Work Text:
Dimitri stared down at the mangled training lance, loosely holding it in one hand as he lightly traced the splintered lines of damage with the other, losing himself to his thoughts in the lull of the gentle, repeated motion. His strength had long ceased to either surprise or confound him, but rather it served as an omnipresent reminder of his one purpose, his best and only true asset. Nothing he earned, no; just a favorable fluke of inherited blood. But nothing so empty as a title, so poorly fitted as a crown. Everything else aside, Dimitri did not doubt his ability to carve out a future in battle, one of bloodshed or brutality.
Still, off the battlefield, his tendency toward unintentional destruction chafed against Dimitri’s natural inclination to move through the world evenly, undisturbed, and—though not possible, given his position—unnoticed. If he could move through each day like the swing of a lance during a training set, the same motions practiced again and again, muscle memory worn into the body like lines in stone, then he would, never straying, never faltering from his own set path. Encountering no surprises, no pain that was not predestined and predetermined, consented to through the decision to return to the opening stance and repeat the motions once again.
Dimitri sighed, cutting off his useless, wandering rumination. He could not even get his lance through such actual exercises unscathed, much less himself through such a worn and frivolous metaphor. He exhaled a quick breath of air, not quite the huff of a laugh, not quite anything at all, thinking derisively my own path. What nonsense. When he stripped everything else aside, Dimitri knew exactly where his end lay; it hardly mattered which trail he stumbled along to get there.
It was not his own fortitude that rallied him and pulled him away from such thoughts, but rather the lively wave of a tanned hand between Dimitri’s eye line and his lance. Dimitri trailed his gaze from that hand up the loose sleeve of a uniform, past yellow cape and open collar, before finally alighting on its owner’s face, Claude’s smile and eyes dancing in their own kind of greeting.
“Hey there, Your Princeliness,” Claude began, before tapping lightly on the lance still delicately housed in Dimitri’s grip. He seemed to be getting a better sense of the damage as his eyes darted along the fractures of splintered wood before they jumped back to Dimitri’s face. He let out a low whistle. “You know, Raphael mentioned something about you snapping weapons completely by accident before, but I didn’t quite believe him. To be fair, though, he said it was a steel lance.”
“It was silver,” Dimitri replied absently, recalling the incident in question with a slight frown. Raphael had been thrilled by Dimitri’s display of strength, following him to the dining hall afterwards and pressing for a detailed account of his training routine, obstinate in replicating Dimitri’s prowess even after Dimitri’s stilted explanation of the effects of his crest.
Dimitri shook his head, dismissing the memory with a bit of fondness—Raphael was so achingly kind, so effortlessly agreeable—before realizing exactly how his words sounded.
“Ah, my apologies. I did not mean to… boast,” Dimitri decided, reflexively shying away from the word but unsure of another that fit better. “Stress or shock can be a… compounding factor, concerning the difficulties controlling my strength. And Raphael had been moving more quietly than I would have known to give him credit for.”
Dimitri quirked his lips at his words, and then immediately grimaced. Was that too jeering, too unkind? Especially when Raphael had been so friendly, and he was not even here to defend himself.
Luckily, Claude saved Dimitri from any turn toward introspection with his own startled huff of laughter. “No kidding? You must have really been out of it, then. Raphael and quietly are not two words I’ve ever thought to string together.”
True enough, Dimitri thought; he had been rather distracted that day. Tired, lost in thought, feeling… ephemeral and hardly present at all, as seemed to be increasingly the case as the year wore on.
“Still…” Claude continued, as though their little detour had never occurred. He tapped lightly on the splintered wood and then a bit harder, using his whole fist to knock against it. It creaked, but the pieces held together. Claude flashed him a lopsided sort of smile, showcasing that strangely delighted gleam his eyes got when he encountered something he didn’t quite expect. “This is rather impressive all on its own.”
Dimitri could not say what motivated his next actions, why he would think to do such a thing. Truly, if pressed, he’d say he must have hardly been thinking at all. But he flexed his hand around the weapon, and the lance snapped clean in half, following the fault lines that Dimitri’s previous careless actions had written its fate within.
Now, he supposed, he was just following through on that carelessness to an absurd degree, its inevitable conclusion. Just senseless, pointless destruction.
