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“And then—and then Ashe said—” Annette makes one more valiant attempt to start her sentence before dissolving into yet another fit of raucous giggles.
This story is getting extremely difficult to follow, considering Annette can’t stop laughing her way through it. And the man in question is no help at all—Ashe went straight past laughter into almost concerning wheezing about ten minutes ago, and he hasn’t stopped since.
But hey, that’s alright. Sylvain doesn’t mind. It’s nice, seeing them this relaxed. It’s nice seeing everyone relaxed.
In two days they’re starting their march towards Fort Merceus, but today the Professor dragged a case of wine from the monastery cellar into the dining hall and gave everyone express permission to go a little apeshit. (Okay, she didn’t say that exactly, but y’know, context clues.)
Shockingly enough, Sylvain might actually be one of the soberest people in the room. He doesn’t drink much lately, though he used to really get trashed during his days at the academy. He is, however, just buzzed enough to be very invested in the disaster of a story Annette’s been trying to tell him for the past twenty minutes, so dammit, he’s gonna hear the punchline.
In an attempt to get things back on track, he asks, “Wait, wait, when did this happen, anyway? Why don’t I remember this?”
Annette exchanges a thoughtful look with Ashe, tapping a finger to her lips. “Hmm, it was a few moons ago, right after we got back from our battle in the Valley of Torment. Oh!” The excitement of her realization quickly melts into discomfort. “That was when you—um.”
“That was when you flung yourself in front of an axe, remember?” Felix cuts in, pointed as one of his own meticulously sharpened blades. Sylvain jumps—he’s been so focused on the tiny hurricane that is Drunk Annette that he almost forgot Felix was sitting so close next to him. “You were in the infirmary for two days.”
Ah, yeah. That. Felix is still mad about that. Sylvain doesn’t know if Felix is ever going to stop being mad about that.
It’s not like they’ve talked about it—at least, not beyond their conversation from the day Sylvain was officially discharged from the infirmary. Sylvain’s kept his word since then, no more close calls, but Felix still goes taut any time somebody even comes close to bringing it up.
There’s something to be analyzed there; how badly Sylvain’s brush with death shook Felix, how angry it made him, how scared. For the sake of his own sanity, Sylvain’s not gonna analyze it tonight.
Instead, he throws on his best faux-wounded expression and turns back to Annette. “So you guys were having that much fun? Without me? Too cruel.”
“Not all of us!” Annette protests, deeply pink from the wine and Sylvain’s teasing. “Felix barely left the infirmary the whole time you were there.”
Huh. This is news to Sylvain. From the way Felix stiffens beside him, he can tell it’s probably news he was never meant to receive.
“Annette—” Felix starts, but she’s on a roll.
“Oh hush, you can admit you were worried! Plus, you pulled a muscle, didn’t you? Carrying him all the way to Mercedes.”
Okay, this is the first time Sylvain is hearing about any of that. He doesn’t even know where to start unpacking this information.
Might as well begin with the most surprising piece of it all. “Felix, you carried me?”
The responding silence is confirmation enough. Holy shit.
Across the table, Ashe stifles a laugh. “You really didn’t remember that?”
Sylvain wishes he remembered that, but the memory of his injury in the Valley of Torment is choppy.
He remembers the heat. He remembers seeing Felix off on his own, outnumbered. He remembers the terrain was unstable, bad enough that he had to dismount, leaving Lady behind and taking off running. He remembers the axe headed towards Felix—the axe that lodged itself in Sylvain instead, tearing through his armor like paper. After that, things get hazier. Felix was mad. He also might have been crying, but it’s hard to tell the difference between tears and sweat in a place like that.
Then Sylvain woke up two days later in the infirmary, good as new, with absolutely no recollection of Felix lugging all six feet of his dead weight through a battlefield that was on fire.
“You carried me?” He repeats, as though saying it out loud again will make it make sense. Sylvain still can’t wrap his head around it.
“What else was I supposed to do?” Felix snaps. “You’re the fool who left his horse behind, and Mercedes was all the way—”
“No, I mean—you carried me? All that way? By yourself?”
Felix arches an eyebrow, which for him is basically the facial expression equivalent of unsheathing his sword. “You don’t think I could do it?”
“I’m not challenging you, Felix, this isn’t a challenge.”
“Oh, this feels like a challenge,” says Annette, who is drunk, and a pot stirrer, and probably about to get Felix to do something ludicrous.
“Okay, no,” Sylvain says, holding out a hand to stop her from further egging Felix on. Without skipping a beat, she high-fives it. Drunk Annette is the best, actually. When he’s done laughing, Sylvain continues, “I’m just surprised? I mean, I know you’re strong, obviously. But I’m a big guy, especially with my armor, and you’re kind of—”
“Choose your words carefully, Gautier.”
Sylvain pauses, considering, then chooses the worst possible one. “Petite.”
“That’s it,” Felix says, and oh look, now he’s dragging Sylvain up and out of his chair to maul him.
Except he doesn’t do that. Instead, once he’s up, Felix is suddenly at Sylvain’s side, pressing one hand to the center of his back and using the other to swipe his legs out from underneath him.
Sylvain doesn’t shriek, but he doesn’t not shriek.
Now thoroughly not on solid ground, Sylvain scrambles to hook his arms around Felix’s neck and then Felix is—holding him. Like a bride. He’s being bridal carried. By Felix. Cool.
Sylvain’s soul escapes his body with a peal of breathless laughter.
