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It started with Sylvain not being available on a Thursday afternoon.
Ingrid and Felix had the same Advanced Data Structures class that semester, which meant that there was no chance of Felix avoiding their high school friend group’s weekly boba meet up.
He did actually try this week. As soon as the professor wrapped up, Felix was darting out the door, skateboard under his arm. But Ingrid caught him before he could get out of the building and skateboard away to sweet isolated freedom. Just like every other week, Ingrid ended up dragging Felix to Lonato’s Teahouse where Dimitri and Dedue were already waiting for them.
Normally Sylvain would have joined too, but he messaged in the group chat earlier today that he was busy and told them to “have fun without me ;)”. Not weird. Sylvain was a sociable guy. He had a lot of other friends (and a lot of… not-friends). Felix didn’t think anything of it.
Well, okay, he thought about it a little. But it didn’t ruin his whole day or anything. He was just a normal amount of annoyed that his friend had cancelled on a weekly hangout, leaving him alone with three of the most poorly-socialized losers on the planet (not that Felix was much better). The conversation just didn’t flow as well without Sylvain smoothing the way. That was all.
Then a couple weeks later, it happened again. Thursday afternoon. A vague excuse. “Sorry, I’ve got plans.” This time, Felix was actually irritated.
“If you’ve got a date just say that” Felix texted back.
“;)” Sylvain responded. Whatever.
It wouldn’t have bothered Felix, really, except—they were nearly halfway through the semester. Sylvain’s last fall semester, an annoying little voice in the back of Felix’s head reminded him. Shouldn’t he have his schedule figured out already? Thursday afternoons were blocked off for boba tea with their high school friends. Weren’t they?
But then Sylvain wasn’t available the next week either. By the week after, they had just stopped expecting him. Ingrid sighed about it briefly, but Dimitri and Dedue didn’t seem to mind at all. Felix seemed to be the only one actually upset—not that he was about to admit that.
“You seem upset,” Dimitri said.
“Shut the fuck up,” Felix said. Then he sucked too hard on the straw of his ginger milk tea (lactose-free, 25% sweetness) and choked on a tapioca pearl, causing Dedue to give him the heimlich and everyone else in the cafe to stare at them.
It was fine. Felix was fine.
It wasn’t like he didn’t see Sylvain anyway. Sylvain was still dropping in while Felix was at the gym and texting him if he wanted to hang out in the evenings. He still showed up to Felix’s fencing matches, whether or not Felix had told him when or where they’d be.
And just a few days later, he showed up at Felix’s apartment with takeout from Raising Flayn’s, just like Sylvain always did the night before he had an exam. He still sprawled on Felix’s bed and reviewed Srengi flashcards quietly while Felix blasted punk music and tried to debug his stupid chatbot for Intro to Natural Language Processing late into the night. So missing boba with their friends wasn’t a big deal, really.
But then Sylvain wasn’t available Monday afternoons either. Felix probably wouldn’t have noticed at first, but Lysithea told him that Hilda, her roommate, wouldn’t shut up about the fact that Sylvain had cancelled on her. Sylvain and Hilda had a standing Monday gossip session where the two of them reviewed the campus parties of the weekend (whatever that meant). Claude kept saying the two of them should start a podcast. Just the idea of hearing the two of them yapping in his ears gave Felix a headache.
“She’s being so annoying. I literally could not care less about the fact that he didn’t try to reschedule,” Lysithea muttered, pulling the cake tin out of the oven and dropping it on the counter to cool. “He’s probably just busy. We’re all busy!” she yelled, throwing her oven-mitted hands up in the air.
Midterms were fully upon them at that point, and everyone Felix knew was reaching panic mode. Annette had texted him exclusively between the hours of one and four a.m. for the last week, and all of the messages had been along the lines of, “what if I just dropped out and moved to albinea and became a sheep farmer!!!!!!!” to which Felix would inevitably respond, “I think you're better at chemistry than farming sheep.”
Even Lysithea, whose usual motto was ‘Only procrastinators need to worry,’ was getting a little frazzled. She had invited herself over to Felix’s apartment to stress bake in a Hilda-free zone and quickly taken over his kitchen. He eyed the batter-coated whisk left in the mixing bowl, silently dreading the inevitable cleanup. He didn’t even know he owned a whisk.
“How’s that analysis class going?” he asked, transparently trying to shift the topic away from Sylvain.
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Lysithea hissed, tearing off the oven mitts and throwing them on the counter. And then she did talk about it. At length. While stuffing her face with cake. She graciously allowed Felix a single slice, which was all he wanted anyway.