Claude’s eyes widened, and his grin slid towards coy, teasing, but as though Dimitri was allowed in on the joke, as though they shared it together.
“Ha! Why even bother with a lance? I feel like you should probably just jump straight to brawling,” Claude suggested, before grabbing the two lance pieces and examining them more carefully. “Surely, you would at least save yourself the bill on weapon’s maintenance.”
“Well…” Dimitri began, not sure if it was one of Claude’s questions that was designed to solicit an actual response or secure his own excuse to continue talking. Claude was… rather fond of the latter, Dimitri had noticed. “As I’m sure you know, the hero’s relic of house Blaiddyd is a lance, so all crested heirs are guided in that direction regardless…
“For me personally, I suppose, I simply enjoy the specific form of repetition it promotes. Closer quarters breed a more chaotic combat atmosphere, but the lance’s primary benefit is in its reach. That creates its own sort of versatility, wouldn’t you say? In its reliability against so many other close-range weapons? Though perhaps you don’t find that answer particularly exciting.”
Claude shrugged, not a disagreement but an evasion. “I’m an archer. How could I think to judge? You’re getting closer than I ever like to.”
“You’re not so bad with a sword, if I recall.”
“Neither are you.” Claude’s gaze was even, smile reduced in tandem with the loquaciousness of their talk, but not wholly vanished still. “How about we split the difference, then? Both pick up a sword and give it our best go?”
Dimitri sidestepped the observation that two swords were hardly the result of the difference between a bow and a lance, working under the assumption that he understood the sentiment that Claude hid behind a mixed meaning. This was another thing Dimitri had noticed about Claude: he often chose the longest, the most turbulent way to navigate around toward a point, picking and choosing his degree of verbal opacity based on rules Dimitri was helpless to infer or understand.
Moving on, Dimitri focused on the question at hand. “You wish to… spar?” He pressed his lips together, faintly, unsure. “With me?”
Claude raised his eyebrows. “That a problem?”
Dimitri bit his tongue to hold back his first response, it’s strange enough to warrant scrutiny, and then his second, I hardly ever see you here even with those you are more inclined to pass the time with, as well. He shifted his stance and rested both hands on his hips to dissipate the thoughts further, concealing the unfavorable judgment to the best of his ability. He studied Claude for a moment, not bothering to attempt to hide it. Claude stared back, affably unreadable.
“No, it’s not.” Dimitri decided. He smiled, small and anticipatory. “Pick your weapon.”
They both made their way over to the weapons rack, studying the options before them. Dimitri was deep in thought between two different steel swords he found acceptable for sparring when Claude tapped his arm, light and casual.
“Highness,” he said, before holding up two wooden training swords. “I’d prefer to keep myself in one piece, yeah? No bisection before the third date and all that, you know?”
Dimitri flushed, deep and quick, partially in embarrassment and partially in shame. For a moment, he felt so caught out, it almost made him dizzy, like staring at the sun after a long bout of exercise.
He and Felix always sparred with real weapons, and always until first blood.
“Of course,” Dimitri said, biting his tongue to keep from explaining, or apologizing, or any other instinctual response that only added to the familiar, suffocating mortification that came with reading a situation all wrong, with no notion that his instincts had even been incorrect. Not until he was enlightened through the reliable exposure of his own foolishness—his second shadow, which clung to him with even more loyalty than the first.
Claude just tilted his head as he continued to smile, not commenting further. He handed Dimitri one of the swords—the slightly larger, longer one—and then made his way to the far side of the training grounds with his own.
Dimitri watched as Claude began a light series of warm up exercises, beginning with some stretches and then circling through a few practiced sets of training maneuvers with the sword. Dimitri followed his example, frowning at the weight of the blade, the balance. It felt like a child’s toy.
Dimitri’s mind wandered as he familiarized himself with the weapon and gradually re-attuned his body to the muscle memory associated with the sword rather than the lance. While he esteemed the lance as his personal weapon of choice, the sword was the first and favored weapon of all children of Faerghus, and he was hardly an exception.
Absently, Dimitri noted that he and Claude were somehow alone in the training yard, unusual but not impossible. Dimitri vaguely remembered Felix leaving soon after Claude had appeared, grumbling about something or another as he left. Odd if only because he typically liked to be more pointed when implying that it was Dimitri’s presence which had soured a location for him.
