[ Arms wind tighter around him than they did before, and - hm. Even though he thought he'd held it together something must've slipped through anyway, and guilt flares up again now in two forms. Sylvain doesn't need to deal with this when he can handle it on his own, Claude thinks. Just like always; all he needs is some time to sort through everything.

And the same goes for wishing for this comfort when he did have it with Hilda and mourned it while here alone, and now they've ended up here, somehow. Maybe it was always meant to be temporary and he'd just imagined everything all along.

More to think about later because while he hears Sylvain ignoring his change of subject, he's just going to ignore it right back. That's one vulnerability too far to go over for now. ]

So what I'm hearing is that I should expect to keep my impressively long winning streak intact? That sounds like a good deal to me, actually. [ It's not difficult to sound entertained now - especially because Claude's fairly certain he can use that to spur Sylvain into all kinds of chess games, though he hums thoughtfully as he shifts to drawing figure eights along the other man's back. ] Maybe I'll teach you some other board games to even it out a bit. Or a card game I picked up from Ciri so then we can both branch out.