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The first thing Claude remembers ever holding in his hands is a book. His mother helps support the weight of its cover and pages—still too heavy for such a small child—as he sits in her lap. He crinkles the paper in his eagerness to turn to the next segment (she always lets him turn the pages), sometimes grabbing more than one sheet at a time. She would smile and smooth down each page before continuing.
She reads to him stories in the morning, afternoon or evening, whenever she has time away from the royal court, and Claude absorbs her warmth and her words like rain. On the very best of occasions, his father joins them.
"And what would you do with three wishes?" His mother asks him one day.
"Fairytales aren't real," Claude says, looking enormously proud of himself for having figured that one out. He's all of four years old.
"That may be true, but that should never stop you from making wishes," she says with a soft laugh. Her expression is kind, loving and profoundly sad, and Claude is too young to notice.
---
His hands soon hold more than just storybooks: academic texts and quills, daggers and slings. He strings his first bow at the age of eight. He can no longer indulge in the embrace of his parents, as much their subject as he is their heir, but his mother helps braid his hair in secret, from time to time. His father puts a warm hand on his shoulder when no one else is watching.
---
Claude enters the Officer's Academy at the age of seventeen. He hasn't seen his parents since he left for Fódlan, and he misses them more than anything.
For those first few moons he does little but study and observe—though those two tasks take up nearly every waking hour of his day. He is often alone outside school hours, his peers reluctant to entertain his company. He makes do.
---
He's touch-starved, and he meets Sylvain.
Claude watches him as he would any sudden addition to their roster, and he isn't the only one curious. The year has barely started, though nobody questions that the young noble had simply followed the new professor's shapely heels to their classroom.
Sylvain behaves as if he had hands all over his conversation partner, despite rarely ever touching them. He uses his honeyed words and eyes to convey his intent, and he knows how to build anticipation, to use his towering frame and handsome features to his advantage. An extended arm just close enough to crowd his companion in. The faintest brush of fingertips against a displaced lock of hair. A hand lingering on the back of a chair.
It's the thinnest veneer of gentility, like the bright red skin of a poisoned apple.
It's awful, Claude thinks, and against all reason he wonders how it would taste to have a bite.
---
Against all odds, it's Claude that gets a hand on Sylvain first. A quick and bracing clap on his back when Sylvain momentarily loses focus on the battlefield—presently the top of a spiraling tower now crowned by a demonic beast, freshly-spawned from Miklan's flesh. Claude doesn't say anything, and he doesn't know that it's more reassuring to Sylvain than anything he could.
---
They don't talk much in the aftermath. Claude is fixated on the crest stones and relics, and it's no secret that Sylvain wants nothing to do with them. Stubborn as Claude is, he knows better than to let his curiosity get the better of his carefully crafted schemes (of which Sylvain most certainly has a part), directing his questions to Teach instead.
But Sylvain isn't deaf, no matter how much Claude tries to talk around him.
---
"If you wanna ask me about the Lance, just ask." Sylvain is on the way back to the dorms, a slim case tucked under his arm. (Claude recognizes the chest set, he'd seen it at the marketplace. Sort of hoped it would've been for him...)
His glimpse doesn't go unnoticed, and the other boy offers the box to him without missing a beat.
"Look, I get they're just tryna be nice, but I'm tired of everyone walking on eggshells around me. We can play for it, if it'll make you feel better."
"I'd rather just play," Claude says with a smile.
"Show me your moves then." Sylvain finally grins back. It's not entirely sincere—it isn't much anything at all, but Claude is still glad to see it.
They set up on the grass. Claude takes the lead, having collected most of Sylvain's army from the playing field, however the game ends abruptly when a stray tabby darts across the board, scattering the remaining pieces everywhere. Claude hears Sylvain laugh, genuinely, for what must be the first time since he's known him.
---
They play again a couple weeks later.
For someone who's only ever taken books back to his room, Claude is not expecting company at his door.
"Wait out here," he instructs Sylvain as he ducks inside to drop off his latest haul of library loans. He notices he's brought his chess set.
"Wow, it's definitely worse than I imagined," his visitor says from outside the doorway, head poking in for a none-too-subtle glance at the decor—which is really just hardcovers upon more hardcovers.
"You've been thinking about my room?" Claude shoots back, tone light.
"You're not the only one who likes secrets."
"And are we playing for one today?"
"You up for it?"
Claude certainly is. He doesn't invite him inside, however. They walk down the hall to Sylvain's room instead, and in hindsight it was perhaps an error in judgment on Claude's part, giving him the home advantage.
---
Sylvain doesn't lose. Claude purses his lips, waiting for the question to drop. (About his heritage, he's sure. Sylvain would be sharp enough to notice something 'amiss'.) He feels brown eyes on him, a stare so deliberate it's almost palpable.
"...Tell me what you want most," Sylvain finally says. "If you could wish for anything."
Claude blinks.
Fairytales aren't real, he instinctively thinks, and the question makes his heart hurt with a memory he's long forgotten. He goes quiet, carefully weighing which of his secrets to give up.
"At this very minute, a hug," he decides out loud.
Sylvain fixes him with a look of disbelief.
"Come again?"
"Y'know, with two arms. Nice big squeeze."
The other boy's confusion slowly breaks into an easy grin. There's something calculating to it. "Huh, didn't think you were so shy. You could've just asked."
