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After a skirmish, Dimitri expects one out of a possible few scenarios to unfold in various different ways. These outcomes have all become somewhat predictable of late, yet he cannot say he particularly dislikes this, since the more predictable the battle forecast is, the higher the chance they emerge alive by the end of the fighting.
What Dimitri expects today, based on his predictions, is this:
They would win.The army would breathe a collective sigh of relief, before collecting their belongings and treating their injuries. Annette would sing a song about turbulent tadpoles or what-have-yous as she worked. Sylvain would flirt with one of the healers, before inevitably getting his ear tugged down by Ingrid. Dedue would load supplies onto Cyril’s wyvern, and Lysithea would assist them with her magic on the side. Then, they would all traipse back to the monastery, weary but victorious, and feast in a manner that would make even Claude grin from wherever he is in (or out of) the continent.
What actually happens:
They do win.
However, in this instance, winning comes with the instance of being separated by the ferocious blizzard that had crept upon them just as the last stragglers were being rounded up. It does this slowly but surely, like a blanket of fog descending upon a snowy town, and Dimitri only just manages to stumble into a nearby cave before he is trapped outside. The wind has begun to whip about his cloak, unrelenting in its assault, and his thoughts immediately turn to his comrades. With no way of knowing for sure, he can only pray that they have found shelter, too.
He has little time to ponder how badly he has miscalculated the weather patterns.
All in all, it is a very unfortunate turn of events. Everything is made exponentially worse when he realises, with a sinking feeling, that he is alone again. The last time he was alone in a cave with only a weapon and the weather for company brings up unpleasant memories that he would rather forget.
It is only when he staggers against the jagged wall, Areadbhar clattering to the floor, that he realises, with delight, that he is in fact not alone.
“Fucking - bastards,” a familiar voice spits as a figure paces the floor across from him. It takes a couple more steps for Dimitri to recognise that shade of navy blue hair, and his heart swells with happiness at the thought that Felix had gotten to safety before him.
What makes him frown, however, is the way Felix appears to be completely ignoring how the blood oozes from where his hair parts, dripping down the side of his face. It both worries and exasperates Dimitri; how, instead of treating his injuries, Felix is deciding to vent his frustrations out on to the floor. More specifically, by boring holes through the poor stone with the heels of his boots.
It would be endearing, Dimitri thinks, if they were not currently trapped in a relatively open space, where the bite of the howling wind outside easily slips between their armour and into their skin with no remorse. Dimitri waits for Felix to stop pacing before he steps forward, hands raised, ready to chastise.
The first step he takes sends a lightning rod of pure agony through his side, as if someone had sunk a hook through his flesh and tugged, hard.
His head snaps down of its own accord, and it isn’t especially difficult to see why everything has suddenly become hazy, because -
“Oh,” he says weakly, before his knees crumple -
- the length of an arrow is sticking out from between his ribs.
“You fool,” Felix mutters angrily (as he often does) but with no real venom (as Dimitri has learnt by now), as he cradles Dimitri’s head in his lap.
“I am a fool,” Dimitri agrees weakly, because he really has no idea what to say when Felix is looking at him like that: upside down and irate in a way that makes Dimitri think he has done something wrong again.
“How did they even sneak up on you?” Felix snaps. He removes one hand from Dimitri’s head, and Dimitri momentarily mourns the loss of warmth before something presses down hard and scalding on his stomach. A gasp escapes him, and his breath curls into a hiss of air. “Why didn’t you repair your armour before the battle, like everyone else?”
“I am… not sure,” Dimitri admits. He speaks slowly, measuredly, because moving shifts the arrow, which has embedded itself rough and jagged into his flesh, and that hurts. “I forgot, I suppose.”
“You forgot.” Felix’s gaze is suddenly icier than the cavern they are in.
“I apologise?” Dimitri does not know how to tell him that he really, truly forgot, and that he had not simply decided that it was unimportant, like he had been doing some months ago.
“Did you really phrase that as a question.”
Distantly, he thinks that it would be funny if he were to respond with a ‘maybe?’, because Sylvain has been trying to get him to make more jokes, and this seems to be the prime opportunity.
He also fears that Felix will actually strangle him and end his bloodline if he makes a joke now.
Instead, then, he keeps quiet, and focuses on trying not to pass out on his dearest friend’s lap. Which, admittedly, is proving to be quite the difficult task.
Felix tenses, and then shifts quickly, sliding his knees out from under Dimitri’s head so he can lay it carefully on the floor. Unfortunately for Dimitri, the arrow shifts with him. He groans, a plaintive, pitiful sound. The cold seeps through his skin he even more keenly, now; both from the hurtling temperatures, and from the bite of the steel sinking into flesh.
