[It is too much.

For every admission, he can feel guilt threatening to rise to the surface again, constricting around his heart. Though his hands, too, wander, though he cannot help but lean into that kiss with parted lips to steal a taste of what he has so long been denied, that Hythlodaeus can say such things with such certainty, with nothing but adoration and fondness in his voice, his gaze—

It is too much.

His jaw tenses, quickly averting his aurum gaze, and he props a hand against the wall of the shower to steady himself as every muscle in him goes rigid all at once, a swift and sudden reaction to the feeling of his own stomach dropping. He had been the one to say that he would never tire of hearing such things, and truly, he's certain he never will, and yet—]

I do not deserve you.

[He had already made his feelings plain, that he didn't feel he deserved this gift of time to begin with— but this is something more. He knows that Hythlodaeus loves him in spite of what he's done, who he had become, and he had admitted as such—

But he shouldn't.]

I don't know that I can ever truly be 'Hades' again, not as I once was. With you, it feels within reach— but it is a fantasy.