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The first time Dimitri meets Claude is the summer after his parents die.
It’s been a couple months since the accident (accident, they call it, as if it was no one’s fault, as if it hadn’t been caused by someone, by a drunk driver veering across three lanes of traffic to end Dimitri’s family, his childish hopes and dreams, in one sickening moment). He's physically recovered, he’s coping well - that’s what everyone says. That’s what Rodrigue says, once his father’s closest friend, now Dimitri’s legal guardian.
He’s coping well, but he hasn’t been in school since the accident. He’s coping well, but he’s not all right. None of them are, not really.
Summer stretches long before him. In past years, it’s been spent exploring with his friends, coming up with new games, riding bikes around town.
But Felix is still mourning his brother, who had been in that car too. Ingrid has equestrian camp, as she does every summer. Sylvain tries to pay attention to Dimitri, but he is occupied with Felix’s grief, and Rodrigue has so much work to do - in addition to custody of Dimitri, he has inherited Lambert’s seat on the board of Blaiddyd Industries, and there is so much to take care of.
So Dimitri slips through the cracks, except when Sylvain takes the time to search for him, or when Rodrigue focuses that kind but unwanted attention on him, or when Felix can be coaxed out of his room.
Which is all right with him. It’s what he prefers.
He is thirteen years old and he’s just lost his entire family, and all that anyone wants from him is to keep it together, to be strong, to work through his grief. And he does, when they’re watching. He tries his best to be exactly what they want him to be. What they expect.
So being left to his own devices feels like a blessing, like a reprieve. He wanders through the woods behind the high school, makes his way down to the lake and cools his feet off in the clear sweet water, and that’s where he meets Claude.
Claude, who doesn’t know him. Claude, who expects nothing from him.
Claude is smiling when they meet. He walks right up to Dimitri, sitting on the edge of the dock, and says, “Hey. Is the water super cold?”
It is, and Dimitri nods, but Claude takes his shoes and socks off anyway and sits down by Dimitri, wincing as he lowers his toes into the water. “Wow, that’s freezing. It comes from the glaciers in the mountains - that’s what I read. No wonder it’s so cold.”
He smiles like it’s nothing, he smiles like nothing in the world could shake him for even a moment, and Dimitri cannot look away.
He learns later that isn’t true. He learns through careful interpretations, through sideways conversations, through speculation. Claude is here staying with his uncle, his mother’s family. He’s here not for vacation, really - this little town isn’t a vacation spot - but to get away from something unspecified at home, something that made his life difficult. Dimitri doesn’t know what, though.
But he decides that it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t seem to matter to Claude why Dimitri seeks him out. He realizes, more slowly than he should have, that Claude wants the same thing as him: to slip out from under everyone’s expectations. To be around someone who doesn’t assume things about him.
And fate, or the Goddess, has brought them together. Claude expects nothing from him, and he tries his best to return that favor, to expect nothing from Claude.
And Dimitri - has fun.
The first time he realizes he’s enjoying himself, he feels instantly guilty. He’s swimming with Claude, having finally coaxed him into the chilly water after much effort, laughing at his exaggerated shivering. He’s forgotten, for a few moments, all that he’s lost. When he remembers, the guilt sets in, the shame that he could enjoy anything when he has so much to mourn.
Claude sees the look on his face, and he doesn’t ask questions. Instead he distracts Dimitri, dunking him under the water, childish and silly but it works. It works because no one has done anything like that in months, no one has done anything but tiptoe around him and cosset him and treat him like he could break at any moment.
He could, he knows, but treating him that way does nothing but frustrate him. And Claude doesn’t, and it’s -
It’s what he needs.
Dimitri seeks out Claude again and again that summer, and Claude always seems to want to be found. They explore the woods, following old paths and making new ones, climbing trees and discovering hidden meadows. They swim in the lake, and Dimitri teaches Claude how to fish, though neither of them are very good at it. They ride bikes downtown, walk through the streets, buy candy and sodas and Dimitri’s politeness combined with Claude’s charm always gets them an extra chocolate bar to share. Claude is smart and creative and never ever boring, and he doesn’t care how Dimitri acts, he doesn’t care that Dimitri can’t be perfect. He only seems to care that Dimitri wants to hang out with him. That Dimitri likes him.
