A picnic, huh? Those are harder to cater than simply going to a restaurant or ordering in...but it wouldn't be impossible. Especially with the right choice of food...
[Oh boy, he's already scheming.]
And hey, you know I would've loved to be in your class, Teach. But you couldn't exactly recruit everyone away from the Golden Deer, could you? At least the house leader had to stay put. [There's some mixed feelings there, that's for sure. The loneliness of his friends leaving his house while he had to stay behind, his genuine desire to join whatever class Teach was in and follow those friends that he hadn't been able to pursue, the quiet inferiority of not having been enough to hold onto the ones who left. Multipled, perhaps, by the knowledge Lysithea and the previous Teach had given him, that when Teach had been in his house he hadn't lost anyone at all - not even Lorenz to the Empire and Count Gloucester's demands during the war. He wonders what made Byleth choose the Golden Deer in that version of events. He wonders what he failed to do to make that happen.
He does his best to shake off those mixed feelings and the melancholy that comes with them, but he can't stop his gaze sliding away from Byleth to be Anywhere Else for a few moments. He also fails to respond to that dig at his cooking and/or his poisons(anyone who'd seen his performance at the cooking contest might declare them potentially indistinguishable), which for Claude is perhaps more telling than anything his eyes are doing.
It definitely puts him in an extra awkward spot when Byleth presses the question Claude had casually sidestepped.]
Me, Teach? I'm fine, obviously. Can't you tell? [He looks back at Byleth, flashing a smile.] You know me. Not a lot really gets me down.
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[Oh boy, he's already scheming.]
And hey, you know I would've loved to be in your class, Teach. But you couldn't exactly recruit everyone away from the Golden Deer, could you? At least the house leader had to stay put. [There's some mixed feelings there, that's for sure. The loneliness of his friends leaving his house while he had to stay behind, his genuine desire to join whatever class Teach was in and follow those friends that he hadn't been able to pursue, the quiet inferiority of not having been enough to hold onto the ones who left. Multipled, perhaps, by the knowledge Lysithea and the previous Teach had given him, that when Teach had been in his house he hadn't lost anyone at all - not even Lorenz to the Empire and Count Gloucester's demands during the war. He wonders what made Byleth choose the Golden Deer in that version of events. He wonders what he failed to do to make that happen.
He does his best to shake off those mixed feelings and the melancholy that comes with them, but he can't stop his gaze sliding away from Byleth to be Anywhere Else for a few moments. He also fails to respond to that dig at his cooking and/or his poisons(anyone who'd seen his performance at the cooking contest might declare them potentially indistinguishable), which for Claude is perhaps more telling than anything his eyes are doing.
It definitely puts him in an extra awkward spot when Byleth presses the question Claude had casually sidestepped.]
Me, Teach? I'm fine, obviously. Can't you tell? [He looks back at Byleth, flashing a smile.] You know me. Not a lot really gets me down.