I was doing warmup sketches and suddenly a golden deer appeared

I see this happening in the first mock battle when he’s like “looks like I’ll have to take this seriously” cuz OOF I’d get riled up getting beat up by Byleth too

cover i made for the FE3H chess-themed @divinepulsezine ♟️✨ interest checks are live!

Claude from Fire Emblem Three houses

Claude, Oblivious

Thanks for the support as always, @xpegasusuniverse! This one was so much fun to write, I hope you like it!

Summary: Byleth was someone that was liked by everybody. That was basically a fact at that point in Garreg Mach Monastery. But was there someone whom the Profesor liked more than the rest…? Someone who could do… things to him? After witnessing something best hidden, Claude has to find out, one way or the other.

Commission info HERE and HERE!

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There was a place at Garreg Mach Monastery that was mostly old people’s business.

One would perhaps think ‘the Church at morning mass!’ or ‘the evening choir’, but they would be wrong.

The place where old folks gathered like moths was none other than the sauna.

Yes. The sauna.

Most of the time, it was populated by old nuns and priests who came to relieve the fatigue from their tired bones. 

Occasionally, members of the faculty would pop here and there to alleviate their daily pains of teaching noble teenagers.

Very rarely, some students who took great care of their skin would drop by for their monthly routine. Those were regulars, so sometimes they even got a nun or three as companions for their time in the sauna.

The sauna was proof that cross-generational friendship was possible, at least within the 20 or so minutes one could last in there.

Even rarer still was the kind of student who went in there just for the sake of feeling hot again, something they might miss from their homeland, or such.

Claude, secretly Khalid, went into the sauna once in a while whenever he felt emotional about his home, and the role he wanted to play once he returned.

To his surprise, however, he found a member of the faculty there as well — someone he was very well acquainted with, in fact.

“Ey, Teach! I didn’t think you were the type to bake in the sauna with the grannies,” he greeted with forced cheer, pushing down the disappointment of simply existing in the heat for a bit.

Byleth looked up with his usual poker face, “yo.” Then, he shrugged. “It’s good to work up a sweat now and then.”

Claude loudly sat right beside Byleth. “Yeah, that it is, isn’t it?” He spread both arms at the seats around him and turned to look at his Professor. “But I think it’s the first time I see you… here?” Claude squinted.

Something… at Byleth’s neck, obscured by his sweaty hair caught Claude’s attention.

What could that be? A wound? Byleth was the strongest person Claude knew, and he was observant to a fault; there was no way he didn’t see Byleth getting hurt. What could that be…

“Hm? So you come here often?” Byleth turned to look at Claude, action of which made his hair slide slightly to the side, revealing the shadow that had caught the prince’s attention.

Widening his eyes, Claude looked from the mark to the Professor. “We’re talking about you now, though, Teach? ‘Sides, something else caught my eye…” he pointed with his chin to the mark that was placed in a spot that was usually covered by his hair and coat. “Who gave you that hickey, Teach?”

“Hickey?” Byleth tilted his head to the side in confusion. That made the hair cover the mark again, which only aroused Claude’s curiosity even further.

“Yeah! That one! You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? I bet you’re faking confusion right now, too.” He pointed, his archer eyes completely focused on the now obscured hickey. “I’m sure of what I saw.”

Following Claude’s finger, Byleth touched the nape of his neck, though a hickey wasn’t usually something you could feel with your hand, so he just massaged the area absentmindedly before an ‘ah,’ escaped his lips.

“So you confess!” Claude got up quickly, a rookie mistake if one’s ever been at a sauna before. “Oh, shit-” his vision blurred and his head spinned.

“Claude!” Byleth pulled the prince before he fell, saving his head from a concussion. Though his mind blanked out anyway, his last words before passing out were ‘oh, shit’. A fitting epitaph, perhaps.

“So you confess!” Claude woke up a few minutes later at the infirmary, his mind rebooting back to the same moment before he had passed out.

“Yikes, is that the first thing you say after waking up?!” Hilda jumped on her seat beside his bed.