By now they’ve caught everyone’s attention. Felix must have had more to drink than Sylvain thought, because he starts showing off—spinning in an easy circle for the room while their friends whoop with laughter. Somebody wolf whistles. It might be Ingrid.
Goddess, Felix isn’t even breaking a sweat, is he?
Sylvain should say something. He’s said words before. His mouth should make a sentence.
“You’re so strong,” he blurts, which is a terrible (but true) sentence.
Felix smirks and that’s it, Sylvain is gone, he’s so fucking gone for him it’s unbearable.
“This is child’s play,” Felix says, voice lilting in a way that Sylvain wants to pretend is flirtation. “I could bench press you.”
Don’t be horny about that, Sylvain thinks emphatically, Do not be fucking horny about that.
Then his mouth, which is not currently connected to his brain, purrs out, “Do you promise?” and Felix goes red all the way to his hairline. Whoops! Failed step one.
In retaliation, Felix loosens his grip on Sylvain, just enough to make him feel like he’s about to fall on his ass, and okay, Sylvain definitely shrieks this time.
“Shut up, I’m not going to drop you,” Felix says, huffing out a soft laugh that hits Sylvain like a physical blow. This whole thing has felt like an elaborate attempt on Sylvain’s life—but damn, what a way to go.
After what might be anywhere from two minutes to ten years (Who can say? Not Sylvain!), Felix sets him back down on his feet. Sylvain tries very hard not to feel bereft about that.
“Don’t doubt me,” Felix says, quieter now, and very close to Sylvain’s face. It’s then that Sylvain realizes he’s still got his arms wrapped around Felix’s neck.
He doesn’t let go. Not immediately. For a moment, Sylvain stays put and looks at Felix—cataloguing the way his hair’s come half-undone, the elegant shadows his eyelashes cut across his face, the subtle twitch of his lips. He’s beautiful, which is nothing new, and Sylvain wants to kiss him.
Wanting to kiss Felix isn’t new either. If anything, it’s essentially become Sylvain’s baseline. Felix snaps at him and Sylvain wants to kiss him. Felix knocks him on his ass during a spar and Sylvain wants to kiss him. Felix asks what’s for lunch and Sylvain has a brief, vivid fantasy of fitting their mouths together and dipping him in the middle of the dining hall.
Fortunately, Sylvain’s very good at not kissing Felix. Considering he has to make a conscious effort not to do it all the time, one could argue that Sylvain is the best at not kissing Felix.
So he drops his hands to his sides, letting the moment pass. Felix remains unkissed, which is a tragedy, but sometimes that’s the way life is.
“I never doubt you,” Sylvain says finally, and he means it. No matter what happens, no matter where the war takes them, that’s one thing he’s sure of.
__________
The taking of Fort Merceus is grueling.
They only win by the skin of their teeth, exhausted and not without injuries of their own. In the middle of everything, Ashe takes a nasty hit to the thigh from an enemy archer, far away from any of their healers. Mercedes is up at the front lines in another part of the fortress, waiting for the inevitable, for the man she insists is still somehow her brother. Sylvain knows the feeling.
In her stead, he patches Ashe up with a half-remembered healing spell, listening to him grit his teeth and curse (surprisingly colorfully) as the wound slowly closes up. “Language, young man,” Sylvain teases, if only because it makes Ashe huff out a pained laugh and stops his own hands from shaking.
They do win, though. The so-called Impregnable Fortress falls, leaving in its wake a path to Enbarr, the Empire’s capital. If they play their cards right, a path to Enbarr is a path to victory, a theoretical end to all the fighting.
Hope is a dangerous thing, especially in times of war. Too much of it can make you blind, make you careless. Still, it hangs heavy in the air like the smell of an oncoming storm—electric, uneasy, slowly seeping into everyone, down to their bones.
No one says it, not yet, but it’s crackling softly in the minds of every soldier in the newly captured fort. This war could be ending soon. This war could be ending, and maybe we could win it.
Amidst the strange new current of optimism, there are the usual post-battle feelings. Fatigue. Grief. Panic.
More specifically, Sylvain is panicking, because Felix is nowhere to be found.
For the first time in a long time, the Professor didn’t put them close to each other in formation. There was a strategic reason for this, one that Sylvain has no memory of because he was also kind of panicking while she talked it over with him. It’s not that Sylvain doesn’t trust the Professor—obviously he does, he trusts her with everything he has—but more that the idea of not being able to keep an eye on Felix while they’re fighting makes his stomach drop like he’s standing at the edge of a cliff. Sylvain nearly got cleaved in half, he’s been so distracted. Hopefully Felix has a clearer head.
Speaking of Felix, where the fuck is he?
The Death Knight must have fallen, they couldn’t have taken the fort otherwise. But Sylvain was nowhere near that clash while it happened—he has no idea who Jeritza might have taken down with him. Felix likes a good fight. He always wanted to go up against the Death Knight back when they were in school, and Sylvain knows he’s not as rash as he was when they were younger, but he’s still so insistent on being a lone wolf. For all he scolds Sylvain about it, Felix is reckless too, so what if he’s—
Sylvain’s not going to think it.
He weaves through the fallen fortress, keeping a lookout, taking stock of the living and the dead. Out of the corner of his eye he spots Caspar and Linhardt collapsing into a tight hug, perhaps gripped by the startling realization that if circumstances were different, they might have fallen here. It’s too much—this is something tender and private, not meant for Sylvain’s eyes. He looks away quickly, keeps walking, walking faster.
