Closing the door behing hin [Qhuinn], he leaned back against it. The only person he wanted to see was the one guy in the house who had no interest in-
[...]
"Is there anything I can do?" [Blay said]
So funny. Qhuinn had always felt as though he'd come out of his mother's womb an adult. Then again, there had never been any cootchie-coo crap for him, no darling-little-boy stuff, no hugs when he hurt himself, no coddling when he was frightened. As a result, whether it was character or the way he'd been brought up, he'd never regressed.
Nothing to go back to there.
Yet it was in the voice of a child that he said, "Make it stop?"
As if Blay alone had the power to work a miracle.
And then... the male did.
Blay extented his arms wide, offering the only haven Qhuinn had ever known.
"Make it stop?"
Blay's body started to shake as Qhuinn uttered those words: After all these years, he'd seen th eguy in a lot of moods and in a lot of circumstances. Never like this, though. Never... so completely and utterly ruined.
Never like a child, lost.
In spite of his need to keep really and truly far away from an emotional anything, his arms opened of their own accord.
As Qhuinn stepped in against him, the fighter's body seemed smaller than it actually was. And the arms that wound around Blay's waist simply lay against him as if there was no strength in the muscles.Blay held them both up.
(p. 279)