By the time she left, there was no cake remaining and Felix knew more about Banach spaces than he had ever wanted to. It had been Lysithea’s decision to take graduate-level Functional Analysis instead of the undergraduate version that was actually required of math majors, and she’d been paying for it dearly for the last two months. Sylvain called the class “funky anal,” which Lysithea hated and Felix privately thought was funny.
Ugh, Sylvain. What was up with him, anyway?
Felix did try to ask what Sylvain was up to a couple of times, but Sylvain, the world’s most emotionally avoidant person, just deflected with dumb jokes that he knew would piss Felix off. Typical.
(“Why the sudden interest in dating? You finally looking to put yourself out there?” Sylvain winked. Felix scoffed and skateboarded away, abandoning the conversation entirely.)
Well, if he was being honest, Felix did feel a little better knowing that Sylvain was cancelling on other people too. Especially Hilda, who Felix found particularly obnoxious. It wasn’t worth pressing, anyhow. It was a bit strange for him to be cancelling regular social engagements, but Sylvain was acting fairly normal otherwise.
Except—and this took Felix an embarrassingly long time to notice—Sylvain had stopped hitting on women completely. Which Felix thought was a good thing, to be clear. All of their friends thought it was a good thing. But it was definitely weird.
Sylvain rarely hit on people when Felix was around anymore because he knew it pissed Felix off. They’d gotten into a huge fight about it a couple years ago and hadn’t spoken for a week. Afterwards, Sylvain cooled it a little (at least around Felix). But still, Felix was used to hearing of Sylvain’s various… exploits, either through their friends complaining or from the man himself.
But it seemed that at some point all of those had just tapered off. Sylvain hadn’t had a full change of personality or anything like that. He was still a little flirty with their friends, but he wasn't going up to random strangers with pickup lines anymore or bragging about his dating app hookups.
“Maybe I've just grown up a little,” Sylvain shrugged when Dorothea asked him about it while they were out at a bar one night. Felix’s eyes narrowed. Another deflection.
“I'll believe it when I see it,” Dorothea snorted.
The conversation moved on to the latest drama in the theatre department. Dorothea was trying to explain Edelgard and Ferdinand’s most recent feud when the waitress came around to ask if they needed anything else. Ingrid was still nursing her beer, but Felix and Dorothea both ordered another drink.
“Just a lemonade,” Sylvain said, smiling charmingly at the waitress. She was pretty. Felix waited for him to say and your number of course, or some bullshit like that, but it didn’t come.
And there was something else odd. Stopping after one drink? Sylvain had cut back some in the past couple years, but he could still out-drink most of their friends and he usually enjoyed showing that off. But Felix wasn’t going to complain about that—at least he wouldn’t have to carry Sylvain’s drunk ass home tonight.
Felix didn’t like Sylvain when he was too drunk. He got a little too… clingy for Felix’s taste. Sylvain was always a little touchy (well, touchier than Felix at least), but only in the macho way that straight guys were—back pats, bro hugs, that sort of thing. Being drunk seemed to make him forget that hugging other dudes wasn’t acceptable frat bro behavior (Sylvain wasn’t in a frat, but he was certainly frat-bro adjacent). And when Sylvain was sloshed and hanging around Felix’s neck like a giant oversized sloth, it made it easy to forget that he was… well. Straight.
Anyway. Felix didn’t mind that Sylvain was drinking less. This way, Felix wouldn’t have to worry about wrangling Sylvain into a rideshare and back to his apartment, or sitting outside the bathroom door listening to him throw up, or cleaning him up afterwards, or staying the night to make sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit. And he wouldn’t have to sit there while Sylvain fell asleep crying over something he wouldn’t tell Felix about and wouldn’t remember in the morning (or at least, would pretend to not remember).
They could just have a nice night and go their separate ways afterwards. And that was exactly what Felix wanted.
Just as Dorothea was finally getting to the point of the story (something involving Hubert and a misunderstood confession), their drinks arrived and Sylvain left to go the restroom. He made Dorothea promise to put her story on hold until he got back.
“He’s definitely got a girlfriend,” Dorothea said the moment Sylvain was out of earshot. Felix choked on his whiskey.
“What,” he croaked out after Ingrid was done slamming him on the back.
