[ It's an aching sort of affection which surges through him at what Sylvain says. The sort of kind which comes still with a tinge of disbelief to it from his self from mere years ago who couldn't and wouldn't have believed it was possible. Not in that loneliness he'd resigned himself to by focusing on other things until he'd convinced himself it no longer mattered until others had broken that damn wide open; it's the sort of thing Claude believes he's caught glimpses of in Sylvain though they were there and gone as quick as light flashes reflecting off a mirror.
All the more reason for him to now bring both hands to the other man's face with some of that dismay softening and their surroundings around them on this street forgotten as he chooses his next words very deliberately. ]
That statement doesn't go only one way, Sylvain.
[ Unknowingly, or maybe because of it, Claude skims the same fine line as Sylvain yet again when it comes to stating another truth without voicing the whole of it: why don't you believe that about yourself?
But this will do in how it more or less says the same - that Sylvain is valuable to him, and not as a possession or in any sense they might joke about when it came to chess euphemisms or anything else playful but something far more than that. That he wouldn't ask Sylvain to do this or expect it because there might come a time when the price for that protection the other man was so willing to step into might be too high for them both, and the reality of it laid bare there in one sentence is enough to bring apprehension of a loss too great to shoulder creeping forth. ]
no subject
All the more reason for him to now bring both hands to the other man's face with some of that dismay softening and their surroundings around them on this street forgotten as he chooses his next words very deliberately. ]
That statement doesn't go only one way, Sylvain.
[ Unknowingly, or maybe because of it, Claude skims the same fine line as Sylvain yet again when it comes to stating another truth without voicing the whole of it: why don't you believe that about yourself?
But this will do in how it more or less says the same - that Sylvain is valuable to him, and not as a possession or in any sense they might joke about when it came to chess euphemisms or anything else playful but something far more than that. That he wouldn't ask Sylvain to do this or expect it because there might come a time when the price for that protection the other man was so willing to step into might be too high for them both, and the reality of it laid bare there in one sentence is enough to bring apprehension of a loss too great to shoulder creeping forth. ]