Chapter Text
“Ferdinand, I’m in trouble.”
The minutes that passed after Linhardt said that were irredeemably intense. First, Ferdinand dropped his bags on the floor, which wouldn’t normally be a big deal, except that he had, for some unknown reason, decided that it was the perfect day to bring home a liter of cold brew coffee in a large, innately fragile glass bottle. Then his face went all pale, and Linhardt had to suddenly grapple with the idea that his roommate might actually faint, although whether it was because of what he said or because of the iced coffee now spreading its way across the linoleum was something Linhardt could not discern. Linhardt stepped forward, hesitantly, the way one does when you know you might need to help somebody but you really are hoping not to -- an offer, if one must -- and froze, his hand stretched out in midair, waiting for his next cue. Thankfully, Ferdinand came to soon after, fussing with his soaked bag and shouting at Linhardt to bring him some paper towels.
“In the commercials,” Linhardt mused, watching the white surface of each towel turn brown as the liquid spread across them, “they only need to use one paper towel.” He tore off another sheet and handed it to Ferdinand. “It’s false advertising.”
“Linhardt, ” Ferdinand huffed, crouching on the ground, looking up at him with his stupid amber eyes, “what on Earth did you mean?!”
Linhardt blinked. “Well,” he said, frowning, “you always see a child spill a glass of milk, right, and then the mother -- or, sometimes, I suppose, the bumbling father -- uses one sheet to wipe up the whole mess…”
“Not about that,” Ferdinand said, and Linhardt was caught off guard by the audible groan in his voice, “but about being in trouble.”
Oh. Linhardt felt his face flush a bit, and he bit his lip as he noticed a shard of glass next to Ferdinand’s hand. “Careful, now,” he said, gingerly taking his wrist and lifting it off the ground, trying not to wince as the wet paper towel Ferdinand was grasping dripped all over his leg, “we should sweep this up, first.”
Ferdinand’s eyes went wide, and his gaze followed Linhardt’s until he appeared to recognize what Linhardt meant. “Oh, yes,” he said, nodding. “Let us.”
As far as ways to break the tension went, it wasn’t the worst. Linhardt had experienced worse.
He found himself sitting on the couch a few minutes later, a can of hard seltzer cupped between his hands. Ferdinand had claimed his -- okay, fine, their -- recliner and was peering at Linhardt with such a look of sincere concern and worry that Linhardt almost felt guilty. Just almost. Just a little bit.
“What is going on?” Ferdinand asked. “Are you… ill?”
Linhardt startled. “What? No.”
Ferdinand nodded. He had an unopened can of his favorite cheap beer in his hands, and he kept spinning it around, like some sort of boozy merry-go-round. “Then are you in legal trouble? Hubert is a lawyer, just so you…”
Linhardt shook his head. “No,” he said, and he couldn’t resist the urge to chuckle. “Honestly, Ferdinand, me? In legal trouble?”
“You do shoplift.”
Linhardt groaned. “That was once ,” he said. “Anyway. There was no reason such an old, archaic text had to be that expensive. The shopkeeper was running a racket.”
Ferdinand sighed. Linhardt knew he wouldn’t keep pressing the topic. It was one that the two of them had a silent understanding that they would simply agree to disagree about. That understanding may have taken a week of very loud, obnoxious arguments to land upon, but it was established, and, anyway, Linhardt knew he himself was correct.
“Then what is it?” Ferdinand asked. “What is the trouble you are in?”
Linhardt froze. He’d gotten so carried away in the nonsense of their usual domestic squabbles -- spilling drinks on the floor, arguing about ethics, never answering questions -- that he’d nearly forgotten what the initial issue was. But Ferdinand just had to remind him that he’d proclaimed to be in some sort of trouble, and now Linhardt was being forced to reconcile with said feeling, and…
“How was work today?” he asked.
