"It should be." He passed the plate over and then took a step back, avoiding Johan's gaze as much as Johan was avoiding his. His hands ached to stuff another pillow behind his back, or smooth down the blankets that wrinkled as he pushed himself up, but that sort of inasion of space would certainly be inappropriate right now so instead he curled his hands behind his back. "Is it enough? I… ah… I know your appetite is not very good, right now. I can get more if you'd like, but I don't think Cora will appreciate my presence in her kitchen again."
Johan pulled his legs up to cradle the plate against his thighs and stomach, reaching first for one of the pies. He simply nodded as he took a bite, supposing that if the food on the plate ended up not being enough, he could just ask for more. Fiori’s last statement, however, had him perplexed. He sent over a sidelong glance while he chewed, brows knit together until he had an empty mouth to speak. “Why’s that? I thought she liked you.” Taking advantage of the time it took to wait for an answer, he took another bite.
"I told her about… that." He glanced away as Johan looked at him, not quite willing to face him yet. "About last night. Nothing specific, I did not wish to embarrass you, but… enough" Cora hadn't yelled at him, but she gave him a look that made him wish she'd just raised her voice. They made food in steely silence after, punctuated by a few razor sharp comments. "She's your mother, she didn't take kindly to me provoking you. It was cruel." He hadn't needed her to tell him that, he'd been thinking about it all night.
“Oh.” Johan darted his gaze back to the plate as if he’d just remembered the happenings of last night. He set down the half-eaten pastry, idly rubbing his finger along a small section of the porcelain. He didn’t hate Fiori as much as he thought he would. In fact, he found it almost difficult—for once—to be angry about the ordeal if it hadn’t for his brother storming in. “It…yes, it was cruel,” he finally said. His features morphed into the familiar, irate expression that felt appropriate, but wasn’t wholly genuine. His anger was better suited towards Leviticus. He took the pie into his hand again, but hesitated to eat. “I’m glad she told you off.”
Fi was surprised that Johan hadn't blown up yet. The man was remarkably sedate for someone Fiori knew was easy to rile up, which left him a little off balance. He could deal with real anger just fine, but this halfhearted irritation was new and difficult to decipher and he found himself unsure of how to react. "You can tell me off too, if you'd like." He glanced up finally, head cocked slightly to the side as he finally tried to meet Johan's eyes. "You shouldn't have had to deal with that. Especially not from me."
Apparently indecisive, Johan put the pie back down again and lifted his gaze up to Fi, looking anywhere on his face but his eyes. Eventually he sorted through his thoughts enough to make eye contact for longer than a brief moment, along with holding onto his awkwardly perturbed expression. “You’re right. I…shouldn’t have to deal with it. But I do. But-but what confuses me is why are you apologizing to me? I don’t get it.” More like he didn’t get why he wasn’t seething at Fiori. “And Leviticus, why isn’t he bringing me breakfast?”
Fi frowned slightly at the questions, even more confused than before. "Because I'm the one who needs to apologize?" He gave Johan a questioning look. What sort of answer did he expect? Fiori had caused the problem, so it was Fi who needed to fix things. "It wasn't Leviticus who provoked you, it was me. So… it is my responsibility to make things up to you. I don't see what role your brother would have in all this."
Johan pursed his lips, his face warped with conflict and leftover resentment. On one hand Fiori had provoked him, as he said, and brought Leviticus into the room. And on the other it was Leviticus who hurt him the most. He took another bite of the pastry to buy some time before he answered, chewing slowly. “I should be mad at you, but I’m not,” he finally said. “Or I sort of am for making me yell loud enough for my brother to get involved.”
Fi thought about that for a few moments, more than a little surprised at the easy forgiveness. "Oh. That's all?" He met Johan's eyes easily this time, not sure what expression he should be making. He wanted to smile, but that seemed a little too cocky for the moment. "I don't mean to be rude, but… Leviticus didn't seem like he did anything. You left before he could say much, and… and you seemed very upset, for such a short encounter."
“Oh, he said plenty.” Johan cringed like the words physically pained him. He flicked his eyes away when Fi seemed more comfortable making eye contact. It wasn’t so much what Leviticus had said. It was more like how he looked. He’d looked almost like their late father then, with his face screwed up in impatience and pessimistic disappointment, placing all the blame on Johan and none on what had provoked him. There was no doubt if Fiori hadn’t spoken up he’d be isolated somewhere that wasn’t the comfort of his own rooms.
Fi gave Johan a long look as he turned last night's events over in his head again. It was the disappointment that upset him, then. The lack of trust, the snap judgement Levi had made to trust Fiori over him. "You're very affected by his opinion for somebody who claims to hate him." He turned to grab a chair, settling beside the bed. It was strange, how Johan ranted and railed when underneath all the yelling he was so sensitive. If you cracked his armor open, it was easy to hurt him. "There's a reason he looks at you like that."
Johan frowned. He pulled the bowl of kasha to the front of the plate, using the spoon to absentmindedly poke at the granola sitting on the surface. It seemed superfluous to have dried grains on top of grains, but Cora must have remembered how much he liked his various toppings. He liked berries on his cereal too when they were in season. “I do hate him. You saw how he talked to me last night, and that’s why. He’s just like our dad.” He muttered the last sentence under his breath, more to himself than truly opening up.
Fiori caught it anyways, doing his best to fix that little detail in his mind for later. "You don't hate him, if you did you wouldn't be so upset that he's disappointed." He disliked his brother, sure. Maybe he even hated a few things about him, the condescension and the easy way Levi cast him aside, but he certainly didn't hate his brother as a whole or he wouldn't be so upset about not having his approval. "And, like I said, there's a reason he looks at you like that, and speaks to you like that, and treats you badly. You wanted him in chains, Johannan."