He isn’t sure when he starts running and calling out Felix’s name, but here he is, tearing through Fort Merceus, screaming for him like a madman. At least, Sylvain assumes he looks like a madman, considering the sideways glances he’s getting from the soldiers he passes in his search. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except for finding Felix, because there’s no hopeful tomorrow if he isn’t there to see it. Without him, there’s no tomorrow at all.
If either of them is going to break their promise, it shouldn’t, it can’t be Felix. Breathing is getting difficult and Sylvain can barely recognize his own voice and then—
“Sylvain!”
There’s Felix, calling his name.
The sound throws Sylvain back into a memory of a game he used to play with Felix, Ingrid, and Dimitri when they were kids, during the summers they spent swimming on the shoreline near the Fraldarius estate. It was a simple game: one person would be “it,” and they’d close their eyes and try to find the other players just by listening to the sound of their voices. There was a call and response of sorts; the finder would call out “Saint” and the other players would have to answer back “Cichol.” Sylvain was good at this game. He was a good swimmer, a fast one, and none of his friends were much for strategy at the time, so he never had trouble finding them.
He always found Felix first, though, no matter what. Following Felix’s voice was easy, almost instinctual. Like they were magnetized. Reaching out through the darkness and grabbing Felix’s hand felt like coming home, like what coming home was supposed to feel like.
The memory is gone as soon as it came, because Felix is sprinting towards him at top speed in a way that would be terrifying if Sylvain wasn’t doing the exact same thing. It looks like he’s been running for as long as Sylvain has. Maybe longer.
“Sylvain!” he shouts again, furious, because of course he is. That’s okay. Everything’s okay, because an angry Felix is an alive Felix and Sylvain has never been so happy to see anyone in his entire life.
They collide full force in a bruising embrace that’s more body slam than hug. It’s probably worse for Felix, what with the hard edges of Sylvain’s armor, but he doesn’t seem to care.
Before he can think better of it, Sylvain is lifting Felix off his feet and spinning him around—once, twice, three times. Felix makes a sound that can only be described as an undignified yelp, but Sylvain doesn’t have the presence of mind to rib him for it. He can barely hear it over his own laughter, anyway, bubbling up loud and more genuinely than it has in years. Sylvain is lightheaded with joy, dizzy with it. Or maybe that’s the spinning.
“Down! Put me down,” Felix is saying, a little breathless. Loathe to let him go, Sylvain reluctantly sets him back on his feet, but Felix doesn’t pull out of his arms like Sylvain half expects him to. If anything, he holds on tighter, nearly knocking their foreheads together as he drags him closer. “Where were you?”
“I was looking for you, Felix! I couldn’t find you anywhere,” Sylvain says between gasps for air. He’s still giggling helplessly. He can’t stop. It’s overwhelming. “I must have just missed you.”
They keep talking over each other now, tumbling over the ends of their sentences like they’re rolling downhill. It occurs to Sylvain, distantly, that they both might be a little hysterical.
“When I couldn’t find you I thought—” Felix swallows, “I thought maybe you’d—”
Sylvain can’t let him say it. “I didn’t. You know I’d never do that to you.”
“It’s the first time in so long that we weren’t stationed close to each other. I kept thinking, what if he does something stupid? What if he does something stupid and I’m not there—”
“Felix!” Sylvain isn’t laughing anymore. “It’s okay. We’re okay,” he says, but wait, why does his voice sound like that? So brittle. He can’t sound like that, he has to be comforting Felix. “We’re okay, aren’t we?”
That’s weird, his face is wet. What’s that all about? Lots of things are happening at once and Sylvain is having trouble keeping up with all of them. His face is wet and his voice is strange and Felix is staring at him, wide eyed, that mask of anger slowing giving way to something akin to horror.
Sylvain sniffles, which is also weird, and—oh. He’s crying, isn’t he?
That explains the look Felix is giving him, at least. No wonder he’s surprised. Sylvain hasn’t cried in front of him since Miklan died.
“Sylvain,” Felix starts, an edge of panic in his voice. Sylvain should say something. He should stop crying, make a joke—that’s what he’s good at, come on, do something right for once—but his voice comes out garbled, unintelligible. Felix stops short.
“Sylvain,” he says again, very careful now, more careful than Sylvain’s heard him talk in a long time. His voice has gone quiet and level in the way you’d speak to a spooked horse. It’s kinda funny, Sylvain has used this voice on Felix before. Honestly, Felix isn’t very good at it. He’s bad with horses and stiff with comforting. But the fact that he’s trying at all, trying for him, makes Sylvain cry even harder.
“Sorry,” Sylvain chokes out, and then Felix is pulling him down to hide his tearful face in the crook of Felix’s neck, or maybe Sylvain’s knees just kind of buckle and he winds up there on his own. It doesn’t matter—either way, Felix is the only thing keeping him upright.
The world falls away and all that remains are the points of contact between them. Sylvain’s face against Felix’s neck. Felix’s hands, one wound in Sylvain’s hair and the other holding firm against his back.
“What are you sorry for?” he asks. There’s a shake in his voice now too, though he tries to cover it. His hands are trembling. “You’re right, we’re okay. Just—just stick with me, alright? We’ll be okay.”
Hope is a dangerous thing, Sylvain knows that. Still, he reaches for it with both hands, clutches it tight, and refuses to let go.
__________
The war is won. Victory takes some getting used to.
Though he often pretends to be, Sylvain’s no fool—he knows all too well that the end of the war doesn’t actually mean the end of conflict, just the beginning of a new kind of struggle to build a better world and maintain the peace so many killed and died for. But knowing certain death is no longer imminently possible for him and the people he loves is… well, it’s nice. It keeps bowling him over whenever he least expects it, the knowledge that his friends are safe, that everyone made it out more or less in one piece. Every time he runs into anybody, he greets them like he hasn’t seen them in years, all close embraces and ruffled hair.
