For the first few weeks of operation, the Golden Perk was running as smoothly as any of them expected it to, which was welcome news given the ragtag bunch in charge of it. For being bossy at times, Leonie did make for a sympathetic and understanding manager, and whenever someone would mess up an order she'd make it right without hesitation, knowing that what mattered most was return business, not the occasional day where they spent a bit too much on replacing items. The baked goods were always selling out faster than they could be made, which Lysithea and Marianne were both happy about, although it was only ever the former who would take credit for the recipes and the creation of the treats. Even the front counter bunch was handling the work well, minus their occasional slip-ups and mistakes, but for all of the smooth sailing they were experiencing, they knew that there were going to be rough seas ahead.
The first instance of something going wrong was Lorenz not showing up for scheduled shifts, only coming in after Leonie would call him and badger him into coming in. He rarely did the work he was expected to do, even when he'd been coming in regularly, so him missing was not as big of a detriment to the overall team as it could have been, but he was so insistent on getting his credit for the class that it felt odd he wasn't coming in at all. By the time a month had passed from his first unexcused missed shift, he wasn't even coming when Leonie would call him, and she was one shift away from going to Professor Hanneman about it.
That was unnecessary, though, as Hanneman came in on them instead the very next day to find the rogue student missing, brushed it off, and asked if he could borrow Claude for some amount of time. Knowing what it was most likely about, Claude tried to duck into the kitchen to hide from being taken, but he was defeated by Leonie pulling him out and presenting him to Hanneman, who gave a solemn nod at seeing him. "Thanks for that, I'll remember this," he whispered to her before heading around the counter to join Hanneman outside the shop, the cooler air around them almost requiring a jacket. "So, what do you need me for today?"
"Ah, I was just checking to make sure you were still attending, nothing more," Hanneman replied, crossing his arms over his chest to rub his hands up and down on his arms in an attempt to combat the chill that morning. "I cannot find myself being too bothered about anyone else dropping the class mid-semester, but if you were to suddenly disappear you know that your continued enrollment would be in jeopardy."
"Trust me, it's not something I could easily forget." In fact, since the day that they'd had their rather heated conversation Claude hadn't forgotten for a second that one mistake would have him being handed a one-way ticket out of Garreg Mach, because of all the people he owed favors to, it had to be a professor like Hanneman. "I promise you I'll be here through the whole year, then my debt to you will be paid, won't it?"
Pursing his lips together, Hanneman took a moment before nodding in agreement. "I suppose then it will be, I'll have received enough tuition to pay you back and you'll have had to stay around to receive my refund. It all works out if you're here through the year."
"Yeah, yeah, I know that's the terms of what's going on," Claude muttered, before stretching his arms over his head and arching his back as deeply as he could manage. "I'm going to head back in now, since you know I'm still working here, and working requires me being inside where I can…work."
"Of course, sorry for taking up your time." For a single moment Hanneman looked like he was genuine with his apology, but he moved right past it without so much as a farewell, heading into his old-timey car that was illegally parked in the street and driving back towards his office on campus. Claude, by that point back inside the building, grumbled something about hating being kept hostage in a situation caused by that exact car before going behind the counter to get back to the work he tolerated decently well.
"You talk to him about Lorenz at all?" Raphael asked from the sink, where he was washing dishes as quickly as he could, passing them off to Ignatz who was drying and orderly stacking them. When Claude said he didn't, he seemed upset but shrugged it off right away. "Oh well, if he doesn't come back then we'll just make sure we put he bailed out on us on his review. That's what Leonie says we've got to do when people don't show up."
Standing with her elbows propped up on the register, punching in numbers with the pressure she was putting down on it, Hilda gave a long, drawn-out sigh. "I really hope it's just him that stops showing up, we're so much better off without his annoying personality here. That, and he wasn't doing enough work to make me have to do more work to make up for him not being here."
"Heh, yeah, you're in luck because I don't intend on leaving this until the class is done, and I think everyone else is in the same boat," Claude laughed, knowing on the inside he was saying that only because he had to, not because he really wanted to be there. "We're all going to go down together, if we go down at all, but I highly doubt that certain people are going to let that happen."
He was, of course, referring to Leonie and the duo in charge of baked goods, who could run the shop just the three of them if it came down to it, although Leonie had made it overtly clear that she wanted the whole team to stick around. "I know I wanted to do something more, like, in tune with what my goal in life is," Hilda said after giving Claude's words some thought, "but I think that if I had to be forced into working a customer service job that isn't retail, I got placed with probably the best people to have to be put with. I don't know if I'd be able to tolerate this work if I didn't have you all here with me."
"That's probably the nicest thing you'll say to any of us," he remarked, glancing towards Raphael and Ignatz to see how they took the slight praise, which was with two big smiles. "I think I speak for all of us when I say that having you here makes this place a bit less boring."
"Definitely!" Raphael's response was loud, and drowned out whatever it was that Ignatz said at the same time, and with the four of them having come to that agreement they were able to power through the next hour of their shift without any complaints or struggles that weren't directly related to malfunctioning machines and a lack of baked goods to hand off to waiting customers, but that was a short-lived time of peace.