“Sorry,” Felix says, low and apologetic, and Goddess, the situation must be more dire than he thought if Felix is apologising to him so readily.
Dimitri mentally berates himself. He should not have thought that; that was a disservice to Felix, whose emotions ran deeper than he cared to admit, but the apologies die on his lips as his side throbs something like an irregular heartbeat. He lets go of Felix’s clothes, because he fears that if he clutches too tight, he will rip them clean off his lithe frame.
As soon as he retracts his grip, Dimitri realises that Felix is shaking. Has begun to shiver. Dimitri feels a familiar pang of guilt, that Felix is suffering for his sake.
He is afforded little time to dwell on it, though. Felix rummages through his pack with the hand that is free of blood. After a moment, his hands come up empty, and he rocks back onto the balls of his feet.
“Shit,” he curses.
“...What is it?” Dimitri manages, trying very hard not to feel anxious.
“No elixirs. Or concoctions,” Felix says, with a snort devoid of humour. “Just one vulnerary.”
“...Ah.”
Well. That is problematic, to say the least. One vulnerary barely stitches up the skin from a small cut. The red staining Felix’s forehead does not tell the story of a small cut, and neither does Dimitri’s shaking torso.
The blizzard rages outside, still. When Dimitri cranes his neck, ever so slightly to the left, there is no sight of the sun that had shone so brightly during the battle. Instead, he is greeted with nothing but a mass of white, pure and deadly, flying past the mouth of the cave so fast that he cannot distinguish between each individual snowflake without his eyes swimming -
Dimitri feels a bit sick.
“Dimitri.” Felix says. His voice is firm, unwavering. Dimitri has always admired that about him - if their situations had been reversed, he has no doubt that he would have been considerably more panicked. “I don’t want to use it now, because I don’t know how long we’ll be out here for, so you’ll have to wait a bit.” Felix shifts again, this time to tap Dimitri’s right cheek. His touch is as hot as the sun. “Did you hear that? Don’t you dare go to sleep, or I swear I’ll kill you myself.”
“Mm,” Dimitri murmurs.
He can feel his strength ebb away, like a receding tide, but he refrains from telling Felix this, because he knows he will only scowl and worry. Instead, he lets his gaze settle on the ceiling, and tries to even his breathing.
Outside, the wind still howls.
“Fuck,” Felix mutters. Dimitri forces his head to tilt a fraction to the right - enough to watch as Felix cracks the vulnerary open with careful precision. “Open your mouth.”
Dimitri stares blearily as the contents of the vial swirl back and forth, back and forth. They are like the whirlpools in the seas up north, the ones his father used to take him to visit when he was a young boy. Dimitri also recalls Caspar chattering about them post-battle, around the crackling campfires where they would roast skewers of meat for dinner.
What he would give for a warm campfire now, with a sturdy tent just a few steps away…
Felix snaps his fingers in front of him, expression severe.
“What are you waiting for? Open up.”
Dimitri ponders this for a moment. In the end, the decision does not take long, especially because Felix is hovering not even half a feet away from him, amber eyes still perpetually rageful, blood sticking to his hair like some sort of half-cooked omelette.
“...No,” Dimitri decides.
He hopes that he does not slur.
“...What do you mean, ‘no’? ” Ah, classic Felix, sounding like he would desire nothing better than to clobber Dimitri’s skull against the hard floor.
Dimitri points to his head. “You have a head,” he says, encouragingly.
Felix looks at him as if he were a slug caught on the underside of his shoe.
“Head injury,” Dimitri clarifies. He is still pointing. His arm is beginning to hurt. “You should take it.”
Felix stares at him for a while longer, mouth agape in the shape of a dumbstruck ‘o’. Distantly, Dimitri thinks that he could probably fit a log in there, with his mouth as wide as it is.
He imagines Felix as a common fireplace. Funny - he is fiery enough to be a good one.
Dimitri thinks he must be delirious, if he is imagining Felix as a fireplace.
“Fuck off,” Felix snaps. He points the vial threateningly at Dimitri’s nose. Dimitri is surprised that he is not using more colourful insults - but of course, it must be because of the blood loss. Felix really does need medical attention. “Just open your damn mouth already.”
“No,” Dimitri says, clearer this time. He shakes his head. He cannot take this medicine; it’s for Felix, who needs it to treat his head injury, and from personal experience, Dimitri knows that those are the worst. “You take it.”
“Dimitri, if you don’t open your mouth right now, I swear I’m going to shove it so far down your throat that you’ll be shitting it for years,” Felix hisses. “Open. Your. Mouth.”
