Chapter Text
The first time it happens, Byleth thinks it’s a fluke.
Felix is mortified. Horrified. Every single “fied” thing he could possibly think of in the moment. He feels himself flush as Blyeth shows him the exam he absolutely, positively flunked.
“Felix, if you were anyone else I’d try to joke about this.” Byleth says, looking down at Felix’s wide eyes and tight expression. “Not that I’m any good at joking, but I also think you’re about to drop dead.”
“Am not.” Felix says, just to be contradictory.
Byleth smiles a little at that.
“I’m sorry.” Felix says, because what the fuck else is he supposed to say?
“Don’t be sorry. Everyone has a bad test day. Well,” Byleth pauses, looking off, brow furrowed. “Not that I know. I never had any proper education.”
“You didn’t?” Felix asks. He knows she was a mercenary, but he also kind of assumed she had a formal education at some point. Lady Rhea really must have been off her rocker to hire someone like her.
“You think I sat down and took a test like this?” Byleth asks, waving the exam around.
No. Felix can’t even imagine Byleth in a classroom. She’s the kind of person that would wrangle authority from the professor and teach the class herself. Felix realizes that’s kind of what she’s done since joining the Academy. It is a relief to hear her say it, though. Byleth is the best swordsmaster he knows, that anyone here knows, and she didn’t need a piece of paper to give her permission to do what she does. Which is bloody and violent and fucking marvelous if you ask Felix.
“Just get some sleep before next time, okay?” Byleth throws the exam away. “Eat a good breakfast. Don’t stress yourself out. You got this.”
Yes, he agrees. He has this.
-
He doesn’t have this, and the second time it happens, Byleth is less forgiving.
“Do you have a concussion?” She asks, dropping another exam sheet massacred in red ink onto his desk.
Felix swallows, bile churning in his stomach. This can’t be happening. Once is a mistake, and Felix never makes mistakes to begin with. Twice is, well, he doesn’t even know what twice is.
“No. Mercedes healed me after the last missions we went on.”
“And she was thorough? Checked your head and everything?”
“You’d doubt Mercedes?”
“The only other option is doubting you.” She says, and the words cut through Felix’s skin like a spear. “But I’m not prone to doing that, am I?’
Felix shakes his head, unable to look away from her confused eyes. She rests her chin in her palm, thinking as she looks at him. She does this a lot, stares at people blankly like she’s choosing the best option for conversation. It’s weird.
“You…do study, right?”
Felix scoffs. “Of course, I’m not an idiot. I’m not Sylvain.”
Byleth sputters with laughter. “No. You’re not. He’s never failed a certification exam. Ever.”
“What?”
Byleth stops, as if she realizes she probably shouldn’t have said that. She hasn’t quite gotten a hang of Professor-Student confidentiality. He likes that about her. It gives him gossip without having to actually interact with people.
“Look, it doesn’t matter how everyone else does. You’re on your own track. You have your own goals.”
Felix knows about the goddamn goals. They’re written pristinely on the chalkboard behind her as she lectures. Everyone has one or two skills to focus on, and Byleth fills little bars up with colorful chalk as they improve and grow stronger. It delights the likes of Annette and Ashe, like the children they are, but it infuriates Felix to no end. More so now than usual, as he watches his classmates soar ahead and himself stay firmly in his current class.
Stupid pastel chalk. Stupid golden deer chalk. He knows that’s where she nicked it from. Claude’s been snooping around with Hilda looking for the thieves like some juvenile detective agency.
“Felix?”
Felix snaps back to look at Byleth. Her blue eyes shine with sympathy.
“Look. I know this is annoying, and you’re pissed off, but I don’t want you worrying about it. You’ll take it as many times as you need to. When you’re ready.”
Felix nods. He’s grateful, all of a sudden, that she chose the Blue Lions to teach all those months ago. He doubts Hanneman would be as understanding, and he’d rather be run through by the Boar’s lance than be patronized by Manuela.
“Alright?” Byleth nods, holding out a hand.
Felix ignores it, but nods as he stands, exam crumpled in his fist.
“Alright.”
-
He’s never ready.
Six exams later and he has nothing to show for it. Byleth doesn’t lecture him anymore. She doesn’t even give them to him personally. She slips it in with some classwork that everyone gets, so no one has to see him being pulled aside over and over and over.
Failed.
The stamp makes him so angry his hands shake. He’s been to the market. He knows how much the Advanced Seals cost. It makes him sick to think of Byleth spending, wasting, all that money for him to fail repeatedly.