Huffing, Claude looked around his surroundings to place himself in reality. “Wait, damn it. Where’s Teach?! He can’t run from me!” He threw the blanket up, ready to start a hunt if necessary.

“Yeah, sure, say nothing to the suuuper thoughtful friend who stayed beside you while you were out before leaving, sureee.” Hilda faked looking at her nails as Claude got up from the bed. “Ah, before you go, the Professor told me to tell you something as soon as you woke up, but now I don’t think I feel like saying it.” She hummed, smirking as she saw him visibly freeze in his tracks.

“Hilda? My gorgeous second-in-command and vice-rep of the Golden Deer—”

“Pass. I don’t want that much responsibility, okay?” She took out a nail file from within her sleeve and blew the dust off of it. “Just waiting for that tiny little word of appreciation here,” she quickly filed her nails, marvelously holding back her laughter.

“Ack, alright. Thank you my dearest Hilda, light of my student life and—-”

“Keep it comiiiing,” she sing-songed.

“Enough is enough, c’mon!” He stomped on the floor like a little kid, momentarily forgetting to keep his cool. He had just woken up from a literal fever dream, after all.

Hilda hid the file back in her sleeve with a slick movement. “Alright, alright. He didn’t say much, honestly,” she snickered. “Only: A training bruise. What was that all about? He just told me to tell you that and left—”

“BULLSHIT! A training bruise my ASS!” Claude cackled, slapping his knee. “He’s practically begging me to find out who gave him that hickey! Hilda, you gotta come with me on this.”

“Wait… a hickey? Gasp.” She said the word as she gasped. “No way. Are you sure? On Professor Byleth?! Where? How did you know? Tell me everything.”

“Okay, so here we go…” he sat back down and covered his mouth with one hand as one does when talking secretly, to which Hilda reciprocated by tilting her ear towards him and frowning to focus on what he was saying.

“No. Way. That’s totally a perfect spot to hide a hickey!” She clapped, laughing loudly. “Oh, la la, young Professor Byleth! Who could’ve known that he’s hiding THAT under his poker face!”

“Right? RIGHT?” Claude scrubbed his hands maliciously. “We gotta find out who gave him that hickey.”

“Orrr even better, what if they also have an EQUAL hickey on them? Do you think our professor would let someone do that to him without doing it too?” Hilda pointed to Claude’s nose, feeling like a famous detective of some sort of novel.

“Huh.”

…

…

“To be honest, I have no idea.” Claude confessed. “He’s a hard one to read.”

“Yeah, I realized that as soon as I said it.”

“That’s why I’m so surprised by this. It didn’t even cross my mind that Teach fucks—”

“Lan-guage!” Hilda booped his nose. “If Professor Manuela had been here, she would’ve taken points out of our House for that, you know.”

“Ack,” Claude scratched the back of his head, then ruffled his own hair in frustration. “This is driving me crazy!” he jumped up to his feet. “C’mon, Second-in-command! We gotta find out about this! Or my name isn’t Claude!”

Well, it wasn’t anyway, but there was no need to tell the world that yet, was there?

“Aye, aye, captain!” Hilda mimicked his enthusiasm, though deep down she was equally as curious as him, so putting in a bit of an effort for this wouldn’t hurt. “I know some girls who are always on top with the gossip, so let me go ask them for some info first.”

“Great! I’ll shadow some of the other teachers and faculty members, maybe it might be one of them…”

“Gasp.” Hilda held Claude’s sleeve before he could take a step. “What if it’s… a student?! Do you think he’d be that bold?!”

“As I said, I have no idea! At this point, I’ll believe he’s capable of anything!” Claude almost shouted in frustration, but now that the list of suspects practically quintupled, he started to get more and more excited about this.

To dig out some hidden truths… Ah, that was the fun he needed!

Infected by Claude’s enthusiasm, Hilda licked her lips to hide a big smile. “Okay, so I’ll go find the girls and meet you back here… no, not here, obviously.” She looked around the empty infirmary.

“Yeah, let’s meet back at the base.” He nodded, exchanging serious glances with her.