The thought alone was exhausting, so Dimitri quickly pushed past it as he worked his way through a set of familiar drills. Eventually, he looked over to Claude, who returned his gaze instantly and nodded toward the side of the yard partially cast in shadow.
Dimitri stood across from Claude, readying his stance, feeling a bit… odd. Claude had removed his long, loose uniform coat, leaving only a fitted, long-sleeved yellow shirt in its wake. Dimitri resisted the urge to make a face; the combination seemed a little much for the weather this time of year, but Dimitri had noticed Claude’s apparent sensitivity to the cold, not unusual for those from Adrestia or the farthest parts of the Alliance. All things considered, Dimitri thought, looking down at his gloves where the leather creased, and then adjusting his posture as his pauldrons shifted against his own tunic, he hardly found himself in a favorable position for passing judgment.
Still, Claude was… smaller than Dimitri realized, narrow and wiry. Dimitri knew that size alone could hardly predict strength or battle mettle; his own slighter form compared to Raphael or Dedue served as proof enough of that (or even that gregarious Golden Deer girl, Hilda, who Dimitri had more than once watched swing an axe the size of her body with arms visually more suited to the assumption that she hardly ever lifted anything at all). But still, it was distracting: the line of Claude’s figure, the usually hidden taper of his waist, the lithe line of his shoulders, so different from Dimitri’s own.
Dimitri blinked, trying to push away his wandering thoughts without telegraphing the need to do so. He returned his eyes to Claude, who appeared to be waiting patiently for Dimitri to give him the signal that they could begin. Dimitri was not fond of calling matches; he knew he had unfair notions of exactly when it was appropriate to stop.
Still, he nodded at Claude as he relaxed completely into his own stance, letting him know without words that they were ready. Dimitri tried not to grimace at the form Claude took—too loose, too open—tempering the judgment with the knowledge that Claude would be speedy, no doubt, and light on his feet.
At Dimitri’s nod, Claude confirmed his initial assumption, pushing forward, whip quick, making first strike.
Their swords met, and the dance began. Claude was alert, spirited, and eager to make use of an opening or cleverly caper around Dimitri to create one if such an exploit did not present itself naturally.
Claude fought like he did anything else, grinning like he wasn’t thinking about it, but his deliberate, measured advances as he assumed the offensive position belied his apparent lack of care.
For some reason, as they circled around, Dimitri’s eyes caught the empty training yard again, and he frowned slightly at the oddness that they were still here alone. Certainly, Ingrid would be coming by at this time of day…? Would she drag along Sylvain, who would sigh and complain, but run drills with her all the same? And shouldn’t Mercedes be here, practicing for her certification exam? Perhaps, as her house leader, he should consider—
Dimitri parried a poorly telegraphed jab from Claude, forcing himself back to the moment. He jumped back and circled around Claude, thinking to get a feel for any tics or tells in Claude’s movements as he acted the lead in their fight. If Claude wanted to take the offense, it was best to just let him do so until he got sloppy, and Dimitri could disarm him cleanly.
Still, even with his plan in mind, Dimitri’s thoughts somehow drifted again, and he caught himself tensing in a muted dread as the details of their upcoming mission surfaced from the back of his mind and into the sparring ring—a place they certainly didn’t belong. The year had started poorly with a bandit attack and, as the moons passed, seemed only to be headed for worse still. What strange or miserable horrors would confront them on their next excursion? The thought left him aching, physically tired, and poorly prepared for Claude’s next insistent push forward.
Dimitri berated himself; such thoughtlessness left him continuously open to Claude’s more aggressive attacks and forced him to remain completely on the defense. They both were already sweaty, breathing rapidly, halfway down the training yard from where they started, and with hardly anything to show for it.
They continued on like that for a few minutes, Dimitri oddly absent from his own body, especially as physical exertion was one of the few activities he truly felt really present for. Still, his constant training served him regardless, and a particularly sloppy swing from Claude was all he needed to end the fight.
Claude held both hands up innocently with his sword on the ground across the yard, but as Dimitri stared into his flat green eyes and empty smile, he could only scoff.
“What was that?” Dimitri asked, curt. Rude. Already an accusation rather than a discussion.