That was, of course, because Byleth walked in and took her seat at her usual table with her books piled high in front of her, and Claude's entire attention span went from getting through work to watching her every breath. Noticing that he was managing to do less work than even she was, Hilda gave a small gesture in the direction of Byleth's table, almost like a dismissive wave. "I know you want to give her table service, so go ahead and do it. Leonie's not here right now, she's not going to stop you, and I think we can say we've got things under control at the moment."
He nodded, knowing that if Hilda was advocating for him to slack off, he was going to have to let her do the same in the future, and soon enough he was on the other side of the counter, approaching Byleth and her books with a glass of ice water in his hand. "Hey, figured you might want this," he said as he set the cup down on the table, before drawing the other chair to sit for himself. "You're looking a bit stressed. School year getting you down?"
"You could say something like that, sure." Her reply was short, matching her almost emotionless expression as she was skimming over the words on the page of her current book. "I had a bit of an incident with an online assignment and now the students are a week ahead of where I planned for them to be. Not exactly a good look, but the headmaster said I needed to go along with it, even if the dean gave me quite the scolding over it."
Confused, as Byleth was opening up to him like he was a colleague rather than a student who happened to be working at the coffee shop she came into just about every day, Claude realized that he needed to play along with her before she noticed what she was doing. "Yeah, I can't imagine that being a fun situation to be stuck in, but I'm glad there's no trouble with it. Headmaster Rhea is a rather understanding woman when you actually get to talking to her." He only knew that because she was aware of his current status as a student and all of its intricacies, things that Professor Hanneman had found out about and thought he could be using as leverage against him—things that he was allowing to be used against him, really. "I hope the class is taking it well, they must think they're getting done a week early."
"Oh, no, Seteth made sure to tell me that they don't get to stop class early because of my mistake, but I'll make it work. I just…" She trailed off as her eyes lifted from the page of her book, meeting a group of young men entering the coffee shop and her face going red at the sight of them. "That's them right there," she sputtered, trying to bury herself in her books, and it was then that Claude understood the reason for her being so open with him (or so he thought): she was trying to get him to act as a barrier between her and the students.
"Seem like a nice bunch," he grumbled, his usually go-lucky attitude souring when he recognized a couple of them, specifically the rich son of a nearby principality's ruler and his closest friend, as well as the party boy whose room was a few down from his in the apartment building (which he assumed most people treated like a typical college dorm). "I'll take care of them, if you'd like?"
"Don't waste your breath on them, they should be…well, actually, we should all be in class here shortly, I guess I didn't realize I was cutting it so close to class time, and that they were going to be coming here of all the places in Garreg Mach." Closing her book, Byleth swallowed her water down in two large sips before handing the empty cup back to Claude. "Thanks for sitting with me for the couple minutes I had. Maybe next time you'll be wearing a nametag so I can thank you by name."
Since his attention had snapped back to her when she'd finished her drink, he was staring awkwardly at the cup he was now holding, while she was gathering her things. "I, er, my name is Claude, if that really means anything," he said, knowing for a fact she'd heard it be yelled at him before on one of the other occasions she'd been in and he'd come to speak to her. "And your name is Byleth, but I should be calling you Professor Eisner, out of respect."
"Calling me Byleth's perfectly fine, you've done enough to help me out since I started coming here that I think we can be on a first-name basis," she said, completely earnest in her words even with their flat delivery. "I'll be seeing you here tomorrow, correct, Claude?"
"No place I'd rather be." He smiled at her and she gave him nothing in return, scooping all of her books up and heading out the door as fast as she could go, leaving him with the empty cup in his hands and a longing in his chest he'd been unprepared for.
The second instance of something going wrong came halfway through the Red Wolf Moon, when Claude showed up for yet another mentally unstimulating day of work at the coffee shop and found the door to the building locked. He knew that something was amiss from the moment he tugged on the front door and it wasn't swinging open, yet he could definitely see Lysithea and Marianne both flittering around inside through the windows; he banged his hand on the glass until he caught their attention, and then when Marianne came to be his savior from the chilly morning he asked her what the holdup was. "Oh, er, I…don't know if I should be the one to tell you this," she quietly said, averting her gaze so their eyes didn't meet. "It shouldn't happen again."
"What shouldn't happen?" he asked, looking for an actual answer, but she was already going back towards the bakery, Lysithea looking at him from its doorway with a solemn scowl on her face, and when they both disappeared without a further word he knew he'd be waiting for that clarification. The problem was, that clarification never quite came, not even when customers started coming inside and he was left totally alone at the register, making all the drinks and ringing in all of the orders on his own.
When he had a moment to make a break for the schedule he did so, leaving the counter totally unstaffed for the ten seconds it took him to duck into the back and see who had been scheduled to work with him that day. Seeing that it was Ignatz and Raphael, a wave of worry overcame Claude's entire body, because they were two of the most dedicated to working there at the shop—meaning that if they were both gone from the shift, something had to have happened to keep them from being there. Now with the worry that they were in trouble clouding his mind, he went back to the counter and continued pulling triple duty until Leonie came in to see him floundering at doing the work of three men on his own, and despite her role as manager she stepped right in and helped him until the shop was cleared of waiting customers looking for their order.
"I thought Hilda was going to come in to help out for a bit, sorry about that," she apologized after they both had a chance to catch their breath from the rush, her nowhere near as worn out as Claude was but still quite frazzled. "I had an in-person seminar this morning I couldn't miss, otherwise I would've been here sooner."
