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Glenn meets Miklan when he’s 4, on a windy spring morning, when their fathers introduce them to each other.
His father pats him on the shoulder, and says, “Glenn, meet Miklan. He’s Margrave Gautier’s son. Play nice alright?”
Glenn turns to Miklan, who has a smile that shone like the sun, red hair short and messy, like someone had tried to tame it but gave up halfway through.
Miklan’s father stiffly says “That’s Glenn. Don’t cause any trouble.”
And then their fathers walk off, probably to talk about affairs of the state or something. Glen waves his father goodbye, and then turns to Miklan. “So,” Glenn says, grinning. “What do you like to do? I’ve got a few toys we can share! I even have a few training weapons as well!”
Miklan stares for a good while, and says, “Why don’t we spend the day outside? I can teach you how to catch butterflies.”
Glenn blinks, and tilts his head to the side. “Huh? You can catch butterflies?”
“Yeah!” Miklan says, excitedly, and grabs at Glenn’s hand, pulling him along. “A friend showed it to me once, and it’s a neat trick!”
Miklan flashes another smile, and Glenn thinks that the smile was the warmest thing, like sunshine.
---
Glenn remembers one night, when he finds Miklan with a training sword in his hands, looking almost like he was dancing with the blade, spinning and twisting around the training grounds. Glenn remembers how Miklan had a look of concentration on his face, and Glenn had sat down on a bench, captivated by his best friend’s swordplay, watching as he flows from form to form like water, like a river or a striking tide.
And then, all the sudden, Glenn isn’t the eldest son of House Fraldarius, and Miklan isn’t the hated son of Gautier, for one, single, blissful moment. For a single, blissful moment, they’re just Glenn and Miklan, and that moment is when Glenn realises.
That he has been hopelessly, wonderfully, brilliantly in love with Miklan ever since that meeting on that windy spring morning many years ago.
---
When Glenn learns that he is to marry Ingrid Brandl Galatea, a girl who is of Felix’s age, and will be wedded to him when she is of age, his world stops, if just for a moment.
It’s only been a month since his revelation in the training ground, and Glenn tells his father that he understands, and he leaves his father’s office, unsure where to go from there.
He locks himself in his room, and he wonders if running away with Miklan would justify anything. He supposes that his father would drag him back. And he couldn’t just leave Felix. And he knows that Miklan would go through hell itself for Sylvain.
He stills on his bed, staring at the opposite wall, and longs for the moments where he was just Glenn, without any titles or claim to nobility at all.
---
He found Miklan in the greenhouses once, napping in a warm patch of sun, when his father took him and Felix to go visit the Gautier estate. It was one of those hot, summer days, where everyone is just a little bit more lethargic and unwilling to do work. Felix had already run off with Sylvain, the redheaded terror mentioning something about how the local woods were a great place to catch insects. Or something.
Reminding Glenn of how he first met Miklan. Catching butterflies in a field with their hands, careful not to crush their wings, and letting them go.
But that’s neither here or there. Glenn goes to sit down next to Miklan, and he watches how the sunlight filters through the dirty glass roof of the greenhouse, the way the vines crawl up walls and across floors to reach the sun.
It’s a very peaceful scene. It’s interrupted by Miklan stirring beside him, sitting up and yawning, and looking around, before his eyes land on Glenn, sitting on the floor next to him.
“Ah…hello,” Miklan says, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “How are you?”
Glenn stares at Miklan for a while, the way the sun illuminates his hair, the red becoming something like fire. “I’m…fine,” Glenn manages to choke out, and he wishes that there was a world where they were just Glenn and Miklan, two boys against the world.
I want to kiss him, Glenn thinks, but he holds himself back, and instead his eyes catch a scar that decorates Miklan’s forearm, already healing over with new skin.
Doesn’t stop Glenn from grabbing the offending limb and peering at the scar, running his fingers over it. Miklan doesn’t stop him, instead leaning back on his other arm, watching. Waiting.
“What happened?” he asks, and Miklan makes a small, wry smile, eyes clouding over, just a bit.
“Ah, well, Sylvain knocked over a candle, and I just… well I shielded him with my arm. Burnt me pretty bad but, well, it’s healing now isn’t it?” Miklan explains sheepishly. “Don’t worry about telling me off, Sylvain already did.”
Glenn furrows his eyebrows, and whispers, “Oh, Miklan, you reckless idiot…”
Miklan must of heard him, because he laughs, and it’s a warm sound, with the softness of the sun and campfires, and Glenn is back at the training grounds, watching Miklan dance with a blade, and Glenn sees how Miklan’s eyes, a warm brown, are staring at him, a warm smile on his face.
He shines like the sun, almost.
“Hey Glenn, are you alright?” Miklan says out of the blue, and Glen startles, and realises that he’s still holding Miklan’s arm. He hurriedly let’s go, and he tries to tear his eyes away from Miklan, whose staring at him, as if Glenn knew what he was doing.
“I’m…I’m fine,” Glenn says, but really, he’s not. He’s slated to marry someone else, but the man in front of him is the one he fell in love with, and by the goddess it’s not fair, is it?
Miklan sniffs the air, he frowns a bit, staring at Glenn, but if he’s caught onto Glenn’s lie, he doesn’t say anything.
Then Felix and Sylvain come bursting into the greenhouse, Sylvain immediately rushing to Miklan to show the stag beetle he’s caught, while Felix shyly shows his own stag beetle to Glenn.
And then, Glenn forgets about his little white lie.
---
Felix bursts into his room one day, a letter clutched in his hands and Glenn startles, dropping his whetstone onto his foot.
As he hisses in pain, Felix catches his breath, leaning against the doorway like he had sprinted from the dining room on the ground floor all the way to Glenn’s room on the third. “Glenn!” He finally says, waving his letter. “I just got something from Sylvain!”
