Chapter Text
“It's not Dimitri,” he grinds out, trying not to yell in frustration because goddess fuck his throat is sore, and it's only going to get sorer even with the healers and medicine. “I've told you, I'm not telling you.” Sylvain only watches him as Ingrid questions, and Felix's fists curl into the blanket across his lap on top of the bed.
“This started when he got engaged.” It hadn't. “Felix... you can tell us.” He can't.
Because it isn't Dimitri, and it had been happening long before he'd had his coughing fit outside the celebration for Dimitri and Byleth's engagement when Ingrid had caught him and he hadn't been able to shrug her off before she knew.
He looks at Ingrid, glances at Sylvain—his eyes brush across him at shoulder height, see the tense set of them—and his glance skitters away back to his fists in his lap.
“If it was Dimitri I would tell you, just to get you to drop it. It's not Dimitri.”
“You won't see him at all,” she says, her voice small, and he knows she thinks he's in love and fucking dying for Dimitri and, what, hurting himself further by keeping his distance? Fuck, he wishes he could keep his distance, but he can't, he doesn't know if he's dying faster or slower for it but he can't. He tilts his head back and sighs.
“Because he would just.” Know, he would know, because even with all those years when they were broken, Dimitri knows Felix. He would know, and he would tell them, and... “He wouldn't be able to fix it and he would be insufferable. I don't want him using my death as an excuse to wallow in stupid misplaced guilt, he has a whole damn continent to run. It has nothing to do with him, anyways.”
“Then... is it Byl—“
“No!” He finally shouts, and then he grimaces and his hand goes to his throat, and Ingrid is bringing him water and Sylvain—Sylvain is too close and he puts a hand on Felix's arm and Felix wants to scream but he settles for gulping the water.
“Felix,” Sylvain says, too close and too gentle, “who is it?”
“Sylvain,” he replies, eyes screwing shut, because fuck, ask a question get an answer, “please drop it.” Sylvain's hand on his arm is warm and he's too close and Felix wants to lean into him because he feels like shit and—he feels the tickle and the burn in his lungs and throat and he shoves Sylvain away but it doesn't stop him from coughing up one whole jonquil bloom, bright yellow and crumpled and bruised by its journey, soaked in his spit and flecked with blood in a way that looks deceptively delicate. He lets Ingrid press his face against her shoulder and she doesn't care that it smears her shirt with spit and tears he would blame on hacking his lungs up.
He's on whole fucking blossoms now.
“I'm tired,” he whispers, voice cracked and torn up, and he feels Ingrid flinch before she strokes a trembling hand over his hair. He allows it, because he's tired, and he's hurting, and they love each other and she's scared for him. He feels terrible because maybe he's going to be another Glenn, only worse because he's going slow instead of in one horrible blink.
Well. Not so slow, now, not when he's coughing up whole fucking blossoms.
+
The war is over, at least the official war—Felix knows there will be pockets of rebellion and little skirmishes, and no end of political bullshit to deal with. There's rebuilding to do, refugees to resettle, a whole damn economy to restore—so the war is over, but the work isn't.
But at least now they're not worrying every day about a battle, about who they might not see again. He can stop worrying so much about Ingrid and Sylvain and, yes, even Dimitri. There are Reconstruction Councils now instead of War Councils, and everyone is light even under the load of so much that must be done, because of the promise of a future.
Felix thinks it's all a bit sappy, but he isn't unaffected by it, finds himself...happy, even. His friends are alive, Dimitri is all but officially King, and Felix thinks maybe there is enough to be done that he can be satisfied returning home.
And then he goes out drinking with the others, and he doesn't drink much because he's always had embarrassingly low tolerance, so he's sober enough when he looks over at Sylvain and Ashe discussing something in low voices. Sylvain is smiling, a real fucking smile, not that shit he uses on girls, and he's gesturing with his hands and Felix...
Felix feels like he's going to throw up.
He pushes himself up from the table they're all at and makes his way out the door, and he winds up in the narrow alley around the side of the tavern, an itching, fluttering in his chest and throat as he coughs and coughs. And then he's spitting into the fist pressed over his mouth, and he stares down at his glove in shock.
