[ It's not sitting up, but he'll still take it. Sylvain shifts and Claude wraps both arms around his shoulders to support him, willing himself to be still to hold steady. He should be saying something, probably, but all Claude can think about is that admission about disliking dark spaces and how Sylvain had been barely holding it together then. What if where he went was worse?
Better to provide whatever reminders he can that Sylvain here and not there, not somewhere that caused his hands and arms to look like this or for him to be quaking with something from the inside out. He runs his fingers through the back of the other's hair since as tactile as he is, that has to offer another thing to focus on. He hopes.
Whatever it is Sylvain says he doesn't catch through the jagged edges of his voice, and Claude has to suppress a wince now that Sylvain will absolutely feel that. He could ask the other to repeat it, probably, but when it doesn't seem like anything else is forthcoming - well, there's time for that later.
Words continue to oddly fail him in his search for what to say, aside from some familiar ones from long ago, from that other life he'd barely glossed over saying anything about on a trip that feels like a different lifetime. But here they are, so with his fingers still running through Sylvain's hair Claude settles for the second best option: ]
You're doing good, Sylvain. If you need a distraction later, when you're ready for it, I have a story to tell you. And I promise it's not about the time Raphael tried to follow Dimitri's training routine, though that's also a good one.
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Better to provide whatever reminders he can that Sylvain here and not there, not somewhere that caused his hands and arms to look like this or for him to be quaking with something from the inside out. He runs his fingers through the back of the other's hair since as tactile as he is, that has to offer another thing to focus on. He hopes.
Whatever it is Sylvain says he doesn't catch through the jagged edges of his voice, and Claude has to suppress a wince now that Sylvain will absolutely feel that. He could ask the other to repeat it, probably, but when it doesn't seem like anything else is forthcoming - well, there's time for that later.
Words continue to oddly fail him in his search for what to say, aside from some familiar ones from long ago, from that other life he'd barely glossed over saying anything about on a trip that feels like a different lifetime. But here they are, so with his fingers still running through Sylvain's hair Claude settles for the second best option: ]
You're doing good, Sylvain. If you need a distraction later, when you're ready for it, I have a story to tell you. And I promise it's not about the time Raphael tried to follow Dimitri's training routine, though that's also a good one.