Dimitri doesn’t invite Claude over, though he knows it’s rude, and Claude doesn’t invite him, either. He thinks maybe they both like it better this way. He thinks maybe Claude feels the same way as him - as if he wants to keep the other boy all to himself.
They don’t spend every day together, Dimitri still spends time with his family and friends, but it’s enough. It’s enough that by the end of the summer, Dimitri feels a new kind of sadness, the sadness of parting from a friend. It feels - strangely good, in a way, better than the crushing grief he’s felt since his parents died, since Glenn died. Claude is going away, but he isn’t gone.
He doesn’t make a big deal about it, either. He just smiles at Dimitri, and shrugs, and says, “Maybe I can come back next summer.”
***
By the next summer, things have changed. Dimitri’s grief is not so raw, not so fresh. He’s better at controlling the anger he feels, better at pretending to be what everyone wants him to be. He’s made a new friend - Dedue, a boy who no one seems to trust, solely because of who he is and where he’s from. He’s on good terms with Felix and Sylvain, though Felix is different now - angrier, still living in Glenn’s shadow.
He knows what this summer will hold. Practicing with Felix, who really wants to join the fencing team next year. Ignoring Sylvain’s advice about girls. Helping Dedue take care of the school greenhouse, a task he’d volunteered for that year.
But then he remembers Claude, and the first weekend in summer, he finds himself down at the lake. Just to see. Just in case.
And Claude walks up, and he says, “Hey,” and he smiles, and suddenly it feels like the summer is going to be a lot more fun.
This time, there’s really no way to keep Claude separate from the rest of his life, and he finds that he doesn’t really mind that. Claude is still in some way his, and all his old friends treat him that way - as if Dimitri is an explorer who’s found a new land, or a scientist who’s made an incredible discovery.
In any case, though things are good between all of them, Felix is solely focused on training and can only be coaxed away for occasional trips to the lake. Sylvain wants to spend his free time on girls, which doesn’t interest Dimitri - and thankfully, doesn’t interest Claude, either. (Dimitri does not think too deeply about his relief when he realizes that.) Dedue is busy, too, though they help him out with the greenhouse more than once.
All of that means that while Claude meets his friends, and seems to like them, Dimitri gets most of his time. Most of his attention. And, selfishly, that’s how he likes it.
Sometimes it seems like Claude is the only thing in the world he gets to be selfish with.
This summer is easier than the last. Some days it almost feels normal, it almost feels like summer used to. But then Dimitri will remember how his father used to steal a weekend away from work now and then, set up the grill outside, and provide them with hot dogs and hamburgers all weekend long. He’ll remember how El - his stepsister, now far away with her father - used to play with them. He’ll remember Glenn’s long-suffering sighs as he easily beat them all at whatever video game was popular that year.
During the rest of the year, on those days, he retreats into himself. He avoids people if he can, interacts as little as possible, because he can’t take the sympathetic looks and the worry and the questions.
During the summer, he seeks out Claude. Claude can always tell he’s upset, but he never asks about it - he just invents a new game for them to play, or shows Dimitri an old birds’ nest he found in the woods, or gets them both popsicles and takes them on a walk through town. It helps. It always helps.
It’s at the end of that summer, Dimitri’s fourteenth summer and his second with Claude, that Dimitri finally tells him. They’re sitting on the dock, the sun is setting, and Dimitri has had a bad day. He even snapped at Claude over something stupid, something he doesn’t remember, and he’s sought him out to apologize.
He watches the sun set through the trees.
“Last year,” he says, and he doesn’t look at Claude, “my dad died. And my stepmother, and Felix’s brother.” He doesn’t think it’s that much of a surprise. Maybe someone told Claude already, or maybe it’s just that he’s so observant that he couldn’t miss the signs of grief. He looks at Claude, waiting for the sounds of sympathy, of pity. Waiting for Claude to look at him like he’s broken.
“Last year,” Claude says, and he’s still smiling, but his words are measured and careful, “four boys at my school pushed me into the deep end of the pool and wouldn’t let me out. When I couldn’t stay up any longer and slipped under, they ran away. A teacher found me.”
