...oooh. Claude went too far, didn't he? It's been a little while since Felix called him 'Riegan'. He could just be - well, affecting disinterest like a cat in front of Sylvain and Dimitri as witnesses, but the timing makes Claude suspect otherwise.

Also, he's not sure even Sylvain was comfortable with that one, either. He turned Claude's statement into a safer, more blanket remark about the whole group - maybe not wanting to be singled out by Claude's remark, although that's pure speculation. But he and Felix have been working on their relationship, and Sylvain doing a lot of flirting has been an issue for it in the past, so...yeah, it makes sense that this could be a sensitive subject for Felix, and that it could be a subject Sylvain doesn't want Claude poking at because Sylvain knows that.

So while it's all varying degrees of guesswork, Claude can recognize there's a whole lot of possibility here that he just put his foot in his mouth. Time to damage control.

"Sorry, sorry," he says, smiling ruefully. "Bad joke. You don't have to humor me, Sylvain. It's just been a hell of a day, you know? And a lot of narrow escapes. I really underestimated how dangerous this plan of mine was..." He nods to Dimitri. "Lead the way back to that little alleyway, okay? You're a big guy, people will make way for you. We'll follow."