“What do you mean?” Because Claude was not wont to give ground until he knew exactly where he was standing.
“Were you even trying?” Dimitri pressed forward, thinking of how poorly coordinated Claude’s final attack had been, how lacking in his natural grace. “Do you just—what? Throw fights so you don’t have to worry about confronting the reality of actually losing?”
Claude had dropped his hands and—for once, Dimitri thought, almost unkind—the smile as well. His expression was pinched, lips pressed together, approaching something like actual annoyance. An emotion Dimitri had seen only sparsely from Claude.
Once directed toward Lorenz after a particularly detailed account of the trials of noble courting; the Gloucester heir had hardly seemed to notice the subtle ire he drew. And then again at Seteth after he kicked Dimitri and Claude both out of the library far too late one night. Seteth, who certainly could not have helped but to have noticed Claude’s particular brand of casual insolence, had sent them along without comment, even as he watched with obvious displeasure the giddy looks and nervous energy shared between the pair, as two teenagers united together against a common authoritative presence, even one as harmless as the library curfew.
“And you, Prince?” Claude shot back, raising his eyebrows as a taunt. Or a challenge. “It’s hardly throwing the fight if your opponent is barely there at all anyways. Wherever your head is, it’s not here with me.”
Shame burned inside Dimitri. Claude was right, and Dimitri held no grounds to argue otherwise. How presumptuous of him, this whole conversation. How endlessly foolish.
“I’m sorry, Claude,” Dimitri said, eyes on the ground. He looked up through his bangs, a bad habit, but his only line of defense. He grimaced in further apology. “I can hardly accuse you of not giving an honest effort when I have not done so myself.”
“Well, Your Royalness,” Claude replied, walking to where his sword lay on the ground and picking it up. “Because I’m so generous, all is forgiven.” He then raised his sword, a jaunty sort of cockiness as he pointed it in Dimitri’s direction. “Again, then? No holding back?”
“I don’t know that I can agree to so much as that, Claude.” Dimitri shook his head, trying to muster up his own smile. “It is as you said: I’d prefer we keep you in one piece.” A beat. “At least for the time being.”
Claude’s eyes widened, and then he laughed, head thrown back. “That confident, huh? Okay, well, then how’s this? Maybe don’t fight like your honor’s on the line with each swing, yeah? No need to be so stiff, so mechanical. Let your hair down a bit, you know? I’d love to see your hands a little dirty, Princeling.”
You wouldn’t, Dimitri thought. You wouldn’t want to look at me at all.
“Perhaps I can… agree to that much,” Dimitri allowed instead, moving back into his sparring stance as he spoke.
Claude followed Dimitri’s cue, returning to form as well. It was still too open, in Dimitri’s opinion, and oddly loose, but it looked more calculated—deliberate—and this, more than anything, narrowed Dimitri’s mind down to nothing but the match ahead.
This time, Dimitri swung first.
Claude, somehow, reacted even quicker than before. If their sparring amounted to some sort of strange dance, then they had switched roles. Claude flitted around and about Dimitri’s attacks, never making his own move, no, but not getting caught out, either.
Dimitri knew he couldn’t linger. He was tired, worn out from lack of sleep and hours of training before Claude even appeared. He ran the risk of getting sloppy, leaving himself open, and he had no desire to organically succumb to a defeat that Claude had manufactured for himself on a whim.
“Come on, Highness. Put your back into it, yeah? I’m barely even trying here,” Claude taunted, light, meaningless, no weight behind the words. He did it purely because he knew it annoyed Dimitri, senseless talk when all effort should be put to the fight itself. “And why not drop a smile or two while you’re at it? You’re looking rather stern, too severe. It messes with your natural good looks.”
Dimitri stuttered, stumbling slightly, embarrassed and awkward that this, of all Claude’s meaningless teasing, was what managed to provoke a reaction. Claude jumped forward for the first time, and Dimitri barely avoided a nasty jab to the stomach as a result.
“Hm, that didn’t quite do the trick, did it? Maybe I need more details. Specifics,” Claude mused, sounding somehow breathless and completely relaxed at once. “It’d help if you’d shed some of those layers and gave me more material to work with, of course.”
Dimitri gritted his teeth against both the words and the reverberation of blocking Claude’s next punishing swing, letting out a low, warning, “Claude,” as his only response.