“I never said I was upset because I disappointed him.” He pushed his brows together and spooned a bite of the kasha into his mouth to conceal a scowl. “And he wants to me chains too. Obviously. He just wasn’t forthright enough to sent me away first.” His voice turned sour, more typical of the resentment he held in his heart than the tired confusion from earlier. “He looked at me the same way even before I had the balls to send for the slavers.”
"No, he was kind. This is a kindness Johannan, you wouldn't be treated half so well if you were sent somewhere else." Levi was angry, obviously, and he wanted Johan punished, but he wasn't cruel about it. There were people here to kept him in check and he had given Fiori of all people a principal role in the whole thing. "You carve away little pieces of him all the time, Johan. You rant and rail and you don't care that he loved you. This situation you've put yourself in is not unexpected."
Johan caught his lower lip between his teeth. He glared at the breakfast plate for a moment, and in a sudden decision that he wasn’t hungry anymore, set it down beside him on the bed. “I thought you were here to apologize. Not make me feel worse about everything.” Though that wasn’t to say he truly regretted what he did to Leviticus. In his mind, his brother still deserved it all. “What do you think he’s been doing to me ever since we were little? He didn’t love me.”
"I gave you my apology, and now I'm giving you this too." He gave Johan a long look, a little confused but mostly searching. The way Johan understood things was strange to him, he didn't know how Johan looked at Levi and saw somebody who had never cared at all. "It's advice, and you can tell me to stop if you don't like it. I think Leviticus has been trying very hard to be your brother for a long time, and you don't think the way he does so you don't see it. This is the only thing he's ever done to you instead of for you."
“Alright, then stop.” Once his hands were free Johan pulled his arms up to cross over his stomach. He paused, staring at his knees, then looked at Fi again with a flat expression. Though his were squinted from faint curiosity. “But first tell me. What has he done for me, then? Besides not sending me to the dungeons or exiling me or whatever.” He could only remember the bad parts of his childhood. The ones that came to his mind quicker than the nice dinners and festival seasons. Instead he focused on the loneliness, always being scolded for playing too rough and making messes.
"I wasn't raised here, Johannan, I can't say anything specific, but I know that when you were younger he adored you." He had heard it in Levi's voice the night they talked, the pride and the happiness as he recalled his brother's youth, and yet Johan seemed like he didn't remember those days at all. "It hurts when you don't fit, but he wasn't the one doing the hurting. Don't turn the blame on him when all he ever tried to do was help you. And don;t turn the blame onto him now either, when the only person you have to be angry at is yourself."
Lines formed on Johan’s forehead as he scowled down at the food plate he’d set aside. “Right. You weren’t raised here so you have no idea what it was like between us.” He hugged his legs closer to himself. At least however much he could without pushing against his ribs. Fiori was right to an extent, he considered: Leviticus hadn’t always been the problem. It was just when they started getting older, and after Mikhail was born, that tensions rose and favoritism became apparent. “Not like I have anyone else to blame.” He turned his gaze sideways to Fi. “Well, there’s always you.” He was only half serious, forcing a glint of humor into his expression.
Fi huffed quietly, not quite a laugh but not entirely without humor. "You can blame whoever you like, Johannan," he said, and he didn't know enough about Johan's family to do anything but guess and hope what he was saying hit home. "But it doesn't change the fact that this is a problem that your parents caused. Did they stop giving you their affection, after Levi came of age?" He didn't know, not for certain, but he had seen men and women like Johan before. Jealous, ambitious, desperate to be noticed; there was a specific problem that drove that sort of behavior. "Or did it feel like they were slipping away even before that?"
Johan lightly chewed on his lower lip. He seemed slightly less perturbed than before, more thoughtful and sad than anything at the moment. No matter how much he had tried to conceal it with humor. He kept his gaze averted, even as he opened his mouth to speak again, then hesitated. He had something to say, obviously, but a wave of reluctance washed over him. While he wasn’t angry at Fi, and part of him wanted to be. Could he really push past that enough to open up? Perhaps. In a way, it felt right to open up. “Ah. It was…it was, yeah, a few years before then.”
Fi smiled, a small, soft thing that he knew Johan probably wouldn't see. "It wasn't fair of them." He reached forward slowly, careful to keep his hand in Johan's line of sight and give the prince time to pull away, and set his hand on the younger man's knee. Touch was equal to comfort in his mind, and he thought that Johan deserved some of that right now. Obviously it wasn't a subject he enjoyed talking about. "They should have taken better care of you, but you can't put the blame on Leviticus. He was a child just like you were, he wasn't trying to make them turn you away."
Johan pursed his lips as he watched Fiori’s hand reach closer to his knee, but he didn’t pull away. He stiffened a bit under the comfort, sure, yet it wasn’t entirely unwelcome. His eyes narrowed, bottom lip caught between his teeth, mulling over Fi’s reasoning. “Well, he did,” he finally said, “whether he meant it or not.” There was also the plain fact that in his parents’ absence, Leviticus was the only one he could blame. Not Mikhail, not Cora, and not even Fiori—save bitter resentment and bias, of course.
Fi didn't move once he'd reached his goal, content just to hold him in a way that wouldn't cause Johan any discomfort. "It is not his fault that your parents favored him, Johannan. You're smart, you must understand that. The blame is theirs, and nobody else's." He looked up as he spoke, catching Johan's gaze with a soft expression. "If you cannot bring yourself to blame them now that they are gone, then at least do yourself the favor of recognizing that your brother had no stake in what happened. Your anger will only cause you pain."