Claude, breathing heavily with his hand held over his chest to feel the rapid-fire beating of his chest, his body feeling like he'd ran a marathon in the hours he'd been working alone, looked at Leonie and saw her expression was just as grave as Lysithea and Marianne's both had been when he'd arrived. "What is going on here that I'm clearly out of the loop with?" he questioned, hoping that if anyone would give him the answer, it would be Leonie. "Come on, I missed out on getting to chat with Byleth for a moment because I was running around like a madman back here."
"Raphael called me this morning to tell me there'd been a fire at his parents' hotel overnight and he and Ignatz were already on their way to take care of things there. I told Lysithea somewhat about this so she knew to let you in this morning, but I also asked Hilda if she could come in to support and clearly that didn't happen." Leonie's voice was remaining rather steady, although she looked to be on the verge of breaking down. "I just…I felt so bad hearing Raphael crying about this when he called me that I didn't think to tell anyone else the details when I was calling them."
Just imagining the sound of Raphael crying put a knot in Claude's throat that he couldn't quite swallow away, and he didn't want to press further than he already had. He somewhat felt selfish for thinking about how his extra work had cost him a chance to talk to the woman he'd been blatantly flirting with for months, when he was doing that extra work to cover for two people who'd seemed to have experienced some great tragedy, but he wasn't going to vocalize those feelings. "I'll be in tomorrow then, so that Hilda doesn't have the same struggle I had today," he declared, letting that be his way of telling Leonie that he understood the severity of what was going on.
She nodded, thankful of his generosity, and without thinking much of it he reached out and wrapped his arms around her in a hug, hoping a comforting embrace would be enough to patch some of the aching in her heart. He'd definitely have thought twice about doing it if he'd seen that people were approaching the door, and so when the group of boys that Byleth had once noted were some of her students came in and saw Claude hugging Leonie, he could hear them chuckling and making comments among themselves about the sight.
When Ignatz came back a couple of days later, he did so without Raphael, and he refused to say much about what had happened. "The plan is to use the insurance money to rebuild, since that place meant so much to us all," he did tell Leonie in a hushed whisper, which Claude only happened to overhear because the shop was silent enough at the moment that one could have heard a pin drop. "It'll be years before it's fully back to how it was, but…who knows if it'll actually get back to that point."
"You'll do the right thing by the place, all three of you," Leonie replied to him, which interested Claude to hear, but since he knew the conversation wasn't meant for him he wasn't going to try digging for an explanation for what she meant. He just went right back to scrubbing tables and rearranging them, shifting up how the place looked so that customers wouldn't feel that their décor was getting stale.
That overheard conversation lingered in his mind for most of the shift, until he saw Byleth come inside and his thoughts went straight to how he was going to socialize with her that day; it was the first time since the mostly solo shift that she'd come in and he knew he needed to talk to her. She took a seat at her usual table, with half the load of books she typically carried with her, and he jumped behind the counter to grab her a cup of water as she was settling in. "Good to see you once again," he greeted, setting the cup on the edge of the table and pushing it closer to her with his fingertips, her ignoring it completely. "Sorry about last time, couldn't get away from the register long enough to specially deliver you your drink, but I'm sure you saw how frantic I was."
"Yes, I did," she replied curtly, which chilled his blood in his veins. She reached over to take the water and moved it to the other side of the table, before waving for him to leave her alone. "Thanks for the drink, get back to work."
"Uh, yeah, right on it!" His head bobbed as he spoke, but he was not feeling very enthusiastic as he trudged back over to the tables he was in the middle of cleaning. The conversation that Ignatz and Leonie had been having was over and they were both doing their own things, which meant that for the moment, he could stand there scrubbing tabletops and pining over more interaction with Byleth without anything to listen to. She seemed like she was deep in thought over something, a notebook open in front of her and her pen moving frantically across the page for lines at a time before she'd take a sip of her water. Whatever she was doing, it was important enough that he leave her alone for it, and despite his desire to spend time with her he knew he needed to respect that.
She was gone within minutes, leaving her half-empty cup on the table and a piece of paper folded neatly under it; when Leonie went to clean it up she stopped and looked at the paper with eyebrows furrowed before sighing and bringing it straight to Claude. "Note for you from a regular," she said halfheartedly, knowing who was responsible for leaving it (but also clearly having other things on her mind). "Make sure that you're not leaving her ones of your own in return, at least while you're working."
"Can do, thank you." Taking the note, Claude could see that Byleth had clearly written out his name on the part she'd left on top, a partial water ring marking it from where she'd set the cup, and he tucked it into his pocket for later. Something told him that the contents were going to be the result of some mistake and he didn't want to be in the Golden Perk when he read about her thoughts on the matter, so he made it a point to read the note when he got back to his apartment. "Say, Leonie, everything okay?" he asked, right as she was going back to what she'd been doing before, but the look of despair across her face told him he didn't want the true answer at the moment.
The note ultimately was Byleth asking if she could get a plain black coffee the next time she came in, nothing more and nothing less, and that was enough to get Claude to begin to second guess what he'd thought had happened. After reading and throwing away the piece of paper, he decided he'd take a walk around his building, for no reason other than to stretch his legs inside where it was warm. Of course, when he walked by a room a few doors down and it came open as he passed, a couple of the boys he knew were Byleth's students walking out, he felt like he had the opportunity to address what they'd seen with them.