Felix isn’t used to this. Failure. This abstract, foreign thing that has barged into Felix’s mind and sat on whatever part of his brain retains definitions and coordinates and stances. He doesn’t know what happens to him when he sits down and picks up a quill. It’s like he forgets how to read, how to convert the instinctual way he moves into the written word. He knows how to use a sword. He was born for it.
But, according to some daft professors who sit in rooms and scheme up ways to make students sick with anxiety and self-hatred, that doesn’t matter. Nothing Felix does matters. The endless hours of training. The blood he spills on the field. The sleepless nights he tosses and turns, fighting off the fear he won’t be able to keep anyone safe because he doesn’t have a fucking slip that says “Congratulations!” in red and gold ink. Every single time, he freezes.
It’s pointless.
All that he can do is what he does best.
Brood.
He watches Ingrid soar around on her newly assigned Pegasus, flying above the Academy grounds like a storybook character. Caspar, Claude, and Dorothea take turns throwing rocks and sticks as Dedue’s new fortress armor, cackling as each one bounces off and nearly takes out the eyes of passing students. Felix can’t even look at Sylvain once he’s graduated to the Warrior class. It has nothing to do with how his stupid, strong thighs peek out from the draping. Nothing at all. He doesn’t even notice.
Sylvain notices, though, the clown haired, maniacal fucker. He lifts the fabric like some floozy and spins around to show off. Felix throws a book at him and storms away. That was a few hours ago, and he’s a bit surprised that Sylvain hasn’t found him again. He has a sixth sense, a Find a Felix sense is what Sylvain actually calls it. It’s stupidly endearing.
It must be broken like he is, because Felix has been sitting in the corner of the second library floor for a good two hours now. He’s curled up on the floor, because he doesn’t deserve the table. That’s where the smart students sit to study. Felix is obviously an idiot.
Speaking of idiots. He can hear his own thumping up the stairs.
“Hey.” Sylvain approaches. “You look like a sick cat.”
Felix looks up at him. Sylvain is wringing his hands together, nervously. He does that now when they’re alone, since the conversation that happened nearly a month ago. Since Sylvain dragged him into one of the gardens in the middle of the night, confessed his feelings, and basically asked to court him.
Yeah. That’s Felix’s life now. He’s an academic failure and the heir to House Gautier has apparently been crushing on him since they were kids and desperately wants to make good on their foolish childhood promise. Felix asked him if he was drunk. Then if he was on drugs. Then if he had been hit with a large boulder or crumbling statue. Each time, Sylvain shook his head, grinning so hard his cheeks must have hurt. What Sylvain did say was that he was in love. Almost. He actually said almost. Leave it to Sylvain to admit he was almost in love with Felix. He didn’t know whether he wanted to punch him, shake him, cry, or pass out. Maybe all at the same time, but Felix has never been able to say no to him. He’s never wanted to.
Instead, Felix nodded, clumsily slapping a palm against Sylvain’s cheek.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
So now he receives Sylvain’s full affections in private, which is something he isn’t quite used to yet, but it’s so, so welcome. Sylvain acts younger, more sincere, not trying to be an adult in a teenager’s clothing. He’s the silly boy Felix grew up with, tripping into his side as they walk at night or leaving cans of spices and sword polish he finds outside his dormitory.
Goddess, he missed this Sylvain.
“What do you want?” Felix snaps.
Not that he’ll ever tell Sylvain to his face. Not now, anyway. Later, when his life is in some semblance of order again. Everything’s been flipped upside down and he hates the unease. He’s a failure of a swordsman and he has a boyfriend. He’s allowed to be rattled.
“Just wondering where you were. It’s creepy not seeing you at the training grounds. Like, if Raphael just suddenly decided he was too cool for the dining hall.”
“Since when is Raphael cool enough for anything?”
Sylvain cackles, earning a shush from Lysithea downstairs. He slaps a hand over his mouth and continues laughing, and damn it Felix wants to bury his face in his hair and not let go.
“Surprised you’d want to be seen with the class flunkie.” Felix snaps, more to degrade himself than Sylvain.
“I always want to be seen with you.”
“Goddess, fucking stop that.” Felix grumbles, and he hates how he knows he’s blushing. How Sylvain can clearly see he’s blushing and stumbling over himself.
Sylvain doesn’t tease him though, just offers a hand to help Felix to his feet.
Felix takes it, and doesn’t let go when they’re both on even footing. Sylvain doesn’t either, and they stand there awkwardly with their fingers curled around each other like fools. He knows Ashe is lurking around here, but he can’t bring himself to care. His entire body feels at ease right now.
“How’d it go?” Sylvain asks, running a thumb across Felix’s callouses.
“Great. I’m now a certified dancer.”