Three fat, pink, camellia petals are plastered to his glove by spit.
He flicks them off of his glove in horror, and then he leans against the wall and he shakes and shakes because fuck, he can't keep telling himself he just has a stupid crush he'll get over, and fuck, he's going to fucking die.
+
“Are you sure?” the healer asks him, and Felix knows it's standard but he's still so fucking annoyed. At least they're alone, the gaggle of concerned friends finally banished so he can think for a second in peace.
He has options, the healers say, and Felix knows that. The problem is they're all shitty.
1) He can tell Sylvain his lungs are sprouting flowers that work their bloody way out of his mouth every time he thinks about him, really thinks about him, for more than a minute, because he's in love with him and has been for at least months but, probably, years. And then Sylvain will feel horribly guilty because he doesn't love Felix back, which means Felix is going to die.
He's already dying anyways, so why add yet one more thing he can't control for Sylvain to hate himself over?
2) He can have the whole damned infection removed, never have to feel a handful of petals flutter in his lungs and stop-up his airway, never have to peel petals off the roof of his mouth and the backs of his teeth while he tries not to vomit and make things worse, never have to rinse the taste of copper and perfume out of his mouth. Never be in love with Sylvain again, feel like he has discovered the answer to some incredible question because Sylvain smiled with his eyes, never even be fond of him, just like he's any other person Felix hardly cares about.
Sylvain loves him. Not the way Felix needs to be loved if he wants to not choke to death on blood and fucking flowers, but he does. Felix can count on his hands the number of people who have loved Sylvain his whole life, who have loved him and treated him well. It's a growing number, he thinks—he truly hopes. He can count on three fingers the number of people Sylvain has loved who used it to hurt him. He does not want to be the fourth finger, even if that means he has to die for it. It's fucking stupid, but Felix has always been stubborn.
3) He can tell Sylvain, cause him immense guilt when he turns Felix down, and then have the infection removed and turn him into nobody as far as Felix is concerned, which would probably destroy Sylvain.
This is a non-option, obviously.
4) He can die. He can just... quietly die. It's bullshit, and Felix hates it, but he can just stay here in a private room in the Royal Infirmary and let them ease him as he chokes to death on his own stupid, stupid feelings. None of them have to ever know it was over Sylvain. They'll all move on eventually—they had moved on from worse. The world will go on just fucking fine without him.
So he chooses option four.
+
Felix knows it's only a matter of time before someone finds out. It's not like you can hide something like the fact you're actively dying when you're in the middle of rebuilding a continent's worth of country. If he could be spared to fuck off back to Fraldarius and die quietly, if not peacefully, he would.
But of course he can't, none of the old Blue Lions class can be spared, all of them slotted naturally into roles of importance for rebuilding Fódlan, like they're indispensable. Felix wonders who they'll put in charge of managing Fraldarius lands when he's dead, he hasn't done up a will yet. Probably divvy it up, give a portion of it to Sylvain, he's already overseeing the North, and he's out in Gautier now cleaning up a spate of bandits even as Felix rides southeast to check grain stores—
He almost falls off his horse, the coughing fit comes so quick, and he's never been so glad that he rode ahead of his men as he is now, alone and clinging to the saddle-horn with one hand and coughing into the other.
He spits petals into his hand, but he gags and has to peel one long petal like tissue paper from the surface of his tongue. It's blush pink and speckled with a deep rose color, and there are a few more like it in his hand, just plain pale pink. Azalea, he thinks, they'd grown them in the greenhouse at Garreg Mach. He doesn't know what they mean, he's never known what any of the fucking things mean, he doesn't care about flowers.
But when he opens his hand, he realizes for the first time he's coughed up more than one, and he actually knows what the round orange petals are, the color of Sylvain's fucking hair. Nasturtium, for conquest and victory. The only flowers he was ever really partial to, and he throws his head back and laughs even though his throat burns and he feels more like sobbing.