Ferdinand’s eyes narrowed. Linhardt felt a pang of panic; usually changing the topic to Ferdinand’s life, in any sort of way, was enough to get him off of his trail (even when, as his mind quietly reminded him, he was the one who put him on said trail in the first place). Ferdinand, however, did not seem like he was going to take the very easy and very attractive bait. Instead, he frowned -- the effect comical on his big puppydog face -- and opened his beer with a crack and a hiss.
“It was fine,” he said. Then -- far scarier than his previous look of irritation -- he smiled. “We had the most darling guest today.”
It was then, halfway into a can of hard seltzer, that Linhardt realized he’d fucked up.
“Oh,” he said. He took another sip of his drink. Raspberry lime, but he could only taste the raspberry. “So, tell me more about your date yest…”
“Linhardt,” Ferdinand said. “Why are you being so evasive?”
“Because that’s who I am?” Linhardt shrugged. “Anyway, I…”
“You like him, do you not?”
Linhardt stopped drinking mid-sip.
Ferdinand was looking at him, his eyes fixed on his face, his body angled toward Linhardt’s, in the way a therapist might arrange their own limbs to appear open, friendly, and interested. Linhardt hated it. He hated the weird feeling creeping through his chest, the mixture of anxiety and nervousness that made every sip of his drink burn like fire, that made every piece of food in his stomach churn into lava. He hated how Ferdinand’s gaze wouldn’t budge, how he looked genuinely interested , how he didn’t even have the air of his typical gossip-mongering persona, the one that Linhardt found so easy to reject. He hated that he knew Ferdinand would not take his silence as an answer, nor would he accept a refusal.
He hated having to even think about this.
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, looking down at his seltzer can. Five percent alcohol. That was nothing. “He’s my student.”
Ferdinand chuckled. “Linhardt,” he said, in that frustrating I-know-we-both-know-this voice, the voice he always used when Linhardt had been shoving things into the overflowing trash can and pretending not to notice it was past full, “you are both adults, and you are not grading him on anything. It is vastly different from a typical student and teacher relationship.”
“It’s not though,” Linhardt said.
“Why not?”
“Because,” Linhardt said, groaning, “he’s paying me for something. It’s…” He pulled his legs up and folded them beside him, frowning. “It’s weird.”
Ferdinand let out the most regal snort a man could ever release.
“Linhardt,” he said, shaking his head, his red hair bouncing elegantly across his shoulders like he was in a shampoo commercial, “what sort of complications could possibly arise from such an arrangement? You perhaps giving him higher quality lessons?” He laughed. “That hardly sounds like grounds for punishment.”
Linhardt sighed. “You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s different than… say, dating your customer.”
“Why?” Ferdinand asked. “My customer is still paying me for something, is he not?”
Augh. Linhardt hated Ferdinand. He needed to kill him. He needed to poison him in his sleep, or throw him off an airplane. He needed to, at the bare minimum, kick him out. “It’s different, ” he moaned. “It’s just different.”
If Ferdinand was aware of Linhardt’s ire, he showed no sign. He smiled, radiant like the sun, a classic simile for a classic asshole. “Is it truly different,” he asked, “or are you simply attempting to come up with an excuse?”
“You’re not helping,” Linhardt said. He took another sip from his drink and put it down on the coffee table, pulling a throw pillow onto his lap instead. “You’re supposed to be helping.”
“Why is this not helpful?”
“Because,” Linhardt said, and his mind suddenly lost traction, his thoughts -- once nice and organized, lined up in a row, the way he used to line up his toy trucks on the carpet as a child -- scattering all over the place, besieged by the winds of mildly alcoholic seltzer and a generally frail constitution. “Because,” he said again, heat rising in his cheeks and in his voice, “you’re supposed to tell me I’m right!”
Ferdinand frowned.
“If that is what you want,” he said, furrowing his brow, “I suggest you speak to a mirror rather than engage a friend .” He put his can of beer down on his end table and sighed, the very picture of a Victorian maiden, helpless in sweatpants. “But as I am, thankfully, the latter and not the former, I cannot simply parrot what you want me to say. You like him, Linhardt. And I believe he likes you too.”