But that…that wasn't exactly appropriate, not when he'd been working and they were customers, he couldn't bring anything up with them and have it get back to Hanneman that he was harassing customers. That mindset changed the moment he heard one of their phones go off with a shutter sound, and he turned to see the party boy, the one with the red hair that lived in that particular apartment, standing with his phone's camera turned towards Claude. "Looks like you caught his attention," his black-haired friend (who he didn't recognize from coming into the shop that day) spat, giving the one with the phone a backhanded slap on the shoulder. "Great job."
"Hey, I wasn't trying to be stealthy, I was just trying to get a picture." Claude knew that he should just let the whole thing go, but when the redhead spoke further his whole mindset changed. "I told the professor I know her little boyfriend from where I live and now I've got the proof, so maybe now—"
"What did you just call me?" The word boyfriend wasn't one that had been used in a positive way there, but the fact that it had been used at all was what bothered Claude. "You better start explaining yourself, before I report you to the headmaster of the colleges about your behavior. I'd consider this stalking, perhaps?"
Another smack on the shoulder of the one still holding the phone with a smirk on his face, while the one doing the smacking grumbled, "Because what you need on your record is another note about stalking. Sylvain, stop trying to play match-breaker and get over it."
"Match-breaker?" Claude repeated, deciding to step closer to the pair, while the third person in the group brought his hands to the sides of his head, mouthing something about the situation that came with no sound. "What match is there to break? Just completely curious about that."
"Sylvain's got a thing for the professor, and he thinks that she's got one for you, so he's set on breaking the two of you up." Pursing his lips together after he'd finished speaking, the black-haired one looked at Sylvain, then at Claude before nodding. "That's about it, really. Can't say there's actually anything going on, but he sure thinks there is."
"I'll have you know there isn't, thank you very much, and if there was…" Trailing off as he wasn't sure how he wanted to end that statement, Claude could see fear starting to form in the eyes of two of the three, the only one who wasn't scared of what was going on being the one who was so open about explaining things. "Well, it doesn't matter if there was anything going on, because that's not the case. Now go ahead and delete that picture and go on with your day, because I'm going on with mine."
No longer interested in going on his walk, Claude had to pass by the trio as he went back to his apartment, seeing their eyes all follow him until he was down at his front door. He could hear Sylvain being told to listen to what he'd been directed to do and they headed off wherever they'd been going in the first place, at about the same time he was unlocking his door and going inside. "I hope the next time I run into him," he clearly heard Sylvain saying as he was closing the door, "you're not here to stop me, Felix." Whatever the response was, he didn't hear it, as he was not going to get caught spying on their conversation and have that information be relayed to Byleth.
"Black coffee next time, huh," he recalled from the note, his eyes tracking towards the trash can he'd thrown it into. "I'll see what I can do about that."
If having some of Byleth's students committed to keeping him from their professor wasn't bad enough, Claude was still having to go through the motions of working at the coffee shop if it meant getting to see her, but the world itself wasn't making it easy for him to do that. It was three weeks before Raphael was back to work, and when he did return he wasn't himself in the slightest, and his younger sister Maya was hanging around the shop each day using the internet to attend online classes, because her brother was now in charge of caring for her full-time.
What had pulled him away from work for so long was tragedy at its finest, that overnight fire claiming the lives of several guests at the hotel as well as the owners, and the only reason Maya had survived it was that she was spending the night with a friend that very night. To have gone from living thinking he was going to take over the family business when his parents retired to having to decide if rebuilding it and running it without their guidance was a good idea had changed Raphael entirely, his originally carefree demeanor turned into a very quiet and understated one. He worked hard and made sure that he was doing everything he could to focus on his job, but it became clear after a few days that he was immersing himself in work because he'd lost nearly everything that mattered most to him.
On one hand, Claude was grateful that he was working alongside someone who was so focused on the work he was assigned, but on the other he knew that this wasn't the Raphael that had originally signed up for the class, and it made it hard to feel good about leaving him at the register to go talk to Byleth when she came in. But he couldn't push aside all of his own wants and wishes for the well-being of someone he was working with, and so the next time that Byleth came in after Raphael's return, he made sure that Raphael was in the middle of helping someone at the counter before he headed to the table Byleth was sitting at with a cup of black coffee, as he'd done every time since she'd made that request. She wasn't sitting at her original table any longer, having chosen to sit in the booth nestled in the corner with the window at its side, her books and a clearly new laptop sitting on the table in front of her.
"I wasn't expecting you to be so quick today," Byleth flatly said as she saw him approaching. "Your friend at the counter's back for the first time in a while. What's been keeping him away from here?"
Rather than address that directly, Claude glanced over to where Maya was sitting, her own computer in front of her as she stared bored at whatever instruction she was receiving. "Not really my place to talk about that, sorry," he apologized, before drawing in a sharp breath, noticing how Byleth was sitting to one side of the booth, giving him plenty of room to take a seat for himself. "I think you look rather comfortable over here today. Enjoying the change of location?"
