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“Caspar?”
“Mm?”
“Do you remember that promise we made when we were children?”
It was an unusual situation; Caspar, rolled over and curled into a ball on his side, having been drooling into his pillow just a moment ago, now with his head turned blearily towards Linhardt, who was wide awake and looking at Caspar out of the corner of his eye while staring up at the ceiling.
“Which one?”
Caspar rolled over onto his back to mirror him, his eyes unfocused with half-asleep but still attentive.
Considering all of the Hell Linhardt has given Caspar over the years for waking him up or keeping him awake, it spoke to a patience most people never would have thought of Caspar having when he didn’t tell him to just shut up and go to sleep.
Linhardt knew better, of course. Caspar was one of the most patient people he knew, when it came to certain things. Perhaps he couldn’t hold himself back when it came to charging enemies on the battlefield, but Linhardt and Caspar had spent the last 15 or so years discovering exactly how much they could push each other’s patience before something had to give.
Linhardt knew he could be… Troublesome . Or so he’d been told, sometimes even by people whose opinions he didn’t completely disregard out of hand. He could never stay awake, and certainly couldn’t be trusted to maintain an interest in something long enough to finish anything. He made a poor soldier and barely adequate field medic, considering his hatred of the sight of blood, and so he honestly wasn’t sure why Edelgard kept him around as part of the Black Eagle Strike Force rather than relegating him to a support role, unless it was purely out of sentimentality. And on a personal level, he could be… Disagreeable . Blunt, to the point, not caring much what people thought of him and so not doing anything to spare their feelings from his honest opinions.
Caspar had told him more than once that he had terrible bedside manner.
As long as Linhardt wasn’t poking at his various wounds at the time, he usually said it with a smile on his face.
Yes, the level of tolerance Caspar had for him massively outpaced anyone else in his life. Certainly his parents never had the same kind of patience with him, treating his habit of bouncing from interest to interest as a bad habit that needed to be curbed, and what they called his ‘attitude’ a ‘work in progress’. The rest of the Black Eagles were kinder to him, most certainly, and he considered them all dear friends, but he still received a lot of exasperated sighs, shakes of the head, and the occasional lecture.
Caspar teased him and did his level best to get him to do things like train, or skip fewer meals in favour of research, or wake up at what he called ‘a decent time’ (and what Linhardt called an affront to the Goddess herself, why would anyone ever want to get up before sunrise ), but not once in his life had he ever felt like Caspar would like him better if he were any different.
“When we were 10,” Linhardt said, turning his head to give Caspar rather than the texture of the ceiling his full attention. “Where you told me you wouldn’t let my father marry me off to some noblewoman, and you would marry me first so he couldn’t, and then we would have sleepovers every single night.”
Linhardt had a lot of very vivid memories from when he was young, more than the average person, or so he had been told. The rest of his memory was often hit or miss; his father had asked, rhetorically, where his steel trap of a mind had gone. If something interested him enough, he could recall it in absolute detail with hardly any prompting. Otherwise, his mind was a sieve, letting useless information flow out as fast as it could enter.
Actually, he was pretty sure his vivid memories of childhood had less to do with having a better memory at some point, and more because memories of Caspar interested him the same way a particularly captivating research topic did. He had a lot of similarly easy to recall memories since the start of their academy days together, too. It was just everything in between that never seemed to matter as much, never seemed quite as worth remembering.
It was dark, too dark to make out much; the curtains were drawn across the window so the morning sun wouldn’t wake Linhardt up, but the moon was full outside, which meant some small amount of light still bled through the unfortunately thin material. It was enough to see Caspar turn away just as he let out a noise that might have been a groan and might have been a whimper.
(Linhardt didn’t have to actually see his face to know he was probably blushing, however. The fact that he was avoiding eye contact was a big giveaway. Caspar wasn’t good at hiding things. Least of all his feelings.)
“Aw, c’mon, Lin, why are you bringing that up now ?” Caspar grumbled. His voice was rough with sleep, and he was half-mumbling. Linhardt liked the sound of his voice like this; relaxed and sleep-heavy.
(He liked the sound of his voice any time, of course, except when it was trying to wake him up far too early in the morning.)
“Well, back then, I said that I would.”
“Actually, I remember you telling me I was being stupid.”
“Yes, and then I said that I would.”
After all, even to a 10 year old Linhardt who didn’t understand anything about marriage or love and was only starting to understand the depths of what being a noble meant and how much he hated the expectations being placed on him, marrying Caspar sounded much better than marrying some noblewoman his father chose for him, even if he was quite sure Caspar’s idle fantasies didn’t hold much sway over his father.
Of course, Linhardt didn’t much care what his father had to say anymore. And hadn’t for a long time.
“I received a letter today.”
“From home?”