“He’s got a girlfriend,” Dorothea repeated. She rolled her eyes at Felix’s disbelieving look. “Come on, think about it! He’s not hitting on random women anymore, he’s not going to frat parties, he’s drinking less. Clearly he’s dating someone and she’s fixing him up,” Dorothea said with a little flourishy hand motion at fixing him up. Like Sylvain was an old house in disrepair or a broken toy that needed to be glued back together.
“I don’t know,” Ingrid said. “Why wouldn’t he have just told us if he was dating someone? We’ve never been able to get him to shut up about the women he’s dated before.”
“I agree,” Felix said. “It’s not like Sylvain to be embarrassed by this sort of thing.”
Dorothea shrugged. “Maybe it’s serious this time. Serious enough that he wants to keep her to himself for a little while.” She took a sip of her drink, a fruity little layered cocktail that she’d taken a selfie with before drinking any. “It’s either that or he’s going to therapy.”
A beat passed. Then Ingrid and Dorothea burst out laughing. Even Felix snorted; the idea was so absurd. Just as Dorothea and Ingrid were catching their breath, Sylvain came back to the table.
“What are you guys laughing about?”
“Nothing,” Ingrid said, too quickly.
“Alright then, I’ll just assume you were talking about me then.” He winked at Felix. Felix looked away.
A girlfriend. Hm. Felix felt an ache in his gut, like an old wound that hadn’t healed right.
Word spread fast about Sylvain’s alleged secret girlfriend. Yuri, Ashe’s annoying friend, brought it up during Thursday afternoon boba.
Yuri had not been invited. Although he had technically gone to high school with them for a year, they were decidedly not friends. Well, he was kind of friends with Ingrid, but definitely not with Felix. The point was, he had not been invited to Thursday afternoon boba. He just showed up to annoy Ashe while he was working and when he realized Ashe was actually busy, he decided to annoy the nearest group of people he knew.
“I don’t suppose any of you know which unfortunate lady took our resident manwhore off the market?” Yuri asked, gesticulating casually with his watermelon oolong tea. Felix ground his straw between his teeth. Yuri was sitting in Sylvain’s seat.
“I’m still not convinced he’s seeing someone,” Ingrid sighed from next to Felix. Across the table, Dimitri stiffened slightly, clutching his plastic cup just slightly harder. Felix’s eyes narrowed.
“I agree,” Felix said. “Why would he keep it a secret? It doesn’t make any sense.” Dimitri tensed further, blinking rapidly.
“...Right!” Dimitri said, a little too brightly. “What reason would he have to hide something from us, his closest friends?”
Ingrid and Felix both stared at Dimitri, who was clearly hiding something from them, his closest friends. Evidently Dedue was in on it, because he cut in at that point.
“None of us know who Sylvain is dating or if he’s dating anyone at all,” he said to Yuri. “When are you going to ask Ashe on a date?”
Yuri got going pretty quickly after that. Felix and Dedue had had their differences in the past, but Felix did respect the man’s direct problem solving approach.
“What are you not telling us?” Felix asked as soon as the purple-haired weirdo was gone, brandishing his cup across the table at Dimitri with the straw pointed at him like a knife.
“Nothing!” Dimitri insisted, putting his hands in the air. “I don’t know any more than you do!”
“Liar,” Felix snarled. What did Dimitri know? Why would Sylvain have told Dimitri and not him? Weren’t they—Felix thought he and Sylvain—ugh. Whatever.
“Calm down,” Ingrid said firmly, putting a hand on Felix’s shoulder. “Dimitri, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.” Her tone left no room for argument about whether or not he knew something, because he obviously did.
“If you would like to know what is happening with Sylvain, perhaps you should speak to him yourself,” Dedue suggested. He was obviously right, which pissed Felix off even more.
Normally Felix would have just asked. But something about the whole situation left him feeling mildly nauseous. Felix didn’t like hearing about the girls Sylvain was seeing under normal circumstances. He certainly didn’t want to know if Sylvain had actually found himself some saintly woman who had taken it upon herself to teach him how to be a functioning human being.
So for now, he left things where they were. It wasn’t as if it was interfering with his relationship with Sylvain either way.
Sylvain had been a pretty hardcore partier his first two years of college (to the point were he’d ended up on academic probation at one point), but he’d mostly gotten his shit together during Felix’s first year at Garreg Mach. He still usually went out on the weekends, but he also showed up to class most of the time and actually studied.
But at least according to Claude (who Felix admittedly didn’t trust), Sylvain hadn’t been to a single major party this semester. The only social events he’d been seen at were smaller parties where he actually knew the people throwing them. He’d avoided frats and sororities entirely. And then a few days ago he’d invited a bunch of people over to his place for a board game night, of all things.