Sylvain should probably stop hugging Dimitri every time he sees him—it’s bad for his ribcage when Dimitri hugs back and probably not the best thing for maintaining a professional image of their future king—but whatever, the man deserves as many hugs as Sylvain can give him.
(And hey, scratch that, he’s not the future king anymore. As of tonight, his king status is current. That’ll take some getting used to as well.)
Dimitri’s coronation ceremony is, of course, ceremonial and tasteful or whatever, but the celebration with their former classmates afterwards is a downright revel. Soon they’ll all be leaving Fhirdiad and going their separate ways, embarking on new adventures and bringing their work across Fodlan, but tonight everyone’s laughing, drinking too much, and dragging each other into bouts of sloppy but enthusiastic song and dance. For the first time in years, it feels like they’re all acting their age.
Even Felix, notorious party hater and enemy of fun, looks like he’s having a good time. Much to Sylvain’s shock and delight, they actually got him to reenact his choreography from the White Heron Cup, which Felix insisted he didn’t remember and then performed perfectly when Annette goaded him hard enough. Drunk Annette continues to be the best. All hail Drunk Annette, the most powerful being in all of Fodlan.
Then midway through the night Felix disappears, which is annoying, because Dorothea just started crooning something slow and romantic and Sylvain is finally buzzed enough to ask him to dance.
After exactly 4 drinks (Sylvain has got this down to a science), Sober Felix, Master of Storming Out of Places in a Huff, becomes Drunk Felix, Master of Silently Wandering Off to Goddess Knows Where. He’s fucking stealthy. It’s actually kind of impressive—or at least it would be, if it didn’t scare the shit out of everybody whenever he vanished while they were out at a tavern.
As per usual, Sylvain is the one to go after him. He doesn’t have to follow Felix’s voice this time. He already knows where he is.
There’s a little balcony on the second floor of the castle, tucked away in an alcove down one of the lesser used hallways. It’s pretty hard to find, which is probably why Felix likes it so much—it was his most predictable hiding spot when they played hide and seek as kids, and also whenever he got upset and tried to run away from everyone.
Sylvain found him then and he finds him now. Some things never change.
Then again, some things change a lot. Back then, Felix was an open book, tear-stained and usually covered in snot. And now, he’s—well. He’s Felix. Sullen and sharp-edged and gorgeous, turning around to shoot Sylvain an unimpressed look, like Sylvain’s late for a meeting he didn’t know they had. Felix’s hair is loose and he’s running his fingers through it almost absent-mindedly—a movement that makes Sylvain stop short, transfixed. Before, he’d kept it pinned back in an intricate braid that Annette or Mercedes must have done for him, because for a man who’s had long hair his whole life, he’s very resistant to doing anything interesting with it.
(That’s okay with Sylvain. He isn’t sure he could handle interesting.)
Lit softly against the night sky by the golden glow of light flowing out from the glass door, Felix is a vision. He’s devastating. Sylvain burns at the sight of him, a warmth in his chest that is as painful as it is familiar.
You’d think that after knowing him his whole life and loving him for a good quarter of it, Sylvain would have built up more of a tolerance for Felix, some sort of immunity to him. But here he is, stabbing Sylvain in the heart just by existing.
Felix’s eyes narrow. “What?”
Right—Sylvain’s been staring, he hasn’t been speaking. With some difficulty, he manages to say, “I liked the braid.”
Felix huffs and turns back around. “Too bad. All the pins were annoying me.”
Sylvain finally moves from where he’s been frozen in the doorway and steps onto the balcony. It’s smaller than he remembered, adorned only with a single marble bench. When they were kids, the bench fit all four of them if they squeezed. Now, it’ll be snug just for him and Felix.
He plops down next to him, real casual, just like someone who isn’t in love with their best friend would. It’s very smooth. Felix isn’t looking at him so he looks at Felix, taking him in. It’s been so long since he’s seen him with his hair down. It frames his face nicely, makes him look—softer.
“I like this even better.”
Felix is still fussing with his hair, one hand clumsily rummaging through the back of it, seeking a pin that continues to evade him.
Sylvain nudges his leg. “Let me?”
After a moment, Felix grunts his assent.
The pin is easy enough to find, caught in a few locks that got twisted up during Felix’s search. Sylvain carefully plucks it out and drops it into Felix’s open hand—and then, because he’s feeling a bit bold, he reaches back up and runs his fingers through the back of Felix’s hair, gently smoothing out the tangles. It’s a dumb, selfish indulgence but Sylvain is a dumb, selfish guy, so he gives himself a short moment to memorize the texture of Felix’s hair, the feeling of it between his fingers. It’s normally sleek and straight, but being in a braid all night has given it a slight curl.
“Your hair’s all wavy now,” Sylvain says, a little awed.
Felix groans. “Don’t tell me I look like my father.”
“You don’t,” Sylvain says, quick and honest. Felix makes a face, like he can’t quite decide if that’s comforting or painful to hear.
Nonetheless, it’s true. Glenn always looked more like Rodrigue than Felix did. There are elements of his father in Felix’s face, but as he’s gotten older he’s actually come to look more like his mother—a woman that Sylvain has no clear memories of, but knows from the portrait hanging above the mantle in the main hall of the Fraldarius estate. Felix has her honey eyes, her sharp nose, and (according to the stories) her sharp tongue.