“...No.” He coughs, and it sounds pathetic, and not at all soon-to-be-kingly. “I… order you to take it.”
“You are not pulling rank on me for this,” Felix snorts, derisively.
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t care. Open up.”
Dimitri considers. “No,” he decides, after considering.
“What is your problem? Do you want to die?” Felix snarls. He hooks a finger under Dimitri’s top teeth, and starts trying to pry his jaws open.
If Felix slowed down for even a second, perhaps Dimitri could tell him that he is actually doing much better nowadays, and does not particularly want to die right now, which is truly leaps and bounds from how he had been doing recently. Still, he supposes that his actions are not conveying that truth just yet, which is why Felix does not believe him.
It does hurt, though.
Felix is using both hands now. He mutters: “I thought you promised you were going to lead Faerghus to a better future. How will you do that as a corpse?”
“It would not be a particularly warm future without you in it,” Dimitri wants to say. It is only when Felix starts to sputter that he realises that the words have already left his mouth without him realising.
He tries to pat Felix’s cheek (‘ some gesture of comfort, perhaps’ is how he justifies this to himself later) but the action is too swift, and he cries out in pain, and - why did he think that was a good idea? His side has seized up now, and the blood is starting to trickle like a stream, and the feeling of vacancy is even more startling when the arrowhead tears into his intestines -
“You fucking -”
“- boar,” Felix finishes, low and threatening, as Dimitri finally slumps on to the floor. His cape has been removed; Felix has bundled it up to press firmly around the wound. Dimitri watches as the crimson stains the royal blue, and feels the cold of the floor seep into his back. “I didn’t think you get any more idiotic, but it seems I was wrong.”
He tosses the empty vial onto the floor, and Dimitri watches it roll, bitter, as the last remnants of the vulnerary flood his mouth.
He does not sulk for too long, though. After all, there is still an arrow sticking out of his side.
Gingerly, Dimitri reaches up to touch his skull. The merest brush of fingers against the skin makes his head rattle and throb, like the roar of a dragon, so he retracts his hand quickly. Dimitri wonders again, a little dazed, how he managed to survive those five years with scarce supplies and no companionship.
(He knows exactly why, but it still surprises him at times.)
He is startled out of his reverie when Felix starts to pull off his own coat.
“What - what are you doing?” he croaks. His voice is hoarse, and the cough to clear it is painful.
Felix ignores him. “Lift your head,” he says, and twitches impatiently when the words fail to reach Dimitri in a time he considers acceptable.
It takes far longer than he would have liked for Dimitri to realise what Felix intends to do, but when he does, he lets his head drop on the floor again and adamantly looks the other way.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Felix hisses. He forcefully shoves the coat onto Dimitri’s ear. It feels soft. “Just do it.”
“No,” Dimitri tells him, muffled. The wind is blowing directly into his face.
Felix stares at him. Then, he reaches forward to wrap cool fingers around the back of Dimitri’s head, and lifts it anyway.
“No - Fe lix,” Dimitri whines, as Felix shoves the coat under his head, leaving the other in his turtleneck only. A sleeveless turtleneck. “Stop.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive, boar,” Felix growls.
“You will freeze,” Dimitri argues weakly. “Felix. Please… please put it back on. My head will be fine.”
“Considering what you just tried to do, I think I’ll be the judge of that,” Felix tells him, and Dimitri wants to huff in frustration, because Felix is being silly. The blood on his face has started to drip onto his lap. Has he forgotten how serious head injuries are?
“Of course not,” Felix snaps, and Dimitri realises that somehow that had all slipped out of its own accord yet again. “I’m just better at prioritising.”
Oh. Well.
That was a bit of a blow, Dimitri thinks weakly. He had been trying to take better care of himself these past days. It is still… unbearably difficult, at times, especially because it is still far easier to throw himself into work and leave his own upkeep for when he has any free time ( so never, basically, Sylvain always reminded him) but he really was trying.
… Maybe the way he could not vocalise any of his thoughts was part of the problem.
… Hm.
“But your head,” Dimitri says, a bit lamely. He thinks he has already said this but he is really not sure at this point. He points to Felix’s head. “Your head… It’s bleeding.”
“Yes, we’ve established that,” Felix tells him flatly. Then, without warning, he applies more pressure on the wound.
It feels like someone is pressing a hot iron to his skin instead, and Dimitri cries out.
“Fee…” he moans, suppressing a sob that has unhelpfully welled up out of nowhere. “That hurts.”
Felix’s face shutters. He opens his mouth, then closes it just as quickly, and looks directly at Dimitri’s face. Not at his eyes, but slightly off-kilter. There is something unreadable in his expression.