Unlike Felix, who lived in a cramped studio on-campus, Sylvain had a large off-campus one-bedroom, which he kept meticulously tidy. The living space was large enough to have a dozen people over comfortably.
Sylvain spent the first part of the night playing host, but pretty quickly he was roped into spending hours playing some obnoxiously complex strategy game about woodland creatures at war. Sylvain and Claude had aligned themselves against Edelgard and Hubert out of necessity, but Felix was pretty sure they were both ready to betray the others at a moment’s notice. Felix gave up trying to understand how the game worked well before Claude declared himself the winner on some minor rule the other three missed, leading to angry protests from all around.
Felix wasn’t a big board game guy, but he was competitive and had a perfect poker face. He was a vicious killer in Werewolf and a merciless negotiator in Coup. Overall, it was more fun than Felix expected. At least, it was until Claude decided to start shit.
“I hear you’re seeing a new girl,” Claude said to Sylvain. The two of them were standing in the kitchen when Felix walked in to refill his drink.
“Oh, something like that,” Sylvain laughed. Felix’s eye twitched.
“Aw c’mon, you don’t have to be all coy with me,” Claude said, leaning in closer. “What’s going on?”
“Maybe I would tell you…” Sylvain paused dramatically. “...If you hadn’t aided Edelgard in that last fight.”
“It was my win condition! I had to!”
And just like that, Sylvain had neatly sidestepped the question again. Claude obviously realized that he wasn’t going to get any more information out of Sylvain and backed off, changing the topic to the latest update in the Edelgard and Ferdinand drama, which was apparently mostly Edelgard taking revenge on Ferdinand for allegedly breaking Hubert’s heart. Felix had a hard time imagining Hubert heartbroken over anything, but then again, most people would have said the same about Felix.
Felix stalked out of the kitchen in a much more foul mood than he’d entered it. He deliberately did not say anything to the people in the kitchen when he saw Hubert looming threateningly on the other side of the doorway. Claude would get what was coming to him.
Unlike the usual college party ragers, this party had started in the early afternoon and had everyone heading out before eight o’clock. Everyone except Felix, who had stuck around until Sylvain was showing the last guest out the door.
Felix wouldn’t have thought twice about it a few weeks ago, but lately all his interactions with Sylvain had felt slightly off-kilter. He’d never considered asking whether Sylvain wanted him to stay later. It was just a given, as so many thing in their friendship were. But now Sylvain was hiding something. Did Sylvain even want him around? Was there someone else he’d rather be spending time with right now?
Sylvain shut the door. Then he turned around and asked, “You want Raising Flayn’s?”
And just like that, the two of them were on solid ground again. Felix ordered takeout while Sylvain tidied up the apartment. They ate fried fish on the couch and watched some ridiculous historical drama that Sylvain claimed to not be invested in and Felix actually wasn’t invested in.
Then of course, Sylvain opened his mouth and ruined it.
“Oh, nice. Got a 90 on my Srengi exam,” Sylvain said, looking down at his phone. Felix stilled.
“You had an exam,” Felix repeated, numbly.
“Yeah, a couple days ago,” Sylvain said nonchalantly.
“But—you didn’t come over.”
Sylvain always studied at Felix’s before an exam. He had been doing it since Felix started at Garreg Mach. He hadn’t done so in the last couple of weeks, but Felix had just assumed that most of Sylvain’s classes required projects instead of exams for midterms this semester. He always said that he studied best with someone else. Felix thought that might have been true, but mostly he thought Sylvain just hated to be alone.
Sylvain just shrugged, as if he hadn’t said anything of importance. “I didn’t wanna bother you,” he said lightly. Like it didn’t matter at all.
“You don’t,” Felix said before he could stop himself.
“What?”
“You don’t bother me when you come over to study. I would fucking tell you if you bothered me,” Felix snapped. His face warmed and he looked away. The stupid drama was still playing on the TV. Onscreen, a noblewoman was asking a maid to secretly deliver a message to her lover. Felix hated this show. Why didn’t she just go talk to him herself? What was she so afraid of?
“Oh. Um. Thanks?” Sylvain said. “It’s really not a big deal though.”
Not a big deal. Alright. So that was how Sylvain felt.