"Then it would be my prize and not yours," Claude says, smiling right back.
Sylvain stares a little more, and then snorts out a laugh, holding his arms open and ready to receive him.
"Mmkay. Give me some sugar."
"I didn't say from you, lover boy," Claude groans, though he can't keep down a grin.
Sylvain mimics such an expression of an injured puppy that it's Claude's turn to laugh. The redhead moves in one step closer, brow raising when Claude doesn't pull away. Claude sighs.
"Alright already. I'm bringing it in."
---
He squeezes his arms tentatively around Sylvain's middle and is met in turn with a crushing embrace. (He never realized exactly how strong Sylvain is.) A part of him feels like melting, and the other brittle, like it's ready to snap in its vulnerability. It's not comfortable in the least.
...And it is. Sylvain is ridiculously warm, pressing Claude so closely to him he can all but hear his heart thump steadily under his broad chest. He smells nice too—probably skipped training again today. (When did Claude start keeping track?)
You trying to break my ribs? He wants to say, but he manages to voice nothing at all, arms winding that much tighter around Sylvain. He takes a careful breath, willing himself not to get carried away.
"Good?" Sylvain asks, after a moment. His voice is so close it makes his pulse jitter.
"Perfect," Claude says, letting go.
---
Time passes.
Claude feels a sudden sting on his back, startled as a heavy hand claps between his shoulders. He quickly returns his gaze to ground level, eyes tearing away from the dragon in the sky to—
"—Sylvain."
"Claude."
There's a momentary silence, except for the noise of rent metal and flesh, death and war. More imperial soldiers spill onto the field, numbers seemingly endless. Another section of Garreg Mach crumbles before them.
"Stay alive," Sylvain tells him. But his attention has turned to Dimitri, expression unreadable as he watches the young prince wreak chaos, and Claude knows he won't be seeing either of them again for a long while.
"Yeah. You too."
---
More time passes. Five years until they return to the monastery.
There isn't much opportunity to play boardgames, war and rebuilding exhausting everyone of their time and energy. Claude sleeps among stacks of battle plans and treatises, and Sylvain... Claude doesn't really want to think of where, or with whom he spends the night. He can't afford the distraction. None of them can.
---
He does notice the dormitory rooms between them are now empty. Even more so after Gronder.
Sometimes Claude sees Sylvain hovering in front of Felix's door. Ingrid's. Dimitri's.
---
Eventually, he finds Sylvain standing outside his own room again.
"Tell me what you're really after," Sylvain says. He looks about as tired as Claude feels.
"We haven't played."
"I won your battle."
The words are bitter to swallow, curdling in Claude's gut, and he doesn't need to ask which Sylvain is referring to. He doesn't know how to respond, and Sylvain looks disappointed, turning to leave.
Without thinking, Claude reaches out to catch his arm. He breathes in a little too sharply as Sylvain stops in his tracks, obliging him.
"...I want peace," Claude begins.
A pause.
"Real peace, that goes beyond lines on a map," he finishes. (...Maybe he does believe in fairytales after all.)
He waits for what seems to be an eternity, before Sylvain responds.
"And?"
Again, Claude has no idea what to say to that. To be told to adjust his aim even higher, as if he wasn't already trying to shoot the sun, moon and stars out of orbit.
"...That's not enough?" He asks, not quite understanding the reason for Sylvain's persistence.
"It isn't," Sylvain says quietly. He doesn't seem angry at all, just sad.
Claude instinctively tightens his grip on his arm when he feels him starting to pull away. Sylvain smells musty, like dirt and horsehair and wellworn armor. Like grief, buried under sleepless nights and countless drills.
"I'm sorry," Claude says, letting go.
"Me too," Sylvain replies softly.
---
Claude wins their next chess match, and the one after.
He asks nothing of Sylvain.
He's asked too much already.
---
When the war does end, it does not end kindly.
Claude collapses at the edge of the battlefield next to Sylvain—he's flown as fast as he could to find him, and he knows he was still much too slow.
Blood seeps into the water, so much of it. The Lance of Ruin lays lifeless nearby, its light extinguished.
He carefully cradles Sylvain's head in his lap, running a shaking hand through his matted hair, red stained with red. He's still barely warm under his touch, and Claude can't stop the small noise from escaping his throat when he sees his lashes flutter, brown eyes slowly sliding open.
"Don't make that face," Sylvain murmurs.
Claude nods, biting his lip as he forces a smile, mind reeling through his dwindling options.
Their healers are much too far away. His wyvern is too exhausted to bear the weight of them both, and so is Claude.
"Just... meeting up with old friends." Sylvain coughs, the sound horrific to hear. "'m late."
Claude nods again. Someone is shouting their names, a steady call for the remnants of their forces to regroup. He can barely make out anything at all. He can't bear to lose the sound of Sylvain's voice.
"Stop talking," Claude tells him anyway. Sylvain doesn't listen.
"...Tell me what you want most," he asks for the third time. His voice is barely a whisper, chest rising slower and lower with each passing second.
Claude blinks, and he thinks of his final wish.
If he had made it sooner, would it have been granted?
He presses his hand to Sylvain's face, thumb brushing gently along the crest of his cheek. He bows his head to kiss his lips, the taste soft and bittersweet. He feels Sylvain sigh against his mouth, and it makes his eyes sting.
"What I can't have," Claude answers.