Chapter Text
Felix does not want for much.
As he has come to learn, however, the expression Sylvain makes when he gets something he wants ranks highly among them.
By nature, Felix is competitive. By blood, it is hunger that drives him. It’s no wonder that his desire to make Sylvain happy feels like a contest, but he doesn’t mind. All he has to do is prove why loving him is the best decision Sylvain could have made.
As a dhampir, Felix has always been too much a vampire for the comfort of most humans and too human for vampires to take him seriously. He doesn’t blame the former and has swiftly disabused the most vocal of the latter of that notion, but the memory of Sylvain pinned beneath him—of Sylvain, willing to fight even though he’s never been one for violence—has made him feel closer to human than he’d ever have thought possible.
And so, in a gesture one part pettiness and five parts sincerity, Felix Fraldarius swallows the anxieties that drip poisonously into the sea of his temper and goes to Mercedes.
She’d been Sylvain’s friend first, and not only because most people were. Though the manifestation is different, the two of them both draw their power from the earth, but where Sylvain spends his time nurturing the fruit of the earth, Mercedes is solid, unshakeable.
It’s just one of many reasons he chooses her for the gift.
Because she and Sylvain are the same kind of insufferable people person, she runs her own shop a few blocks away from the druid’s. Felix doesn’t go often—magic was something he’d been wary of for years, and even now, it’s something he only overcomes for Sylvain’s sake—but the neighborhood is familiar enough from the few times he’s accompanied his boyfriend.
Something chimes softly as he enters, though he sees no bell, and when Mercedes looks up from stocking her shelves, she is not surprised to see him.
“Hello, Felix,” she says, and the genuine warmth in her voice still throws him for a loop. “What can I do for you?”
If he were Sylvain, he would have a joke at the ready, carefree and easygoing and all the things Felix will never be. But he’s not Sylvain, only learning to love like him, so he gives her a sharp nod and says, “I’d like a ring.”
Sylvain invites him over for dinner that night. This isn’t an unusual occurrence; even before Felix had let his true feelings spill over with his teeth against Sylvain’s shoulder, they’d spent many an evening curled up on the couch, wolfing down takeout like they were beasts rather than (mostly) human. These days, they sit with thighs pressed together rather than with carefully enforced distance, and Sylvain takes a stab at cooking more often than not, but the general concept remains the same.
He’s making hunter’s soup when Felix lets himself into the apartment above the shop. The air smells smoky and warm, and Felix’s mouth waters despite his recent feed.
His purchase weighs heavily in his pocket, reassuring and nerve-racking all at once as he slides his arms around Sylvain’s waist just to feel the way he softens at the touch.
Of all the things he’s learned about his boyfriend in the pursuit of making him feel like Felix does every time their eyes meet, this one numbers among his favorites.
“Good day?” Sylvain asks. Felix knows he means to sound snotty, to poke fun at Felix’s uncharacteristic display of affection in a love language all their own, but he only sounds pleased.
Good. Felix feels Sylvain’s pleasure as his own.
“Mm.” It’s noncommittal at best, but Sylvain hadn’t been expecting a real answer anyway.
Because, of course, Sylvain is kind and patient and gentle, loving despite the layers of carelessness he girds himself with. He reaches out with pretty words and open arms and I picked this up because it made me think of you s. Because Felix can’t forget the way his own love comes in the willingness to stay, to give of his time and talent and body until Sylvain knows that Felix is his. Because Sylvain knows Felix and has reciprocated in kind.
“If I give you something,” he mutters, still clutching Sylvain tight, “You have to promise not to take it the wrong way.”
“Encouraging,” Sylvain teases, but he turns off the stove and twists in Felix’s arms until they’re facing each other. “Did you get me a human heart or something?”
No, but I would if you wanted me to. I would do anything for you, no matter how it might stain my hands, my heart, my soul.
These are not the words he says, but Sylvain reads them in the pursing of his lips anyway.
Felix doesn’t have words, so he fishes the pouch from his pocket and presses it into Sylvain’s hand—his hand, so warm and strong. He watches the moment Sylvain recognizes the shape of it, the instant that he pulls it free and recognizes Mercedes’s handiwork in the inlaid jasper.
“For grounding,” Felix murmurs hoarsely, as if Sylvain won’t have felt his intentions down to the core. “To remind you of where you belong.”
Because Sylvain loves. Because Sylvain loves him. But most of all, because Sylvain has given of himself his whole life, and, even once, Felix wants to make him feel the same way.
With shaking hands, Sylvain slips the ring onto his middle ring.
It fits perfectly.
“I love you,” Sylvain breathes.
And then Felix is supporting his weight for a different reason entirely.