Anyone else would have questioned the quick shift in topic, but Caspar simply went with it, despite the fact that Linhardt was sure he hadn’t connected the dots quite yet.
“From my father, yes.” Linhardt sighed as he said it. Many things in life exhausted him; it was why he slept so much, or so he said. But few things exhausted him quite as much as dealing with the esteemed Lord Hevring. “About a potential betrothal.”
“Seriously? Doesn’t that guy realize we’re in the middle of a war ? There are way more important things to be thinking about right now!”
“I sincerely hope that’s not your only objection to my father’s desire to marry me off, Caspar, or I might have gotten the wrong impression entirely from the fact that you’re in my bed right now.”
He was teasing, of course. But Caspar still looked away in the same way that told Linhardt he was embarrassed and didn’t want him seeing him turning red, even though he couldn’t see anything in this darkness anyway , except the way the scant bits of moonlight reflected off the whites of Caspar’s eyes.
“Y-you know what I mean, Lin!” Caspar crossed his arms, and Linhardt almost wished there was more light so he could see the no doubt adorable pout on Caspar’s face.
(He briefly debated using a fire spell to light his bedside candle without getting up, but the last time he’d done something like that he’d gotten quite an earful from Hubert for nearly burning the library down.)
“What did you say?”
Of course, Caspar tended to get distracted easily, even from his own moods, by anything even mildly interesting— which tended to include stray cats, interesting looking rocks, and shiny objects.
“Nothing,” Linhardt replied. “I tore the letter up and threw it away. As you said, there are more important things to be thinking about right now.”
He rolled over in bed to face Caspar completely, even if he couldn’t see him in the darkness. He reached out to put his hand on his chest, rubbing half-hearted circles with no real intent.
“You should have told him exactly what you thought about it,” Caspar muttered, his fingers coming up to lace together with Linhardt’s.
“That seemed like a waste of time,” Linhardt said. “Particularly since I had a much better idea for how to get that point across.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to go see him in person,” Caspar said with a snort. “That seems like way too much effort for you.”
“Fortunately, I have a better idea.”
With their hands clasped together, Linhardt shuffled forward on the bed until he was curled against Caspar’s side. The hand Caspar didn’t have clasped with his own snaked around his waist and held him closer.
He could have fallen asleep, just like that, curled up against Caspar. Between the body heat and his familiar bed, it was terribly tempting… But he could tell he had peaked Caspar’s interest, and going to sleep before he finished his thought wouldn’t be very nice of him.
“Marry me, Caspar.”
The words came easily, with no hesitation. Why would he hesitate? He had been thinking about it since he had opened that letter from his father and read the very first line; it wasn’t the first betrothal attempt he’d been faced with, but it was the first since he and Caspar had begun their… Whatever this was.
It was not even remotely a courtship, being completely informal (and their families didn’t have any idea besides, not that Linhardt felt it was any of their business), and saying they were dating seemed too casual for what they had…
At least now he would have a label, which was convenient even if it was completely unnecessary.
Provided Caspar actually gave him an answer instead of complete silence.
“Caspar…?”
He doubted he’d fallen back asleep; Caspar was not a silent sleeper, which was why it was so lucky that Linhardt could sleep through just about anything.
Of all the reactions he’d been anticipating, though, silence had not been one of them. Getting Caspar to be silent about anything was an exercise in frustration that Linhardt had long since given up on unless the stakes were especially high— like Caspar waking him up in the middle of a nap.
(He’d watched, in amused silence, when Hubert during their school days had tried to get Caspar to be quieter in the middle of battle. He’d been shocked when it had worked for a while, but he had been one of the people complaining to Hubert that a quiet Caspar was just… Unsettling .
Once you had put up with someone yelling and going on like a fool constantly for most of your life, it almost became something comforting , instead of something annoying. He never had to worry about Caspar being hard to find, for one…)
“...you serious, Lin?”
He was so focused on listening for anything from Caspar that it almost made him jump when he asked that, even though he asked it in possibly the smallest, quietest tone Linhardt had ever heard come out of Caspar.
“Am I serious?” he repeated, genuinely confused by the question. “This isn’t exactly the sort of thing I would joke about.”
He actually felt a little offended by that, and Linhardt didn’t tend to get offended by anything; it felt like a waste of his time and energy to worry about how other people thought of him, but Caspar was different, had always been different.
“I know, I know! I just— sometimes you say weird things and have weird ideas and don’t really think about what you’re saying before you say it?”
Linhardt couldn’t exactly argue with any of that. This wouldn’t even be the first time he had suggested marriage to someone, although the previous times had been simply idle curiosities, thought experiments with no real intent behind them— knowing what his father wanted for him, he wasn’t about to rush to make his job any easier, but this…
“If you really consider it weird, you have only yourself to blame. You were the one who said you would marry me to keep my father from being able to marry me off.”