+
“Here,” Sylvain says, soft, handing Felix a handkerchief to clean himself up, because he may be dying but he's not an invalid yet. Felix wipes his face with a hand that shakes and then swipes blue petals from his skin, lovely pale blue forget-me-nots, and he grimaces when Sylvain hands him a cup of water and holds out a basin. But he's grateful, and when he swishes water in his mouth and spits it out pink, two more blue petals slip to stick to the side of the basin.
“Thanks,” he says, settling back to lie down and stare at the ceiling, anywhere but at Sylvain, here every day and so, so patient and caring that Felix is sure it's killing him. “You don't have to stay. I know you hate this.” Of course he hates sitting here watching Felix die, Felix still can't look him in the eyes but he's heard him sniffle once or twice when he thought Felix was sleeping.
The others, the ones he allows to see him—Mercedes, Annette, Ashe, hell, even Dedue, just anyone but Dimitri—can do this just as well as Sylvain can. He doesn't have to sit and watch Felix sweat and wheeze his way into his coffin. He doesn't have to take care of him, it's not his fault.
“I'm not going anywhere, Felix,” he says, and it's so fierce Felix turns onto his side and coughs up three purple hyacinth blooms; they sit like dark little stars slick with more blood than spit, and Sylvain helps him clean up this time because he's too exhausted to do anything but lie there and hate that even option four is dragging Sylvain down with him.
+
They find out, of course. It's just the timing of it that's so hilariously inconvenient.
There's a ball, the first one since Dimitri was crowned, and Felix doesn't want to go of course because when the fuck has he ever cared about dancing and fancy dress, but he goes because they all suspect Dimitri's going to finally announce he's marrying Byleth and it's important to the two of them. And Felix, begrudgingly, loves them. If standing at the back of the room and scowling when anyone is dumb enough to approach him is what he has to do to survive showing his support, he will.
But it's such a fucking mistake, because of course Sylvain is there, too, and of course the bastard looks like an entire meal and Felix is starving for it, trying so hard not to devour him with his eyes every time he swans into view. It's a bad idea to think about him, and he manages, somehow, to focus on how much he hates being here and how long this whole fucking thing is taking.
And then everything gets quiet and he sees Dimitri and Byleth on the central stair, and they look so happy and healthy that Felix thinks he won't even be sorry to leave them, they'll be fine without him watching out for every little thing. And Dimitri makes his announcement, and everyone is applauding, and Felix lets his eyes wander across the crowd...
And that's really where he fucks up. Because balls mean beautiful women, and beautiful women are Sylvain's vice, and of course he's got some girl clinging to his arm and he's tilted his head to hear her say something, and all the way over here Felix can see him laugh and smile but it's the fake grin, it's the fucking fake grin and he'll still probably sleep with her even though he doesn't like her—
He can't breathe. It's not a tickle or a flutter, it's like fucking hornets buzzing in his lungs, and he turns and pushes his way out through the balcony doors and almost slams himself against the wall for support, coughing and coughing into his hands until his vision gets spotty. Somewhere during an arm wraps around him, holds him up, and when he finally stops coughing and breathes ragged he finds himself sandwiched between the wall and Ingrid.
She looks scared, and he hasn't seen her scared since Sylvain threw himself into an axe in Derdriu saving Felix's life, and they had both thought he would die—she grips his wrists and holds up his hands, plastered with petals, and he doesn't have to fake surprise when he looks down at them.
He barely sees his gloves under the yellow petals, each one a little blunted spear-tip, and he thinks they are hyacinth—he's been looking at gardening books lately, and no one questioned it because Ashe's birthday was coming up. But it doesn't matter what kind of flower he's hacked up, it's not important, it's... he laughs, bewildered, because for the first time his hands are spotted with blood.
“Oh, Felix,” Ingrid says, and actually embraces him, and he knows that now everyone will know.
+
Sylvain pulls his chair up close to the edge of the bed when he sits down, and Felix wonders what he'll cough up today. He watches Sylvain's hands settle together on top of the blanket, twisting and squeezing, pressing his knuckles like he's trying to pop them. He's anxious, and Felix wonders if he's finally going to say goodbye. He feels the tiniest tickle, but nothing comes up, and that's nice.
