"Because--" He swallows, and these are questions he's never really had to answer. Not outloud, not like this, where it's too specific and clear for it to be something he can brush aside. His voice is soft and hushed with the vulnerability of it. The answers aren't pretty things, not the Richard Gansey III he sells to the rest of the world.

He's not actually oblivious to the image, the veneer of a King and his Court. But it isn't that simple, never has been, not really. He lets his fingertips slide against Declan's skin, because it's easier than putting voice to those truths.

"It's not that easy. Most of the time I don't know what I'm doing and it's-- It eats me alive," he admits, whispers it like a bloody sort of secret. Because it is, it's the worst sort of truth. One of those things that only Adam really knows about him. Only in the dead of night when he crumbles under the weight of it. Sometimes he feels like nothing more than tin painted gold.

There are two images of him, one the very boy that Declan describes: golden and perfect, with command in his fingertips. And then this- uncertain and plagued with anxiety that leaves him shaking at night, who ached with the wanting, guileless and fragile.

He frames Declan's face in trembling hands, can't quite look him in the eyes with so much truth on the air. Even when there's still shadows he can't say.