Normally, Glenn would dismiss this, but the look in Felix’s eyes is so panicked and frustrated that Glenn has to go “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Miklan!” Felix explains, the onsets of anger and frustration colouring his voice. “He’s been disowned from the Gautier line!”
“What?” Glenn nearly shouts at Felix, and Felix only nods to Glenn’s unspoken question. “It happened a week ago, and Miklan didn’t even fight back! He just said something like ‘Okay, sir,’ and then the next thing Sylvain sees is him just leaving the grounds!”
Glenn has already gotten to his feet, and going to the door of his room, when Felix calls out “Are you telling father?”
Glenn freezes, and realised that his plan did not include his father, but rather, just riding out to go find Miklan. Goddess, he is an idiot.
“Right, yeah, I’m going to do that.” Glenn says shakily, and he almost wrenches his door open as he sprints towards his father’s office.
---
“I see,” his father says, frowning. “And what are you going to do about it?”
“Huh?” Glenn replies unintelligently, because he never really though this far ahead.
“I’m not blind, Glenn,” his father explains, leaning back in his chair. “I know the only love you hold for Miss Galatea is the same of which you hold for Felix. You’re more enamoured with Miklan, correct?”
Glenn blinks, and says, very quietly, “How did you know?”
“I was in love once, Glenn.” His father says, smiling, “After all, I did fall in love with your mother.”
Glenn blinks, and whispers, “Oh,”
His father rests his chin on his hands, and stares at Glenn, and he asks “So, Glenn, what are you going to do about it?”
Glenn balls his fists, his nails pressing into the palm of his hands. “I…want to go find him. I want to tell him, before…before…”
“You don’t need to tell me,” His father says with a smile, and then his gaze hardens, “I know you are due to go serve the kingdom next moon.”
Glenn frowns. “I am.”
His father sighs, and turns his head to the Shield of Agis, hanging on the wall. “And yet, you want to go find Miklan.”
Glenn falls silent. He can’t refute that statement.
“Then, for one moon, I give you permission to go find Miklan. Talk to him, tell him what you need to know. Next moon, you are to serve the kingdom as a knight. Just remember you have someone waiting for you to come back, alright?”
Glenn stares at his father, before he breathes out “Thank you, father.”
---
Glenn rides, travelling from village to village, town to town, city to city, all to find Miklan.
And then, in the middle of a remote village in the aftermath of an attack, and Miklan is there, being holding up a bundle of dry straw in one hand and a bucket in the other, dry mud and blood smeared across his face and clothes, leather armour looking worse for wear.
But Glenn doesn’t care, he doesn’t care when he dismounts his horse and sprints towards Miklan, and he yells out loud, “Miklan!”
Miklan turns, and he drops his bucket and straw to the ground, and audibly whispers “Glenn?”
But Glenn doesn’t care, because he’s tackling Miklan into a hug, pressing the other man close to him as he feels tears well up in the corners of his eyes, and by the goddess, he just wants to kiss him. Right in the middle of the street.
But Glenn has held back for so long, always trapped by decorum and things, and so, Glenn places his hands on Miklan’s cheeks, and before Miklan can ask him what Glenn is doing, Glenn-
-kisses him.
---
Glenn is in Duscur, tugging Prince Dimitri by the hand as he tries to get them both out of the village, when Glenn is knocked over, and he tells Dimitri to keep running, don’t stop, just get out of the village.
Dimitri yells that he’s not leaving without his father or him, because Felix would be very sad and so would anyone else waiting for him to come back home.
But Glenn can hardly move now, and the axeman that bears no uniform of the Kingdom nor of Duscur raises his axe, and Glenn can feel tears coming to his eyes, knowing that Felix will never forgive him, and…
Oh, Miklan. Goddess, what is he going to think?
Glenn closes his eyes, and waits his death, the sound of thunder in his ears.
(What Glenn figures out later, is that he survived.
He didn’t notice, but there was a clap of thunder, and a man with blond hair and a sword with lighting running down the blade blocking the axe and sending it far away before beheading the axeman, and then the man turns to Glenn’s unconscious body, and he says, very quietly, “Tanjirou, I hope our charges can be happy.”
Zenitsu never had that much of an impact on Glenn, his soul too feeble to cause anything, but at least he can do this.)
---
Glenn recovers from injuries in his family home, and he dreams of thunder, of lightning, and of sunshine skies and dancing flames.
Felix comes to find his brother passed out on a couch, snoring, a letter from Miklan in his grasp.
Honestly, his brother and Sylvain’s brother are disgusting, if their contents of their letters are to mean anything.
---
The news comes on a cold, autumn afternoon.
Glenn gets a letter, and when he reads it, he realises.
He leans against a wall, feeling his knees buckle as he slides to the floor, and he cries, hot tears splashing against the floor, as Glenn screams and breaks all over again.
Because, on the letter, written in black ink, plain as day, is the very simple, “Miklan Anschutz Gautier has died.”
---
Sylvain sees him after Miklan’s funeral service, and he says, quietly, “You loved my older brother didn’t you?”
Glenn smiles sadly, and he stares at the sky, drinking in the blue that drowns the world around him.
“Yes,” He says, finally, tears rolling down his cheeks for the third time today, “I did.”
---
When Glenn is thirty-four, and back in the Kingdom’s army, he dies.
It’s not anything too terribly climatic, but Glenn does die, but when he does, he finds himself in a forest, blanketed in snow, and he turns to see…
Miklan, smiling, and saying, “Are you ready?”
And then Glenn is smiling too, and he’s running up to the man he had fallen in love with, ever since that windy, spring morning.