He winced a little, hearing himself say it like that. He could see why Caspar might think he was… Being less than sincere , if that was what he sounded like…
“Yeah, when we were 10 !”
Oh.
Doubt was another thing Linhardt wasn’t prone to— not when it came to himself or to Caspar, at least. Linhardt doubted things, but rarely himself, and never Caspar… (Unless he was doubting Caspar’s self-preservation skills, which happened quite often.)
But suddenly, he was filled with doubt. Because what they had, right now, what they had been teetering on the precipice of since they had hit puberty and started to actually pay attention to things like romance and sexuality, and what they had only recently tipped over into because war seemed like the stupidest time to hesitate about anything ?
Well, it was a far sight from traditional .
And that was a good thing! That was the reason they were all here, right? To buck off tradition and create a new world in which the old ways would no longer hold them back?
(At least in theory. Linhardt was there because Caspar was there, and if Linhardt didn’t follow him into battle he couldn’t be completely sure Caspar wouldn’t get himself hurt or killed. He was still dubious about both Edelgard’s methods and her goal, but that wasn’t something he felt was a good idea to talk about in the current environment, and he’d decided when he joined that he would put his trust in Edelgard even if he couldn’t quite manage faith…)
But the topic of taking it further had never really… Come up . Caspar had said he was leaving on a journey when the war was over; Linhardt had said he was going with him. They were going to see Fodlan together, leave their families behind.
That seemed more intimate than marriage, but the idea of getting married had somehow… Never come up.
And now his usual tactic of just saying exactly what came into his mind without shame was apparently coming back to bite him.
He almost, almost felt the urge to say that no, of course he was just thinking out loud like he usually was, but… He didn’t like lying to Caspar.
Well. Too late to turn back now, he supposed.
“...we certainly don’t have to, if you don’t want to. I’m not certain it would even dissuade my father, anyway,” Linhardt said with a sigh.
Caspar sat up so suddenly, Linhardt felt the mattress bounce with the force of it. He heard him more than saw him fumbling for something on the nightstand, and after a few muttered baby curses (and how charming it was that Caspar rarely swore “seriously” even though he was a leading general of the Adrestian army and a personal friend of the Emperor), the room was flooded with a warm light from the candle they kept by the bed for Linhardt to read by or if they needed to stumble out of their room in the middle of the night.
Their room. They hadn’t really bothered to keep separate rooms since they had started… This relationship, because why would they? It wasn’t as though they would ever spend any time there…
Caspar stayed turned away from him, and Linhardt pushed himself up until he was sitting up, leaning towards him. He put a hand between Caspar’s shoulders, and felt a little jolt go involuntarily up Caspar’s spine, probably because his hands were always cold compared to how hot Caspar ran…
“So you really mean it?”
He didn’t have to be looking at Caspar to know what the little shake in his voice was, and so his hand immediately went to Caspar’s shoulder to turn him around so they were facing each other.
Caspar was too slow at reaching up to rub the tears away from his eyes for Linhardt not to notice them. (It also didn’t help that he very audibly sniffled, although so audibly that it sounded almost like he was succumbing to allergies…)
“Caspar, why in the world are you crying?”
He reached up to wipe some of the tears away with his thumb. Caspar immediately flushed bright red, starting right at his nose and travelling outwards.
“M’not,” he murmured as he caught Linhardt’s hand by the wrist, stopping him from pulling it back so he could bury his face in Linhardt’s hand, as if that was going to allow him to hide.
“You most certainly are, and I need you to tell me why.”
Since Caspar wasn’t going to let him take his hand back, he instead used it to his advantage to turn Caspar’s head towards him. Caspar tried to avoid looking at him, but Linhardt wasn’t about to allow that , and kept angling his head to look him in the eye every time he tried to look in a different direction.
“H-hey… Isn’t it totally normal to cry when your boyfriend asks you to marry him?”
Caspar cracked a smile, probably going for his usual boyish grin, albeit a little watery.
As soon as he said that, Linhardt let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding in. It came out almost like an exasperated sigh, which was also fitting.
“Caspar, you idiot. You really worried me for a moment. I thought I had… I don’t know, upset you somehow.”
That was probably a little bit of an understatement; there had been a moment there where he’d been quite sure he’d completely ruined their relationship by springing something like that on Caspar so suddenly, even though he was consciously aware that it was ridiculous of him to think that way…
After all they had been through, there was no way something like that would be enough to scare Caspar off.
“Seriously? Sorry…” Caspar blushed even harder, somehow. Combined with the gentle glow from the candle, he looked very warm; Linhardt couldn’t resist the urge to lean against him, and so he didn’t even try. “I just… Wanted to make sure you were seriously asking me to marry you. It would’ve been pretty embarrassing for me to say yes if you were just saying it because you were thinking about ways to annoy your dad.”
