Lone Star Mountain Talk to me, just one last time

"Tai," he heard from her soft lips. The name froze his heartbeat, if only for a moment.
It had been a very long time since anyone had called him that. A lifetime away, he remembered that name from his childhood. Later, it had been another who had spoken it. The prince was paralyzed with an emotion he could not place. Memory seemed to plague him and flush his cheeks with a strange and uncomfortable heat.
He could feel her warmth beneath his chin. He felt alien. She was so natural, so present, so there. He was a world away, a shell of the person who had just recounted his travels to her. Lunaria. Such a lovely, wonderful soul to try to restore the broken prince to anything normal. She was too good for anything he deserved.
The prince shuddered at this touch. It felt foreign. Strange. Aphrodite had tried to comfort him this way before, but she had been charged with a certain sexuality that made him uncomfortable. He didn't trust touch. He didn't know what to do with it.
"If you're going to cry, then let it out..." The toxic part of him wanted to throw her aside, to scream at her that he didn't need to cry, that he didn't need her. An anger welled up inside of him. A fury. For the briefest moment, he hated her for doing this to him. How could she? What kind of person would want to see a friend in pain?
Was this pain?
I... You... Words would not come. He remained still for a moment, his breathing slowing to a forced, hard, heaving.
And then he let go of the breath. With it came bizarre, angry, frightened, thick tears. He hated himself for having them. But as they came, something changed; the prince pushed closer to her who was willing to hear him and see him. He let her hold him as he pressed against her. He did not, would not, sob, but the tears came. For the first time since he had relayed Aphrodite's death to Artyom, he let them.