"No, I'll just be here for a while and figured sitting on this would be much more comfortable than in the other chair. I just…I have a lot of grading to get done, the classes started taking their final exams today." She gestured toward the books she brought with her and Claude noticed they weren't the usual books at all but rather a bunch of different ones, and the computer was obviously for inputting the grades. "I think once I'm done giving exams each day I'll be here to work until you close."
"I think we can accommodate that." His response came with a smile, which was not met with one in return, although he could tell by the gracious shine in her eyes that she was thankful for his kindness. "Just let me know if you need anything else to drink while you're working so hard, I'll hook you up with that too."
"Thank you very much, Claude, I'll keep it in mind." With that, Byleth was to her grading and he was walking back behind the counter without any idea if she was going to ask him for anything at all for the rest of the day. If she came up to the counter and struck up idle conversation with him as a distraction from what she needed to be doing, he wasn't sure how he'd be able to handle it, but something told him that it'd be handled well enough.
She didn't actually approach the counter that day, or even for the next couple, but when it was the shop's last day open before the winter break taking them into the new year, about halfway through his shift Byleth was up at the counter with an empty coffee cup in one hand and a broken spirit evident in her face. "Give me something stronger, I'm on the last set of essays and I kind of want to wring the necks of the students who thought these were appropriate to turn in as a major part of their grades," she joked, passing him the empty cup and expecting him to fill it back up for her. What he did instead was take it and put it in the sink, grabbing a larger one and filling it with the most caffeinated combination he could create with what he had behind the counter, passing it back to her with a grin.
"Consider this my gift to you," he told her as she took a sip and gagged at the bitter taste. "It'll perk you right back up and make you glad you're suffering here with me instead of anywhere else in Garreg Mach."
"I'll think about that when I start jittering in a bit. This tastes like straight espresso." Her back turning on him, she couldn't see his grin turning to more of a sly expression, knowing very well that was nearly what he'd given her. "You better be prepared to give me more of these so I can get these grades in tonight."
It took a second for her words to sink in, but he was jumping around the counter to chase her down the moment they hit him. "Tonight? Byleth, we're closing early today because—"
"Because classes are over? I figured as much." She was already taking her seat once again, and Claude was able to see that she'd prepared herself for the long haul of finishing up her grades, complete with a blanket and a pillow in a bag down on the floor. "I was assuming that you'd take the opportunity to help me out, just this once, but if you're not interested I can always find a different shop to hang out at until I'm done."
His face contorting as he went through all of the thought processes he possibly could, he ultimately decided that he would do whatever he could for Byleth in that moment, whether it was continuing to give her free drinks or let her stay as late as she wanted. "I'll see if Leonie's chill with you hanging out here until you're finished," he told her, knowing that if anyone was truly itching to get out of the shop for a couple weeks, it was the manager herself. "She'll probably say no, but there's no harm in trying."
"Trying's all I can ask for, really." Byleth set her cup down on the table, already partially emptied, and she was right back to grading her essays, while Claude gave a few slow nods before ducking back behind the counter and into the bakery area, where Leonie was doing a walkthrough of cleaning needs with Lysithea and Marianne.
The moment Leonie saw him standing there, she pointed in the direction of one of the machines and the other two went investigating, while she trudged over to where Claude was waiting. "Something going on?" she asked, putting on her best managerial voice. "I'm sure that almost every regular we've gained over this semester hasn't showed up today because they understand this place is a front for a class, so I'm sure that if you've got a problem I need to deal with it's some stranger."
"Yeah, actually, about that. Not really a problem I need you to deal with." Scratching his foot against the floor, Claude tried not to meet Leonie's eyes until the split second before he started to tell her what was going on, but when they did lock he could tell she knew what he was about to say. "Byleth's here, and she needs somewhere to work until she's got all her grades in, and I was wondering…could here work? I can do some deep cleaning of the seating area while she finishes up, so that when we come back in a couple weeks everything's the cleanest it's been."
It took several minutes of Leonie standing there, her hand brought up to the bridge of her nose that she was pinching in thought, for her to finally concede that the offer he'd made to clean was one that she couldn't pass up. "Just make sure this place is locked down tightly before you leave, I guess," she said, dropping her hand and giving a single, resolute sigh that told Claude he'd won the battle. "I don't want Hanneman coming by over break and finding this place ransacked, you know?"
"Trust me, doors will be tightly locked when I leave, if anyone's getting in here while we're closed it'll be through a window." He shot Leonie a couple of finger guns, to which she rolled her eyes and went back to her walkthrough with the bakers, while he headed out to the still-empty café part of the building, finding Byleth exactly where he'd left her. "Manager says it's all good if you stay here as long as you need to, and I'll be right here with you," he told her, gesturing to the room with so many tables to scrub and push aside for the break. "I've just got to get a bunch of my own work done while you're doing yours."
"If you get tired of working, feel free to sit with me." Byleth wasn't looking at Claude, as she was focused on the essay she was grading, but he could tell that she meant her offer in a way that wasn't just a friendly one, and the idea of taking her up on it was one that he could barely resist.
But resist he did, because he knew that if he started slacking off then and a customer came inside, he'd be in trouble. Or he'd be in trouble anyway, because the next customer to come inside was one of Byleth's students who immediately saw that the other people in the shop were the guy who worked behind the counter and their professor. "Hey, mind if I ask you a question about my grade?" Sylvain—the one who lived just a few doors down from Claude, the one who'd been taking secret pictures of him—asked loudly, causing Byleth's head to shoot straight up from the essay she'd been reading. "That's the spirit, thanks for giving me an ear. I noticed that you marked me down for 'historical inaccuracy', but that can't be right, Felix even told me I was writing the story exactly as it happened."