“I don’t like him,” Linhardt groaned, leaning down and resting his head upon the cushioned arm of the couch. Comfy. “He’s just cute.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And funny.”
“Mmhmm.”
“And interesting.”
“Tell me more.”
“And…” He blinked, lifting his head just enough to look at Ferdinand. “Wait. What are you doing here?”
Ferdinand burst into bright, cackling laughter.
“Oh, Linhardt,” he said, standing up. “You are such a lightweight.”
“Mmnot,” Linhardt said, but Ferdinand was gone; the couch throw had, somehow, been placed on top of him, however, and between that and the feeling of the throw cushion smooshed against his chest, Linhardt was feeling cozy enough to drift off into sleep.
In the gap between sleep and wakefulness, Linhardt caught snippets of sound.
A song, hummed between pursed lips.
A metal spoon clanging against the side of a pot.
An oops and a ugh , something hitting the floor.
A softly muttered my clumsy hands.
The ring of the landline.
A voice -- Ferdinand’s -- shifting from cheer to solemn seriousness.
A song, hummed between pursed lips.
A metal spoon clanging against the side of a pot.
Linhardt’s watch, pressed up against his eyelids, declared the time as six thirty.
He felt terrible. Alcohol naps were the worst naps. There was a hierarchy of naps, a very clear, immutable one, and alcohol naps were at the very bottom. One never felt rested after an alcohol nap -- an alcohol sleep, sure, maybe, it depends, but an alcohol nap just resulted in bad breath and a groggy head.
It can’t get any worse than this, Linhardt thought, slowly lifting himself up into a shaky sitting position.
“Linhardt,” Ferdinand said. He hovered over him, a glass of water in one hand and a handkerchief in the other. As Linhardt’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that his lips were twisted in a frown. “You are awake.”
“I am indeed,” Linhardt groaned, taking the water (but, decidedly, not the handkerchief -- he may have been a man of little dignity, but what little he did have would not allow him to wipe his grungy face on a piece of silk bearing the name Aegir in delicate, golden thread). He took a sip and swallowed; it was harder than it should have been, his throat dry and sore. Lightweight. He took another sip, and then fixed his eyes up to meet Ferdinand’s face. “Why the grimace? Did I make you miss that telenovela?”
“No!” Ferdinand said, sitting down on the couch beside him. It felt weird. I always felt weird to sit next to Ferdinand. Too close. “No,” he said again, quietly, using his rejected handkerchief to instead dab at his own forehead, “I am both delighted and afraid that is not it.”
Linhardt blinked. He’d never been very good at this sort of thing, but he could tell that Ferdinand’s tone was… more serious than he had expected it to be. That couldn’t be good. “Did… I…” He scoured his brain for any ideas; he knew he hadn’t wet himself, so that couldn’t be it. He frowned. “Did I say something weird in my sleep?”
Ferdinand laughed. The sound was strained. Linhardt didn’t like it. “No,” he said, “nothing like that.”
“Then what?” He was growing irritated; Ferdinand was terribly good at bluntness when it wasn’t necessary, and horrible at it when it would be helpful. “Did somebody die?”
Ferdinand’s eyes went wide. “Oh!” he said, throwing one hand over his mouth in what Linhardt assumed was surprise. “Heavens, no! Nothing like that. No, no…” He sighed, his broad shoulders slumping, and his hands twisting the handkerchief taut. “No,” he said again, “but while you were napping, your father called.”
Oh.
“Oh,” Linhardt said.
Would have been better had somebody died instead, he thought.
“Yes,” Ferdinand said. “He… would like you to call him back at your earliest convenience.”
“Okay,” Linhardt said. He took another sip of water from the glass Ferdinand had given him; it was ice cold, and still burnt going down his throat. Whatever. It was fine. “I’ll get on that at my earliest convenience, then.”
Ferdinand nodded, pressing his feet onto the ground as if preparing to stand. “Should I… give you some privacy, then?”
