Chapter Text
Byleth follows Dorothea towards one of the walls of apartments surrounding the parking lot, duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Dorothea has her phone to her ear, trying one last time to call her mother before they make it inside.
“Good morning,” she says, voice a bit more upbeat than usual. Byleth checks her phone, confirming that it’s just past 12:30. “Byleth and I are right outside, just wanted to–” her posture shifts, and she rolls her eyes. “Spring break, mom. Yep. No, this week. Yes, I’m sure.”
She stays quiet as Dorothea lets them in and leads her up to the
second floor. It’s strange, she thinks, that “going to Dorothea’s place” was a recurring element of her adolescence, routine in a way she never gave much thought to. Walking over right after school, down the tree-lined streets down to the other side of town until she reached a small house with a porch and a yard. Even though she’s still “going to Dorothea’s place”, everything save for Dorothea and her mother is completely different.
“We’re coming inside now, okay?” There’s a hint of levity as she adds, “Just make sure you’re decent.” Her protest of It was one time! is audible through the speaker before Dorothea hangs up her phone so she can unlock the door and kick off her shoes.
It’s her first time in the new apartment, even though they’d moved in… close to three years ago? She feels a little disappointed at the realization. The place is on the smaller side, with just enough room for mother and daughter to make a place for themselves. Still, she recognizes the painting on the wall, crocheted blanket lying over the couch, a shelf dedicated to a handful of Dorothea’s favorite books. The general messiness that her mother leaves in her wake. Different as it all looks, she still finds a hint of comfortable nostalgia in it.
They stow their bags in Dorothea’s room, and Byleth doesn’t bother to unpack. Her hormones are safe and accessible in a side compartment, and she can just use her bag as her dresser. “Thanks again for letting me stay here,” she says, even knowing there’s no thanks necessary. Her family had moved recently as well, and while it had been under more positive circumstances than Dorothea’s, it had also been much further away. “Wasn’t looking forward to a long plane ride.”
“Please, the pleasure’s all mine,” she smiles. “You know I like having you around. Besides, Mari’s visiting family this week, so I’ll be a lot less lonely with you around.”
She doesn’t quite smile at that– it takes a lot to make her smile, and forcing it only makes her look robotic– but it fills her with warmth nonetheless.
The smell of coffee fills the apartment as they leave her room, and Manuela Casagranda turns to beam at them from her spot in the kitchen.
“Byleth! So good to see you again.” Her voice is warm and carries a faint lilt, despite the fact that she’s so clearly just rolled out of bed.
“Good to see you too, Manuela.” She’d say the same to just about any parent of a friend from school, but Manuela is probably the only one where the words would feel genuine.
Her first hug is for Dorothea, wrapping her daughter in a tight embrace with a murmured “Welcome home, dear.” Byleth isn’t much of a hugger, but she’s well used to Manuela’s preferred method of greeting, and dutifully reciprocates when she’s enveloped in her warm arms and freshly-applied perfume.
“You’ve changed so much I think I’d hardly recognize you,” she muses, looking down at Byleth with a fond expression. “Love the hair, by the way.”
She’s not quite sure what to say, but the words fill her with a bit of pride. In the few years since they’d last seen each other, Byleth had gone on hormones, completely phased out her wardrobe, gotten a voice coach, and most recently dyed her hair an eye-catching blue shade to match old pictures of her mother back in college. The changes felt slow, hardly noticeable at times, so the idea that someone who knew her so well as a teenager might fail to recognize her is encouraging.
“I’ll leave you two to it for now,” she carries on, pouring herself a cup of coffee and adding a frankly irresponsible amount of sugar. “But I’m taking you both out to dinner tonight, okay? A lovely Thai place opened last month and I’ve been dying to go back.”
“Yeah? Hot waiter?” Dorothea teases. Manuela takes a playful swat at her with a dish towel.
That night, Byleth lies awake in Dorothea’s bed. She’d offered to take the floor or couch, but relented to her friend’s insistence that they both be comfortable. Dorothea’s in the other room, giggling into her phone as she has a late-night conversation with her girlfriend, while Byleth stares up at the ceiling.
“Everything alright?” Dorothea asks, slipping inside and shutting the door behind her. The clock on the bedside table reads 11:32 in blocky red numbers. “Usually you’re out as soon as you’re in bed.”
“Just kind of weird,” Byleth shrugs, still looking at the ceiling. “We’ve shared a room since sophomore year, but something about being at your house makes me think of all the times in high school we got told I couldn’t stay overnight at a girl’s house.”
She settles in under the covers. “That sucked, didn’t it?”
“Moreso in retrospect,” Byleth admits. “I think I was always pretty jealous hearing about what happened after I had to go, but I didn’t realize that’s what it was at the time.”