Felix had been trying harder to keep his anger in check this past year. He still spoke his mind, but he wasn’t a teenager anymore, and people didn’t make excuses for him the way they did in the months after Glenn died. Anger had consequences, he’d learned. It was easier now, anyway. He didn’t have vitriol bubbling out of his pores like he used to. But in that moment, he felt all the annoyance and frustration of the last few weeks boil over.
“Who?” Felix demanded.
“Who what?”
“Who did you study with?”
Sylvain blinked. He gave Felix a strange look, which only made Felix angrier. “I just studied on my own?”
“Oh, on your own,” Felix scoffed. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Sylvain stared at him, the confusion plain on his face. He paused the show. Thank the fucking goddess.
“Look, Felix,” he said slowly, like he was talking to a frightened animal, “I’m sorry for whatever I did to upset you, but I’m not really sure why you’re angry at me right now.”
“I know you’re seeing someone!” Felix yelled, even though he absolutely did not know that.
“What? How?” Sylvain yelped.
So he admitted to it. Felix felt a sharp pain behind his ribs. “Everyone knows,” he snapped. “You’re acting so—different!”
“I am? I didn’t think it was that obvious,” Sylvain said, rubbing the side of his neck and looking away shyly. Damn it. What kind of person could make Sylvain shy?
“Yeah, well it is,” Felix said shortly, crossing his arms. “I just don’t understand why you bothered trying to keep it a secret.”
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Felix. It’s just… kind of personal, you know?”
Kind of personal. Kind of personal?
The two of them had been friends for as long as Felix could remember. Best friends, Felix thought, although he wasn’t going to say that kind of cheesy shit out loud. They had been there for the darkest patches of each other's lives and dragged each other kicking and screaming through them. They swore to die together. What the fuck about their relationship wasn’t personal enough for Sylvain?
“Dimitri knows,” he gritted out instead of voicing any of that.
“Dimitri introduced me to her!” Sylvain said, throwing his hands up in the air. “You can’t possibly blame me for that.”
Felix scoffed. On the contrary, he absolutely could blame Sylvain for that. He could blame Sylvain for whatever the fuck he wanted, which was currently everything. “I just thought that you would have told me you were dating someone. Goddess knows you’ve never shut up about the topic before.”
“Wait, what?” Sylvain protested. “Back up. I’m not dating anyone.”
Felix’s brow furrowed. “Yes, you are. You just admitted to it!” He felt like he was losing it.
“What, no! That’s not what I meant,” Sylvain said, looking increasingly manic. “I’m not ‘seeing someone’ as in a girl, although she is a girl—or a woman, I guess.” He made a frustrated noise before throwing his hands in the air. “I’m going to therapy!”
“What,” Felix said.
“I thought that was what you meant when you said you knew I was ‘seeing someone’. Like, seeing a professional!”
It was not at all what Felix had meant. Sylvain put his head in his hands.
“...I didn’t know that,” Felix said.
“I’m getting that, yeah,” Sylvain said. He let out a great sigh and removed his hands in favor of shoving his face into a throw pillow.
“Why did you think I was dating someone?” he said, his voice now muffled by the pillow. He surfaced for air, still not looking at Felix. “I thought you were above listening to bullshit rumors like that.”
“Dorothea thought a girl was ‘fixing you up’.” Felix grimaced at the turn of phrase, but he couldn’t think of a better one.
“So, what, you thought it was more plausible I’d started dating a woman who was forcing me to take better care of myself than just… getting professional help?”
“I mean. Yes.” Felix had literally not once considered that Sylvain would ever go to therapy. Guiltily, he thought of the way he and Ingrid and Dorothea had laughed about the idea just a couple of weeks prior.
“You know, that’s fair actually,” Sylvain said. The two of them slumped on the couch. The anger drained out of the room, replaced by an awkward silence.
“So what made you. Start.” Felix asked. Sylvain sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Felix watched him for a moment, then tore his gaze away.
“I don’t know, a lot of stuff I guess. I just didn’t want to fuck up again this year, you know? I’m already on my fifth year of college. Another would just be embarrassing.” He laughed bitterly. “So I asked Dimitri for his therapist’s info."
“That makes sense,” Felix said. Felix didn’t like therapy. His father forced him go to a grief counselor a few times after Glenn died and Felix thought it had been the most useless experience of his life. But he wasn’t going to deny that it worked for other people; Dimitri was a prime example.
“Yeah. That, and…” Sylvain seemed to struggle to get the next part out. “I’m actually starting to think my childhood was. Kind of fucked up?”
Felix blinked. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Are you just now realizing this?”