“... Just hold on,” Felix says finally. His voice is stilted. “The others will be here soon.”
Felix slaps him when his head starts to loll.
“Ow,” Dimitri says, faintly. It does not particularly hurt - his skin is too cold to register any point of contact - but the sound of it reverberates around the cave all the same, so he feels it necessary to comment on it.
“Stop that,” Felix barks.
I can hardly control my body, Dimitri wants to tell him, before his eyes start to droop.
Felix slaps him again.
“Ow,” Dimitri says, and he feels a strange sense of déjà vu. Did he already say that…? In any case, the slap does not particularly hurt, because his skin is too cold to register any point of contact -
“I said,” Felix hisses, strained, “stop it. Don’t fall asleep.”
Oh. So he has said that before.
He is forgetting things at an alarming speed.
In his daze, a memory floats to the forefront of his mind; unbidden and unwanted, but impossible to deter in his fatigue. Dimitri is lying on his side in the memory, facing a stone wall with his back to mothers with blank stares, girls staggering about in unbuttoned blouses, and wailing children in rags. His eye is throbbing sluggishly with no one to tend to the gash that splits down, down, down -
“ - mitri? Dimitri!”
Felix’s voice cuts through the memory like a whip.
“... Sorry,” Dimitri slurs. His tongue lies heavy and useless in his mouth.
“I will prop your eyes open with needles if I have to,” Felix warns. He brushes a thumb over Dimitri’s right cheek, and leave a smear of blood. “Don’t close them.”
For a moment, Dimitri entertains having to stare into Felix’s eyes for all of eternity. He imagines peering into that fierce, cutting gaze, burning like an everlasting fire, without any reprieve. It sounds simultaneously like heaven and hell.
He forces himself to focus on Felix’s words.
“...It’s hard,” Dimitri admits. He winces at his own laboured breathing.
“... I know,” Felix says, quietly. He brushes a knuckle over Dimitri's cheek, tender in a way that someone who did not know Felix would have thought him incapable of. “Don’t do it.”
Dimitri wants to lean into the touch, but every spasm of muscle has him writhing. His vision goes white, momentarily, and when he comes to again, Felix is staring at him with a furrowed brow, lips pursed. Worried. Dimitri can tell.
… He will not last much longer, Dimitri realises, if he is feeling as fatigued as this.
He does not want to watch Felix's face if that happens.
“Distract me?” Dimitri asks, voice weak.
Felix gives him a considering look. It is strange to see him so guarded, yet still somewhat soft. “... All right,” Felix says, slowly. “With what?”
“A story.” The answer leaves Dimitri’s lips surprisingly quickly.
“...I’m not good at telling stories,” Felix admits.
Objectively speaking, Glenn had been better at reading tales to the quartet. He was all grand gestures and rich intonations that could enrapture even the most unenthusiastic of children. He'd even done the voices. The four of them had agreed that he acquired some sort of natural charisma when it came to storytelling, an easy charm that disappeared the minute he stopped, and returned to his usual sarcastic wit.
Dimitri had always appreciated baby Felix’s attempts, though; sweet and red-faced, cheeks puffing out whenever he'd trip up or stumble on the harder words.
“Actually, I always found your stories oddly charming,” Dimitri smiles. It's true. Felix had been so sweet. Adorable, even.
He's still sweet now, of course. It just takes some time to draw that sweetness out of him nowadays.
“Don’t flatter me,” Felix snorts. He flexes and straightens his fingers, skittery and restless.
“A childhood tale, please?” Dimitri asks again.
Felix pauses, contemplative. “Remember that time we tried to act out the Minotaur play? As kids,” he says eventually. Dimitri tilts his head, and Felix huffs. “You were the prince. Glenn was the Minotaur. Sylvain was the king, and I was the princess of the land you travelled to.”
Dimitri remembers it clearly. The sun had been uncannily bright that day, especially for Fhirdiad, and Sylvain had dragged them outside to act out whatever play he had been harping on about that week. Sometimes it was the one with the Minotaur, and sometimes it was the one with the giant Cyclops. Sometimes it had even been the one with the boar hunt, which Dimitri finds ironic in the present day.
Whichever it was, the four of them had traipsed out to perform it all in the garden his stepmother used to frequent. They had even managed to drag Glenn along at times.
Dimitri is glad Felix chose this tale to recount.
“... I remember,” Dimitri says slowly, and then warmly, “how you started crying when you thought I left you.”
Felix scowls. If he wasn't hurt, Dimitri is sure he would have punched him right now. “It was part of the story, you idiot. The princess gets abandoned on an island by the prince, what did you want me to do?”