Mostly though, Felix looks like himself. And right now, he looks like he’s shivering.
“Are you cold?”
“No.” Haha, liar.
Sylvain hums. “Well, I’m a little hot, actually.” He slips out of his suit jacket and drapes it over Felix’s shoulders. “Mind taking this off my hands for a bit? I don’t want to sweat in it.”
Felix scoffs but pulls the jacket tighter around him anyway. “Idiot.” He’s smiling.
“That’s what they call me,” Sylvain intones, giving a little bow.
“They shouldn’t,” Felix shoots back, suddenly very serious. Yep, he really is drunk.
Sylvain laughs. “You just did.”
Felix pauses. Then, softly, a little embarrassed, “You know I don’t mean it.”
There he goes again, doing the whole ‘stabbing Sylvain in the heart just by existing’ thing.
“Yeah, I know,” Sylvain says, too quiet, too fond. Then, before he can stop himself, “I’m gonna miss this.”
“Miss what?”
“You.”
Felix turns towards him, looking surprised and—something else. Sylvain has never seen this look on Felix’s face before. He wants to commit every detail of this expression to memory and turn it over in his mind until he understands what weight it carries, what Felix is thinking. He doesn’t. He looks away.
Now would be a very good time to stop talking. To reroute this conversation back towards safer territory. But Sylvain has never been great at self-preservation, so he keeps going.
“I mean, everyone’s going back to their own territories soon. We’ve got responsibilities. Running a country, all that fun stuff. Do you think we’ll still see each other? When you’re off doing Duke things and I’m trying to keep my father from wrecking the north while he’s still Margrave?”
Sylvain’s bit of word vomit has given Felix some time to collect himself, so whatever soft expression was on his face before has been devoured by his usual glare. “Don’t be foolish. Of course we’ll still see each other. We’re both on Dimitri’s counsel, we can’t not see each other.”
“I guess you’re right. But it won’t be like this. I won’t see you every day,” Sylvain sighs. “What am I gonna do without you?”
Uh oh.
He really didn’t mean to say that last thing out loud.
Partially because even though he’s getting better about his whole ‘allergic to honesty’ thing, it’s still not like Sylvain’s about to win any awards for emotional availability. And partially because it’s a question he really doesn’t want to know the answer to.
The other shoe is about to drop, isn’t it? Sylvain always knew this was coming. It’s not like him and Felix were ever going to wind up together. Even on their best days, when Felix would offer one of those rare, treasured smiles and hold his gaze a bit too long, long enough that Sylvain couldn’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, he might—
Well, even then, Sylvain knows better. He used to blame it all on his father’s expectations, an inevitable arranged marriage and the dreaded crest babies hanging over his head. But Sylvain doesn’t really give a shit about that anymore. He fought a whole war, his father doesn’t scare him—or, at least, not like when he was a kid. Sylvain would be willing to give it all up, to dare Margrave Shitlord to disinherit him if he thought there was even a chance Felix wanted him back.
There isn’t, though. That’s the real problem.
So they’ll go their separate ways. Still see each other while working with Dimitri, like Felix said, every few months if they’re real lucky. Maybe they’ll go visit each other’s territories every once and a while. Sylvain will tell himself that it’s enough. It won’t be.
“Sylvain,” Felix starts, softly. There’s that look again, brows furrowed and eyes full of something. Sylvain can’t bear to see it.
Just as Felix is about to speak again and unknowingly shatter his heart even further, Sylvain’s last remaining survival instincts kick in and he bolts up, full of false cheer.
“Guess we should go back inside, huh?” Sylvain laughs and it sounds fake even to his ears. “I heard some people saying they wanted an encore of your dance.”
“Absolutely not,” Felix growls. The death-glare he’s giving Sylvain would be a lot more effective if he weren’t blushing.
“Leave ‘em wanting more, I gotcha.” Sylvain turns and extends a hand towards Felix, to help him up. “You’ll dance with me, though, won’t you?”
Felix looks at Sylvain’s outstretched hand. He’s still flushed from the comment about an encore—or maybe it’s just the booze. Then, with a roll of his eyes, he takes it. “Fine.”
Sylvain pulls him to his feet, but as soon as he’s up, Felix stops abruptly and shoots Sylvain a look of disgruntled confusion, as though something has gone terribly wrong. The expression would be worrying if Sylvain didn’t know it very well—this is the face Felix makes when alcohol hits him all at once and he promptly loses most of his equilibrium. Somehow, it takes him by surprise every time.
“Felix? You okay? Wait,” Sylvain doesn’t even try to hide the childish glee bleeding into his voice, “you’re dizzy, aren’t you?”
“I’m never dizzy,” Felix says gravely, before attempting to take a step and suddenly pitching forward straight into Sylvain’s chest, unsteady as a newborn foal.
“Whoops, yes you are. Okay, let’s get you back to your room, yeah?” Looks like Sylvain will have to carry him. Felix is undoubtably going to be embarrassed and pissy about that, but he can be embarrassed and pissy about it when he can walk in a straight line.
Sylvain sets him upright, keeping one hand on the small of his back to hold him steady. “Wrap your arms around my neck. Don’t strangle me,” he adds as an afterthought. To his credit, Felix does what he’s told with no complaints, no strangling, and only a vaguely mutinous expression. “Up we go.”
Then Sylvain lifts him, bridal style, just like Felix did to him at the monastery only a few months ago. Wow, he’s heavier than he looks. Felix might not be the biggest guy in the army but he’s all lean muscle, every inch of him. Sylvain tries not to dwell on that. (He’s gonna dwell on it. A lot.)