Linhardt cocked his head to the side. “Why?” he asked. His voice sounded higher than usual to his ears. He hated it. “Pass me the remote, let’s see what’s on the History Channel.”
“Linhardt…”
“Fine, we can watch Bravo if you insist…”
“ Linhardt… ”
“I am drawing the line at the Property Brothers, though.”
“ Linhardt von Hevring. ”
Linhardt winced. Ferdinand was looking at him with an expression he could only read as pity, and that made him feel even more frustrated.
“I am sorry,” Ferdinand said, and he sounded sorry, which made it even worse. “But you cannot continue to evade him forever.”
“Sure I can,” Linhardt said. “Wonder how he even got this number…”
“He works for the government, Linhardt. I am sure there is a database or something along those lines.”
Linhardt grunted. “Told you we should have put the landline in your name.”
“But it’s not m…”
He couldn’t let him finish the sentence. Linhardt groaned -- a deep, guttural groan, something a man of his petite stature should not have been able to produce -- and stood up suddenly, throwing his hands in the air (but, thankfully, not throwing the half-finished glass of water in the process). “Fine!” he said. “Fine! I’ll call the damn man. Did he leave a number?”
Ferdinand’s eyes were round and watery. Linhardt hated it -- he didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to see that look, didn’t want to have to think about why he had it, why he was aiming it in his direction. Thankfully, Ferdinand nodded, gesturing weakly toward the kitchen. “I wrote it on the message board,” he said, referring to the cheap dollar store whiteboard they kept on their refrigerator. Its usual purpose was to inform each other of shift changes or toilet paper scarcity. Now it was a harbinger of doom. “I hope you can read my handwriting.”
“I hope I can’t,” Linhardt muttered, before trudging off toward the kitchen, feeling sick for an entirely new reason.
Later that night, an email came.
Subject: hi!
From: CvB [ [email protected] ]
To: Linhardt von Hevring [ [email protected] ]
heyyyy Linhardt its me Caspar youre student!! i was tinking about it and I thnk may be we can meet on twosday at freedom park??? they have taybls so we can work and get sum fresh ayr!! let me know what you thnk!!! - Caspar
To which Linhardt sent a reply:
Subject: Re: hi!
From: Linhardt von Hevring [[email protected]]
To: CvB [ [email protected] ]
Sounds great. I’ll meet you by the statue of Saint Cethleann.
Sincerely,
Linhardt von Hevring
Eagle Tutoring
When Tuesday arrived, Linhardt was forced to face the truth: the park was a terrible, terrible place for a lesson.
For starters, it was hot . The sun was hanging, mercilessly, in the sky, and it was creating heat, which was (ostensibly) its job, but still . It didn’t have to be so aggressive about it. It was also breezy, which was a nice contrast to the heat, except for the fact that it blew the few loose strands of Linhardt’s hair directly into his eyes, and this, for some reason, made his nose feel itchy and raw. There should have been no connection between the two sensations, and yet there it was. Thirdly, it was outdoors, where things lived, like bugs and children and soccer moms yapping on their cell phones as they pushed their ugly strollers.
The park sucked .
Still, he stood by Saint Cethleann’s side, his bag pulled around toward his front, his arms wrapped around it. The gesture comforted him; he felt so exposed, out there in public, for all eyes to see, for all life to -- augh -- potentially interact with, and hence he would take any tiny slivers of security he could get.
He was there a little early, like always, and he hated himself for it. It was one thing to be early to a coffee shop, where he could at least pick a seat and buy a drink and sit down, his hips resting in the gentle embrace of a flimsy wooden chair. Coffee shops offered some creature comforts: hot chocolate, air conditioning, the greatest hits of Enya. The outdoors, however, offered nothing but discomfort. And sweat. He was starting to sweat. Just lovely.
It wasn’t like it mattered. Let him sweat. Let him get gross, and stinky, and let his finishing powder fail, and his highlighter melt from its anointed place atop his cheekbones. Let the armpits of his shirt grow wet and stale. It didn’t matter. Who even cared?