“You won’t hear me complaining about that.”
Felix kicks him, and Sylvain giggles, fucking giggles as he places his other hand on Felix’s elbow. Sylvain likes being in his space, that’s what Felix has learned in a month. It’s not too different from how he usually is. He just has permission to be even closer, to touch him. And lean into his space, like he’s doing now.
“Want to know how I do it?” Sylvain asks, the question hitting his ear and making him shiver.
“Enlighten me.” Felix challenges, but it sound breathier than he intended.
Sylvain swallows, and Felix can hear it, his mouth is so close. Felix steps back, leaning against the bookcase to keep himself sane.
Sylvain drops his bag on a nearby table to rummage, and Felix glances downstairs. Sure as shit, Ashe is there, nose buried in a book. He’d probably have an absolute conniption if he knew what was happening up the staircase. It’s straight out of those fairytales knights he’s convinced Felix is reminiscent of.
When he turns back, Sylvain has a stack of parchment in his hand, cut into uneven rectangles. He waves them in front of Felix’s face.
“While you were busy studying the blade, I was studying flashcards.”
“Flashcards.”
Sylvain nods, flipping through them quickly. Felix catches blurs of ink and color as he shuffles them.
“Ingrid showed me how to do this years ago.” Sylvain explains. Of course Ingrid would be behind this. “It saved my ass when I was a kid. I couldn’t study for shit because it was so overwhelming.”
That’s exactly how Felix feels, looking at a block of text explaining the best way to shank someone in the ribs. It’s overwhelming in it’s superfluousness. He’s not going to wax poetic about death and strategy when he eventually stabs the Death Knight.
Sylvain hands one of the cards to Felix. It’s simple, a clear cut, choppy explanation on axe maintenance.
“So she taught me to pick out the important points. The stuff that counts. You can always make up and fluffy bits in between, but as long as you have the main points you can—”
“Give me those!” Felix lunges to grab them, but Sylvain must also be studying speed, because he raises an arm immediately, pushing up on the balls of his feet so his height is even more infuriating.
“Whoa, whoa, easy wolf.”
“Shut up, just—” Felix puts a hand on his chest and pushes him against the desk. “Let me see it!”
Sylvain raises an eyebrow, and Felix freezes. His heart is pounding, in the library of all places. What a boring, cliche place to desecrate.
“Uh,”
They both turn. Ashe is standing at the mouth of the staircase, leather-bound novel clutched to his chest and jaw hanging open. “Congrats are in order, I guess?”
Felix makes his move, ripping the cards from Sylvain’s hands and slipping past Ashe. He can hear Sylvain squawk and rush to follow. They thunder down the stairs, and Lindhardt jolts awake when they both slam into his table.
“What are you, children?” Lysithea seethes, and Felix feels her magic crackle through the air.
Sylvain laughs, and Felix pushes him out the door before they get kicked out, or incinerated. He can’t stop smiling.
-
Felix skips dinner. He skips choir practice, he did that one on purpose, though. He also ignores Sylvain for the rest of the day, opting to hole himself up in his room and copy his notes onto evenly cut parchment. Felix probably spends hours hunched over his desk, writing and organizing his lessons into anything coherent. Fucking useless. It may as well be Almyran with how much text he managed to cram onto one piece of paper. He essentially rewrote the entirety of his semester notes, which completely defeated the purpose of Sylvain’s advice.
Useless.
His hand flops over the edge of the bed, and he lets the cards tumble from his grip. They flutter and fly across the floor, like all of his hopes and dreams and purpose. He hates that his rigorous training schedule amounts to absolute dog dick without Certifications. No one in the Academy works harder than he does. He knows it. The Knights of Seiros know it. Seiros herself knows it.
What does it matter?
He’s about to blow out the candle on his nightstand and give up for the night, when a knock on the door startles him. He doesn’t jump out of bed, too exhausted and down on himself to care if he’s assassinated tonight.
“Come in.”
The door opens, and a familiar mop of red hair peeks in.
“Hey, you up?”
“I’m not your booty call, Sylvain. Get lost.”
Sylvain slinks into his room anyway, because he’s an absolute nuisance who won’t leave Felix alone for one day. Felix watches Sylvain take him in, limbs sprawled on his own bed, hair loose and spilling out onto his pillowcase. He can see the heat rise under his skin from all the way across the room, and at least he has that going for him. Maybe he’ll make a good trophy husband, if nothing else of value.
“How’d it go?” Sylvain asks when he remembers he’s hasn’t said anything.
Felix sits up, huffing and pulling his knees to his chest.
“Well, I don’t know what axe training is going to do to help me pass a sword exam.”
