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Thunder crashes all around him, ringing in his ears. The sound of pouring rain lies under it, drowning out whatever thoughts he can hope to have. It’s so loud, too loud, and he’s almost certain he’s going to be deaf by the end of this. (If he’s not dead, that is.) A harsh voice cuts through the din, grating and hateful and rotten:
“You think you’re so important, huh? You think you’re better than me?”
Sylvain is scared. His hands scrabble at the much larger ones over his neck. He’s on his toes, struggling to stand on the slick stone below him as he tries to keep from being strangled entirely. He grunts, teeth grit. The rain obscures almost all of his surroundings, the smell of mud and heavy clouds stuck in his nose. Every few moments, lightning will flash, followed quickly by more of that echoing thunder. In the brief sparks of light, he sees his own eyes stare back at him.
No, wait, those eyes droop further than his own. The jaw is stronger, the nose hooked, the hair wilder despite how familiar the bright red is. Those features contort in fury and hatred, all directed at him, accusing him of crimes he could not possibly have committed. It’s an ugly expression, but not one Sylvain will ever forget.
“Miklan,” Sylvain tries to say, but his voice is tiny compared to the thunder, to the rain, to the hands currently choking out each word. “Please,” he tries again, but there’s only so much a child’s vocal cords can do when he’s currently being strangled senseless.
“You think I’ll let you go for that?” his brother sneers, pushing him further, and Sylvain manages to gasp as his feet lose purchase on the edge of the well. “Beg harder, you little thief. You need to learn your place, wretched parasite—”
Sylvain kicks uselessly into the air, trying to find some way to stand again. Realization of where he is falls over him like a bucket of ice, and he whimpers. “It’s not my fault, I didn’t mean to—”
“Shut up!”
Black dots dance in from the corners of his vision. His eyes burn, so he closes them. His lip trembles, so he bites it. Terror grips him painfully, wrapping its horrid claws around his lungs and squeezing. He hears his heartbeat in his ears as he realizes how familiar this feels.
“I said beg!”
“Please!” His voice is hoarse, though once Miklan gets what he wants to hear, he loosens up the slightest bit so the rest can come out: “Please, let me go. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” If he was older, he would be ashamed of this and drawn tight with rage; how dare he have to apologize for being born?
But Sylvain isn’t older. He’s young, and hopeful, and much too enraptured by the idea that one day, he’ll wake up from this bad dream and Miklan will grin at him and carry him around on his shoulders like a good older brother.
When he peeks out once more, lightning flashes and illuminates that crooked, wicked grin. The face grows harsher, older in the span of a few moments, and a scar sprouts up to slice clear into Miklan’s hairline. “As you wish, precious heir.”
He lets go, alright.
And Sylvain plummets down the well, like he does every time. He screams, the noise ricocheting back up, but he only hears Miklan’s laughter. Sylvain’s nails break as he grabs for the walls of the well, fingers scrambling for purchase, but down he goes. And down, and down. Miklan’s laughs follow him the whole way, shifting into screams, and then roars. Sylvain looks up, calling his brother’s name, but all he gets in response is a guttural growl.
When lightning flashes again, it hits slick scales and bright, evil eyes. A monster, larger than life, screeching down into the well and making his eardrums tremble:
“You did this to me, you fucking nuisance!”
He hits the water with a smack, immediately sinking down, and his limbs paddle frantically so he can keep his head afloat. It stinks down here, it always does, and moss grows too dense on the wall for him to even think of climbing out. He whimpers, but the sound gets lost down here at the bottom of the well. He feels hot tears trace down his cheeks.
Something brushes against his legs, the texture rough. He shudders, kicking it away. Then, something sturdier brushes his arm. He flails, trying to beat it back, trying to get away, and when the appendage wraps around his shoulders and pulls, he cries out—
He hears someone hush him, right by his ear, and the embrace turns warm. “Calm down,” it husks in a voice riddled with sleep. “’m right here.”
Sylvain wakes up. He’s alive. He’s twenty years old, and he’s alive, and rain patters gently against the tent over him. He tries to remember how he got here, why he’s here and not in his own bed at the monastery. It must be some sort of excursion, some sort of outing Byleth planned. His bedroll is warm, retaining his own body heat well given the circumstances, but with that comes the thin sheen of sweat on his skin, making the entire arrangement less than ideal. He shifts to get comfortable again, wincing at the feeling of stale sweat and how his heartbeat still races—
Someone grunts, and the weight tossed over his shoulders pulls once more. Breath combs over his scalp, gentle and warm.
“You awake?” Felix slurs, nose buried in Sylvain’s hair.
Sylvain’s heart cracks open like an egg, oozing gratitude and affection and love, love, love. “Mhm,” he manages. “’m sorry.”
Felix huffs. “For what, ruining my beauty sleep?”
When he puts it like that… “Yeah, actually.”
“… Shut up.”
Sylvain laughs at that, though it’s not as confident as he would like it to be. It’s still small, shaking at the edges like it was all those years ago, when he had to explain to Felix what had happened the first time (the only real time) he fell down that well. He reaches to rub at his neck, checking for the hand-shaped bruises that can’t possibly be there. “What did I say?”
Felix makes that noise he usually does when he’s trying to figure out what to say. It comes out either when he’s too tired and confused to pick the words, or when he’s purposefully trying to tiptoe around saying something that makes him look soft. (Sylvain can’t tell which instance this one is.) “You can’t help it. I’d have nightmares, too.”
Sylvain pauses, and his voice goes just quiet enough to barely be heard over the rain. “Was I talking in my sleep?”
“You often do.”
He swallows, his stomach turning into a cold stone that anchors him to the ground. “How much did you hear?”
