Chapter Text
Everyone had left. This left Sylvain with two things to take care of:
1) an inordinate amount of cleanup detail;
2) Felix Fraldarius, drunk as shit, draped unceremoniously across his couch.
An uncomfortably attractive sight and not one he was often graced with. Good thing there was so much cleaning up to do. Nothing quite so distracting as cleanup. Yeah, that’d work. He'd just get to scrubbing the counter now and --
"Sylvain," mumbled Felix.
Talking to Felix? Well, that was the opposite of what he needed.
But Felix was talking to him. He couldn't give up that gift so easily, could he?
"Hello to you too, friend," said Sylvain.
Felix said nothing. He rolled off the couch, very slowly, and hit the floor with a thud. The plates near him wobbled unsteadily.
"Wow," said Sylvain. “It's a rare sight to see you like this."
"Like what," said Felix.
Sylvain considered his options. Cute was there, sure, but that wasn't rare, and more importantly, he used it on Felix all the time. Vulnerable was more accurate, but that might steer the conversation in a direction he wasn't totally ready for.
"Drunk," he opted for instead, the safest choice.
Felix glared at him once more. Sylvain hadn't been lying before: those glares always had made his heart thump in his chest, do a secret leap of childish delight, do something. He knew he was delusional, but it really felt like there was something reserved just for him in those glares. An expression of tenderness, secret, one only he could see...
It wasn't there, and he knew that -- but he still saw it, and it still made him tremble, just a bit.
"You're so red," he said instead, instead of any of that nonsense. "Here, let me get you some water."
He was halfway through filling up the glass when it happened.
"Sylvain," Felix called out suddenly, his voice surprisingly strong. "I'm... thankful for you."
Crash!
"Um," Sylvain said. Held a hand to his head. "What?"
"You're," said Felix, every word a great effort, "...kind. To your friends. You value them. It's... " A hiccup, small. "Good. You're good."
"Felix," Sylvain said, feeling his face flush with pleasure and wonder.
He had dropped the glass he was holding, and it had shattered into a million pieces, and somehow that seemed much less pressing than making sense out of the wildly unusual thing Felix had just said to him.
Then Felix hiccuped again, more loudly, and Sylvain -- well, Sylvain laughed bitterly.
Alcohol. That's all it was. It wasn't Felix talking -- it was just -- wine.
He'd done this kind of thing plenty of times himself, drunkenly blurted his affections, laughed it off in the morning. He'd done it to Felix, even. Alcohol. He understood.
So then why did it hurt?
It’s good. You’re good.
Because he wanted to believe it was real, that Felix had really meant it.
But he could handle it in stride.
Something he was good at. Playing it cool.
"I’m thankful for you too, Felix,” he said, easy as anything, walking over and kneeling beside him. “I'm just thankful I get to see you like this, honestly," he went on, grinning at the Felix sprawled before him, flushed and glaring. "You know those glares don't really work when you look like this, right? I mean, I still like it, but -- here you go, here's your water, don’t spill."
He made an effort to deliver it. He really did.
What actually happened was this:
Felix's hand reaching feebly for the glass; Sylvain letting go much too soon. The second glass spraying its contents through the air, soaking Felix's cotton shirt. Sylvain losing his balance, wobbling and crashing on top of Felix with a yelp; the glass tumbling to the floor with a thud , rolling away.
A long and excruciating moment of silence between them.
Oh.
Falling on Felix like this? he wanted to ask his treacherous body. Are you serious? Every teenage fantasy we’ve ever decided to not act on and you go and come up with this? Flinging an entire glass of water on him while you’re at it?
Goddess. The entire situation was so ludicrous, it seemed straight out of one of Bernadetta’s stories.
But he couldn’t argue with the tactile -- sensation. Somehow this was happening. And he needed a way out.
"Uh," said Sylvain. "Maybe I'm not entirely sober either."
Felix glared at him fiercely.
...
Oh no.
Was it there?
Suddenly Sylvain couldn't look at him.
"I can, uh, get you a spare shirt," he said. "Just let me... uh." Think of something. Anything that’s not boning your best friend. Think.
He couldn't look at Felix’s eyes, full of emotion he couldn't name or answer. He definitely couldn't look at his shirt, which was clinging to his body, um, all too well. But if he looked at his mouth he’d really be in it, too fucking far gone entirely --
“I saw you,” said Felix, hoarsely. “All evening. I saw you look at me.”
“No,” Sylvain breathed, even as he thought was I so obvious?
“And I’ve looked at you,” Felix said, as if it were being torn from him, “the same way.”
…
It was Felix who closed the distance. He snarled and dragged Sylvain to him, pressed their mouths together like a man starving, no gentleness to it at all. It didn’t matter. What mattered was this: Felix was kissing him. Kissing him eagerly. Kissing him rough like nothing else mattered, as if he’d never get another chance.
When their lips parted they stared at each other, flushed and panting, until Sylvain broke the silence.
“We,” he said, “are going to have a lot to talk about tomorrow, Felix.”
To which Felix scowled, and elbowed him, and kissed him again.