Claude’s eyes danced with his feet, and they were fighting harder but more gracefully, meeting each other in a way that felt natural, equal… fun, like deciphering a secret code. Like the spar itself was merely pretense for the enjoyment that flowed easy and open between them each time their swords met.
But eventually, it had to end. One of them would get the upper hand, find the perfect opening. Claude seemed to do just that, finding himself in a position to forcefully swing his sword right at Dimitri’s neck, putting his entire weight behind the motion. Quickly, sloppily, Dimitri brought his own blade up to block the strike, gripping the hilt and blade together in a fumbled version of a move he had watched Felix perform expertly once before.
He overshot his strength, overcompensated for Claude’s own, and that was it. The wooden sword snapped in two, and defeat was inevitable with only half a weapon.
Claude seemed to think the same, and something about his triumphant smirk caused Dimitri to lunge, quick and reckless, elbowing Claude in the chest and knocking the air out of his lungs. Dimitri stepped in closer, forcing Claude to fumble and drop his sword, to grab on to Dimitri or risk falling backwards into the dirt.
Following the natural momentum of his charge, Dimitri pressed closer to Claude and held the broken halves of his sword against Claude’s neck. The jagged edge of one peeked up from the hilt behind his head while the flat length of the other pressed perpendicular to Claude’s throat. It was not a position he could have forced with a steel sword, gripping the blade in such a way, but the dull edge of the training weapon acted as the perfect line to deter crossing. And, well. Claude had insisted on the training weapons.
Claude, clutching on to the front of Dimitri’s uniform for balance, lest he fall into Dimitri’s sword one way or push himself up into it from the other, looked hardly bothered by the position.
“Caught me!” he said, more like a taunt than an admission. And then—
Dimitri was not entirely sure what happened then. Claude took a step back, jerky and forceful, using Dimitri and his own overbalanced position to cause them both to stumble. Then, he ducked left, under Dimitri’s arm, grabbing it as he went, and spun them both as they fell to the ground.
A second or two at most, and their positions were completely reversed. Worse, if Dimitri considered Claude’s weight against his chest after he scrambled to stabilize his position combined with Dimitri’s weapons both lost in the maneuver—one dropped in surprise, and the other twisted painfully out of his grasp in the scuffle when they hit the dirt.
Claude’s victorious grin, Dimitri allowed in his own mind, seemed more honest than Claude usually liked to show, if only in its self-satisfaction. Dimitri squinted up at Claude, hardly able to make out the other boy above him as he was backlit by the setting sun. But it hardly mattered; truly, even as just an outline against the fading sky, Claude was beautiful.
Then, Dimitri relaxed his entire body, closing his eyes briefly before opening them again and giving Claude his own small, closed mouth smile.
Sensing Dimitri’s admission, Claude relaxed himself, leaning over more heavily to say, “Now, wasn’t that a bit more fun—”
But Dimitri was already moving before Claude could finish his—too cheeky, in Dimitri’s opinion—question, tensing up and flipping them as quickly as he could. Dimitri knew, deep in his bones, it was the type of subterfuge he would only be capable of getting past Claude once, and only immediately as it came to him—any drawn-out game of light and shadow between them was sure to land in the other’s favor.
There was a momentary scuffle, Claude’s limbs flailing as he gave as good as he got, but when they settled again, the roles reversed a second time. Dimitri did his best to imitate Claude’s own playful, winning smile—though he held no illusions that it approached as effortlessly light, as coyly attractive—and then nodded in belated answer to Claude’s remark.
“I must admit, Claude,” Dimitri said conspiratorially, “you were right. This was quite enjoyable.”
“Sneaky, sneaky, Prince. You’re worse than they give you credit for.” Claude seemed almost delighted by his position, hips trapped between Dimitri’s knees and wrists fixed against the ground under Dimitri’s hands.
Dimitri held himself carefully now, deliberately, despite Claude’s earlier suggestion to relax, let his hair down. He was cautious in how his gloved fingers met the skin of Claude’s wrists—soft, if he had to guess, as there would be no way to know. Even more mindful with his weight settled across Claude’s waist, as the strength of his thighs was not something he often found himself needing to moderate. For some reason, the thought almost made him blush.