“Hm… It wasn’t the brightest way for me to bring it up, I’ll admit.” Linhardt turned his head so he could press a kiss to Caspar’s shoulder, finally freeing his hand from Caspar’s grip and instead going back to rubbing his chest. “Although finally being able to tell me father exactly where to put all of his stupid marriage proposals would be a definite boon…”
“You really want to, though?”
Linhardt didn’t like how insecure Caspar could often be for someone who always seemed so sure, so ready to leap into action… And yet when it came to things like how Linhardt felt about him, or things like that, he always seemed ready to doubt himself…
“Of course I do,” Linhardt said, although his voice was muffled somewhat by the way he was pressing his mouth against Caspar’s shoulder. “I’ve already told you I’m going to stay by your side forever, haven’t I? This would just make it official.”
He didn’t feel any need to make it official, of course… But he couldn’t stop thinking about it after his father’s half-baked attempt to marry him off. He was never going to acquiesce to his father’s attempts regardless, of course, but…
It had made him realize he didn’t hate the idea of being married, or having children, or any of the things his father wanted him to do, as long as it was with Caspar .
“Yeah… Actually… I’ve got something…”
Caspar turned away from him and got up, leaving Linhardt to fall right over into bed, frowning at the loss of his personal heater but curling up in the warm bed with the covers pulled around him. Caspar dug around their things for a while before coming back and climbing into bed— although love he damned, he wasn’t about to give up any of his covers.
Caspar didn’t seem to mind and just climbed back onto the bed, holding something in his hands that made Linhardt instantly curious.
“I had a whole… Big thing planned, but I probably would have screwed it up somehow anyway, so… Here.”
He handed the mystery object to Linhardt, and it turned out to be a box— the sort of box that jewelry came in. Based on context clues, he already had a pretty good idea of what it was before he opened it, and still…
Still he found himself tearing up when he opened the little black velvet box and a beautiful silver band with gleaming green and turquoise gemstones glinted back at him.
“You’re making me feel ill-prepared, Caspar… I don’t have one of these for you…” Which sounded silly, since he was the one who had asked Caspar to marry him. Of course, he hadn’t imagined the conversation going like this…
“You know I don’t care about that, Lin.”
“Of course you don’t. But I’m still going to get you one. Can you blame me for liking the idea of seeing you wearing my ring?”
“Don’t just say stuff like that, Lin!”
Linhardt didn’t think he said anything especially embarrassing, but Caspar tended to get worked up about things he didn’t really understand anyway. But he could tell Caspar felt the same based on the way he was looking at Linhardt holding the ring box, and so he didn’t hesitate in pulling the ring out and slipping it onto his finger.
It was perfect. Linhardt held it up closer to the light to see it glint, admiring the way the gems looked exactly like a blend of the two of them, which clearly showed how much thought Caspar had put into it. Of course, he would have been happy with it if Caspar had just presented him a piece of twine wrapped around his finger…
“It’s perfect,” he said, reluctant to remove it but not wanting it to get lost in the sheets while they slept, knowing it would be much safer in its box. “Though I have to say, the idea of having to go out and find you one that looks just as nice… It sounds like a lot of effort.”
“Lin!”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding…” Linhardt sighed, tired and content, as he sank into the pillows once he was certain the ring was safely put away. “Well. It does sound like quite a lot of work. But you’re worth the effort.”
“That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Lin.”
“Stop being a smartass and get down here so I can kiss my fiance,” Linhardt said as he grabbed Caspar’s arm, pulling him down into bed and drawing him into the first of many passionate kisses.
He would have to remember to thank his father at some point.
The letter that Lord Hevring received several weeks later went thusly:
Dearest father,
I apologize for not responding to your previous missive. Things have been rather busy, as I happen to be on the front lines of a war at the moment.
As my silence might indicate, my answer to this proposal is the same as every other one you’ve suggested to me. I have no intentions of marrying whatever noblewoman you’ve picked out for me to fill our family’s coffers, and even less of marrying simply to produce children to pass on the family line. If I were to have a sudden desire to pass on my Crest, I have far more intelligent and efficient ways of doing so than a cumbersome betrothal.
In fact, I’m writing to inform you that you needn’t worry any longer about seeking a wife for me and can instead focus on running your territory and contributing to the war effort. Three days ago from the day I’m writing this letter, Caspar and I were pronounced married by the Emperor of Adrestia herself. I would have invited you to the ceremony, but it was quite small and impromptu, on account of what I said before about being on the front lines of a war. No need to worry yourself about a wedding gift, either; I’ve already appropriated some of the Hevring family funds to pay for the reception and my husband’s ring.
By the time this letter reaches you, you should also receive the marriage certificate for archival purposes, and my official documentation stating my resignation from House Hevring.
Cordially,
Linhardt Bergliez von Hevring.