“I can lift you like this,” Felix mumbles, an endearing mixture of smug and petulant.
Sylvain bites back a laugh. “Yeah you can, apparently. Not right now, though.”
Felix shifts in his arms and Sylvain half expects him to start trying to get back on his feet in an attempt to dispute this “challenge,” but instead he just lets out a little sigh and holds on tighter, pressing his face against Sylvain’s neck.
Ah. Cool. Sylvain is cool about this. He totally doesn’t nearly trip over his own feet in response—and if he does, then he plays it off really well and Felix definitely doesn’t notice.
“Sorry. ‘S my face cold?” Okay, Felix noticed.
His face is cold, actually—Felix has always run cold—but Sylvain doesn’t care about that. He’s much more concerned with the tickling flutter of Felix’s eyelashes at the crook of his neck, the soft puff of breath at Sylvain’s exposed collarbone. Seems like the goddess is finally punishing Sylvain for the hubris of never buttoning up his damn shirts.
“Don’t worry about it,” Sylvain says, a moment too late. Felix nuzzles closer.
“You’re warm,” he says, like he’s kind of pissed about it. Sylvain feels the words ghosting across his skin, the slight brush of Felix’s lips moving as he talks. It’s not a kiss. It’s not even close to a kiss. Sylvain’s brain knows this, but his quickening pulse still hasn’t gotten the memo.
“Glad to be of service,” he coughs out, and starts heading down a maze of corridors towards Felix’s room.
It’s the same room he used to stay in whenever they visited the capital as kids. Dimitri offered him a better room—Rodrigue’s old quarters, the guest room permanently reserved for his trips to the palace—but Felix refused.
Sylvain has walked this path many times before, giving Felix a piggyback ride to his room after he’d cried himself out in his hiding place. The nostalgia makes Sylvain quiet, a little melancholy.
Most of the trip passes by in silence, until suddenly Felix says, “You could stay with me.”
“Huh?” Sylvain must have misheard.
“You could stay with me,” Felix repeats, low but insistent. “Come to Fraldarius. You don’t have to go home.”
“And distract you from your lordly duties?”
“You could help me, jackass. You’re the one who’s good at,” Felix stops to search for a word, deciding on, “diplomacy,” said with as much derision as he can manage when he’s slurring his speech.
It’s a nice thought—conducting his business from Fraldarius, aiding Felix with his own, seeing him every day, even if it’s just as a friend. A very nice thought. But Sylvain knows better than to make plans with someone this deep in their cups.
Still, in the moment, he allows himself to pretend it’s a genuine offer and he smiles, small but real. “I might take you up on that, Fe.”
And with that, they reach Felix’s door.
“Here we are, my lord,” Sylvain announces, shouldering his way inside and setting Felix back on his feet. He’s steadier now than he was before, but it’s still nothing compared to his usual poise. Sylvain leans on the doorframe, watching with faint amusement as Felix makes a beeline inside, gracelessly plunking himself down on the bed with a sigh.
“What are you standing there for?” Felix gives Sylvain an irritated look—which, hey, way to be rude to the guy who hauled your drunk ass home. But then he says, “Come inside,” and Sylvain doesn’t know what to do with that at all. Besides, y’know, come inside.
Felix provides no explanation, just sets about attempting kick off his boots. He’s not having much luck with them, probably because he’s not even trying to undo the laces.
“Want me to get you some water or something?” Sylvain asks, mostly just to have something to say. After one more unsuccessful bid at yanking off his shoe (again, still completely laced up), Felix looks up at Sylvain with this specific kind of glare, like there’s a point Sylvain’s missing, something obvious whooshing past right over his head.
“Help me with my boots,” Felix says, in that sharp, imperious tone that (unfortunately) really does it for Sylvain. It’s not a question. It’s barely a request.
At least he’s not still in those thigh-high gaiters he used to wear during the war—that really would have killed Sylvain on impact. It’s a small mercy, a really small one, because Felix is still sitting on his bed, half disheveled with Sylvain’s jacket draped over his shoulders, and Sylvain is still kneeling in front of him, feeling like his heart is about to go galloping out of his chest.
He tries to focus on the laces, the simple mechanics of his fingers undoing the knots and pulling them loose. Felix’s gaze is a heavy thing, a warm weight that Sylvain feels all over his body like the steam of a sauna. Funny, Sylvain’s always been better with eye-contact, but he doesn’t dare try to catch Felix’s eye now. He’d die. The goddess would smite him on the spot.
The boots are removed. Somehow, Sylvain survives the whole ordeal.
“I trust that you can take care of, uh, everything else?” Asking that is probably a mistake. If Felix turns around and tells Sylvain to help him out of his clothes, Sylvain will burst into flames.
He chances a peek up at Felix, which proves to be another perilous mistake, because Felix is just looking at him—eyes narrowed but so bright, like he’s decided something, like a spar’s just turned in his favor and he means to press through. Felix leans over, shifts his elbows onto his knees, and suddenly their faces are very close.
“Hey,” Sylvain says very eloquently, and then Felix tries to kiss him.
Emphasis on tries.
“Wait—” Sylvain scrambles to his feet and out of Felix’s reach, because even if this is everything he’s ever dreamed of, he doesn’t want it like this. Or, well, he does—of course he does, he always wants Felix—but it shouldn’t go like this. Not when Felix is drunk, when he might not really mean it, when he might regret it in the morning. If they’re going to do this, they have to be sure. Voice thick, Sylvain says, “Let’s talk tomorrow, yeah? When you’re sober.”
