Chapter Text
The dining hall was loud and crowded. An absolute nightmare of a place. Linhardt sat unhappily squashed between Dorothea and Caspar, eyelids drooping and chin cushioned on his hand. He’d eaten… half, maybe, of his portion of the meal, but eating suddenly seemed to be so much effort. Choosing and cutting each bite, lifting it to his mouth, chewing, and then eurgh, the swallowing… His jaw ached at the thought. No, he was done for the night.
To his right Caspar leaned into him, chattering about some strength-building strategy he’d learned from one of his new classmates. Not someone Linhardt knew, yet. Someone in another class? He was apparently having no such issues with the concept of eating, shoveling food into his mouth with glee as he spoke. Some of it dripped out of the corner of his mouth, and Linhardt felt himself scowl at the sight. Caspar being a messy eater wasn’t new, but it never seemed to get any less annoying.
"I'm like twice as hungry since we got here," Caspar was saying, "I guess it's 'cause we're working so hard? You gonna finish that?" He pointed with his fork at Linhardt's plate.
“You’re making a mess,” Linhardt told him with a long sigh instead of answering, and to his credit Caspar at least fumbled for a napkin instead of ignoring him. Any goodwill he gained from that, however, vanished when, unable to find one, he gave up and instead dashed the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing half the mess and totally missing the rest.
“No, a little to the left… oh, here,” Linhardt said, sighing and levering himself from where he was leaning on the table to sit up fully. At this height he towered over his friend, but he was used to that. He found his own napkin easily and reached over to wipe at the mess on Caspar’s chin.
Caspar turned his gaze up to him in a wide eyed stare, jaw going slack as Linhardt fussed over him. Then, just as Linhardt lowered the napkin, he flushed bright red, jolting away with a yelp and knocking Bernadetta off the edge of the bench. Bernadetta, of course, immediately burst into tears, curling into a ball on the flagstone floor with her hands over her head.
Linhardt supposed he should be annoyed. The thing about Caspar was that he was a known factor, fully understood and entirely reliable. Even the things that caused others to consider him a wildcard made perfect sense to Linhardt. He didn’t always agree with them, but he always understood him. And that was all that really mattered. It was enough to make Caspar the least exhausting person to hang out with that Linhardt had ever met. He’d assumed it would always stay that way; had counted on it, in fact.
This reaction, though? He didn’t understand that at all. Could Caspar have been changing all this time, when Linhardt wasn’t paying attention?
Caspar leaped off the bench to try to comfort Bernadetta, and Dorothea rushed to try to help as well, the general noise level at their table rising from ‘uncomfortable’ to ‘unbearable’. Linhardt folded his napkin, laid it next to his half cleared plate, and disentangled himself from the bench.
He needed to think, and for that he needed silence and space.
…
The library was empty, which was his favorite state for the library to be in. Linhardt approached his favorite table, selected in his first week and undisturbed since then, remaining a mess of books on ancient history and crest methodology. All were fascinating, and he intended to return to them as soon as possible, but right now he had a new mystery to solve. He cleared a small section of the tabletop, chose a new blank notebook, and retrieved his favorite pen from his bag.
So.
Caspar. Blushing.
That was a physical reaction. But what did it mean? Surprise? Embarrassment? Discomfort?
Linhardt thought he understood Caspar head to toe (not that there was much of him to understand) and yet the answer to this eluded him. He frowned and smoothed the paper flat, gazing at the far wall across the dim library. He must hypothesize.
- Caspar was surprised that I would take care of him in such a way.
This seemed unlikely. Linhardt had always taken care of Caspar, in his own sleepy roundabout way, and Caspar had always taken care of him. Surely Caspar would not have expected this to change just because they were at school together. There was no reason for it to do so. He crossed the line of text out, shaking his head.
- Caspar was embarrassed to be taken care of in front of our classmates.
Hm. Not entirely ridiculous. Caspar was fiercely proud, not in the way most nobles were, about stupid things like wealth or style, but of his own capabilities. He’d always been this way. And this Linhardt understood; he’d always lived in the shadow of his brother, who was taller, stronger, and stood to inherit essentially everything the Bergliez family owned. Linhardt had often envied Caspar’s freedom in being left to his own devices, but he also understood that Caspar had learned to take care of himself in a way he himself had never had to. He didn’t like this hypothesis, but it was… possible, at least.
There was another possibility, however. Linhardt lifted his pen, laid it down on the page, and picked it up again. Then, holding his breath, he wrote on the next line,
- Caspar is attracted to me.
He put the pen down. Unlikely, but not impossible. They were at an age where ill advised crushes were commonplace. Still, even just writing it made his heart rate pick up, and he decided his second guess seemed far more likely. He folded his hands beneath his chin, thinking the situation over.
One way or another, he had to know. Asking would be far too bothersome, and honestly, he didn’t want to admit that there was something he was missing about Caspar. This would be a proper experiment. He’d devise some tests, come up with standard parameters, and record the outcome. In no time at all he’d understand the reasoning behind Caspar’s blush, and then everything would make sense again.
He couldn’t wait to get started.