softly and kisses him on the head because if this is the first thing his son learns from him, then -- he’ll take it. He’ll be pleased with it. “Wanted reading.”

And: “Cor, Boco’s family? Cor and Prom?”

“Don’t know,” but he smiles a little as he says it, so Prompto knows he’s teasing. “I don’t have wings,” and he jiggles the soft toy’s other wing to demonstrate. “I don’t think you do, either.”

The pout he gets is the full-on pleading version, lower lip pushed out all the way. “Cor.”

“And Boco doesn’t have freckles,” and he taps over Prompto’s forehead with his little finger. “You have these all over.”

“Your,” and Prompto pokes at his cheek, in return, just above the correct spot.

“Say yours,” he says, gently correcting. “And yes. Mine. Boco doesn’t have that.”

“Family,” Prompto says, after a moment, insisting in his own small way. “’Get’er.”