Gilbert Beilschmidt is quite possibly the most discordant person Roderich has ever met.

"Still planning to spend the rest of your life in front of that piano?"

Loud and irritating and he has a grating voice and he keeps clean which shouldn't be a problem but it means that Roderich can't nitpick about please-pick-up-your-things-Gilbert which he would love to because voices were subjective but neatness was not and he really was being unfair to Gilbert right now but God damn it if he wouldn't stop saying "G-sharp" every time he walked past when this was in the key of D

"F-flat."

— well, at least he had a concept of variety. Although to be completely honest Roderich wasn't one to talk either (how long had he been playing this?).

"F-sharp, Gilbert. And no, I am not."

"Could've fooled me," and Gilbert whistles another semi-tune completely as he begins to stack the sheet music Roderich accidentally knocked on the floor about thirty minutes ago but he couldn't have stopped then since that would've meant interrupting a phrase and then he'd got caught up in it again and — he supposed perhaps he did spend rather a lot of time in front of the piano.

Which was not bad.

"Gotta move sometime, Roderich."

Roderich simply says "Hm," and continues with his playing.

He would agree, and Gilbert is often right — about some things — but really, it's the principle of the thing. Just like Gilbert appears to say the wrong notes on principle, even when he knows that Roderich is playing from pure muscle memory. It's just something that he has always done, and Roderich will move as he always has done when he wants to.


They've settled.

It's alarming to Gilbert how they've settled, how it just happened that one day he realized that they actually literally lived together and Ludwig lived with them and he didn't jump when Roderich somehow blew up something while making tortes, and Erzsébet still came over a lot even though she and Roderich hadn't quite worked out and she and Gilbert still shoved each other around — it was probably half to see Ludwig, she wanted to make sure he learned something besides military tactics.

Which was silly, since Gilbert knows that Roderich taught him French.

And then Gilbert had taught him about the uses of infantry in the Battle of Gravelotte and how even a scouting Stormwalker could take the ever-loving piss out of two French battalions these days, so Roderich had better tell you how to say "Put your hands up and drop your weapons!" really damn quick, kid.

And then Roderich had told Gilbert not to swear in front of Ludwig, and then Gilbert had said that that wasn't even really swearing if you want to hear swearing let's get Erzsko in here and then Ludwig had said he heard worse when he went to work on the Clanker the local garrison had in for repairs and he wasn't a kid anymore Roderich and Gilbert didn't get around to explaining Mars-le-Tour that day.

He did get to it eventually, though. See, he does pay attention to Ludwig's education. And he knows that Erzsébet is teaching him math, more than the add-subtract-multiply-divide stuff, and Roderich makes him read that wet poetry all the time. So he's doing okay.