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Sylvain slumps into the couch cushions, his feet up on the slightly battered coffee table that sits between him and the fireplace in one of the common areas. Fancy rich kid school or not, few things survive years of daily use by pre-teens and teens unscathed, and he only feels slightly bad about putting his feet on it. His shoes are clean, at least, he tells himself.
Loud drumbeats pound through his headphones, joined by a droning bass-line and a melancholy voice, and Sylvain lets himself zone out and stare into the fire.
Once again, his father has decided he should stay at school for the most important 'family' holiday in the school calendar, one that almost every student goes home for, because, “You should be focusing on your studies.” As if Sylvain hadn't secured the top scores in his grade for the quarter. As if he hadn't been top of his year for years. But it's his last year, and that means he must try even harder to make his father proud.
He had just wanted to see Dima and Ingrid, that's all. It's been years since he's seen them in person, not just facetime conversations. Not that Dimitri does facetime with him since the fire, anyways, too self-conscious of the scars around his eye and the protective patch he wears now. If Sylvain had gone home, he could have been there for Dimitri's birthday the day before, instead of just calling to make sure his birthday and Christmas presents arrived.
But Dima will be ok, he has family to spend the day with, and he had sounded genuinely happy with his present and his holiday plans. Ingrid would be visiting for New Year's, and they were planning to celebrate her birthday early. Sylvain would have liked to be there for that, but he'd had to settle for including Ingrid's present in the box he'd sent Dima. At least he would get to facetime with her when she opened it, Dimitri had promised to hold her phone and everything.
Fuck, he's so bitter about it. He scrubs a hand over his face, frustrated—how long can he expect to go without seeing his childhood friends before they grow so irreparably apart that he loses them? Already Dimitri is drifting...
He's jerked out of his thoughts when a hand gently tugs once at the cord of his headphones and he looks up to see Claude leaning on the back of the couch, looking down at him with a raised eyebrow. He pulls the earbud out and hands it to Claude, who leans down and puts it to his ear, cheek to cheek as Claude listens to the music with a curious little frown.
“Oh boy, Joy Division? So, we're really brooding, then?” Claude asks, and Sylvain rolls his eyes as Claude passes the earbud back.
“I like Joy Division,” he says, and Claude just smiles and climbs directly over the back of the couch to plop down and sit beside him. He pulls out his phone as Sylvain sighs, resigned, and drapes his headphones around his neck, turning off his music. Claude is not going to allow him to stew. “What are you doing?”
“Telling Bern and Marianne where we are.” Sylvain crosses his arms and tries to hold onto his brooding at that, but it's difficult. Claude is at school for the holiday because he had told his Grandfather he wanted to study, and as a Muslim he doesn't celebrate Christmas anyways. Bear convinced her father she needed to study, and Marianne had simply asked to stay because the travel distance was so far. The only one of their little group who'd gone home is Lorenz, and that hadn't been a surprise—his father brought him home for every school holiday whether he wanted to go or not.
Claude scoots into Sylvain's space and leans heavily against his shoulder before extending a hand palm-up in front of Sylvain.
“Phone,” he demands, and Sylvain hands it to him, rolling his eyes and readying his headphones as Claude scrolls through his music library and makes a selection. Claude trades Sylvain the phone for an earbud, and Sylvain puts an arm over his shoulder to pull Claude snug against his side. “If we're going to brood, at least let's listen to something a little more recent. And fun.”
“One, I'm not brooding,” Sylvain answers as he puts his earbud in and MGMT greets him, “and Two, fun kind of defeats the purpose of brooding.”
“Uh yeah, that's the point,” Claude says before leaning up to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Sylvain can't help but smile at that, he's a sucker, and he surrenders to listening to something slightly more upbeat while he and Claude sit curled close and wait for their friends to join them.
Bear gets there first, a huge bag slung over her shoulder, and as she flops down beside Sylvain she drops it with a relieved groan. When she starts pulling tupperware containers out of it and setting them on the table, Claude lets out a low whistle.
“Jeez, Bern, did you bring the whole kitchen with you?” he teases, and she rolls her eyes.
“You and Sylvain eat so much, and I wanted to make sure there would be cookies for me and Marianne, too.” When she has finally pulled out all the tupperware, she extracts embroidery supplies and goes back to work on a half-stitched picture of venus flytraps. “I made Lebkuchen,” she says, not looking up from her stitching, but she smiles small and proud when Sylvain gasps.
“You didn't.” She knows how much he likes the cake-like gingerbread, but she rarely makes it because it's a lot of work.
“Blue lids are glazed, red lids are dark chocolate, don't touch the clear one because that's milk chocolate and it's for Marianne.”
“You are a goddess, Bear,” Sylvain says, and when Marianne arrives with several packs of Uno, Sylvain and Claude are sharing a container of the sweet, glazed gingerbread. She sits in the space left on the other side of Claude and hands him some of the cards to shuffle so they can work on starting a game.
They spend their afternoon like that, sitting on the floor with the table pulled closer to the fireplace, playing Uno and eating gingerbread and listening to Christmas music Marianne plays on her phone, and by the time dinner rolls around Sylvain is completely removed from brooding. He's not even brooding-adjacent, which had been the point.
“Hey,” he says when it's his turn again to drop a card, “thanks. For doing this, I mean.”
Marianne is always so soft-spoken, but she sounds almost exasperated when she answers, “Of course, Sylvain; you're our friend.”
“We love you,” Claude says, and Bear nods. “Now quit stalling and play your card.”
Sylvain laughs and drops a Draw 4, and he isn't even bothered when Claude says he takes back the 'love' part.