“Wish you could’ve been there.” The mattress creaks as Dorothea settles in, and her voice betrays that she’s starting to get sleepy. “But I promise, you didn’t miss out on anything special.”
“I guess not.” She shrugs again, and turns to her side. That isn’t what the problem is, people miss out on special things all the time. But she doesn’t know how to explain that it’s the mundanity she wishes she had. “Night, Thea.”
“Night, By.”
Byleth isn’t one for social media, but she has a defunct-looking account on every platform for the sole purpose of following her friends. By the time it’s 3 in the afternoon she’s seen pictures of beautiful scenery, videos of beachside parties, vacation liveposts, and a particularly cute photograph of Bernadetta’s latest embroidery project.
Meanwhile, she’s reclining on the couch with her feet up and laptop open, playing Stardew Valley co-op with Dorothea, who’s situated a few feet away. There’s a bottle of lemonade at her side, and a fan blowing right at her. As good a time as everyone else is having, there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.
She looks up at the sound of the door unlocking. “My goodness, I think this is the same position you were in when I left this morning,” Manuela pretends to chide, stepping inside with a cup of coffee in one hand and a small pile of mail in another.
“We’ve been very busy,” Dorothea informs her. “Byleth’s being a tryhard and I have to keep up with her.”
“I see spring break isn’t going to stop you two from… what is it you call it these days, ‘the grind’?”
Dorothea groans overdramatically, making Byleth and Manuela laugh.
“Ugh, would you look at this?” Manuela asks, waving an envelope that neither Byleth nor Dorothea are close enough to look at. “‘Manuela Arnault’. Three years ago, and they still can’t get my name right.”
“Gross,” Dorothea says. Byleth’s pretty sure it’s a completely automatic reaction.
“Same company, they get your name right!” she complains. Byleth and Dorothea had changed their names at the same time, Byleth to… well, Byleth, while Dorothea abandoned her father’s last name in favor of Casagranda.
“Maybe they just like me better.”
“Then they have good taste, at the very least.” She discards the mail in a stack on the table, which looks more like a pile than a stack at this point. “You two eat yet?”
“It’s almost 3:30,” Byleth says.
“We went for pizza,” Dorothea fills in, which seems to satisfy Manuela better than Byleth’s answer.
“In that case, I’m going to go clean up. Date tonight,” she singsongs.
“Ooh, who with?” Dorothea asks, swiveling her chair to look over. Byleth also looks up, mildly curious.
“Guy I went out with last week. Very handsome. I’ll leave you two money for dinner?”
“Sounds good,” Dorothea says, before Byleth can offer to pay for both of them. Manuela already insisted on covering last night’s dinner, and she’s going to start feeling guilty if she doesn’t buy more than the occasional slice of pizza. Then Manuela disappears into her room, and she figures that’s an issue to work out later.
9:30 sees Byleth and Dorothea in the kitchen, brownies in the oven, eating the leftover batter out of the mixing bowl with a pair of spoons.
“Alright, that’s enough sugar for me or I’m gonna get sick,” Byleth proclaims, then takes another spoonful for the way to the sink. The uncooked batter as well as the burritos they’d ordered for dinner were both delicious, but filled her to the point of bursting. She opts to busy herself with doing the dishes to avoid the temptation of taking another spoonful.
“Your loss,” Dorothea says, and she hears the clink of the spoon scraping against the bowl. “Uh oh.”
Byleth looks over her shoulder. “What is it?”
She leans over to show Byleth a text. Awful date. Will be home in half an hour.
“Ooh.” She grimaces internally. “Should we do something?”
“Probably not,” she says, leaning against the counter to rest her head against a cabinet. “We’ll leave some brownies out for her, but she’ll want to mope in her room for the night.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a routine down.”
A tired smile crosses her face. “Little bit, yeah. Been here for a handful of breakups. If they’ve only gone out a few times it’s not too bad, she just wallows for a bit. Nothing like my breakup with Ferdie.”
“That was a bad one,” Byleth recalls, purposefully understating. The breakup, which occurred junior year just after their first anniversary, had been best described as ‘disastrous’. While she prides herself on being there for her friends, she’d been keen on avoiding breakup fallout ever since.
“Fortunately, we’re already preparing good breakup food,” she gestures to the oven. “Here, want me to take over washing?”
She shakes her head. “I’m good.”
The brownies are still in the oven, three toothpicks having judged it underdone, by the time Manuela comes home. Byleth wasn’t sure what to expect on her face- anger, misery, maybe even signs of tears. Instead, she just looks exhausted.
Dorothea turns to acknowledge her but doesn’t say anything, and Byleth follows her lead. Manuela looks over into the kitchen, and says only a tired “good night, girls,” before retiring to her room.