Dimitri stares. “Why?” He remembers the effort it took to convince Claude to swim with him the year before, effort he had attributed to the ice-cold water and Claude’s teasing nature. But no. No, it hadn’t been that.
Claude shrugs, and he looks away. “They don’t really like me there. It’s like your friend Dedue. It’s not always easy for people who are different.”
Dimitri thinks about Dedue, about the distrust and the strange way people treat him. He thinks that Claude is visibly different, too, and he wonders if it has been hard for him here, too. He wonders if Dimitri being around him helps, like it does sometimes for Dedue. He wonders if there’s anything he can do to change things.
Claude takes his hand. His fingers are warm, a little callused, with a few cuts here and there from roughhousing this summer.
“You don’t have to let the bad things that happen to you define you,” he says, quiet, looking out at the sunset. “You can be mad, and you can be sad. But you can be a lot more than that, too.”
Dimitri holds his hand, and he doesn’t feel self-conscious about it.
And he thinks that Claude is right.
***
When Dimitri is fifteen, he has his first kiss.
This summer is not like the one before it. He and Felix have had a falling out - a very bad one, all thanks to Dimitri losing his temper at some older boys. There was a fight. One of them ended up in the hospital, and Dimitri heard the words anger counseling more than he was comfortable with.
Felix doesn’t really talk to him now. Sylvain is having family problems - really, he always has been, it’s just that they’re getting worse. Dedue is still his friend, still kind and loyal, and this year Ingrid stays home from equestrian camp because her father thinks she’s getting too old for it. She’s unhappy because of that - miserable, really - but at least Dimitri gets to see her sometimes.
It’s Claude that rescues the summer for him. Again.
He shows up in town not long after the beginning of summer break, just like he has the last two years, smiling like there’s nothing wrong in the world. And somehow, things are different.
Dimitri has a difficult time putting his finger on what it is, at first. Claude has always had a knack for throwing him off his guard, making him blush, teasing him. Dimitri has always wanted to keep a bit of Claude to himself, spend time around him, have the full force of Claude’s attention. That hasn’t changed, not really, it’s only… more, now.
Now when they go swimming together Dimitri finds himself distracted by the way the water droplets cling to Claude’s golden skin. Claude has an earring, new this year, and it’s all Dimitri can do sometimes to keep from reaching out to touch it, to touch the soft skin of his ear. Claude smiles at someone else and Dimitri burns with a jealousy that startles him.
It takes him much too long to realize what it is. It takes Sylvain and a joking comment - “Good to see your boyfriend’s in town again.” Dimitri should be embarrassed, and he is a little, but more than that he’s just disappointed in himself for not realizing it sooner.
Claude isn’t his boyfriend. But Dimitri wants him to be.
He isn’t sure how to go about making that happen. He isn’t sure he wants to ruin what they already have - Claude is so important to him, for all that they only ever see each other for a few weeks out of the year. On top of that, he’s never kissed anyone, never been on a date, never even asked anyone out. Though, from seeing Sylvain do it so many times, he at least has a good idea of what not to do.
So he resists the urge to touch, he goes tongue-tied when Claude grabs his arm, he has a few embarrassing dreams.
And then one hot summer night, under the stars, Claude kisses him.
He isn’t expecting it. They’re out late, because Claude doesn’t have a curfew and Dimitri wants as much time with him as possible, and he knows Rodrigue will not have it in him to punish Dimitri if he gets home late. They’re stargazing, of all things, because Claude says the constellations here are a little different than where he’s from, and he wants to see if he can pick them out.
In hindsight, it’s almost a cliche. Under the stars with the boy he has a crush on, arms pressed together, half of Dimitri’s mind on the sky and half on Claude next to him.
And then Claude says, “Dimitri,” and there’s something different in his voice, and when Dimitri turns to look, Claude presses their lips together.
It’s a soft kiss, but not tentative, because that is not Claude’s nature. There’s a fumbling certainty to it, an air that says this is not an accident, and then Claude pulls back and looks at Dimitri.
Dimitri can’t breathe. He doesn’t think he can speak, and then he sees something uncertain flicker in Claude’s beautiful green eyes. He can’t have that - he can’t. So he leans in and he kisses Claude.
