ʷʰᶦˢᵖᵉʳ .

“I could totally do it!”

Please post it up on the bulletin board so we can organise the seats

“Aw come on!”

oh, that’s right. that…that would make three times this week alone if he were to hurt himself by…. well, being himself. quite a difficult predicament he finds himself in, halfway out the window to climb to the building’s roof──torn between his impulse, and common sense. the sharp  &  cutting stare of their daring professor is more than enough to make him decide what it is he’ll do.

          ❝  okay, okay! sheesh! quit lookin’ at me like that, professor.i’ll behave, and i won’t backflip off the roof.  ❞

          @ claude / 'i read the rules before i break them.' 

there it is──that vulpine grin,  (  the witty fox, masquerading as the majestic deer; a wolf in sheep’s skin  )  clear  &  cleanly cut, albeit, hung so crookedly ‘pon his lips. hand crooked on his hip, weight shifted just so to lean toward byleth &  give him a gentle nudge with his elbow. had claude been caught in one of his many acts  &  tricks? oh, absolutely──and entirely on purpose. he knows better than to think he can escape that man’s sharp stare. not with these harmless little pranks. still does he take the short lecture in stride, never more bothered by it than by the distasteful words of others.

           ❝  OH?  you actually read the rules, professor  '  i considered letting my house leader poison the other classes before the battle of the eagle  &  lion  ‘  ? that’s rich. but you’re the teach, teach. i’ll behave. don’t got to tell me twice.  ❞

                  @ claude / ' nothing scares me anymore. '

at first──at that very first meeting, when one could not tell what lay beneath the fathomless depths of that mercenary’s mind, that was so. little for words, little for small talk. he seemed to be going through the motion  autonomously, rather than as a human. it was difficult to gauge what kind of person their newly appointed professor was. offhanded jokes out of earshot aside, there was one thing that claude thought he had known for certain about him──fear was not something he wrestled with.

and he  isn’t sure how to handle it; hearing that. himself, not having lost a parent─lost anyone, in the same way that byleth had. he doesn’t know how to react to the waves of grief that came  &  went. does he let him be?  (  to back out the door now, never to answer for his late night stroll ; to never address the downpour of emotion that weighed so heavily on the man’s shoulders  )  does he put a hand on his shoulder, offer the same condolences as all others have before him? claude does neither. he does nothing, save for sit beside byleth. an arm drawn ‘cross shoulders, and claude simply lets him weep.

                          ‘  it’s okay,  ‘                  he would otherwise desire to say,                 fully aware that it is, in fact,  not okay.

and it’s as if he knows──knows, like he knows everything going on around him. with that icy stare  &  unchanging expression cutting through all hilda’s excuses  &  all claude’s jests, oh, byleth knows what claude wishes to say. and those words, so hollow  &  deprived of life─how he feels his heart sink at hearing them. only then does it sink in, that idea. the mere concept of byleth knowing what fear even meant; that he ever fought tooth  &  nail with himself over it. that he was  human, and not some  feral beast  (  a demon; something worth fearing  )  that cut through bandits without a second thought before his class.

his own reply  does not flow as quickly as his quips  &  snipes. it comes without the lightheartedness so carefully hung in his speech. his voice─soft. thoughtful. he takes his time in stringing his words together to the best of his ability, and when claude mulls over them long enough, does he speak;

          ❝  i think we both know that isn’t true, teach. you don’t have to say something like that for anyone’s sake. it’s what makes us human, and that’s okay.  ❞

I'M MORE CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR NAME CHOICES