Claude just stared at him, patient for Dimitri’s response—his next move.
“Well, Claude. You have risked all in your gambit, and this is what you have to show for it,” Dimitri said, flexing his hands where they had Claude’s wrists pinned to the dirt ground of the training yard. He used no force, no pressure, and theoretically Claude could break himself free at any moment. Dimitri leveraged his weight alone to keep Claude beneath him.
“Quite… the predicament…” Claude replied, breathless from the fight, cheeks red from exertion. His eyes darted up to Dimitri’s own, then lowered slightly, and then up again, perhaps fully considering his position.
“I am told I can be quite severe,” Dimitri said, a parrot of Claude’s earlier words, “too stern, even. I suppose that disqualifies me from a disposition favoring leniency. Though, perhaps that silver tongue of yours can still guide you out of this yet.”
Claude’s eyes widened at Dimitri’s words, before he gave a nervous, airy sort of laugh. “Your Princeliness…”
“Ah,” Dimitri cut him off again, unsure exactly what had gotten into himself. He felt winded, lightheaded, like he had just finished a dozen bouts instead of the one. “You have challenged me, have you not, Claude? Surely you are familiar with the rules of such a duel. Do I not demand some sort of satisfaction as recompense? For such a slight upon my honor?”
Nonsense, he was talking complete and utter nonsense. Dimitri would almost certainly think to be embarrassed, if he could think anything coherent at all. For a brief, feverishly humiliating moment, Dimitri imagined Sylvain overhearing such talk from him, and he knew with absolute certainty he would never then know peace, never be allowed to live such a discovery down. Small mercies, Dimitri thought, a little hysterically, staring at Claude’s lips.
“What—” Claude stopped, licked his lips. Dimitri tracked the movement with his eyes. (Was Claude—did Claude wear some sort of lip balm? Is that why they seemed so—) Claude tilted his head up slightly, guiding Dimitri’s eyes along with the movement, bringing their gazes together to meet. “What would you… demand, Your Highness?”
“My name, Claude,” Dimitri confessed, softer than before. Leaned down closer so he could speak softer still, hold Claude’s lidded eyes as if that could carry his command to fruition. “Call me by my name.”
Claude did not.
Rather, he surged up so quickly Dimitri thought he sought to change the delicate outcome of their spar once again, and he found himself momentarily stunned by Claude’s audacity, his enduring fighting spirit.
Instead, Dimitri felt slim arms wind clumsily around his neck as Claude’s mouth met the corner of his own, a rare sign of less than perfect accuracy from the Golden Deer’s most celebrated bowman.
Claude, always quick to adjust, tilted his head just slightly and slotted his mouth against Dimitri’s proper; easy, so easy, as if it required of him no deliberation at all.
Dimitri tensed, surprised, uncertain, but when Claude made to pull back, Dimitri followed him down to the ground, refusing to let their lips part, not even when the force of his enthusiasm made him overcompensate, nearly toppling himself over Claude rather than moving in tandem with him.
Only briefly, only due to a need for air, did Dimitri consider parting, and he took the opportunity to simultaneously open his eyes to stare in a thrilled sort of wonder into Claude’s own. Claude’s eyes, usually a cool, green glass, smoldered darkly, and Dimitri felt as though he could see the warmth that coated his throat and traveled down into his stomach mirrored back at him through Claude’s own heated gaze.
Claude was not… unaffected by him. By Dimitri. And the thought alone was so gratifying Dimitri was unsure what to do with it, or the way it made it feel as if his whole body glowed alight.
“I…” Claude began. Laughed a little, and then continued, “That got away from me, a bit.”
“Can I kiss you again?” Dimitri asked instead of answering, bypassing his own embarrassment—and Claude’s, if Dimitri could trust himself to read the scrunch of his nose and his suddenly deepened flush. He flickered his eyes down to Claude’s lips and back up again, a nonverbal repetition of his question.
Claude only nodded, and Dimitri echoed the motion before leaning back down, keeping Claude’s eyes locked to his own. Then, so close he felt Claude’s soft, warm sigh against his own exhale, he paused, considerate.
