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Caspar doesn't know when he first started to really pay attention to Sylvain. The two of them rarely crossed paths at first, being in different classes and all. Even after they both transferred to the Golden Deer class early on, Caspar didn't even notice him except in passing. He'd picked up on everyone's thoughts about the guy though. Lorenz once called him a floozy while talking to the professor, which led to a very awkward conversation with Dorothea when he asked what it meant. Rumors were always swirling around the monastery about his "escapades" (which is word Caspar think should really be reserved for fighting and other fierce stuff). He'd seen Leonie demolish a training dummy after a particularly irritating conversation with him. None of it really mattered to him at the end of the day. Sylvain was his classmate sure, but Caspar never saw him at the training grounds, was never partnered up with him for anything, so it was like he barely existed.
Maybe he started paying attention after that horrible mission with Sylvain's brother. He couldn't understand why someone would do the things that guy did, and things continued to stay unclear after he watched Miklan knock the lance out of Sylvain's grip to choke him out. Then the monster explosion happened, and Caspar ended up with more questions than answers. Maybe the real thing that made him start to pay attention was the blank look on Sylvain's face after the mission was over that shifted into cheery anytime someone tried to speak to him. It was creepy watching the convincing cheer turn back into apathy whenever he was left alone. Caspar found himself unable to look away from Sylvain after that. The guy was a master at faking things, and it was too confusing to try and figure out the lies from the truth. He was about to give up on trying to puzzle out Sylvain, when the professor suddenly decided to pair the two of them up on a tactics project. Now, Caspar is sitting across from Sylvain in the library with his forehead pressed flat to the wooden table.
"None of this makes any sense," he groans, wishing the professor would just understand he's the kind of guy who works on instinct instead of fancy book tactics. He hears Sylvain try and pass off a laugh as a cough but none of it matters when he's this close to failing tactics. He never should've joined the same class as Claude, who runs laps around the rest of them and only made Caspar look that much worse at thinking.
"You really suck at this, huh," Sylvain teases. Caspar whips his head up to defend his honor, but then remembers that Sylvain isn't exactly wrong.
"I just don't think fighting needs to be this complicated," he groans, "just hit the bad guys and don't get hit yourself, no need for all this fancy stuff."
"That might work for the regular soldier, but if you want to be a good leader this kind of stuff is important." There's an edge to Sylvain's voice that makes Caspar squint to get a closer look at his face. Sylvain isn't looking at him, but is tapping his pen on the blank paper in the center of the table instead.
"You really care about this stuff?" This time it's Sylvain's turn to whip his head up. The two of them hold eye contact for a moment too long to be comfortable before Sylvain's expression shifts into something that makes Caspar wanna punch him and flee.
"I'm going to be the Margrave of a territory at active war, if I don't want all the soldiers under me to die I need to care."
"Honestly dude, I totally forgot about that," Caspar says, scratching the back of his head. For the first time ever, Caspar sees Sylvain genuinely stunned.
"You forgot?" Sylvain repeats back at him. Caspar nods sheepishly and tries to fight off the burning feeling in his face.
"I used to get in trouble for forgetting people's titles all the time as a kid. You'd think getting hit over the head for it enough times would've made me better at it," he laments. Sylvain starts laughing, and Caspar suddenly realizes every other laugh he's ever heard from Sylvain has been fake. He feels something tumbling in circles in his stomach at the sight but he pushes it down.
"I can see that so clearly," Sylvain wheezes in between fits of laughter.
"You're reacting like Lin used to! I swear he would purposefully lead me to important people who I should've known just to get me in trouble! One time I accidentally asked the emperor to show me somewhere in the palace, and my dad made me run laps around the training grounds until midnight!" Caspar winces just remembering how much his legs had hurt after that, and Sylvain's laughing fit finally subsides.
"My dad used to make me run laps around the whole estate in the snow if he thought I was slacking," Sylvain says, nodding his head in painful solidarity.
"You get it, man!" Caspar cheers, pumping a fist up in the air. "Lin used to give me the weirdest looks anytime I brought stuff like that up."
"Nah I totally understand," Sylvain says, eyes weirdly light.
"Hey you should totally come spar with me sometime! I bet you could keep up with me pretty well!"
"Yeah sure, I'd be down," he responds even though his face is twisted in mild disgust.
"I'm useless with a lance, but I could teach you how to swing around an axe! Or brawl! You've got the right hands for it for sure. If you hit a bad guy with the one-two combo I bet you could knock 'em flat on their ass!"
"That's not the usual way my hands take someone down but I'm sure I could make it work," Sylvain says with a smirk.
"I thought you normally used a lance?" Caspar says as he tilts his head to the side in confusion. Sylvain reaches over and ruffles a hand through his hair, and Caspar finds himself rooted to the spot with a feeling he's unfamiliar with.
"Never change, Caspar," Sylvain says, weirdly sincere.
"I have no plans to!"