Felix’s face falls like a bird shot out of the sky.
“If you don’t want to,” he averts his eyes, voice going quite with shame, “you can just tell me.”
No, no, this is all wrong. Sylvain is fucking this up like he fucks up everything.
“It’s not that I don’t want to! Believe me, I really, really want to.” Tentatively, Sylvain reaches out to tuck Felix’s hair behind his ear. When Felix doesn’t swat his hand away, he lets it trail down to cup Felix’s face, an attempt at reassurance. “I just—I want to do this right.”
Even as he leans into Sylvain’s hand, Felix won’t look at him. He doesn’t believe him.
“First thing tomorrow, we’ll talk, okay?” Sylvain says, desperate. “I promise.”
Felix perks up at that, even if it’s just a little. Sylvain keeps his promises. At least—he keeps the ones he makes to Felix.
“Fine,” he says, making eye contact for the first time since Sylvain pulled away from him. His gaze is brief, searing. “Tomorrow.”
By some miracle, Sylvain tears himself from Felix’s side and goes back to his own room. The party’s surely winding down by now anyway—not that Sylvain could go back and pretend everything’s normal, even if he wanted to. He’s good at putting on a brave face, but he’s not that good.
So he lies in bed, staring blankly upward, thinking about all the ways that tomorrow can go wrong. He’s probably already screwed things up beyond repair. Felix probably didn’t really mean to kiss him in the first place—he’s just drunk. There’s a whole lot of probablys, all of them bad, but maybe—
Well. There are some maybes too.
Even outside of wartime, hope is a dangerous thing for people like Sylvain, for whom fate has already been too kind, for those who are undeserving. He still does it though, still hopes like the feeling has made a home in his ribcage, thrumming to the beat of his worthless heart.
He stares at the ceiling and he hopes, hopes, hopes.
__________
Sylvain doesn’t sleep.
He lays in bed, only mostly catastrophizing, until the sun starts peeking through the gap in his curtains and he drags himself up to get ready to potentially ruin everything. Or make everything better! It’s a coin toss, really.
Before he goes to Felix’s room, Sylvain makes a quick detour to the palace kitchen and sneaks a plate of food and some water to assuage the hangover Felix is probably nursing. Briefly, he considers bringing him flowers too, but quickly dismisses that idea as ridiculous. Would Felix even like flowers? Maybe. He can be surprising sometimes. But Sylvain doesn’t want to overwhelm him with flowers and a love confession—if he goes full “romance novel” Felix might run for the hills. Also, where would he even get flowers in the first place?
Stalling. Sylvain is stalling. Time to go see Felix.
Even as early as it is, Sylvain knows he’ll be awake. Felix has trained himself to always get up at the crack of dawn, no matter what. At this point, the man is physically incapable of sleeping past 6 AM.
After about two minutes of quietly panicking outside Felix’s door, Sylvain finally works up the courage to knock. There’s some shuffling around inside, a crash followed by a string of muffled curses, and then Felix swings the door open looking righteously pissed.
“Now who the hell is—Sylvain?” Felix’s angry-anger melts into angry-confusion and for a moment, Sylvain thinks there’s a chance he has no memory of anything that happened last night. Then realization dawns over his features and Felix quickly schools his expression into something carefully blank, guarded. Yep, he remembers.
And even if he didn’t, Sylvain would still want to have this conversation. Or, at the very least, he knows they need to have it.
Sylvain attempts a grin, presenting his peace offering. “I brought breakfast. And water. And me. Also, good morning.”
Felix glares down at the plate, then back at Sylvain, then back at the plate. After a long moment, he heaves out a sigh to end all sighs and plucks the glass of water from Sylvain’s other hand. “Come on, get in here,” he says, moving aside to let Sylvain through the door.
Felix guzzles the water like a man dying of thirst, then wordlessly snatches the plate and takes it back to his bed to sit down. This behavior is very rude, very Felix, and Sylvain is stupidly charmed by it all.
He sits down next to him on the bed—not too close, but not too far either—and tries to settle into this new, uneasy silence.
“Don’t just sit there watching me eat,” Felix huffs, picking up a piece of fruit from his plate and thrusting it towards Sylvain. “You have something too.”
Huh. Looks like Sylvain’s not the only one handing out olive branches this morning. He accepts the fruit, a perfectly round little clementine, and suddenly the silence is marginally less uneasy.
Felix has his breakfast. A light smell of citrus fills the air as Sylvain neatly peels the clementine and eats it wedge by wedge. He manages to get Felix to try a piece with only minor needling—“It’s not that sweet, Felix, I swear. C’mon, you don’t wanna get scurvy, do you? Because it kinda seems like you wanna get scurvy.” Things almost start to feel normal until Sylvain catches Felix looking at him and he jolts, whipping away as if burned. So, yeah. Decidedly not normal.
Felix clears his throat. “You look tired.”
“You look great,” Sylvain says, only half joking. Felix always looks great. Even like this, hangover pale and rumpled from sleep, he’s everything Sylvain’s ever wanted.
That spurs another disgruntled little noise out of Felix. He sets his now empty plate down on the end table next to the bed and finally turns back around to glower at Sylvain in full-force. “You said you wanted to talk, didn’t you? Spit it out.”
“Yeah! Yeah, I did. Okay. Um.” All coherent thought leaves Sylvain’s head. Every careful speech he’d crafted last night promptly goes flying out the window, because even though he’s been thinking this for years, he has no idea how to say it out loud. This is probably some kind of divine punishment—retribution for all the time he spent using well-practiced lines on perfect strangers.