“But your tears were real,” Dimitri says brightly, and then he coughs.
Felix levels him a glare. “I was a good actor,” he says, waspishly.
“And then you saw how Sylvain broke his arm, and started crying harder -”
“Was it my fault that the fool jumped off a tree?”
Dimitri tries to laugh, but the end result is only a feeble exhale. He can feel his eyes drooping again, and the prospect of another slap really is not enticing at the moment.
He scrabbles around for something else to say on the topic. Finding none, he searches for another memory; something else they can reminisce over with nostalgia, because if Dimitri is about to depart this world, as he is beginning to suspect, then he does not want his last memory of Felix to be a tearful one.
"...We used to play Rapunzel, too," Dimitri says. It comes out as a whisper, so he wiggles one finger, trying to beckon Felix down.
Felix complies, but makes sure to press down harder before he does. It hurts, but Dimitri supposed that it is a small price to pay if it is helping him stay alive in the end of things.
By the Goddess does it hurt , though.
"You were a... half-decent princess," Felix acknowledges, snapping Dimitri out of his haze of pain. He manages to hear the last half of the sentence, and pieces things together from there. Which is fine. Everything is fine.
"And you were a good tree," he jokes.
He takes it as a good sign that Felix only jabs him in the armpit.
"Shut up," Felix snaps. "What else was I supposed to play?"
"You could have been the prince, like Ingrid," Dimitri muses. It was true; there weren't many other characters apart from the ones Dimitri and the others had filled, and baby Felix, being the youngest, was immediately given the least important role, much to his chagrin. The tantrum he had thrown after Glenn had suggested that he would be a perfect as a tree really was… a sight. "Although she was a very good prince…"
"And what, fall off the tower and scratch my eyes out?" Felix mutters. He is still petty about it, Dimitri realises with some strange satisfaction. "No thanks."
"At least… you didn't get Sylvain's part."
His companion snorts. "A brute like him deserves to be horse," Felix agrees, with a genuine smile. Leave it to Sylvain to make someone laugh, no matter whether he was physically present or not.
It is getting more difficult to breathe, like someone has caught a hold of his heart and squeezed, and it must show, because Felix narrows his eyes at him again.
Dimitri does not like that look. It spells trouble (more specifically, a Felix snapping at him), so he casts his mind about again, searching for something to say to distract Felix from the inevitable tongue-lashing he is about to deliver.
Miraculously, something comes to him. This memory carries with it the smell of fresh rain, the echo of a child’s ringing laughter, and the lingering pressure of someone else’s hand in his own. It is such a golden opportunity for a distraction that Dimitri cannot help but beam, despite his pounding head.
"Felix!” He tugs on Felix’s sleeve. Where this sudden burst of energy has come from, he has no idea. “You proposed to me that on day, did you not?"
It hadn’t been the ideal day for any sort of proposal. It had started raining right after they finished playing Rapunzel, and Glenn had already headed back inside, Ingrid and Sylvain in tow.
Yet, Felix had still bounded up to him, with a smile so wide it had made his eyes crinkle and his chubby cheeks screw up like a hamster's. He had stuck out his hand, palm turned up, and Dimitri had watched in awe as he unfurled a daisy ring sitting daintily in the middle. Dimitri remembers marvelling at how delicate it looked, and how long Felix must have spent painstakingly trying to weave it. It was something his clumsy, too-strong fingers could never have done.
“Mother told me you marry the people you love!” Felix had exclaimed. The rain had stuck his hair to the side of his face. They were both getting wet, but Felix kept going. “Glenn said the same. I think we should get married, Dima!”
Dimitri had started to giggle. He’d stuck out his hand, too. “Okay, but let’s go inside first!” he had told him, before pulling the other boy towards the castle.
It had been so easy, back then, before their relationship had torn itself to pieces. Dimitri is only glad that they are trying to mend it, now, as awkward and difficult as it is.
Now, Felix stares at him, before quietly huffing. “I’m surprised you even remember,” he tells Dimitri, voice even.
Dimitri is astonished that his friend isn’t spluttering. Time flies, he supposes, when one is locked in one’s own head for five years.
“How could I forget? I was so very happy...” Dimitri trails off, and then feels warm. The memory is sweet, and lends some of its sweetness to the words that comes next. “You told me that I was the person you loved most in the world.”
This, he sees, causes Felix to turn as red as a cherry. He hides the lower half of his face behind his fingers (and it is so, so adorable, especially because he probably does not realise he is doing it) before mumbling something incomprehensible.