Carefully, as carefully as he knew how, Dimitri swiftly rolled them both over. He kept them connected as he shifted their position, settling Claude astride his waist with his wrists still held steady in Dimitri’s grip. The force of their movement sent Claude toppling forward, and he braced himself on Dimitri’s raised wrists as he hovered over Dimitri, their positions now an almost perfectly inverted parallel to before.
Rather than say anything, Claude pushed Dimitri’s wrists down to the ground, vaguely placing them in the space above Dimitri’s own head. In the same motion, he slid his own hands up Dimitri’s wrists to lace their fingers together, ignoring the awkward bulkiness of Dimitri’s gloves and gauntlets to press their palms into one another. The position left Dimitri feeling exposed, terribly open, and as though any moment longer spent without kissing Claude would be a moment too long, too unbearable to endure.
Still, as Claude moved to close the gap between them, Dimitri whispered, feeling some need to explain, “This—I will have to be less careful, this way. With my strength. I—” Dimitri paused. Licked his own dry lips, and then wondered hopelessly if that was something unattractive to Claude. “I would not want to hurt you, Claude.”
“We’re in agreement there,” Claude said against Dimitri’s lips, the words unfairly attractive for their lack of substance, a coy wit present in tone rather than meaning conveyed.
“Yes, of course,” Dimitri replied, just as immaterial, ephemeral, and then he closed the minuscule remaining distance himself.
Claude’s lips were soft but firm, no hesitation in his movement or the way he pressed down further against Dimitri and gripped his hands tighter.
He opened his mouth gently, coaxing Dimitri to do the same, and Dimitri had a giddy, delirious moment where he could think nothing but by the goddess above, I’m not going to make it out of this alive.
Claude pressed down with his full upper body, leveraging himself against Dimitri in a way that would probably be painful to anyone else. Instead, Dimitri pushed back, bracing Claude’s weight against his own hands so he could reach up, reach out, stay connected at the palm while attempting to bring his hands to Claude’s face.
Claude laughed against his mouth, somehow both fond and coy, said, “Can I have my hands back, Dimitri?”
But Dimitri could think of nothing but how he felt Claude’s words before he heard them, transmitted through the working of Claude’s jaw, Claude’s hands pressed between his own face and Dimitri’s fingers, Dimitri’s palms just large enough that he could cradle Claude’s face as he kept Claude’s hands in his own.
Belatedly, Claude’s question caught up to Dimitri, and he frowned in embarrassment, the movement lost with Claude’s mouth still held so close, swallowed up in the space between them.
He pulled back just slightly. “I suppose,” Dimitri relented before letting go of Claude’s face and then hands in one motion, allowing Claude the opportunity to find his own balance, and then returning his palms to Claude’s face just as quickly, fingers brushing up and past the edges of his hairline. Carefully, so as not to catch any strands in his gauntlets.
He fantasized, briefly, of removing his vambraces, pulling off his gauntlets, and then slowly, slowly peeling back his gloves, pressing his bare hands into Claude’s face and feeling its soft warmth, free of all barriers. But Dimitri crushed the desire as soon as he comprehended it, as if thinking to ask was the same as assuring a no. And he suddenly felt stupid, needy and vulnerable and rejected in a way that didn’t make sense, that didn’t align with Claude still hovered over him, breath dancing against Dimitri’s lips. Dimitri closed his eyes, squeezed too tight.
“Dimitri,” Claude whispered, bringing his hands up to cover Dimitri’s own, inverting their hold from just a minute before. “Stay with me, yeah? Don’t go anywhere.”
Dimitri nodded, allowing Claude to guide his face to meet his mouth once more. He tried to heed Claude’s request, breathing out through his nose as he opened his mouth, clearing his mind and focusing on nothing but sensation.
Claude’s face under Dimitri’s palms, the back of Dimitri’s hands under Claude’s own. Mouths pressed together, and Dimitri licked into Claude’s mouth just to try it, jolting pleasantly at their shared startled noise in response. Claude, if possible, pressed himself even closer, letting go of Dimitri’s hands to grab his face, thumbs stroking across his cheekbones as he did so.
It startled him, Claude’s skin against his own, even with their mouths pressed together, their bodies hardly distinguishable from each other. And it was… pleasant, endearingly so, a grounding sensory experience that overshadowed even their mingled breaths, their chests pressed close together, Claude’s hips just above his own. When was the last time someone touched his face? Slowly carded fingers through his hair? Dimitri couldn’t remember, had no desire to try. Forced himself away from the thought and back to Claude’s touch, that same repeated motion still tracing soothing lines across Dimitri’s skin.
