Hearing Wilhelm confirm what he had already begun to suspect is... an oddly humbling experience. It's a feeling not unlike his first few days among the settlement, finally seeing demiflora of all kinds use their powers and with ease — having living proof right in front of him that the world is so very, very vast, and he is but one drop in the ocean of it. A power like the one Wilhelm is describing seems so wholly inconceivable, and yet it describes what had just transpired down to a t. Trying to resist it would be both a giant waste of time and a disrespect to what the other boy had just done for him.

For him.

Wilhelm saw him, folding under all that pain, and his instinct had been to take it away, even to the point of taking it all onto himself and — and who does that? Who cares like that?

"Wille..."

His tongue stalls. He wants to tell him he's got nothing to apologize for. And he wants Wilhelm to know he's never experienced such gentle kindness, and how that somehow feels more intense than even the sadness that was barely letting him breathe just a few seconds ago. And he wants to make Wilhelm promise him he'll never do that again, not for him, not if it'll have him hurting too. And he wants to hear him say it again, so he can hold the memory of it that much tighter.

He wants a lot of things, suddenly, and some things maybe not so suddenly, and all of them feel like a stormy mess battling out inside him that it seems only right the one thing that gets through should be the messiest one, the one barely thought-out, for how often it's thought.

Eyes closed, breath held, he has his mouth kiss where words fail him for the moment, something sweet and tentative and so immeasurably brave.