“Repeat that… for me?” Dimitri asks, straining to hear.
“I said…” Felix mumbles again, before wincing. He turns away quickly, and shifts Dimitri more steadily onto his lap. “Be quiet.”
Dimitri watches as his cheeks stain crimson, at how he avoids his gaze with a semi-angry, semi-flustered expression, and cannot help the fondness from welling up in him.
Felix stares into the distance for a while longer, periodically shuffling aside to check on the wound, or to mutter curses as to why the others were taking so long. The storm still rages outside, and Dimitri feels lighter by the second, almost as if he could float away. He imagines it is because of how giddy he is feeling. Giddy, and lightheaded.
Felix is staring at him again. The crease between his brows has become deeper. It looks funny, so Dimitri decides to fill the silence with something, lest he hyperfixate on Felix’s forehead.
“Felix… Did you know?” Dimitri coughs. Felix raises an eyebrow. “Even when I was a child… no, especially when I was a child… I always wanted you to stay with me.”
Distantly, he realises he is babbling. Perhaps it is because of the memories they have uncovered, have mutually reminisced over, but Dimitri feels a keen sense of longing that he has not felt so strongly since their academy days, when Felix would not even look at him.
His blood is oozing into the cracks in the floor now. He really is not sure what he is trying to do with this. “Forever by my side. Just like in the stories.”
“We don’t have to be carbon copies of Loog and Kyphon,” Felix harrumphs.
“I agree. We can be ourselves… if you’ll have me.” If you’ll have me? That was… unnecessary. It sounds ridiculous, even in this confused state. It feels like the sort of thing a lover would -
Dimitri fiddles with his tunic. If he were at full strength, he would probably be shredding it. Even this dizzy, he feels an acute sense of embarrassment. “I - I understand if you would rather not, given our history, but perhaps…”
He trails off, unsure of how to end such a statement. Perhaps he should have not started talking about their past in the first place? Surely Felix will shoot him down any moment now. Dimitri feels a bit silly for even attempting it.
Luckily, he is overcome by another bout of coughing - one that wracks his entire frame. Felix has to pin him down to prevent him jerking off his lap, and there is no time for him to continue blurting out his deepest wishes.
The motion pulls at the arrowhead, and something like the searing press of a hot iron tears through his stomach.
Dimitri howls. It hurts. He wants it to stop.
“Shh,” Felix soothes. His voice has dropped to an uncharacteristically gentle tone as he brushes the hair off Dimitri’s sweat-soaked forehead. “You’re okay.”
It is excruciating. The area directly around the arrowhead pulsates with sharp agony, whereas the rest of the site throbs like a dull sort of torture. Dimitri half-wishes he could go back to the time, not many moons ago, where he barely registered pain of this kind.
… But of course, Felix would never be treating him so kindly in that time. And he had made a promise, too, to keep marching forward, instead of casting his gaze backward.
“You can have my answer if you stay awake long enough,” Felix tells him evenly, breaking him out of his feverish musings. Dimitri is grateful to have something he can place his square focus on, something to distract him from the sting.
“That is a rather compelling incentive, Felix,” Dimitri coughs. Against his will, a groan slips from his lips when, once again, the motion spasms his entire body.
“A little while longer, Dimitri,” Felix says, quietly. He grips his hand. “Stay awake a little while longer.”
“Mm…”
Fee is asking him to, so he’ll try.
A little while longer, Dimitri is running out. Of time, or steam, or both, even, he cannot say, but through the haze he has to sift through to think with any semblance of clarity, he can say that he is simply running out.
The cold is everywhere, now: trickling into his armour, his skin, his lungs, even, like twisting ivy, stubborn with stifling fervour. Much of the blood has dried, cracking across his armour like the peel of a pomegranate. His fingers do not stick together anymore, although it seems to Dimitri that only moments ago they were dripping like wine.
Felix is swearing whilst trying to summon the last dregs of his Faith magic. Dimitri knows, however, that he has used it all in the battle, and had already tried again when they’d first dragged themselves into this blasted cave. It hadn’t worked then, and it wouldn’t, despite his efforts, work now.
And Felix is trying. The signs manifest themselves through the bead of sweat adorning his brow, and the puffs of exertion, and the near-constant downturn of his mouth that Dimitri recognises as worry - he is really trying.
It makes him feel warm, somehow.
Felix curses again, and Dimitri looks at him. Really, really looks at him, taking the time to commit the details to memory. His bare shoulders, bitten red by the cold and crossed with tiny scars. His hair, spun like midnight silk. His lips: not quite plump, as others would prefer, but still curving gently in a way Dimitri has fantasised tracing with his thumb. His eyes, too; burnt copper, honeyed in the sunlight, yet intense as scorching fire in this very moment.