“Felix,” he starts, and his tone almost makes Felix look him in the eyes, but not quite. “Felix, who is it?” Felix doesn't answer, of course, of course, but Sylvain keeps on. “Felix, please tell me,” and he takes Felix's hand and Felix flinches—he can feel the tickle again. “I know I'm being a selfish jerk, but I need to know. I can't sit here watching you die and not know who it is. I can't think what, what kind of idiot you must love that they don't love you—“
And his hand spasms around Felix's, pulls back, and he tries for a second to rise from his chair but he's coughing and Felix is looking at him, he's looking right at him now but Sylvain is hunched over the edge of the bed, fists knuckle-white in the blanket, and fuck oh fuck Felix knows what it sounds like when you're coughing up things you shouldn't, he does it often enough.
“Sylvain.” Felix is up now, not lying down but scrambled up onto his knees and leaning towards Sylvain, who has stopped coughing but won't lift his head. “Sylvain, look at me. Sylvain.” He looks up, slow, and for the first time in weeks Felix meets his eye and Goddess, he looks tired, he looks sick, why hasn't anyone noticed? There's spit and blood on his chin, and Felix looks down and there on the blanket is a single, bloodied marigold.
An entire fucking blossom.
Felix can't breathe again, but this time it's not flowers but panic filling his throat, and he lifts a hand to his mouth and bites hard and lets the pain ground him even as Sylvain is reaching for his wrist to stop him. He slaps Sylvain's hand away and looks at him.
“Fix this,” Felix says, and Sylvain blinks at him. “Fix this, you idiot—whoever she is, go fix whatever you fucked up, I know you can, girls love you—“ Sylvain is shaking his head and damn it Felix has started to cry. “It's not supposed to be contagious, you fool.” Sylvain actually chuckles and Felix wants to hit him.
“Well yeah, Unrequited Love isn't exactly catching. It's not your fault.” Goddess, it reassures and hurts at the same time, because it would be so easy to fix if it was his fault. He reaches out anyways and wipes the blood off of Sylvain's chin because he can't stand to look at it, and Sylvain's eyes close and he sighs painfully.
“How long have you been hiding this, that's a whole—if you can't make it right with her, can't you get it removed?” There's pleading in his tone and he hates it, but he can't help it.
“You didn't.”
“It's different,” and his voice is harsh. Sylvain just looks at him, steady.
“I doubt it,” Sylvain says, and then, “I guess I'm keeping our promise, huh?”
“Don't you—don't, fucking. You just said it's not my fault, don't—“ Sylvain catches him with hands on his cheeks and wipes away the tears on his face, and Felix shudders, feels that tickle turning into a flutter.
“I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. You're tired, and I'm fucking everything up as usual.” Like Sylvain isn't tired, too, like he isn't sick, like a whole blossom hadn't worked it's way up out of his lungs onto Felix's bed a few minutes ago.
“Who is she?” he asks, even though the words feel like acid, tear his throat up worse than the flowers. Sylvain just shakes his head.
“You won't tell me who you're dying over, so, no, I think not.”
“That's because it'll hurt you,” he sighs, eyes sliding shut as he frowns. He doesn't want to come back to this, he wants to help Sylvain, because Felix is a lost cause but Sylvain still has a chance. How could he not, he's Sylvain.
“Not nearly as bad as you dying,” Sylvain says, hot, “you dying and not knowing why. Just tell me. I can take it.” Felix smiles, and Sylvain's hands twitch against his cheeks. The flutter is a burn now.
“No, you can't,” he says, and he starts to cough, and it's like his fucking lungs are trying to climb up his throat with the flowers, as done with this shit as Felix is. He dimly registers Sylvain pulling him in, holding him while he spits bloom after bloom on his shirt, in his lap, and he really wouldn't mind if this was the big one except that it would be exceptionally cruel of him to die in Sylvain's arms.
When he finally stops, his breath is wet and rattling and Sylvain is sitting on the bed, Felix pulled across his lap so that that his side presses to Sylvain's chest as he props him in one arm, and their bodies make a bowl filled with little bloody flowers. Sylvain brushes hair out of Felix's face with shaking hands, and Felix just lies there half-dazed in his arms and lets him.