It’s awkward. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s a little too eager, and Claude’s lips are chapped, and neither of them really seems to know what they’re doing, and none of that matters. None of it matters because he is kissing Claude.
When they part this time, Claude is smiling, and Dimitri cannot help smiling too.
It’s only a couple more weeks before summer ends, before Claude leaves and takes a little bit of happiness out of Dimitri’s life, but they make the most of those weeks. They hold hands sometimes when they’re alone, and they kiss, and Dimitri tells Claude how lovely he looks, and Claude leans into him and rests his head on Dimitri's shoulder.
This time, when Claude leaves, he kisses Dimitri goodbye.
***
They talk throughout the following year. They haven’t before, both of them too caught up in their own lives and difficulties to reach out to a summer friend. But now it feels important, now Dimitri wants to reach out to Claude from half a world away.
It’s not constant. It’s not even regular. But somehow it never quite ends, either - Claude stops responding for a full month at one point, and Dimitri only worries a little, and then he continues with barely a pause, only a short apology because a school project had gotten away from him. They email, they text, but Dimitri is rarely able to hear Claude’s voice because of the time difference.
These points of contact become desperately important when Claude tells him that won’t be coming this summer. He’s apologetic in a sincere way that Dimitri cannot be angry with, for all that it hurts. He was looking forward to seeing Claude, to having him there in person, to kissing him again and maybe - maybe more. To naming what they have and introducing Claude to his friends again, this time as his boyfriend.
But they haven’t named it, so maybe that’s only in Dimitri’s head.
It’s a summer course, Claude says, something to prepare him for college. Something he needs to take to put him above the rest, though Dimitri already knows he’s brilliantly intelligent. What college wouldn’t take him? And with his parents’ money - because Dimitri knows they are as rich as his own were - it shouldn’t be in question.
Maybe there’s another reason. Maybe Claude doesn’t want to see him. Maybe he’s met someone else.
He tries not to dwell on these things, and spends the summer wondering if he ought to be focusing on college, too. But there’s no need for that. Dimitri will attend Garreg Mach University, like his father did, like Rodrigue did. His grades are good enough to get him in, and his father’s legacy will ease the way. It isn’t in question.
So instead he just thinks about Claude, and texts him most days, and spends his time with Dedue and Ashe, a younger boy at their school who has been helping with the greenhouse as well. He lets Ingrid drag him out hiking, tries to curb Sylvain’s worse impulses, even manages to get Felix to tolerate his presence occasionally.
It’s all right.
Something is missing, though, and he knows that texts won’t make up for the lack of Claude’s hand in his.
***
That year is difficult. It’s not because of Claude’s distance, though that’s part of it. It’s just - things are changing. Life is changing. He’s limped through the past years, missing his family, the sole survivor of a catastrophe, and now he’s expected to grow up and become a leader.
He has already grown up. He did the day he woke up in the hospital and was told his family was dead. But a leader? He isn’t sure he’s the right choice for that, but everyone seems to believe in him. Finish high school. Go to college. Get a business degree, take over his father’s company. Carry on the family legacy.
He supposes there’s no other choice.
And Claude seems to be drifting away.
He still emails, he still texts. But Dimitri rarely hears his voice anymore, and he wonders if that summer was just a fluke. If Claude was just lonely, if he’s found someone else. He hasn’t said so. There is still affection, verging on flirtation, in many of his messages. But he’s quieter - busy, he says, when Dimitri asks.
Dimitri tries not to think about it. He is wondering if he has been a fool for getting too attached to a boy who should have been nothing more than a summer fling. But though he can look at the people around him and know that they are attractive, that some of them even seem interested in him, there’s no one who captures his attention like Claude. There’s no one who fills his thoughts in the same way.
He has enough to worry about without adding ‘dating’ to the pile, anyway. So he does his schoolwork, and he puts in his college applications - to four different schools, as if there were any chance Garreg Mach University might not let him in - and he gets the acceptance he is expecting.
He graduates alongside Felix and Ingrid, and summer comes, and this time so does Claude.