Felix is beautiful, torturously so. Dimitri is in a dire situation - he knows this - yet he cannot bring himself to look away. He is rendered helpless in the face of such feelings.
Suddenly, It seems very important to him that he tells Felix about his eyes.
Dimitri tugs weakly at his wrist. Felix’s gaze trains on him in an instant.
“Fee…”
“What is it?” Felix says, low and urgent.
Dimitri beckons with one finger, then coughs. “Need to… tell you something…”
“Is it hurting more?” Dimitri shakes his head. “Then save your breath. Tell me later.”
He coughs again, but there's no time. His ribs rattle as he inhales.
“Your eyes…” He reaches up with a trembling hand to tuck a dark lock behind one burning ear. “They’re beautiful…”
A pause. Then:
“If you die trying to tell me about my eyes, I will kill you myself,” Felix seethes. Dimitri doesn’t point out the contradiction. He is too tired.
“Yes, Fee,” he mumbles, before he finally gives in, and his eyelids start to droop.
“Dimitri - what did I just say -”
“‘M sorry,” he slurs, and he really does mean it, because death is one battle he cannot win, even for Felix. Ironic, really, that he feels so nonchalant about this - there is some regret, yes, but he is accepting, even… when Felix had been… trying to…
“-mitri! Dima, what are you-”
Felix’s voice gives away to a wretched sob, and Dimitri hates himself for being the cause, and that is the last thing he thinks of before he slips away.
When he finally comes to, the first thing he registers is the heavenly feeling of lying atop a real bed. The sheets are silky and warm, if a little damp.
The next thing he identifies, rather groggily, is the glare of a certain swordsman, drilling into him with its usual intensity from the seat on his right. Although his head is wrapped in bandages, and his eyebags are deep enough to rival Dimitri’s own during the early stages of the war, Felix’s glare is still as cutting as ever. It is piercing in a way that even the sharpest of weapons could not achieve.
Dimitri coughs, awkward.
“Felix-”
“You took your time,” Felix interrupts, voice flat. Dimitri dips his head in acknowledgement, and Felix must deem it a worthy response, because they abruptly lapse into a lengthy silence.
It would be strange if he continued staring at Felix, so Dimitri takes the opportunity to observe his surroundings. They are in a private medical room, though judging by the view from the window, it is very early in the morning. That would explain the absence of bustling soldiers outside the door, and the shortness of the candle.
The flame is still flickering. Felix’s jacket is flung haphazardly over the back of the vacant chair on the other side of the room. It is the same one he had used to shield Dimitri’s head from the cold floor of the cave. The dried blood stains the white fur of the coat in russet splodges, like how a painter would flick their brush.
“You were a fool,” Felix says abruptly. He is leaning forward, now, mouth turned down into a scowl. Dimitri feels a rush of familiarity.
Once, back in the Academy, Dimitri had taken a blow to the shoulder whilst protecting Felix in battle. The wound was far from severe - he only had to stay overnight in the infirmary - but Felix’s enraged reaction, even when he could not stand to be in the same room as him, was identical to the one he is sporting now.
It had been so affirming, knowing that Felix still felt something for him, despite the usual disgust he had directed at him whenever they so much as brushed shoulders. Now, it gives Dimitri a surge of warmth, to know that Felix cares so deeply.
Even if Felix would rather throw himself into an active volcano than say it out loud.
Dimitri smiles. “Because someone managed to shoot me?” he asks, somewhat teasingly. He probably should refrain from making light of the situation, but one look at Felix’s pinched face makes him consider otherwise.
Goddess. Felix is going to gain more wrinkles than him at this rate.
“Yes,” Felix snaps. “On top of everything else. If you had listened to me and stopped talking, then maybe you wouldn’t have been out for so long.”
Dimitri smiles again, and Felix grumbles. He is so used to getting scolded by Felix for, well, everything , that this is nothing new to him.
It is when he remembers the concept of scoldings, of how frequently Felix likes to give them with his usual brand of scathing worry, that Dimitri remembers, with a creeping sense of dread, the last scolding Felix had given him before this one.
Oh, Goddess. He remembers.
He does not want to remember.
“Um,” Dimitri begins, tentatively. Felix raises an eyebrow. “Did you - nevermind.”
“What,” Felix says. “Spit it out.”
Had Dimitri really waxed poetic about his eyes? Surely not. He remembers taking in the sight of Felix, and how beautiful he had looked against the crisp wintry backdrop, but surely he had not… commented outwardly, and so forwardly, on it?