(Why did he care?)
He stood, growing increasingly aware of his discomfort. His feet hurt. The arches of his shoes were too high, and the toebox was too narrow. Did he have fat toes? Maybe he had fat toes. The small of his back (small, unlike his toes, which were huge and fat and bulbous) became sore, exhausted of having to carry the weight of the rest of his ludicrous body. One shoulder hurt, but not the one his bag was hanging off of, which didn’t even make sense. His nose was still itchy and raw. He swallowed, and he could have sworn that one of his ears popped; he hadn’t realized it had even been closed up, and perhaps it hadn’t, but it still popped nonetheless.
“Aha,” came a familiar voice from behind him, “so this is Saint Cethleann.”
He spun around. Unlike him, Caspar seemed completely in his element; the sun seemed to adore his face, kissing his cheeks and casting him in some unfairly golden hue. He was smiling, and the smile reached his eyes, which were -- oh, fuck -- the same color as the sky, and Linhardt had known that, of course, but he had known that in the same way he knew space was cold and empty. He’d known it through abstract metaphor and dispassionate study. To be suddenly forced to observe the color of Caspar’s eyes and its easiest comparison in a natural context was absolutely cruel; he had not been ready. He had not prepared.
Also -- also! -- Caspar was not wearing his usual schoolboy getup, the button-up shirts and collars that suggested things without overtly stating them. No, he -- and he was, for the record, the worst person Linhardt had ever had the displeasure of meeting -- was wearing a tight grey tank top and a pair of basketball shorts. At least, he thought he was wearing a pair of basketball shorts. He couldn’t tell. It was hard to take his eyes off of his arms.
“Caspar,” he said, from somewhere deep inside himself, somewhere that was seemingly blind and unaffected by the sight of those biceps, toned to just the right amount, strong, large, without being overly bulky , the kind of biceps that would be perfect to be embraced by, warm and inviting and, fuck, he was still, somehow, talking. “Please don’t tell me you cannot tell the Saints apart.”
“Uh,” Caspar said. Linhardt somehow managed to tear his thoughts away from those arms and looked at his face; he wore an unmistakably sheepish expression, and the tips of his ears were pink. Fucking hell . “I mean,” he continued, bouncing on the balls of his feet, “I know there are four of them, right?”
“Five, technically,” Linhardt said, smiling, “although we rarely count Seiros with the others. I’m not sure why. They were all related, after all.”
“Can you imagine being, like, a god’s brother?” Caspar said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t wanna be counted with them either.” A sheepish grin crossed his face. “My brother might think he’s a god, but…”
Linhardt smirked. Yes, yes, this was better. Talking seemed to keep his mind where it was supposed to be -- on teaching, on education, on imparting information -- and away from the distracting thoughts of oh fuck his shirt is so tight on his chest . And if anything was a surefire cure for impure thoughts, it was talking about religion.
“I take it you weren’t raised in a religious household.”
The pink spread from Caspar’s ears to his cheeks. “Uh, no,” he said, with the guilty air of one who made the conscious choice to be born into a heretic family. “That’s not a dealbreaker, is it?”
Linhardt startled. “W-what?”
The pink in Caspar’s cheeks deepened. “I mean,” he said, quickly, “for, like, our lessons and stuff.”
Oh. “Um,” Linhardt said, trying to hear his thoughts over the sudden (and entirely unnecessary ) drumming of his heart, “if you’re asking whether or not Eagle Tutoring is a religious institution, let me assure you that… we are very much not.” He reached a hand over to rest on the base of the statue and smiled, shifting some of his weight onto it. Let Saint Cethleann carry both his emotional and physical burden. “I only know so much because my family can supposedly trace its lineage back to the Saints.”
Caspar’s eyes grew wide. It seemed it was his turn to startle. Good. It was only fair. “Wait,” he said, “what?” He laughed, the sound a bit high. “Oh no, Linhardt... are you a god’s brother..?”
Linhardt burst out laughing.
