Work Text:
When Skylar first showed you the ropes, you didn’t expect love to come quite as fast as it did. You were hesitant about the whole “dating your furniture” thing at first, only having tepid, nervous conversations with the first few objects you awakened. Wallace pushed you out of the nest, forcing you to fly. You could tell how much he strained to make himself say the words “I love you,” as if his body couldn’t produce the proper phonemes, but he said them anyway, and just like that, you were swept into your first object romance.
You found it off-putting at first. Yes, the speed with which he declared his love, although you were quick to understand that these objects all knew you quite well already, despite your ability to converse with them being new. But what bothered you the most was that Wallace never said those three words again.
The thing about having a lover who only says one word is that it makes you wonder. What is he thinking? What does he want? And the ones that needle at you the most, What does he see in me? Does he even still love me? Every inscrutable “WALL!” out of Wallace’s mouth fills you with doubt and anxiety.
The irony being that Wallace doesn’t struggle with these things at all. The one thing you can say for certain about Wallace after knowing him for a few weeks is that he is a man with a mission — and a beefy, exposed chest and a chiseled, serious face, but a mission primarily. What his goals are exactly you couldn’t say — holding the ceiling up, you guess, but how hard could that be? — but he knows the exact purpose of his every action, and he acts with sureness and stability.
You respect and admire his poise. You’re attracted to it, and, increasingly, to him too. And you feel utterly second place in the relationship because of it. You have all the grace and self-assuredness of a newborn giraffe. How could he love someone so awkward? taunt your anxieties. How, when he is so controlled?
You remind yourself of what Skylar told you: the dateviators not only give you opportunities for love, but opportunities for growth as well. The objects around your house have a lot to teach you. Even if none of them understand Wallace themselves, they might still have some insight into what makes him tick and how you might live up to his example. With an increased boldness, you go about making new friends and attracting new lovers, and maybe you hold some sort of bias, but you find yourself focusing on those who remind you of Wallace in some way.
You start with Abel and Dasha. In him, you see a certain calmness; in her, brute strength. You quickly recognize how necessary both things are for holding things up.
“I’ll never be a load-bearing fella like that Wallace,” says Abel, spotting you as you follow Dasha’s lead in a sequence of push-ups. “That takes a core strength I simply do not possess. But I’ll tell you a little something I’m sure he knows well: lifting can be grueling work, and that’s why you take it one moment at a time.”
Your adventures with Beau are fearsome and often death-defying, but she is ever unflappable in the face of danger and uncertainty. “The treasure we seek is through these cobwebs,” she says. “Jeepers, there must be at least six layers of ‘em!”
“Cobwebs are so creepy,” you say as you hack through them with a butter knife. “How does Wallace stand to have them hanging off him all the time?”
Beau just smirks and takes down an especially creepy one with a nonchalant crack of her whip. You feel like you’ve learned something.
Daisuke teaches you stoicism. Kristof teaches you power. You even learn single-mindedness from Fantina and how to set and follow self-imposed rules from Parker. So many objects have lessons to offer, and you do your best to internalize them all. It isn’t long before you feel steadier, sturdier, and more structured (not to mention funnier, kinder, and more charismatic).
But for all the help your newest friends have given you, you find that you’ve gained the most from observing Wallace himself. The more time you spend navigating this society of objects, the more you feel how present he always is. He lurks on the edges of others’ stories, and when he is needed, he is always ready to step out and offer his tangible support. You see him offer Lyric constructive criticism on his book. You watch him provide Beverly with ingredients for her signature cocktail. You can imagine that Dorian’s bouncing would be ineffective without Wallace there to reinforce the boundaries between rooms, and most strikingly of all, it becomes clear that Celia cannot lead without Wallace’s quiet power sustaining her in the background.
You spend a lot of time pondering the role that Wallace plays in your house. How ceaseless his work is, how little he complains. And one day, it all just clicks for you.
Not the how of Wallace’s poise, but the why.
The reason Wallace keeps himself strong and remains unshakable, maybe even the reason he rarely says anything but a single word, is because he cares about people. His mission, the one you were so confused by before, is to protect and support those around him. He might not express it in the most obvious way, but he cares about the objects in this house. He cares about the people in it, too. Namely, you.
It dawns on you that this understanding is what you needed all along. I may never be as poised as Wallace, you think. But somehow I feel like I’m on his level.
You know what you have to do. You bound upstairs to the second story landing, a space you once took for granted. You aim your dateviators at the wall, admiring its chipping yellow paint and all, and when Wallace appears, you don’t cower in the presence of his muscles and his deathly serious expression. Because you understand why he needs those things, and that might be enough.
Wallace raises an eyebrow at you, silently intrigued by your upright stature and uncharacteristically confident grin. “Wall?”
You take a deep breath, and when you speak, it comes naturally. “Wall.”