Felix takes a breath. In, out, stirring Sylvain’s hair. “Enough,” he says, voice hazy, “to know that you needed me.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
The translation for that one (and Sylvain’s gotten good at translating Felix, he promises) is easy: Thanking me every time will get tedious.
Sylvain pauses, taking a breath to steel himself. Then he rolls over in Felix’s hold to face him, to see how rest has softened the familiar, safe face. It’s a little awkward, considering they’re in two different bedrolls with Felix’s arm flung out of his own to wrap around Sylvain’s shoulders. But Sylvain appreciates the contact, especially since he knows it’s not Felix’s strong point. Whatever he can get, he’ll cherish.
Felix’s hair falls over his profile, having been let out of its bun when they first settled in for the night. His eyes are still closed, brow smoothed out and mouth slack with sleep as he continues to take even breaths. He looks relaxed, and he would probably even look peaceful if it weren’t for their situation.
He’s beautiful, he always is, but that’s not why Sylvain turned around.
“Hey, Fe,” he says.
Those amber eyes creak open, regarding him silently.
They damn near glow in the dark, even with sleep glazed over them, and Sylvain has to swallow to be able to say the rest: “Thanks for being here.”
Felix sighs, feigning exasperation. He’s far too tired to have any genuine frustration in his body right now. “I told you not to mention it.”
“I’m going to, anyway.”
Those eyes flutter closed again, and if Sylvain looks very closely, he can see Felix’s lips curl. It’s so unlike his usual daytime expression, so soft and open, that he’s left breathless. Even in the darkness of their tent, it’s mesmerizing. “You always do.”
Lightning flashes outside of the tent, casting harsh shadows from the trees around them, and Sylvain braces himself for the coming thunder. It comes later than expected, having moved past their encampment. Still, it’s familiar, flashing in his mind and carrying with it the ghost of grating laughter.
“It wasn’t storming,” he says.
Felix makes a questioning noise, easing even further forward. It’s a shame they’re in separate bags.
“It wasn’t storming, it was sunny.” Sylvain stares hard at a very particular strand of hair resting against Felix’s cheek. “Because I could see him clearly. He didn’t have his scar yet. There wasn’t anything grabbing at me when I fell in.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Felix asks, voice a monotone. Translation: You don’t have to tell me this.
“I’m telling myself,” Sylvain replies, “so I know it wasn’t as bad as… as my head makes it out to be.”
Felix’s eyes crack open once more, his brow furrowed. He opens his mouth to say something, but apparently thinks against it, his expression stormy. He leans in, lips brushing the very top of Sylvain’s forehead. “Stop thinking about it,” he murmurs. “You need sleep.”
Sylvain’s laugh tastes bitter on his tongue. “I’ll just wake you up again.”
“And I’ll pull you out of the nightmare.”
That small pledge makes Sylvain’s heart do slow loops in his chest. Nothing like the fast, fluttering butterflies that he’s felt before—this is a heady rush in slow motion, wine pouring into his veins as the comfort of having someone there, of being protected (no matter how simply) wraps around him warmer than any bedroll.
I love you. I love you. But they haven’t said that word yet, and he would rather go outside and sleep in the rain than pressure Felix for anything. “You’re with me ‘til the end, huh?” is what he asks instead, soft and vulnerable and weak, weak, weak.
He tries to shove Miklan’s voice out of his head. He can be soft tonight. The smiles will come back tomorrow, wherever Byleth may lead them, so no one will think he’s ever like this. But Felix knows him, Felix has known him from the very beginning.
“That’s the promise,” Felix responds, and Sylvain feels his lips brush his skin with each word. Not exactly a kiss, but enough. “Now, go to sleep.”
Silence. The thunder’s far away now, flashes of lightning far off in the distance, but the rain continues patting out a steady rhythm. Sylvain tries to let that rhythm drift him off. He tries counting sheep. He takes deep breaths, counting in his mind to try to slow his own heartrate.
He thinks about Felix, about how soft and warm and at ease he feels, even if they’re in the wild during a storm. He thinks about how he wishes these bedrolls were bigger, or that they were in a bed in general, so they could wrap in each other’s limbs and fall asleep like that.
He tries everything he can think of, to sleep. He’s exhausted, wrung dry from the nightmare and sleep inertia alike, yet nothing works.
Instead, he whispers, “He dropped me.”
Felix takes in a long breath and lets it out slowly. His fingers comb through Sylvain’s hair in an even rhythm, sending shivers down his spine with the contact. The pause weighs heavily on Sylvain’s chest until he says, “I know.”
What’s left of Sylvain’s energy twists into something parallel to anger, souring his words. “I hate him.”
Felix hushes him, continuing to comb his hair, twisting the strands around his fingers and writing meaningless symbols into his scalp.
“I hate him,” Sylvain repeats, but he knows things aren’t as simple as that. Felix does, too. Maybe, just maybe, if he keeps saying it, it’ll get easier to think, to feel. It would be so much easier to get over all of this, if his emotions towards his own brother weren’t twisted into an incongruous puzzle.
Felix doesn’t call him out. He doesn’t tell him to quit lying to himself. Instead, he murmurs, “I know.”
And that’s enough. They will wake up and return to their normal banter in the morning. Sylvain will put on his act and remind everyone that he’s just some womanizer with a lance, and Felix will roll his eyes and go along with it by scolding him. Part of Sylvain whispers, timid and meek, that You can’t live like this forever.
The vast majority of him, however, dares that part to find any better way to live his life, when he has so little control over it already.
He can’t even control when he falls asleep, though when he finally does drift off, he takes note of how Felix’s ministrations don’t stop until he falls into the perfect, dreamless sleep that he always aims for.