“What?!” he said, placing his free hand on his stomach as he laughed, the other one gripping Cethleann’s base tight. “No… what?! No… no…” He didn’t know why it struck him as so funny -- it wasn’t even that funny, Caspar’s dumb, stupid, innocent comment -- but it was so absurd that even remembering it made him laugh even harder, his mirth renewed, and before he knew it he felt his eyes begin to tear. He gave a silent thought of gratitude to the Saints for not having him put mascara on that day.
Caspar, for his part, was frozen in place, watching Linhardt with a small, nervous smile.
“Sorry,” Linhardt said, straightening up, trying to catch his breath through the edges of his laughter. “I, just… oh, Caspar, that was so funny, you don’t even know.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his arm, his laughter fading, finally, into soft, manageable chuckles. “Saints above, I’m sorry…”
Caspar shook his head. “No way,” he said, the smile on his lips shifting from nervous to warm. “I love it when you laugh.”
Okay. That was a weird thing to say. Wasn’t it?! It was, right?! It was such a weird thing to say that Linhardt couldn’t help himself. “Why?” he asked, while part of him -- the part of him that remembered why he was actually there -- screamed in protest toward the back of his big, smart, but so fucking stupid brain.
Caspar didn’t seem to mind. His smile changed into a quiet grin. “You just seem so serious,” he said, “so… bookish? Mature? Like, we’re the same age, but you’re on an entirely different level than I am. It’s just… I don’t know.” He scratched his arm; even away from the harsh fluorescent lights of the coffee house, Linhardt could see the dry skin flake off beneath his fingernails. “I guess it just feels good. To make you laugh, like that.”
Ferdinand’s voice rang in Linhardt’s head.
You like him, Linhardt. And I believe he likes you too.
Stupid. So, so stupid. Luckily. years of living with Ferdinand had made Linhardt an expert at deflection.
“So what I hear you saying,” Linhardt said, “is that I’m an uptight nerd.” He smiled and made a show of straightening his shirt collar. “Not far from the truth. Actually, right on the money. Speaking of which…” He nudged his head in the direction of the pavilion. “There are tables over there. Let’s not waste another cent of your father’s gold.”
Whether or not that was the right thing to say, Linhardt couldn’t be sure; he noticed a slight slump in Caspar’s shoulders, and the corners of his lips fell, almost imperceptibly. He was still smiling, but not as brightly as before. His father would have been proud of him for having been able to tell the difference. But then Caspar laughed and nodded, reaching a hand out. “Let me carry your bag for you, at least,” he said. “I did keep you waiting out here, after all.”
The entire situation was ridiculous. Absurd. He would never have let Bernadetta carry his bag for him, Hell, even some of his other male students -- Raphael leapt to mind -- would have never offered, and, had they, he would have never felt comfortable accepting. Yet, there he was, Linhardt von Hevring, prized tutor for Eagle Tutoring, supposed descendant of Saint Cethleann, pulling his bag off of his shoulder and handing it over to his student, because somehow, there in the bright daze of the sun, it just felt like the right thing to do.
Just as Linhardt feared, teaching outside was a nightmare.
There were ants. There were so many ants, and they crawled all over the table, dancing over the pages of their lesson notebook, seemingly blind to the scratch of the pen across the paper. They were black ants, at least, so Linhardt wasn’t worried about being bitten, but he still swore they were climbing up his legs beneath his pants, and he couldn’t shake the feeling away.
Caspar was just as focused and eager as usual, but it was so difficult to discuss obscure suffixes when children kicking soccer balls kept flying by the pavilion. It was even harder to get into his planned reading activity -- which involved tracking the uses of pronouns across multiple sentences -- when Jessica and her sixteen children decided to take the tables next to theirs, shrieking about whatever it was children and undersexed mothers shrieked about while fussing over opening Go-gurts and punching holes in Capri Suns.
In the end, they both could only laugh as a final attempt at continuing their lesson as planned was destroyed by the wind blowing away the pile of index cards they had carelessly left on the side of the table, resulting in both of them scrambling to pick them up before they disappeared into the great unknown.