“I mean, no!” Sylvain protested. “I’ve always known that my parents sucked, and Miklan sucked. And obviously it's not normal for your brother to try and… yeah,” he trailed off quietly. “I knew it was bad, but... I don’t know, I guess I’m just starting to unpack how much it actually affected me. Affects me. Present tense.”
Felix looked at Sylvain with incredulity. “Sylvain. He pushed you off a bridge.”
Felix didn't mean to say it. He and Sylvain didn't talk about the past like this. It just slipped out.
He braced himself to hear the usual bullshit excuses that Sylvain's parents had made that summer, the ones Sylvain always parroted. It wasn't that high above the water. Sylvain was a strong swimmer. Just boys being boys.
But Sylvain only curled into himself. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He did.”
"I thought you were going to die," Felix said. Another thing he hadn’t meant to say. He regretted it immediately.
Sylvain had been a strong swimmer for his age, but he hadn’t been ready for that hard shove from behind, or the cold shock of the water. Felix remembered it all in vivid detail—Miklan shoving Sylvain, Sylvain’s shock of red hair disappearing under the water, Felix screaming himself hoarse until help came.
Felix clung to him for the rest of the trip. He made Sylvain hold his hand every time he crossed the bridge for years afterwards, and he let Sylvain believe it was for Felix’s sake. Their last day on the trip, he made Sylvain promise he wouldn’t die without Felix.
Felix was eight. Sylvain was ten.
Felix knew Sylvain had probably gone through worse. Much worse. But the bridge was the one Felix saw happen. It was the one he remembered the most.
“Yeah, well,” Sylvain cleared his throat. “The point is, things were bad and therapy has been helping me.”
Felix didn’t know what to say. It seemed like he never did when it mattered. “That’s… good,” he forced out.
“Yeah. It has been good," Sylvain said quietly. "But yeah. That’s why I haven’t been around as much this semester. I started out twice a month, but after our first couple sessions Byleth—that’s her name—suggested I come in a little more often. And I usually need some time to myself afterwards.”
Felix nodded stiffly. That made sense. But he still didn’t understand…
“Why didn’t you come over before your test?” he blurted out. If Sylvain hadn’t found some hot girl to replace Felix with, then why not?
Sylvain looked surprised. “Oh. I just figured that I should be a little less reliant on you, I guess?” he said, rubbing his neck. “It’s not like you need me to drag you out of your room and force you to talk to people anymore. You have a lot of other people you hang out with now. Willingly, even. I thought maybe it was time to learn how to concentrate on my own instead of always bothering you.”
“I already told you, you’re not bothering me,” Felix snapped. “So stop.”
“Sorry, Felix. I really didn’t think you’d care this much.”
Felix looked away, heat rising to his cheeks. “Just because I don’t need you doesn’t mean I don’t want you around,” Felix said. “And you don’t need me either. You’re perfectly capable of studying on your own. But if it’s easier with me, then you should come over.”
“Oh. Um, thanks. I think.”
And that was that, for a little while.
It had been a few weeks since Sylvain’s board game night, and the semester was finally coming to an end. The rest of the semester had gone smoothly, for the most part.
There had been one incident where Sylvain’s frat friends had finally talked him into coming to one of their parties and Sylvain proceeded to get completely wasted. He ended up drunk dialing Felix to come help him out at one in the morning. Felix had dragged Sylvain home while Sylvain slumped over him and muttered over and over, “I couldn’t do it, Felix. I couldn’t do it.” Felix asked it about it in the morning, but Sylvain just shrugged and said he didn't remember.
Anyway. Other than that, Sylvain had been… better, it seemed. More stable, less self-destructive. He was also prone to these weird moments of vulnerability, which kept catching Felix off-guard.
Sylvain was over at Felix’s place that night. It was late. Felix only had one final project left and he could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Sylvain was already done for the semester and was just keeping Felix company (and of course, putting off going home for the break as long as possible).
Felix rubbed his eyes and took another swig of his energy drink. He’d been stuck on the same issue for hours now. This project wasn't due until tomorrow. He needed to get out.
“I’m going skating,” Felix said, standing up and stretching. He didn’t ask if Sylvain was going to follow.
“I’ll come with you,” Sylvain said, with a yawn.
Felix grabbed his board from where he left it by the door as he left. Sylvain followed closely, holding the longboard that he kept at Felix’s for this exact situation. The moment they set off, the cold air shocked Felix awake again.