Sylvain groans, scrubbing a nervous hand through his hair. “Goddess, why is this so much harder to say now that I actually mean it?”
“Sylvain—”
“Y’know how I carried you back to your room last night?”
Felix pinks, looks away. “Yes.”
“And that time you carried me, after I got hit with that axe in the Valley of Torment?”
Felix’s embarrassment quickly gives way to annoyance. “Well, I hardly think you lugging me home after I’ve had too much to drink compares to me, dragging your lifeless body halfway across a battlefield because you can’t manage to—”
“I know! I know.” Sylvain holds his hands up in surrender. “It’s not the same thing. But we’ve always been doing that, haven’t we? Picking each other up when we fall. Carrying each other. Even when we were kids.”
“You did love giving piggyback rides.” The corners of Felix’s mouth twitch like he’s fighting back a grin. “Showoff.”
Sylvain’s hand rests very close to Felix’s on the mattress. If he wanted to, he could reach out and lace their fingers together, easy as a breath.
Fuck it. He wants to, so he does. Felix shifts and for a moment Sylvain thinks he’s about to pull away, but then he adjusts his grip and settles, holding on just as tight.
Quietly, Sylvain says, “I’ve always wanted to be someone you could depend on.”
Felix looks confused. “You are,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world, just a statement of fact.
Logically, Sylvain knows that’s true, but hearing it out loud still lances right through him—a perfect shot to kill, straight through the heart.
Okay, here goes nothing.
“Well, then—then I want you to know you can keep depending on me. For the rest of our lives. I mean—I know you don’t need anyone to take care of you, I know you can handle yourself just fine on your own, but you shouldn’t have to. I want to be with you. Through thick and thin, all of it.” Sylvain takes a deep, shuddering breath. And then, because he needs to be clear, because he needs to get it out before he collapses under the weight of it, “What I’m trying to say is that I’m in love with you. Probably should have opened with that.”
There’s a moment of perfect silence, which is really not what you want to hear after you’ve completely spilled your guts all over the floor for somebody. Sylvain can’t look at Felix. Coward that he is, he shifted his gaze into his own lap as soon as the words left his mouth, too terrified to actually watch them make impact. This has got to be a rejection, right? But Felix still hasn’t let go of his hand.
There’s a gentle touch at Sylvain’s cheek, and—oh, that’s Felix, reaching out to turn his face back towards him, to look him in the eyes.
When he does, it’s not a face of rejection Sylvain sees. Instead, it’s that same heated look, the one from last night, burning impossibly brighter.
“Come to Fraldarius with me,” Felix says, slow but urgent, like each word’s been torn out of him.
Sylvain blinks. “Huh?”
Shaking his head, Felix lets out a sharp sigh and draws Sylvain closer, as though proximity alone will make him understand. “Last night you said you didn’t know what you’d do without me. And—” his breath catches like the words are threatening to choke him, but he grits his teeth and says them anyway, “and I’m telling you, you don’t have to find out. Ever.”
Felix presses their foreheads together. His face is very warm, probably from the scarlet blush painting him all the way to his ears, but Sylvain’s in no position to judge, considering he sure as hell isn’t faring any better.
Softer now, Felix says, “Stay with me. If you want me, I’m yours. Always have been.”
Time might stop. There’s a good chance Sylvain isn’t breathing. He has, perhaps, misplaced his entire fucking brain.
Then there’s the faint puff of Felix’s breath—grounding, real, and so close to Sylvain’s mouth—cutting through the shock like a hot knife through butter. That’s when the joy sets in, a storm surge of happiness that drowns out everything else. Sylvain draws back for a second, just to see Felix’s face, to burn this moment into his memory, and then he finally gives in to the impulse that’s been living in his body since he was nineteen, kissing Felix like his life depends on it.
“Of course,” he murmurs against Felix’s lips, over and over again. “Of course I want you.”
Felix is the one to eventually break the kiss, red-faced but smiling, really smiling, and Sylvain could die at the sight of him. “You should have just let me kiss you last night. Now I have bad breath and a slamming headache.”
“You’re perfect,” Sylvain says without thinking, because it’s true. It’s the truest thing he knows. Then, just because he wants to hear him say it, “You still want to? Kiss me, I mean.”
Felix looks at Sylvain likes he’s stupid—and okay, maybe he is. “Obviously. I just kissed you.”
“Technically, I kissed you.”
“You’re insufferable.”
“Mm, seems like you suffer me just fine.” Felix gives a sharp tug to Sylvain’s hair (which is really not the punishment he thinks it is) and Sylvain dissolves into a fit of giddy laughter. “I’m sorry, I’m just—happy. I never thought you’d want me back.”
Sylvain half expects a wry quip for that, an ‘of course I did, you fool’ or something of the like, but instead he’s rewarded with Felix’s lips against his own, pressing soft and terribly tender. This kiss isn’t frantic like the one before but it’s no less passionate, searing Sylvain from the inside out with love, pure love.
“Do you believe me now?” Felix asks, just a hairs-breath away, more than a little smug.
Sylvain grins. “I dunno, I’m still a little skeptical. Maybe if you did that again—”
Let no man say that Felix Fraldarius has ever backed down from a challenge. He practically pounces, toppling Sylvain flat on his back as he fits their mouths together again, harder this time. Felix kisses insistently, like he’s got something terribly important to say and licking fervently into Sylvain’s mouth is the only way he can say it.
Figures. He’s always been better with actions than with words.
Felix keeps kissing Sylvain, keeps relaying that wordless message over and over—and as always, there’s no room for doubt.