“Okay,” Caspar said, sitting back down, his hands full of index cards freshly stained with dirt, “this wasn’t my best idea.”
“No,” Linhardt said, laughing. “probably not.” He frowned. “I can issue you an extra lesson at the end of your contract to make up for it, if you’d like.”
Caspar narrowed his eyes. “Why?” he asked. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was my idea to come here.”
“Well, technically,” Linhardt said, “it was my idea to change the location in the first place. And I should have predicted some of these problems and… ack!” He ducked suddenly as a giant wasp flew overhead. Okay. Maybe it wasn’t a giant wasp. Maybe it was a fly. There was no way for the human eye to tell. “Okay, yeah,” he said, slumping against the table, resting his head on his arms. “This was a bad idea.”
Caspar looked down at him for a moment. “Linhardt,” he said, “the ants.”
“Holy Mother of Seiros,” he cursed, sitting up suddenly and wiping the invisible insects off his arms. “I hate outside.”
Caspar laughed. Then a look of contemplation crossed his face, and his eyes slowly widened. “Wait a second. Linhardt.”
Linhardt was running his fingers through his fringe desperately, trying to find and destroy any renegade ants that may have climbed up his hair shafts. “Yes?”
Caspar swallowed. “If you’re related to the Saints, and the Saints are related to the Goddess, does that mean…”
“Ah.” Satisfied that his hair was bug free, and suddenly far more interested in this turn of conversation than the hunt for potential insects, he straightened up. “Well, some people think so.” My father, for starters. “I’m of the belief that, if there really is just one, singular Goddess, the Saints were Her disciples and not Her children.” He shook his head. “Actually, I don’t believe in any of it at all, to be honest, and I don’t actually think the evidence linking my family’s bloodline to Cethleann is at all credible.” He chuckled. “I mean, come now. Cethleann? Irish name. And as we established last time…”
“You’re Germanic as hell, yeah,” Caspar said, chuckling. "We established that."
“Yeah,” Linhardt said. He felt himself smile. He didn’t know why. “Actually, now I have a question for you.”
“It’s okay,” Caspar said, “we can head back to the coffee shop next time…”
“Well, good,” Linhardt said, “but that wasn’t my question.”
“Oh.” Caspar blinked, and if Linhardt wasn’t mistaken, he thought he looked almost… anxious. It was nonsense, of course -- the only person in the entire world that felt anxious around Linhardt was Bernadetta, and she would feel anxious around the world’s most soft and gentle kitten -- but still, he couldn’t shake the feeling. Odd. “What’s up?”
Linhardt cocked his head to the side. “Does your father know we’re here?”
Caspar visibly relaxed -- which was weird -- and nodded. “Yeah, I told him I was meeting you at the park.”
“He was okay with that?” Somehow, Linhardt found it hard to imagine big, bossy Ernest von Bergliez feeling all right about a change like this, the devolution of his highly structured, predictable plan into.. whatever this was that it had become. But to his surprise, Caspar nodded again.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling. “I showed him what you’d taught me and he said he was impressed. I guess he trusts you now.”
(Linhardt suddenly felt a pang of guilt, remembering his brain’s long, highly inappropriate -- he told you so, Ferdinand -- internal monologue about Caspar’s arms. Trust? Him ?)
He swallowed and tried his best to smile. “I see.”
Caspar stopped what he was doing -- doodling random geometric shapes into the margins of their half-assed work -- and looked at him. “Hey,” he said, cocking his head to the side, so much like some sort of innocent, unforgivably adorable puppy, “you okay?”
I’m not okay, Linhardt thought, in the way that thoughts are so often thought, in flashes of energy and emotion that are parsed far more quickly than the words later construed by the mind to summarize them. He quickly checked his posture and body language; no, nothing about them should have given him away. He was smiling, after all. Relieved by this small miracle, the miracle of his body actually cooperating with his social needs for once, he mirrored Caspar’s gesture, letting his head drift to the side as well. “Hmm?” he said, trying to arch one inquisitive eyebrow (and almost certainly lifting them both). “I’m fine.”