Felix picked up skateboarding his freshmen year. It was how he’d met Claude, who’d taken pity on him when he was clearly a newbie just trying to get around campus faster and taught him the basics. It had quickly evolved into a full-blown obsession (although not one that could replace programming or fencing).
Skateboarding was nothing like his other hobbies, and that's why Felix liked it. There was no room to overthink things. Even a second of hesitation would kill your momentum. If you wanted to do a trick, you had to just do it.
He and Sylvain skated from the dorms to west side of campus, which had been more recently constructed. The pedestrian-only roads there were wide and smooth, and there were just enough outdoor stairs and railings to make for the perfect makeshift skatepark. They were the only ones there that night, the campus already largely abandoned this late into finals.
They didn’t talk for a while. Sylvain found a place to sit and watched while Felix practiced, warming up with tic-tacs. Felix felt the cool air chilling him through his thick hoodie as he worked up a sweat, trying to warm his muscles up. He looked over at Sylvain. It was almost winter and Sylvain had only brought a light jacket.
Eventually, Felix felt the exertion clear his mind. The solution to his problem came to him easily, then. He slid to a stop and pulled out his phone to write it down—he’d implement it in the morning. For now, it was time to head back and pass out.
“Finished up?” Sylvain asked. Felix nodded. “Let’s walk back,” Sylvain suggested. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I want to talk about something.”
They walked back slowly, boards under their arms. The cold bothered Felix less now after a bit of exercise. Sylvain had been the one who wanted to talk, but he didn’t say anything for a while.
“Felix… Look, there’s something else I have to tell you. I think… Well.” Sylvain swallowed nervously. He wasn’t looking at Felix. “I think I might be gay?”
Felix stopped in his tracks. Blinked. Tried to process what Sylvain just said. Failed. He could picture a little error message popping up over his head: Felix.exe has stopped working.
“What,” he said flatly, startling a laugh out of Sylvain, who had turned around when he saw Felix stopped.
“Felix! You’re supposed to say, ‘Wow, thank you so much for trusting me,’ or some bullshit like that.”
“Thank you for trusting me,” Felix said mockingly. “What? You’re—seriously?”
“I mean, I don’t know,” Sylvain groaned. They were stopped directly under one of the streetlamps and the fluorescent light reflecting off his red hair gave him something akin to a halo. With the dark of the campus behind him, he looked like an angel emerging from shadow. It pissed Felix off.
“I’m still trying to figure it out,” Sylvain said.
“But you—you like women.” But even as he said it, Felix realized what a trite statement it was. Sylvain dated women. He had sex with women. But did he like women? Felix doubted it.
“Yeah, I’m not a hundred percent sure about how I feel about women, honestly," Sylvain sighed. "Maybe I am attracted to girls, but it’s just wrapped up in so much baggage about societal and family expectations that it makes it hard to tell, you know what I mean? Also, I think I might be… kind of a misogynist?”
Felix reeled, his brain struggling to keep up with everything Sylvain had just said. But that last bit—
“You think?” Felix said with disbelief.
Felix had known he was into men from a pretty young age. He hadn’t known for sure that he was into women until he’d watched Dorothea punch Sylvain in the face for drunkenly implying that all women were golddiggers. And wow, that was a strange feeling—apparently Felix was more secure in his attraction to women than Sylvain.
“Okay, I definitely am. But I'm working on it!” Sylvain insisted. Felix snorted. He wanted to cross his arms, but he was still holding his board.
“Alright. So you think you’re gay because you’re not attracted to women?”
“No, I’m definitely into men,” Sylvain laughed bitterly. “I’m uh. I’m pretty certain about that.”
A moment of awkward silence passed between them.
“Well," Felix said, “at least now you'll stop making those terrible jokes about being the token straight guy.”
Sylvain laughed again and rubbed at his neck. “Yeah, those were a little defensive in hindsight.”
“How did you…” Felix hesitated, gripping his skateboard harder. Did he really want to know this? No, it didn’t matter if he wanted to. He had to know. “How did you figure it out? Don't tell me Leclerc’s flirting got to you,” he tacked on, trying not to sound as if he cared too much.
“No—I mean, okay, Yuri was a contributing factor.” Felix felt a wave of murderous intent wash over him at Sylvain’s words—so much so that he nearly missed what Sylvain said next.
“But actually what happened was I realized that I'd been kind of hung up on this one guy for a while,” Sylvain continued. “Like, a long while. And I don't think I'm gonna be over it for a while, so you don't have to worry about me being in a relationship anytime soon, alright?”
