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Linhardt gathered the blanket around his shoulders as he sat up. He truthfully didn’t know what to do now. The pleasure in his abdomen was giving way to numb contentment, and yet he did not feel much like sleeping at all. Byleth sat on the tent floor, still shirtless, pulling his boots off and looking around as though the same restlessness had suddenly welled up in him. When their eyes met, Linhardt was powerless in returning the smile that had settled on the professor’s face.
He let Byleth set about his work, picking up and folding clothes. Checking his own armor for dirt and rust in the small amount of moon light that entered through the tent walls. Brushing his hair (it looked like starlight now, reflecting the light of the moon) from his forehead. Some part of the younger man was content to sit and watch, letting the mundanity settle in between them and what they had just done. Another part of him wished to regain Byleth’s attention, wanted him close rather than so far away. The rest of him sat in some sort of distress he was only beginning to piece together.
He waited until Byleth’s back was turned away, thinking it might make the subject a little easier to breech.
“I have to ask, was this your intention the entire time?” He was relieved to hear the question came out sounding coy, but it carried too much tension to sound like a jest.
Lin was relieved that Byleth didn’t do more than turn his head back with a questioning sound before setting back to folding the heap of fabric that was meant to be his cloak. “Be more specific?”
“Back at the academy…”
“Oh…”
The implications had only just begun to pass through his mind, festering like an infected wound. He could ignore it, but it would eventually suffocate him or need to be cut out of his life completely. If the damage needed to be limited, it would be best to test the wound sooner rather than later.
“I had been wondering…”
“It hadn’t ever crossed my mind.”
“Really.” The deflection had seemed far too hasty, and the younger man wasn’t keen on letting the subject drop. “Thinking back on it you did try very hard to get me into your class.”
The other man conceded on the point and turned around. The eye contact didn’t unnerve the younger man in the same way he thought it would. Byleth didn’t look like he’d taken the question as an affront.
“So?” He gestured for the other to continue.
“I needed another mage to run some of the battle scenarios. I also thought you might get along with Ignatz and Marianne,” so much to be said for that arrangement, “Or at the very least I needed some other students who wouldn’t cause unnecessary trouble. I did the same for Mercedes, Felix and Bernadetta.”
‘So much for not causing unnecessary trouble’ is what Linhardt had wanted to say. Now with the war looming over them; They had all had to abandon or turn on friends when the war set in, led by a man who had disappeared for 5 years and come back with silver hair as his only sign of aging. A mess.
He returned to the moment at hand, and let the logic of it set in. “You promise you weren’t in anyway showing me preference?”
“I told you. I had never considered it. At least, not until the other day.”
Linhardt balked for a moment. Even with how things had turned out his impulsivity in revealing his feelings still felt more mortifying than romantic. He found his apprehension had eked out of him almost completely.
(It had been a graceless thing. The possibility of dying, an endless ocean of stars overhead, a sudden desire he had not overwrought before following through. Lips pressed to lips. He hadn’t regretted the implication of the action, only the lack of forethought. What a terrible cliché.)
“Alright.”
“Alright?”
Linhardt provided a small nod in response, “I trust you.”
The silence settled between them once more, relieved of the tension, and Byleth returned to what he was doing at the other side of the tent. Linhardt let his leg swing off the side of the cot, and tried to release his attention off of any one particular thing for the time being.
“It is different than I thought it would be.” Byleth called over his shoulder, breaking Linhardt out of his daze.
“How so?”
“I thought you would have fallen asleep by now.”
Linhardt grabbed the pillow from the cot and threw it half-heartedly at Byleth’s head, and Byleth made no motion to avoid the easily deflectable attack. Unbecoming behavior… He smiled at that too.
Byleth sat on his heels and propped his head on one of Linhardt’s knees where his leg hung off the cot.
The carefree atmosphere that the evening had started with had seamlessly returned, the quiet playfulness that hid behind serious facades and taciturn gestures.
“It’s nice seeing you like this,” he pressed the lower half of his face to the flat of the younger man’s knee cap.
“What? Naked?” Linhardt had the humor to jolt his knee forward just enough to startle the white haired man.
“Smiling,” he pulled himself off the floor to sit on the cot next to Linhardt. Lin tried to ignore the way his throat caught as hair was brushed off his cheek and behind his ear. He pulled the blanket up over his head in defiance of any further affection, and yet leaned into the shoulder beside him.
“I smile.” He stared off pensively, then sighed in remission and let the blanket fall from his shoulders altogether. “Sometimes. I do smile sometimes, don’t I?”
“You’ve always been a little… blasé, even when you’re happy.” He must have pulled a face because he could feel the shoulder pressed against his own begin to shake with a low, soft laugh. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew.”
“I suppose… I suppose I did.”
“You always made it a point to tell me verbally if something had made you happy.”
Linhardt paused to consider that. “Yes, I suppose that’s true as well.”
They sat there for a moment, with no other interaction than the shared heat between their bare shoulders. His apprehension, the memories of all they had suffered through— would continue to suffer through, rose to the surface. But beyond that was the future. Peace. Everything his research and work would eventually accomplish. That was why they had followed Byleth, why he followed Byleth. And why he would continue to follow Byleth as far into that future as he was allowed to follow.
“I am, you know.”
Byleth turned his head to look at him, “‘You are’… what?”
“Happy,” Linhardt leaned forward and rested his forehead against Byleth’s, their noses barely touching where they met. He let the words float there between them, their veracity slowly seeping into him, felt how easy the affection came. “I’m happy.”