It was odd how the rules of space and time did not seem to apply when Caspar was around. The digits on the face of his watch hardly changed; mere seconds went by, less than a minute, a handful of heartbeats. Not enough time to do anything, really. But in his mind, Linhardt was suddenly much smaller, standing in the ornate living room of his childhood home, his hands stuck stubbornly in his pockets, his lips curled downward into a scowl. His mother was there, perched in her chaise, sobbing quietly into her forearm. His father stood before him, and while he couldn’t make out the words, he could still feel the volume, the way the sound waves seemed to make every tiny hair on his arms stand up, and he knew he had done something wrong. A second passed, half a breath, and the memory became clearer; he was in trouble, yes, and it was his fault. He hadn’t meant to seem so rude. He didn’t understand why it was rude to tell someone the truth. Wasn’t it wrong to lie, Father? His mother’s sobs grew in volume.
Child, his father’s voice boomed through his skull, I’m going to teach you tact, so help me Sothis.
All this flashed through his brain in the time it took for Caspar to inhale and exhale once, his eyes (so blue, like the sky, like the shell of a particularly vibrant robin’s egg) looking over Linhardt’s face before nodding, a hint of heat rising into his cheeks.
“Okay,” he said. “Just wanted to make sure. You looked a little out of it for a moment.” His teeth worried his bottom lip; Linhardt tried very hard not to notice. “Wait… are you hot? Shit, I hadn’t even thought about it… you’re wearing long sleeves…”
“I always wear long sleeves,” Linhardt replied, the words automatic. It was the truth, and the truth was easy to say. He shook his head. “No, don’t worry about me. I’m probably just dehydrated.”
Caspar’s eyes widened. “Oh!” he said, suddenly pulling his bookbag onto his lap and opening it up. “Fuck, I didn’t bring anything else… do you want some of my water?” He looked up at him, a bottle of Poland Spring in his hand. “I swear I don’t have germs.”
Now, Linhardt’s mind may not have been working at full capacity -- the ants, the heat, the blue of Caspar’s eyes and the shadows cast over the hills and valleys of his arms by the unforgiving sun were all to blame -- but he at least had the presence of mind to shake his head, waving a hand dismissively in front of his face. “I’m sure you don’t,” he said, fighting off any of the follow-up thoughts threatening to break through his mind, “but I’m okay, really. I have my own water.” To ease Caspar’s worry ( look, Father, I do have some capacity for empathy ) he pulled his own bag onto his lap, dusting off the invisible ants he assumed were crawling over the fabric and opening it up.
His water bottle was tucked neatly inside an internal pocket, unopened. Next to it, however, was…
“Oh, fuck,” he cursed, looking up at Caspar. “The notebook. I’m sorry, I meant to respond…”
Caspar’s face took on an expression that Linhardt found impossible to immediately parse. His lips were tilted into a soft smile, but there was something about it that felt very off. He hadn’t known Caspar for very long, but he knew how he smiled, and he knew that this smile was not a typical one. It didn’t reach his eyes, for starters. And his eyes…
“It’s okay,” Caspar said, laughing. “I know you’re busy…”
...his eyes seemed so sad.
“No,” Linhardt said, shaking his head. “It’s not that. I wanted to respond, I meant to respond, I just….”
Caspar chuckled. “The ADHD?”
Linhardt waved his hand in front of his face. “No, I wish I could blame it on that. No. I…” Linhardt would later not know what got into him at that moment. Perhaps it was the heat. Perhaps it was the look of disappointment , of resignation, of dejected acceptance on Caspar’s face. Perhaps it was Ferdinand, miniature in scale, sitting on his shoulder and nudging his neck suggestively with his pointy elbow.
Perhaps it was just his heart.
“...do you want to go on a walk?” he asked, leaping up onto his feet. He swallowed; his ear popped again. “I can explain.”