Felix ignored the last part of what Sylvain had said. They hadn’t discussed about Felix’s freak out over thinking Sylvain was dating someone a few weeks ago and Felix wasn’t about to start now. There were more pressing issues anyway, because for what felt like the thousandth time this semester, Felix felt his whole worldview shatter.
“You like someone,” Felix echoed. He was beginning to shake, and not from the cold. Sylvain didn’t notice. He was looking away from Felix again, staring out into the distant darkness. Felix stepped closer, but Sylvain still didn't look at him.
“That's what I said, yeah,” Sylvain said in that stupid fake-casual tone of his.
“And he's not interested in you,” Felix said, watching Sylvain like a hawk.
“Probably not, no,” Sylvain shrugged.
“You haven't asked?!” Felix burst out.
“No, but I'm fairly certain.” Sylvain smiled bitterly. Like he's already come to terms with this hopeless pining bullshit. Felix hated it. He wanted to strangle something. Possibly Sylvain, and not in a fun way.
“That's stupid. You haven't asked and you haven't tried to get over him?”
“I've tried getting over him, believe me—”
“Yeah, with random hookups at parties,” Felix snapped. “You haven’t tried a relationship. You haven't tried with other men.”
Felix felt a mounting hysteria inside his gut. He knew his fury at this was giving too much away. Sylvain was going to know. Felix had spent all these years hiding his feelings and if Felix didn’t get his shit together right now, Sylvain was going to know.
But Sylvain didn’t seem to notice anything. He hardly seemed to see Felix at all, too wrapped up in his own head.
“It’s not that simple, Felix,” Sylvain sighed. “This guy, he's… I think he's it for me, you know?” He gazed forlornly up at the night sky, like he was some fucking star-crossed lover in one of his stupid dramas.
“You haven't even tried and you're already giving up,” Felix snarled. At that, Sylvain finally looked at him. Good, Felix thought bitterly. Look at me. Look at me, not anyone else.
"It's not like that. I'm not giving up," Sylvain said, irritation clouding his voice.
"Yes, you are," Felix's voice rose. "You're telling me there's not a single other man you could see yourself with? You won't even consider—" me, he cut himself off.
So Felix was finally an option, and Sylvain wouldn't even think about it? Wouldn't think about anyone but—who the fuck was this guy, anyway? Who could Sylvain think of as being forever, if not Felix?
"It's not giving up," Sylvain said, breaking Felix out of his thoughts. "It's not giving up to let myself love you, Felix."
Felix froze.
"...What?" he croaked out.
"I... fuck," Sylvain said, turning away from him again. “I wasn’t going to tell you,” he said quietly, dragging his foot across the pavement.
"Is this a joke?" Felix said. He regretted it immediately.
“Why would I joke about something like this?" Sylvain snapped. Then his shoulders slumped and he looked down. “Look, I’m sorry Felix. Let’s just forget about it, okay?”
“No,” Felix said. No, he didn’t want to forget about it. This was the last thing in the world he wanted forget.
“Felix, I’m sorry. I don’t know what you want—”
Felix dropped his skateboard. He heard it clatter to the pavement—he didn’t care. He fisted Sylvain by the shirt (he hadn’t even zipped up his jacket, that fool) and yanked him close. Sylvain yelped, dropping his longboard to the ground as well. Now he was really looking at Felix, his eyes wide with confusion and surprise. Felix looked at him hard, trying desperately to read the planes of his face now that they were only inches away.
"Say it again," he demanded.
"Felix—"
"Say it again."
Sylvain sighed. He didn't ask what Felix meant. He looked so tired. Like he was facing an execution he’d long been sentenced to long ago and he was ready to just get it over with.
“I love you, Felix,” he murmured.
Felix kissed him.
It wasn't great at first. Sylvain was frozen solid, until he wasn't. Then he was kissing back with a sort of frenzy, clenching at Felix's clothes like a lifeline. They stayed like that for—Felix didn’t know how long, frantically pawing at the warmth of each other’s bodies until he heard the sound of an approaching golf cart.
Felix broke away. Sylvain, still dazed, leaned in again. Felix stopped him with a hand to the chest and turned around to see Alois, one of the campus security guards. Alois waved at them as he drove by.
“Hello boys! Staying warm, I see!” And he laughed, driving off into the night.
The cold of the Ethereal Moon night hit Felix again all at once. He shivered. Then he felt a warm arm around him and looked up. Sylvain was smiling—a real smile, this time.
“Come on,” Sylvain said. “Let’s go back to yours.”