"I doubt that to be true," she coldly replied, shifting her eyes back down to what she was reading, "because there's no way Felix would do that…unless he was setting you up for failure. There is no such thing as 'historical accuracy' in a story about a so-called romantic tryst you swear you watched happen that never actually happened, the grade you received on that portion of your paper was well-deserved."
"Yeah, see, I don't really agree with that, and I think…" Trailing off, Sylvain looked over at Claude with a rather playful smirk. "Tall, dark, and handsome over here might agree with me if he saw the points I made about a lustful professor shacking up with one of her students so his grade didn't suffer."
For a second, all Claude could feel was anger at hearing such an accusation be tossed out, but he knew that he couldn't show any emotions at all toward what was said if he was going to get out of the situation faster. "At no point did such a thing happen, Sylvain, and I already told you that these sorts of accusations can lead to my termination from my position. Is that the sort of game you want to play?"
"Then how come he can bed you all he wants?" Despite what Byleth had just said, Sylvain was pointing fingers at Claude, enraging them both because they knew that he was doing nothing but telling lies at that point. "Answer me that, if you won't admit to sleeping with anyone so they can pass, why're you sleeping with the barista guy?"
"She's not, dude, leave me out of this," Claude spat, barely resisting the urge to throw a dirty cleaning cloth at Sylvain's face. "I don't know what goes on in her classroom, but Byl—Professor Eisner and I have had nothing but a customer service relationship and that's as far as it's ever going to get."
"Because he's a student here in Garreg Mach and I'm a professor, it's illegal and illicit, even if he isn't a student of my own." There was clear anger in Byleth's words too, but she remained steady as ever and was beginning to get Sylvain to see the error of his ways. "I know that you and your friends have joked endlessly about Dimitri and his schoolboy crush on me, but I'm not quite into the rugged men like him, fake eyepatch and all that. My interest lies in academics, not in people."
Finding that his argument had no feet to stand on, but that he'd come all the way to the Golden Perk to cause a scene in the first place, Sylvain had to meekly order himself a drink to go from Claude, who had to keep himself from spitting in the cup as he poured the coffee. There was no tip, there was no thank you, there was barely any eye contact as the drink was handed over and he was out the door. "Geez, that guy really wrote a paper about you hooking up with one of your students?" Claude asked once he knew that no one was going to overhear him. "What a sleazy thing to do."
"It's a bit more complicated than that, he accused me of wanting to sleep with one of my students, who most definitely did have a crush on me during classes." Her voice showing that she'd already calmed down, Byleth set aside her work for a moment and pulled out her blanket, covering her lap with it. "Then he said I was stringing him along, because I was playing interested but refusing to do anything because of…someone else."
"A tall, dark, and handsome someone else?" he suggested, using Sylvain's exact words because they felt right in the moment. When Byleth turned away from looking towards him, he knew he had her caught. "Well, guess I better get to working on growing out my beard during break, I've had it shaved all school year for sanitary reasons, but I can't have a professor lusting over me and I happen to know she doesn't care for rugged men."
"I don't think you changing your appearance would make me think any less of you, Claude," she replied, her eyes still facing the window and not him. "I've done some digging into who you are, a professor by the name of Hanneman has been quite the help in getting information on about who, exactly, Claude von Riegan is, and I—"
"Don't ask me about what I know you're about to ask."
"—I'm curious about why you're here, taking this class, rather than doing anything else with your life." Now Byleth was turning back toward him, the smallest of smiles on her lips as if she was amused with the topic she'd approached. "I didn't inquire about the details regarding your enrollment, although Hanneman was quite eager to share those with me if I wanted them, but it did seem that you being here had something to do with him specifically."
Claude knew from that moment on that Byleth's behavior that day had been, no doubt, because she knew more about him than he'd wanted anyone there to know, and she was choosing to divulge that secret in the most roundabout way. "I owe Hanneman for an accident we were involved in, plus he knows the less-than-savory details about my life that the school doesn't need to know about," he explained, coming to the booth seat and sitting down next to her on it, as she threw the blanket over his legs as well as her own. "Business isn't really my thing, neither is school if we're being honest, but I had to be here to make good on my debt to him and that's why I'm here with you today."
She went silent for a little while, basking in the warmth he'd brought when he sat down with her, and slowly but surely she brought the blanket up, until she was leaning back with it covering herself with plenty extra to cover him as well. "I'm going to take a nap before I get back to work," she told him, "and whether you're still here when I wake up, that's up to you, I guess."
"I still have a job I'm doing…" he reminded her, but seeing her laying her head back against the seat, her seafoam green hair splayed everywhere as she dozed off, he knew that he couldn't pull himself away from her in that moment. He glanced toward the counter, where there had been a grand total of one customer in who really knew how long, and he decided that with it being the last day they were open, if anyone else came in for a bit Leonie could be the one to deal with them.