Hilda frowned with a serious expression. “Your room. Got it.”

They parted ways, each to investigate in their own fashion.

Hilda went down the stairs and followed the entrance hall towards the marketplace.

“Ah, it’s gonna be a pain to look for them in this crowd,” she sighed, already tired as she overlooked the market from the gates.

“Greetings!” A cheerful background voice that was always there sounded, but she was so used to it at this point that it went in one ear and into the other. Going on her tiptoes, she tried to find the girls by not going down the stairs.

“Oh, there they are! Giiiirls!” She waved. “Come here, come here! I wanna ask you something!” She winked, luring the girls into going up the stairs instead of her being the one to go down.

“Hilda!” A brown-haired girl with a pink bow waved. “Look at this cute accessory! You’ll love it!”

“Oohhh, accessory…”

Well, Hilda ended up being lured downstairs anyway.

There was not much progress on Claude’s side, either. He asked broad questions like ‘what do you think of Teach, I mean, Professor Byleth?” to some of the faculty members, but they all had similar responses.

That he was hardworking, had an eye for detail and worried about his students very much.

If he were Dimitri, Claude would’ve been feeling bad about digging dirt on the man at that point, but thankfully, Claude was Khalid, and Khalid had absolutely no qualms in digging things whatsoever.

None of them had that twink in the eye most people did when talking about their significant other, so Claude couldn’t pinpoint any sort of romantic interest in them towards their youngest coworker.

Hanneman even went on a tangent about wanting to dissect Byleth, which was right within Claude’s expectation of what the old man would say, so he just silently left as Hanneman did a presentation by himself.

There was no need to ask the students what they thought of Byleth as he was without any doubt the most popular of the teachers. Many had crushes on him, and some even publicly confessed their admirations, but all were equally rejected.

Deep down, Claude didn’t think the culprit could be a student. Byleth didn’t seem the type to lay a hand on his students, at least of that Claude was sure.

Sure, the man had only a single expression on his face, but his actions showed that he treasured his pupils in a different way than whoever gave him that stupid hickey!

“Damn it, who could it be?!” He ruffled his hair as he passed by the entrance and heard the usual background greeting. As he was passing to the mess hall, he found Hilda going up the stairs. “Hilda! What did you find?”

Flinching, Hilda hid the little shopping bag she carried behind her back.“So, um, nothing, actually. They didn’t find anything suspicious in the Professor’s behavior lately. And one of them even knows Ashe from the Blue Lions — whose room is close to Byleth’s, by the way — and he commented once that it was always nice to sleep close to his room ‘cause it was always so silent. The kid doesn’t like ghost stories so any little noise would shock him awake, see.”

Claude squinted at the bag behind Hilda’s back, but decided to ignore it seeing as she actually did her job despite being sidetracked. “So, nothing either, huh.”

“Are you really reaaally sure you saw a hickey? He did tell me to tell you it was a…”

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?” Claude cut in, crossing his arms.

Hilda sighed. “… Well, no, but isn’t it easier to just give up? The man is a wall.”

“I can’t give up. My pride won’t let me,” Claude shook his head.” But I have to admit that our findings were inconclusive, so without substantial evidence to pin the hickey on anyone, I’ll declare our mission as failed for today.”

Hilda blinked, surprised that he actually gave up for once.

“But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop gathering info. I’ll just change my strategy. I’ll find them, you’ll see. I’ll tail him if need be!”

“Annd there it is,” Hilda giggled. “Alright, as your second-in-command or whatever, I’ll help you! Within reason.” She waved, patting his back.

“Hah, of course. Within reason.” Claude laughed, shaking his head as they went up the stairs to the mess hall together.

Watching the pair from afar, a man lifted his helmet to be able to see them better.

From the side, one could see a hickey at a spot similar to the one Byleth had in him earlier that day.

“There was something to report today,” the Gatekeeper smiled, bobbing his head to the sides happily. “And there will be more to report later, too,” he looked further up at the top of the stairs, finding Byleth looking straight at him.

They both nodded, hiding equal smiles before turning back to finish up their shifts.