Dimitri then lifted his leg and braced his foot into the ground, trying to get closer and bury himself entirely in the various points of contact. The movement unintentionally pushed his hips up and into Claude, pressing his arousal into something that couldn’t conceivably be interpreted as anything but shared desire from Claude as well.
They both froze instantly.
“Maybe we should—” Claude began.
“—go somewhere else,” Dimitri finished, and then stuttered, horrified, at Claude’s widening eyes and slack jawed surprise. Instantly, Dimitri realized just how far off base he had been, again . How mortifyingly eager he exposed himself as. But Claude spoke before Dimitri could even think of how to salvage the situation in the face of his own overenthusiasm, his own poor judgment.
“I—yeah. I, let’s, uh. Yeah, let’s go,” Claude got out, his fingers still pressed to Dimitri’s face. Claude snorted inelegantly at his own ineloquence, and then smiling in a sort of helpless silence that made Dimitri laugh, lightly, a sound that felt wholly unlike himself. He caught Claude’s eyes. They shared a small smile together, lost in the giddy, silly surrealism of the present moment. After a few seconds of stillness, Claude repeated, as if confirming for them both, “Let’s go.”
Dimitri nodded, and Claude wasted no time in clambering up off of Dimitri, offering his hand to help Dimitri rise as well. Dimitri grimaced slightly as he looked down to inspect his own appearance, uniform wrecked and covered in dirt and wrinkles. He attempted to adjust his tunic to better save himself any embarrassment walking back to… his room? …Claude’s room? …How exactly were they meant to decide? Just the added dimension of a new location created so many extra decisions, so much unnecessary uncertainty. For a fleeting moment, Dimitri looked back favorably at the ground.
Belatedly, Dimitri considered resettling his house leader's cape to give himself some extra… coverage, but that seemed almost a more humiliating prospect itself: the thought that anyone who he passed would know exactly what he was doing, what he was hiding.
Growing lost in his demoralizing considerations, Dimitri’s eyes drifted, and he noticed his broken training sword on the ground along with the pieces that had splintered off during the spar. He bent over, picking up the two halves before working on locating all the variously sized splinters of wood that had fallen around the yard with their movement.
“Dimitri.” Claude said from behind him, sounding vaguely incredulous. “What are you doing?”
“We can hardly just leave our mess here, Claude,” words given back in the same tone offered. “Especially given—as I’m sure you know—Raphael and Caspar like to hold their… brawling training… here early in the mornings.”
“Oh my gods.” Claude sounded as though he no longer understood the conversation he was having. “Are you talking about when they strip down to their underclothes and just start rolling around on the ground? Caspar and Raphael. In their underwear. In the dirt,” Claude’s tone somehow grew more disbelieving, more provocative with each pointed phrase. “You’re not talking about that, right? When you just had your tongue down my throat? You’re not actually making me think about Caspar in his underwear right now? Right?”
“I was worried they might…” Dimitri deflated, defeated by his own inability to prepare for such a string of words being put together and then subsequently used against him. Dimitri finished his statement with his head practically hung in shame. “…get splinters.”
“Saints, Dimitri,” Claude said, all provocation gone, laughing brightly, like flowing water in the sun. The sound made Dimitri smile minutely yet reflexively, though his cheeks still burned with a dull embarrassment. Claude grabbed Dimitri’s hand at the wrist. “You’re something else entirely, you know that? We’ll come back later. Now come on.”
For a few steps, Claude pulled Dimitri along by his wrist, before using an extra forceful tug on Dimitri’s arm to bring them closer and realign their palms against one another, allowing him to lace their fingers together once more. Still mirthful, he guided Dimitri away from the mess—that they would come back for, Dimitri assured in his mind, and perhaps he should even procure a broom…?—Still tugging, Claude guided him away from the training grounds, towards the dorms, hands linked all the way. They reached the top of the stairs and paused, Dimitri stumbling slightly and into Claude when the stop occurred more suddenly that he expected.
Claude looked over, expression soft, something that could almost be called shy. “So, um, your room… or mine?”