He opens his mouth to tell Sylvain he should leave, because he can tell it's not too long now, maybe a day or two, and he shouldn't have to be here. He shouldn't have to be here when Felix finally chokes to death, because it won't be pretty, not at all. But—
“Felix?” There's an odd, trembling quality to his voice, and Felix looks up at him, sharp and wary. Sylvain is looking at the flowers pressed between them, and he reaches with his free hand to pluck one from the mass. It's small and star shaped, five pink petals that pale to white in the center, and Felix doesn't know why it's important until, “Do you—you never studied flowers, did you—Felix.” He sounds scared, but when he meets Felix's eye there's understanding and: “Is, is it me? Am I... Oh.” Felix turns away, crushes his eyes closed like that could stop this from happening.
“I didn't want you to know,” and the way the words claw out of him it's like he's been spitting up gravel, or broken glass, not soft flower petals. He's waiting for what comes next, for Sylvain to be hurt, and it shocks him when Sylvain laughs.
“Felix. Felix. Oh, Felix, fuck, we're so stupid,” and Sylvain is kissing his hair, his forehead and cheeks and nose and—
“What,” he manages, and Sylvain pulls him up with both arms and fuck, fuck he's going to start coughing again for sure at the way he just fits there, head in the crook of Sylvain's neck like they're made to slot together, but the tickle doesn't come because Sylvain presses another one of those desperate, laughing kisses next to his ear and just holds him.
“It's you, Felix, it's—there's no girl, it's you. And you—Goddess, all of that for me.” The laughter is gone, and Sylvain's hold on him goes too tight for a second, and Felix is still reeling because there's no girl, it's you. Sylvain leans back to look at him. “I did this to you,” he says, shaky, thumb brushing at the dark splotch under Felix's eye, and Felix grabs his hand.
“No, you didn’t. You didn’t, you idiot,” he repeats when Sylvain starts to shake his head, and Felix is hardly even annoyed because for the first time all week he feels like he can breathe. “I did this to me. I did it. I fell in love with you, that’s me.”
“But I could have stopped it if I just told you–”
“How were you supposed to know, Sylvain, I was purposely hiding it. Please just… it’s not your fault. This is exactly why I was hiding, I didn't want you to think it was your fault; it’s not.” He brushes his hand up Sylvain's side, feels him shiver, and they really are stupid. “Ingrid's going to kill me when she finds out why I'm not dying anymore.” Sylvain shudders and then laughs, leans down and kisses over Felix's eyelids one by one.
“I think His Majesty's first in line.” Shit, Dimitri— “Maybe don't tell him I was going to let myself die, too?” It's Felix's turn to shudder, their promise. To shake off the horrible thought that Sylvain would have followed him and they would have died so stupidly together Felix leans back and pokes Sylvain in the chest with one finger.
“If I have to stay here and recover from this shit, you're not getting out of doing it—“
“Think they'll let us share the room?” Felix sighs and starts to fire back but Sylvain cuts him off completely with, “I love you. Just to be clear.” Felix stares at him and feels himself go red, and it's so dumb considering everything, but Sylvain flustered him with such a simple, direct phrase. Sylvain smiles soft at him and it's real and perfect as sunrise. “Say it back?” Felix hadn't thought he could get redder, but his face feels like it's burning and he looks anywhere but Sylvain.
“That's—I don't—“ he sputters, and Sylvain sighs.
“Oh no, I feel a cough coming—“ Felix shoves him, gripping the front of his shirt to pull him back in.
“That's not funny—I love you. Alright?” Sylvain grins so wide Felix can't even be upset with him, and he leans down to kiss him but Felix puts a hand between their faces at the last second. Sylvain looks hurt for a moment, but Felix waves him back, still pink in the face as he looks for something to wipe the blood from his chin, water to rinse his mouth. “I am bloody and gross, let me clean up, I want the first one to be good—“
“Oh, shut up,” Sylvain says, voice cracking, and kisses him anyways, like he can give back every breath Felix choked over, licks into his mouth like it doesn't matter if his teeth taste of copper, and Felix doesn't give a fuck when he gets short of breath.
It's good.