It’s been nearly two years since they’ve seen each other. Dimitri wants to see him, but he finds himself somehow reluctant to seek him out. He doesn’t know what to expect, what to fear. He doesn’t know if they can return to the easy friendship, to those soft kisses that they once had. Everything seems uncertain. This is, he thinks, their last summer. Soon they will be walking different paths.
He does not have to seek Claude out. Claude knocks on Rodrigue’s door the day after he arrives, still jetlagged, and asks for Dimitri. They go for a walk in the woods, the same ones they played in that first summer, the same ones that remind Dimitri so much of Claude - all green growing things and sunlight through the leaves.
Claude was beautiful two years ago. Claude is beautiful now. That, Dimitri thinks, has not changed.
“I wanted to see you,” Claude says, after some easy and meaningless chatter about his flight, about how his uncle is remodeling the house, about how Dimitri’s graduation ceremony went. And then he says that, and Dimitri looks at him.
“Did you?” he says, and it’s sharper than he meant it to be. He sees Claude falter, look away, and then look up at him with a smile that does not reach his eyes.
“I really did.” Claude pauses there on the path, under the trees. “Last summer… I was doing an advanced chemistry program. Usually it’s for undergrads, but I got in. It looks really good on college applications.”
Dimitri nods, a little stiff. Claude loves chemistry, though he loves history as well, and political science, and in fact Dimitri is not sure there is an area of knowledge that doesn’t capture Claude’s endless curiosity. But he’s said before that chemistry is what he wishes to study, at least to begin with, so it makes sense that he would prioritize it - particularly if he’s hoping to get into an especially competitive program.
“It was fun, but I missed you.” Claude says it simply, quietly, still looking up at Dimitri, and then he smiles. “I’m going to make up for it. You’re going to see so much of me that you’ll be sick of it.”
Dimitri smiles, a sad thing. “I would like to see as much of you as I can before we part.” If they will be walking down separate paths, and least he will have this summer with Claude. He isn’t going to allow his jealousy or his loneliness to ruin it. Claude deserves the best that life can give him - Dimitri wants that for him, very badly.
Claude makes a hmm noise and turns back to the path. As they begin to walk again, he reaches out and takes Dimitri’s hand. “You’re starting at Garreg Mach in the fall, right? Do you know where your dorm is yet?”
It takes Dimitri a moment to get his mind back on track. “They’ve placed me in the Blue Lion Hall.” He realizes then that, despite everything, he has not asked where Claude will be going to school. He knows Claude’s parents had been pressuring him to apply to the University of Almyra, the most prestigious institute in their homeland. He is sure Claude got in. But as he opens his mouth to ask, Claude speaks.
“Great,” he says, a smile in his voice, “I’m in Golden Deer Hall. They’re pretty close. Maybe we can meet for breakfast sometimes.”
Dimitri stops in the middle of the path. “What?”
Claude looks up at him and laughs, pleased by the look on Dimitri’s face. “Garreg Mach has one of the best chemistry departments in the world. And when you told me you’d be going there - well, I figured I at least had to try.”
“But I thought - the University of Almyra -” Dimitri doesn’t know what to think. What to say, what to feel. He thinks what he’s feeling might be - hope.
“My parents wanted me to go there,” Claude says. “In fact, they said if I went anywhere else they weren’t going to help me out - my dad was pretty adamant. But that program last summer helped me get a scholarship for the cost of tuition and housing, and my grandfather said he’d give me money for books and things.”
“You didn’t tell me,” Dimitri says, eyes wide.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to go. If I hadn’t gotten the scholarship - well, anyway, I didn’t know for sure until March, and then I wanted to tell you in person.” Claude’s smile doesn’t falter, but Dimitri can see a growing uncertainty in his eyes. “I mean - I’m not asking for any kind of promise. I know we’ve never talked about… dating for real or anything.”
“No,” Dimitri says, and his words are failing him. Instead he reaches out, pulls Claude to him, kisses him long and deep and true. When they part, Claude is breathing hard, cheeks flushed, and his smile is real again. “I would like that. All of it. Breakfast - together in the mornings, with you. And dating. If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I want,” Claude says, his smile brilliant, and he pulls Dimitri down for another kiss.
He feels the future unfold before him, brighter than he could have imagined.