the mere second that his fingers had been met with the cold skin of his companion, wallace had braced himself for the overflow of thoughts of a nonstop mind that he's come to find a homely kind of feeling in - but instead, what he's met with is ... silence.
it's strange, odd and destabilizing for just that brief heartbeat of time until it yields a realization to him : that steven had quieted his mind deliberately, likely as to not overwhelm him. rayquaza-forbid another nose bleed occur and ruin both of their clothes ... but it had been a surface thought, surface-level awareness that eventually would bleed into appreciation that he would've even thought to do something like that for him.
and perhaps it hadn't been a conscious thought that steven had, else wallace would have surely perceived it before the quiet. perhaps it had been a reflex ... and such a possibility takes his heart in his chest and squeezes as if in the middle of a fist. heart and lungs alike, something likened to a spasm from within that causes him to lose his breath temporarily.
even more so when he'd been met face to face with the first thought that finally started steven's mind up once more in a matter of seconds. ( the burden of a heart indeed ... ) and there's a twinge of sadness that blooms from within wallace's heart, chest constricting all the more as he wills himself into an elongated blink. and from the darkness of that instant, all he can see was the paleness of his lifelong friend and the heaviness of his body as he picked him up from the ground.
death ... would never discriminate who it so chose.
( that is why i will not let you go again. i will not let you ... remain ignorant to the depth of my own heart. )
- if only his gift allowed for a two-way street.
but the following words that begin to form and be spoken from steven's tongue ease the champion's heart back into the comfort it could take from his simple ... refusal of refuting. it had been something of positive note, not an outright denial that would have surely wounded wallace's pride, and that meant something. when eyes of warm turquoise open once again, they are met with the storms that rage and simmer quietly underneath the steely blue of his friend's. a part of him, somewhere distant, yearns for the ability to comfort him with the touch to steven's face as he delivered.
" ... i am not blind to these deviances you describe - even wish to remind me of. i have personally seen how it has affected you in your father's pursuit of lineage continuation ... i have witnessed, for years, how you have slowly lost any and all already minimal interest over what it might mean to partake in partnership. " the corner of his mouth tugs upwards in tandem with a night inaudible huff from his nostrils, something like sympathetic amusement erring on the side of sharing in a kind of woe.
" i am keen to remind you how i am not exactly within the range of society's defined normal either, myself ... however, i do see your intent behind what you speak. "
wallace does not pull his hands away, but simply allows his wrists to settle over the collar of his friend, fingers still curled against steven's neck as he brushes his jaw lightly. though there is an itch present on his tongue, the yearning to continue speaking to fill the space and let the words flow free like a river that had been held in a blockage for far too long, he does not succumb in this immediate second. not in the face of wanderer continuing on his own, not when both thoughts and spoken words held such equally balanced importance ... as he carefully absorbed everything steven deemed important enough to verbalize. and to think.
his eyelids flutter shut once again with such stray thoughts that preceded such words ... and open, once again, to meet evenly with the gaze that demanded his resolution.
" i am certain, daigo. you could never be a cage, not to me - not when you have been a figure deemed a rival to me since childhood. not when you, my beacon, had shown me what ambition truly looked like, and how it could be the very thing that could set me free when i needed it to. you are not a cage ... you are a set of wings, my dear. " wallace breathes in, slowly ; " i will share with you if something should ever go far as to wound me, that i promise you. but ... to hold you, dead, and then to imagine a world where i could hold you, alive - ?
" i find it is all i want, now. you, and all your intricacies. "