“Listen, I never said those flashcards were going to help, but hey, at least you can pick up another hobby.”
Felix glares at him, and Sylvain steps closer. He’s holding something. Felix didn’t notice when he came in.
“Maybe these will be more helpful.” Sylvain holds out another stack of flashcards.
Felix stares at them. It’s thick, a larger amount than the ones he just threw on the floor. He gives Sylvain an apprehensive look before reading them.
Positions in Wooded Terrain.
Ambidextrous Exchanges.
Infusing Blades with Poison.
It’s all there. Everything that Felix forgot in the heat of the moment, sitting in that classroom alone with Byleth watching him nervously. Felix looks at the cards, then back up at Sylvain, mouth open.
“Where’d you get these?”
“I made them.”
“What? How?” Felix shuffles through them. They’re incredibly detailed. Thorough and bulleted and even underlined in Sylvain’s big, loopy handwriting. “You’re not studying this class.”
“No, and thank the Goddess. I thought you were exaggerating this entire time.” Sylvain take a seat on Felix’s bed, kicking off his boots and settling back against the wall. Felix watches him maneuver his long legs and weirdly endearing stocking feet. He never quite got used to his own height. “That shit sucks.”
“How did you even get the exam?”
“I took it.” Sylvain says. “Absolutely bombed it, too, but I remembered enough of it to make use of Petra’s notes.”
“The professor let you take it?”
“No. I just did it. Bought a pass from the market and took a swing at it. Hah.” Sylvain laughs at his own pun. Felix could punch him in the throat right now.
“You took the exam.”
“Yeah.”
“To make these.”
Sylvain nods.
“Sylvain,” Felix says, like he’s lecturing an extra special, idiotic child. “You just pissed away one thousand gold.”
Sylvain shrugs, and he looks almost bashful as he squirms under Felix’s stare.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I’m in need of it. Hardly spend anything nowadays.”
Felix rolls his eyes. “Like I believe that. You drain your pockets every week taking girls out to bars and—”
Oh.
Felix snaps his mouth shut, and Sylvain blushes. His cheeks darken the same way they did in the garden he had pulled Felix into, talking and talking like he couldn’t stop even if the Goddess herself smited his voice. Words like “most important person” and “the one I trust the most” and, most soul crushingly, “the one I never want to break a promise with”. He thinks of what Sylvain had whispered against the back of his hand, brown eyes so wide and earnest and hopeful that it made his knees weak.
“I know I have a terrible track record with women. With everyone, really, but not with you. I made sure of it.” Sylvain had pressed a kiss to his knuckles, and Felix had forgotten how to breathe. “Let me prove it to you.”
“You’re really doing this, aren’t you?” Felix asks now, voice feeling like a feather in his own throat. Wispy, light, like it could blow away if Sylvain says the wrong thing. This is real. This is happening, regardless of whether he becomes a swordsmaster or dancer or scarecrow. Sylvain’s beside him, wasting his afternoon failing an exam he doesn’t need to take, just to help Felix push forward.
Sylvain smiles, and every shard of ice in Felix’s heart melts.
“Yeah, I am.” He says, sliding a hand onto Felix’s knee, thumb pressing against the bony kneecap. “We are.”
Felix doesn’t know what to say. He leans into Sylvain’s side, resting his head on his shoulder. Sylvain’s breath stutters, and Felix smiles as he turns to press a kiss to his bicep.
“Thank you, Sylvain.”
He flicks his eyes upwards. Sylvain’s gaze pierces him. There’s a moment where he thinks Sylvain is going to lean in and press his mouth to his. Kiss him. Felix has the fleeting, delusional thought that this is what it’s like on the other side of his blade. To be spared or speared with a moment’s notice, and not care either way.
He thinks Sylvain is going to kiss him.
But he doesn’t, because he knows Felix isn’t ready. He just smiles, wide and goofy and so heartbreakingly sincere.
“You’re very welcome, your dukedom.”
“Shut up.” Felix pulls away, and Sylvain’s laughter cuts through the tension easily. He still feels bubbly, like if he grabbed Sylvain’s hand he’d float away. He isn’t entirely sure he’d be afraid to anymore.
“Now,” Sylvain clears his throat and take the cards from Felix’s still hands. “Tell me how the heat would affect your approach to battle against Paladins.”
Felix should kiss him. Really kiss him. He should smack those flashcards out of his big hands and push him down and smother him like he deserves.
But he desperately needs to pass this exam, so he doesn’t. Not yet, anyway. Someday.
Felix smiles to himself, listening to Sylvain’s annoyed mumbling as he tries to read his own handwriting.
Yeah, someday.