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Caspar wasn’t a complete stranger to the idea of holiday celebrations, but holy shit did the monastery go all-in. Maybe it was because his family wasn’t as religious, really? But anyway, he was a big fan. Candles? Hell yeah. Trees indoors? Sure, why not! Mistletoe?
“What’s that?” he asked, distracted, as Dorothea murmured the word beneath her breath with an air of contemplation, one manicured finger tapping her chin. She glanced at him with a little smile, as if about to deny she’d said anything at all. Then she laughed.
“Oh, sweetheart! No, don’t be embarrassed. It’s a custom from Faergus, apparently.” She gestured at the decorated hallway with a beringed hand. “See that little cluster of berries down there? Supposedly, if you find yourself underneath one with someone else, you need to kiss them. Better watch your step, dear.”
She waggled her eyebrows at him, and Caspar felt his face heat up, but he knew enough by now to realize when she was just trying to get a rise out of him. “Uh huh. You don’t seem too worried.”
She laughed again, shaking her head. “No, I was thinking I might find a way to use it to my advantage. I’m a fairly good kisser, after all.” She booped him gently on the nose with one finger. “Would you like a demonstration?”
If his face was hot before, he was certain it was brick red now. “N-nope! I’m good! I’m a real good kisser too, don’t worry!” He scrambled back away from her, although the mistletoe was nowhere near where they stood. What was the range on those things, anyway?
“I don’t believe you,” she called after him, cheery and amused, but he tactically chose not to respond as he fled down the hallway. He’d never run from an actual fight, but he could tell when he was totally unmatched, and this was definitely one of those times.
He avoided the mistletoe for the next week and a half. The professor complimented him dryly on finally putting the evasive maneuvers he’d learned in class into practice when he vaulted over a wall rather than walk under the mistletoe lashed to the archway. He narrowly avoided getting kicked by Ingrid’s horse by trying to roll under it once (which hadn’t really been necessary, he just thought it’d look cool). He even waited for Hubert to incinerate the mistletoe over the classroom door for a fuming Edelgard before entering with the rest.
He was actually starting to have fun with it, sort of. It certainly was fun when it turned out the mistletoe culprit was Sylvain and everyone got to watch Seteth scream at him in the courtyard. The mandatory church sermon the next day about Propriety and Decorum was less fun, though.
Even after that the mistletoe didn’t stop, exactly. There just was less of it. Sometimes Caspar went a day or two before seeing a sprig nestled amongst the rafters. He guessed Sylvain was just getting sneakier with it?
He’d almost forgotten all about the mistletoe, at least until one late winter afternoon, Caspar wandered into the library in search of Linhardt, who’d promised to watch him train and then vanished, and he saw it. A bundle of mistletoe. Over the table his friend was sleeping under.
A sudden righteous fury flooded Caspar’s veins. The mistletoe had been pretty funny, but this was too far! Linhardt was sleeping, his guard totally down, 100% defenseless, with his long eyelashes and soft hair and, you know, all those Linhardt traits that only seemed to intensify when he was in the land of dreams. Just anyone could waltz up and kiss him! And that would be really terrible!
Caspar clenched his fists and furrowed his brow. It took all his energy just to contain the shout of warning that echoed within his ribcage, but this was the library, technically, even if no one else was here.
...No one else was here? That gave him an idea. If he warned Linhardt, then Linhardt could move, and no one would know. Linhardt’s lips would be safe. It was a foolproof plan, probably.
Invigorated by this idea, Caspar marched over to the library table, which was spread with books and notes and… half of a sweet bun? Geez, dude.
“Hey, Linhardt.” he reached over to shake his shoulder. “Hey. Wake up.”
Linhardt mumbled something unintelligible into the surface of the table, which Caspar figured meant “Good morning to my best friend in the world, how are you on this fine afternoon,” or something like that.
“Dude, wake up,” he said, and then realized he wasn’t whispering, which is what you were supposed to do in the library apparently. “There’s some mistletoe,” he hissed, at what he assumed was a situation-appropriate volume level.
Linhardt shifted, and then turned his head to look at him with one big gray-blue eye. “Huh,” he mumbled blearily.
Caspar pointed upwards at the cluster of berries, doing his best to inject urgency into the motion.
“Oh,” Linhardt mumbled, pushing himself up on his elbows. “I see. Well, alright.” His chair scraped against the floor, and before Caspar knew it, there was a hand on the back of his neck, pulling him downwards so fast he almost overbalanced, palms hitting the table to stop from falling. And then Linhardt was kissing him.
It was over way too fast. Linhardt pulled back an inch or so and looked at him appraisingly, eyebrows raised, hand still warm and firm on the back of Caspar’s neck. The sweet bun must be pretty recent, because Caspar thought he could smell it on his breath. Actually, there was a crumb on his cheek, so that was totally proof. He should tell him about the crumb.
“Huh?!” he said instead, because his tongue didn’t seem to be working quite right.
“Does that not satisfy the bounds of this odd tradition?” Linhardt asked, “I wasn’t really listening when Ferdinand explained it.”
“I-- uh-- uh--” Caspar said. Linhardt’s hand moved from the back of his neck to his cheek, and he frowned.
“You’ve gone very warm. Did you run here?” Linhardt’s worried expression was cute as usual, but still just way too close.
“I was just warning you!” Caspar burst out finally, because he didn’t know how to say ‘no I didn’t but I sure feel like I just ran a million flights of stairs’ in a way that made it make sense. “I didn’t-- I didn’t want a kiss, I just wanted you to know. ”
“Oh,” Linhardt replied, his face going blank. “Good night, then.” And he put his face back down on the table.
Perhaps that would have been that, and Caspar could have run back down the stairs and outside to bury his face in a snowbank, but he realized something very interesting; the bit of Linhardt’s neck that he could see above his uniform collar was sort of red. Was he embarrassed? For making the mistake, maybe? Caspar stared, brain churning to life again.
Linhardt was Caspar’s best friend. Caspar wasn’t about to leave him up here feeling terrible for something like that! Caspar pulled out the chair next to him and sat down, brow furrowed in determination.
“Hey,” he said, and Linhardt grunted. “I mean, it wasn’t my goal, but it’s not like it was bad, y’know?” This didn’t get a response, so Caspar also put his head down on the table, cheek squished against the wooden surface, so he could peer past the curtain of Linhardt’s hair. “I’ve never kissed before but I kinda liked it. I’d do it again.” Talking about all this was really embarrassing, but he’d do it for Linhardt!
Linhardt turned his head to look at Caspar, and the novelty of being this close to his face hadn’t really worn off yet, even if he looked a bit silly with one cheek squished flat. It probably would soon. Any second now. “You are,” Linhardt told him icily, “a phenomally stupid man.”
Caspar had been called stupid all his life but he’d never been called a man before, so he felt his chest puff up with pride, a dumb grin spreading across his face. Linhardt seemed to realize his error and groaned. “Only you would be pleased about that,” he told him, but a fond smile was growing on his face.
“You know what I’d also be pleased about?” Caspar asked, scooting his face closer so the tips of their noses bumped.
“Another kiss?” Linhardt asked, arching an eyebrow with an expression Caspar might call ‘amused’ or ‘intrigued’ or ‘cute as hell’.
“Anoth-- ugh, I wanted to say it!” Caspar complained, and Linhardt laughed in a puff of air that smelled like icing sugar and leaned in and kissed him. It was hard to tell who kissed who, after that, but Caspar couldn’t find it in himself to care. Tomorrow in class he was totally going to tell Dorothea he was a real life experienced kisser now. She was gonna be so impressed.