At some point he fell asleep there next to Byleth, because when he realized what was going on the room was a lot dimmer, the closed sign was plastered to the door, and the two of them were the only people left in the shop. There was a moment where he dazedly looked at her and considered falling back asleep as he'd been, but it dawned on him that she was supposed to be grading essays and an hours-long nap in the middle of that was not going to be good for her productivity. When he shook her awake she came to with a gasp, as if he'd caused her to rise from the middle of a deep sleep, and before he could explain a thing she was frantically tossing the blanket aside and getting back to her computer.
For a moment there, everything had been peaceful in their lives, and Claude would have been lying if he said he didn't wish it could stay that way. He didn't know Byleth too well, beyond the customer aspect of her as well as vague understandings of her professional life, but he would give up just about everything if it meant getting to be with her—and he wondered if she'd consider doing the same if it came down to it.
It was dark out when she finally submitted her final grades, him having spent the time making sure every last speck of grime was off of the tables and countertops. "I think we can call it a night," she proclaimed, beginning to pack up. "And now I get to walk home in the dark, but I'd say it was worth it. I've never quite had a nap like that before."
"I'd offer you a ride, but I don't know how well your pile of things would handle riding on the back of my bike," he replied with a scratch at the back of his neck, realizing that offering to take a professor home on a motorcycle would be more trouble than it was worth. "But I could at least ride alongside you as you walk, if that's cool with you?"
"It's a kind thought, but I think I'll pass. It's just a few blocks to my place, I've made it there in the snow and cold before, I can make it tonight." As they both finished getting ready to go, they made idle talk between them, feeling like a bond had been deepened by their booth nap they'd shared, and by the time they were heading out for the next couple of weeks, numbers and addresses had been exchanged and a promise was made that they'd keep in touch over the break.
Claude thought that once he was on his bike that'd be the end of Byleth that day, but he watched her down the street just a bit, looking at him with the faintest of smiles on her face only visible due to the overhead streetlight shining directly down on her. There was something about her presence there on that darkened sidewalk, illuminated by a light from above, that made her feel more angelic than she'd ever once been before, a blessing that had been given to Claude for his sacrifice in dealing with Practical Business when he had no actual need for the class.
The whole ride back to his apartment was spent with thoughts of her and her bright hair and her kind gestures and work-focused mind, and even as he was parking his bike in its usual spot inside of the room he couldn't help but think that he could just drive back over and spend some time with her. A knock at the door broke him from his reverie, and he went to see who it was, to find Sylvain standing there, a sheepish look on his face as he asked to come inside. "I just wanted to apologize for being a dick earlier, it wasn't cool and wasn't called for," he said once Claude granted him entry. "You and the professor deserved better than that, and if you wanted to report me for harassment I'd be understanding of it."
"You couldn't help it that you're jealous she's not into you or one of your friends," Claude told him, giving his shoulder a firm pat and watching Sylvain shrink underneath his strong grasp. "It's only natural, goddess knows I'd do the same if I had a thing for my young professor and she was all over some middle-class worker at a coffee shop." He paused, as Sylvain gave an awkward chuckle. "Yeah, laugh about it all you want, but here's the catch: your professor? She's not into just some 'middle-class' guy, and she knows it."
"Ah, talking big game about yourself, love that confidence. Wish I had it for myself, but that's life." It was increasingly clear that Sylvain wanted no part of the conversation beyond his apology, but Claude could see right through his tough-guy disguise and wanted to make a point of it. "I should be going now, my friend Felix's on his way over and I don't wanna be missing in action when he gets there, you dig? Especially not if he invites the whole squad over, our whole project group was going to get together at some point and…you're not letting me go that easily, are you?" Claude's wordless nod was enough to make Sylvain gulp. "Yeah, uh, didn't think so."
"Stay for a while, I'd love to hear you tell me more about your project group and your friends and maybe even a thing or two about the other one who has a thing for Byleth. Dimitri, that's his name, isn't it?" There was a line between playful and intimidating that Claude was trying to toe with his treatment of Sylvain, but he was certain he was on the wrong side of it when the redhead silenced himself completely and didn't want to say another word until he could leave. He was back later that night, though, with black-haired Felix and a bunch of others that he'd never seen before, as well as some he had, all there to share stories about their experience in Byleth's class with him.
By no means was it anything that Claude had hoped for that night, but he was able to come away from it with a deeper appreciation for the kind of patience she had for teaching students like these, and a stronger desire to spend more time with her in the future. Break was only a couple weeks long, taking them into the beginning of the Guardian Moon, but he knew that he wouldn't ask going that long without seeing her. That wasn't something he was to admit to these now-former students of hers, although he was sure they could guess it just based on how he would smile to himself with a lot of their stories. But all of that sense of camaraderie was lost when one of the many people crowded there in his apartment let it slip that they were all planning on taking the second half of Byleth's class in the coming term, and he realized these people weren't former students at all.
"You mean, you're getting me to spill everything I know about her just to use it against her when you're in her class again?" he asked, completely blown away by the audacity they all had, and while a couple of them seemed genuinely shocked that he'd accuse them of such a thing, Sylvain's smug smile told a different story. Without much in the way of thinking through what was going on clearly, Claude demanded they all leave, and slowly they made their way out of the room, allowing him to slam the door on them and get them out of his sights…except for one.