Knowing his track record, he probably has.
Dimitri feels his cheeks burn. He has to fight the impulse to bury his face into his hands.
“What?” Felix presses.
“Nothing,” Dimitri squeaks. Seiros, did he really just - squeak.
Dimitri wants to leave the room. Through the window, if he must.
“... Alright. Whatever. Don’t tell me,” Felix gripes. He turns away slightly. “I don’t care.”
“You will not want to hear this, I promise you.”
A silence.
And then: “Hmm.”
Dimitri is glad they dropped the subject. He looks away, too, staring determinedly at the opposite wall and willing his cheeks to return to a normal colour. Curse his skin for ratting him out so quickly. He feels like someone threw him into the sauna, and he has no one to blame but himself.
Thinking about it further makes Dimitri redden even more, so he quickly changes the topic.
“If I had stopped talking, I ran the risk of falling asleep,” he says, making his voice as mild as possible. “I was under the impression that you were adamantly against that?”
Felix narrows his eyes. “It’s too early for you to be so annoying, boar,” he informs him, before prodding at the covers with his foot. Dimitri shifts over to make room, and is just about to reach over to pull the blankets back, before Felix slaps his arm away with a scowl and does it himself.
Dimitri smiles again, thumbing at his bandages as Felix settles under the blanket. Their legs tangle together, yet as uncomfortable as it is, Dimitri cannot help but feel so inextricably pleased as Felix shoves his feet over to get the warmest spot of the bed. Felix rummages through the satchel on the floor, and Dimitri watches him, a feeling of contentment pooling in his gut.
I always knew you cared, Dimitri wants to say. You’ve always cared, haven’t you? Even when you pretended you didn’t -
- and that is when the wet cloth lands with a plop on Dimitri’s forehead.
“... Ow,” Dimitri says. He gingerly touches it. “What was that for?”
“... Annette asked me to take care of you for the night, so that’s what I’m doing,” Felix grumbles. His eyes slide away, and his ears are suspiciously pink. Cute, Dimitri thinks, before Felix can catch him staring.
He smiles. “And you cannot say no to her.”
“Can you?” Felix challenges. He sounds irritable. Dimitri knows he really isn’t.
He shrugs, and pretends to consider. “You could always leave, and have some other healer watch over me...”
Felix scoffs, and does not answer. Dimitri beams, and before Felix can scoot away, he catches hold of his hand, enveloping it between his own.
“Thank you, Felix,” Dimitri says earnestly. Felix makes an outraged sound when he realises that he cannot pull away. “For taking care of me. You always watch over me, and I fear I will never be able to express to you how grateful I am, and how heartened - ”
“Stop,” Felix groans. His ears are burning again, Dimitri thinks affectionately. “You’re so annoying. Make your speeches when I can escape them.”
He can escape now, but Dimitri doesn’t say anything.
“... All right,” he says, and his face must have stretched into a wide grin, because Felix takes one look at him before huffing again. He moves to throw the blanket over Dimitri’s right foot, which is peeking out at the end of the bed.
As Felix rearranges his sheets with furrowed concentration, Dimitri has a dawning realisation.
“Oh,” he wonders, out loud. “Felix… are you nursing me back to health?”
Felix stops in his motions, and the sight is almost comical. He looks rather like a ruffled cat. Dimitri beams internally, and commits the vision to memory. “That’s very sweet of you.”
Hah. Felix, a nurse. Felix, in a nurse outfit. How funny.
Felix turns towards him. His expression is completely unreadable. The blanket is still clutched tightly in one hand.
Then, he leans over, snatches the wet cloth from Dimitri’s forehead, and starts stalking away. Dimitri calls towards his retreating back, slightly panicked.
“Wait - where are you going? Felix - Felix, that was a joke -”
“If it’s that funny to you, then clearly you don’t need me anymore.” Not even a glance is offered behind him. Dimitri represses the urge to snort. Felix is adorable.
“Felix! Sylvain - Sylvain asked me to, ah, ‘lighten up a little’, in his own words, and I made a promise to him that I would -”
“And you listened to that oaf? No wonder your ‘jokes’ are all so terrible.”
“Felix-!”
Felix throws him the middle finger, and Dimitri laughs, a rich, honeyed sound that reverberates around the room, even when the recipient himself has forcefully closed the door behind him.
Later, the guard posted outside the infirmary insists that he saw the young general, the next Duke Fraldarius, smiling to himself as he passed him in the hallway. He spreads the word over drinks later that night, swearing up and down that no, he is not lying, and yes, he really did hear the general chuckle quietly (a small, private sound) when he thought he was out of earshot.
No one believes him, of course.