"I promise a word of this will not find its way to the headmaster or the dean, or anyone with even a lick of authority," the kindhearted woman named Mercedes that had come in with the others said, her head bowing slightly as she spoke. "I know that what they've done is a bit uncalled for, but most of them meant nothing by it, and I can assure you that's the truth. The only ones who have any sort of stake in this are Sylvain and Dimitri, and at the end of the day I think one of them's smart enough to know this is not a situation to be involved in, and the other is Sylvain and he'll get over his crush on the professor soon enough."
"Thanks, but how do I know I can trust you?" He already felt like his ability to trust had been betrayed by the surprise gathering in his home, but Claude was beginning to feel desperate to keep Byleth's job intact. "What way can you prove your worth to me, right here and right now?"
Lifting her head so that he could see that she was smiling radiantly, her whole face beaming, Mercedes said, "I don't think I can really prove anything right this second, but I want you to know that my word is as good as your own. And besides…" She pulled out her long ponytail, and much to Claude's surprise the good majority of it came out in her hand, leaving her with a very short haircut that she'd been clipping hair into. "I think that you can use my own secret as leverage here. I'll protect you if you protect me."
"P-protect you?" he repeated, glancing towards his windows to make sure no one was spying on him, beginning to suspect he'd slipped into an adult film without realizing it. "I don't know if I'm up for that, we just met and all."
"Oh, no, I mean that I want you to keep it a secret from all of them that I'm much older than the young twenty-something they think I am. I've got a good five years on the majority of them, you see." The way Mercedes laughed sounded similar to chimes in the wind, and Claude felt more at ease knowing that her secret wasn't too risqué or dangerous to withhold. "I'll protect your student-teacher relationship if you protect my friendships."
With his back metaphorically against the wall, Claude knew there was no choice but to accept her offer. "You've got yourself a deal, Mercedes," he said after holding out a hand for a shake, which she took after putting her fake ponytail back in. "I'll keep my lips sealed if you keep theirs sealed too." For whatever reason, that handshake was the least comforting thing Claude had ever had to commit to, but he didn't have anything else he could do unless he wanted to lose something that meant a lot to him on terms that weren't his own.
Now, if it was losing Byleth for reasons of his own actual doing, that would've been completely different, but he had no intentions of driving her away.
For the rest of the break between semesters, Claude's mind was racing over the potential backstabbing that Mercedes could've given him in regards to what had gone down in his apartment, but based on the fact that Byleth was able to come over a time or two for a drink and some personal life sharing, he knew that she was at least doing her part in keeping things safe. Sylvain didn't show his head around any time that Byleth was nearby, and neither did any of the others who'd been involved in the night's ordeal, with the exception of Mercedes, who did pop by one time to let Byleth know of her involvement with things and that if anything went wrong, it wasn't on her.
"Do I want to know what this is about?" Byleth had asked when the conversation happened, to which Claude shrugged, wishing that Mercedes hadn't been there and hadn't ever opened her mouth on the matter. As far as he was concerned, it could have stayed out of the professor's ears, but at the same time it somewhat did make sense that she needed to be aware that some of her students were trying to ruin her life.
When the Golden Perk reopened the day before classes resumed, it was with one less person than they'd been used to having show up, the third instance of something going wrong with the coffee shop itself, but the fourth such thing in Claude's mind (everything with Sylvain and the others being the true third). "Marianne has decided that for her mental health, she can't continue on with the class," Leonie told everyone when they'd all gathered in the shop, moving tables to reorganize the seating area together. "She alluded to some wild and crazy things going on but didn't give details, and I told her that I think Lysithea will be able to handle the bakery without her at this point."
"Definitely got it under control," Lysithea replied, giving a thumbs-up from where she'd sat herself up on the counter, munching on one of her cakes that she'd brought in for everyone to have as a snack. "I'll miss having her around, she kept my sweet tooth in check back there, but the work's not going to be too hard without her."
"Down two and we still have a lot of working to do," Ignatz mumbled under his breath, while Claude looked over at Hilda and how she too wasn't doing anything to help their setup for the shop. "I can't help but think that this course might end in a lot of failed grades for most of us, which I am not exactly looking forward to. Unless…" Looking at Leonie, who was strongarming a table with Raphael doing the same across the room, he yelled out, "I think we've got it under control with the six of us, don't we?"
"Definitely!" she replied, sliding the table into its new resting place, completely ignoring that Claude had stopped moving chairs to go stand over by Hilda. "I'm confident that at least the six of us will pass the class, sucks about Marianne but she couldn't hold up, and we all know about Lorenz and his disappearance for no reason. Anyone hear about him lately?"
The group had a resounding negative response to that question, which amused Leonie, but when she and the others were back to work, Claude was nudging Hilda with his elbow to get her attention. "Want to talk about what's eating at you?" he asked quietly, fully willing to let their conversation go just between the two of them. "I'll share my break if you share yours."
"I'd rather choke, thanks," she snapped in response, flouncing off to go start moving around knickknacks on the shelves and walls, and he was left looking for answers—until he happened to glance outside and saw Byleth walking by, her eyes looking longingly in the coffee shop and lighting up at seeing him. They shared a wave and that was the end of the interaction, and small as it might have been, he was glad they'd been able to have it; something told him that those small things were going to be what got him through the second semester of the class he'd never asked to have to take.
A/N: there is ART that goes along with this! check out the AO3 version to see it! c:
