Work Text:
Sylvain grins. He can't help it. "Never?"
"Fuck you," Felix snaps, already turning away, and Sylvain lunges for his arm.
"No, hey, I'm sorry," he says, free hand raised in surrender as Felix glares. "That was mean, I didn't need to do that. I guess I assumed you'd already had a chance."
Felix’s expression, already uncomfortable, turns dismal. His hair is messier than usual today, two dark locks slipped free of his bun and trailing down his neck as he looks away from Sylvain, staring at the corridor wall. “Who would I even have...tried it with,” he mumbles.
Sylvain very firmly does not say the name that immediately, with extreme prejudice, comes to mind. Instead he relaxes his grip on Felix’s arm, letting his fingers tug playfully at the sleeve. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. When Felix glares at him again, the only kind of eye contact he’s really capable of in times of distress, Sylvain smiles at him as sincerely as he knows how. “I mean it, everyone has a first time for everything. Do you want me to help?”
Felix frowns. “What?”
“Do you want me to help show you,” Sylvain replies, patient. “How to kiss.”
Felix blushes like he’s been smacked with it, all the big-eyed terror of a kitten tossed into a bucket of dye. “What?”
“It’ll be nicer than figuring it out with a stranger,” Sylvain says, keeping his voice as calm and unaffected as possible, lest Felix go for the window. “You can believe me on that. And it won’t take long, I promise, it’s not actually as tricky as you’re thinking it is.”
Felix is still staring, eyes darting, like Sylvain might shortly peel his face off and reveal Claude pulling a fast one underneath.
“And this isn’t a come-on,” Sylvain says, “to be clear. I provided Ashe a little instruction just last week, and Mercedes—well, to be honest with you Mercedes was doing most of the—“
“Okay,” Felix says. Sylvain stops.
“Yeah?”
“Asshole." His face is still red as lit coals. He hasn't pulled away from Sylvain's arm. "Yes.”
Sylvain can admit, as he sits down on the bed and invitingly pats the sheets beside him, that this isn't the most truthful claim to altruism he's ever made. He did spend a delightful twenty minutes with Ashe last week ago showing the kid how to use tongue, and it hadn't been more than that. He likes his classmates, he doesn't want them to get taken advantage of, and it's no hardship to spend a few minutes on the hillside with a willing friend. A friend who asked him first, even.
But Felix—
He's standing in Sylvain's room like he's never seen it before, like he isn't in here three times a week complaining about their classmates, their teachers, his father, the weather. Like he hasn't barged in and out of Sylvain's living spaces since they were kids, red-faced with shining eyes.
Felix on the edge of tears, bundled in furs and whining for Dimitri or his brother—it's the only image Sylvain really had of Felix for years, even as he watched the round-faced kid growing into a skinny teen with hair like his brother's and a permanent scowl. He assumed that, even as they grew, that's who Felix would always be to him. The kid he'd always look after.
The first time Sylvain saw him at Garreg Mach, buttoned into his uniform and disarming a solider twice his age, expression grim and face shining pale in the mountain sun—
Well, he's still working on all that.
"There's no way you've read all these," Felix mutters now, staring at Sylvain's shelf of magic texts.
"Mhm, sure," Sylvain replies. Of course he's read them. "Now, we don't have to both be sitting for this, but as this is but our first lesson, and you're about a foot shorter than me—"
Felix glares, frown pulling his whole red face down, but moves away from the shelf. He sits on the bed, an exact six inches between every part of his body and Sylvain's. His hands make white fists in his lap.
"Hi," he says. Extremely stilted and wary.
"Hi," Sylvain replies, smiling as easy as he knows how. He puts one hand on Felix's arm, making Felix stare at him again, eyes huge with unfamiliar feeling. "Tell me if you want to stop, okay? Any time."
Felix, now faced with what he asked for, appears unable to reply.
Sylvain leans down, careful, eyes open and watching to the last, and presses his mouth to Felix's.
It's warm, a little chapped, and he pulls back. Felix opens his eyes a long second after Sylvain does. His lips part, one shaky breath escaping, his pale neck still craned high. Sylvain looks up from his mouth and meets his dark eyes.
"Okay?" he asks.
Felix swallows. He nods.
"Okay," Sylvain says, and returns.
He keeps it slow, careful. His hands stay in his lap, his body leaning across the empty half-foot between them like a narrow bridge over a deep crevasse. He kisses Felix's bottom lip, his top lip, a gentle excursion to the corner of his mouth. All of it as calm and measured as a morning magic lesson, the steady repetition of dangerous elements until they're made familiar. This is what Felix smells like. This is what Felix tastes like. Where Ashe was curious Felix is scared. Where Mercedes was languorous Felix is punishingly tense. But here, take his mouth with yours, tease his lips open with careful steps, and there, suddenly—
Felix inhales, ragged and deep, and presses back.
Heat expands to fill Sylvain's body, not the warmth of desire (not entirely!), but the warmth of simple pleasure, the unbridled contentment that comes with Felix's mouth bumping clumsily against his, Felix leaning forward, the little back-of-the-throat noise Felix makes when Sylvain shows him again, patient, how to tilt his head and fit to his partner.
"Good, that's good," Sylvain says, panting, to another of Felix's soft noises. "I'm going to touch you, okay?" It's hard to get the words out. Felix, having discovered the joy of reciprocation, has yet to give it up. "I'm going to touch you."
He puts his hand to Felix's jaw. Felix and shudders and leans into it, like a cat extending its body into the sun.
Sylvain lets his eyes drift close on the sight of his own fingers skating down Felix's cheekbone, the drunken sensation of Felix's smooth skin under his. He guides him gently, angling his head just so to get them closer. Felix's breathing is coming fast, hot little puffs from his nose against Sylvain's lip, from his mouth whenever Sylvain pulls away. Sylvain experiences a sudden burst of daring and touches his tongue to the seam of Felix's lips, the new gap between when Felix inhales.
Felix says, low voice cracking, "Sylvain."
Sylvain pulls back, own chest heaving, though he doesn't stop touching Felix's jaw. He—that's just not gonna be an option for a while. "Okay?" he asks. "All good?"
The afternoon is turning long and golden outside Sylvain's window, layering light like a heavy brocade over the room. Felix, in it, looks more than human. Like something Sylvain should have started praying to a long time ago.
Felix looks up at him, shaky and frazzled and lovely and new. His mouth is red, the color explosive in his cheeks. He puts his hand on Sylvain’s wrist, the one just brushing against Felix’s chin, and says, absolutely mutinous, “Don’t stop, you bastard.”
Sylvain laughs, wheezing and creaking for all of three seconds, before Felix starts up his next demand and Sylvain kisses him properly.
Now, emboldened, he moves fast. Kissing isn’t tricky, Sylvain stands by his assertions, but open-mouth is something new for Felix. He swallows every wayward chuckle as he shows Felix when to open his mouth and when to close it, what feels good, how to make it flow. How to press your tongue into your partner’s mouth and feel your whole body shudder and flex. How to take your partner’s lip between your teeth and make them shake.
Oh, this didn’t happen at all with Ashe. It didn’t even happen with Mercedes, who kissed like a woman who could spend a whole summer kissing and laid in the grass with him for an hour after, asking him about his family and where he grew up.
That had been one of the most wonderful afternoons of his life. Against Felix, sitting on Sylvain’s bed and gasping every hot breath, it can’t even hope to compare. Can’t even begin to. “Here,” Sylvain mumbles, “here,” in those short half-seconds when his mouth is free. “Try—“
He takes Felix’s hand from his lap, squeezing it once, feeling Felix’s fingers close around his, and then draws it to his chest.
“Touch me, too,” he says.
Felix does.
His chest, his jaw, the vee of his open collar. First with one hand, then so quickly two. He kisses Sylvain and drags his hands over him and fucks up his hair and bites him so hard he almost makes Sylvain bleed. Of course he’s a biter. Of course! Sylvain makes all kinds of noise, laughs, purrs, groans when Felix suddenly realizes about hair pulling. Felix shifts closer, closer again, until he’s on his knees on the bed and Sylvain’s got no choice but to put his hands on Felix’s tight waist and drag him into his lap.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Sylvain says, with his lips against Felix’s sensitive throat.
He should freeze when he says it, really. He should stop and pull away. They’re hours past from anything their friendship can recover from, they’re seconds from Felix realizing the immediacy of Sylvain’s agonizing boner, it wasn’t actually supposed to go like this. It’s not like Sylvain starts his mornings thinking how he’ll lie to his closest friends.
It’s so far beyond his control, though. He’s conducting a thorough investigation of the soft skin under Felix’s jaw, every little spot that makes Felix wriggle and gasp, and he says again, “Oh, darling, look at you,” with all the wretched feeling he’s got.
The first miracle is that Felix stays on his lap, head hanging low, hair falling in dark ropes around them both.
The second miracle is that Felix looks up, red and ravaged, and meets Sylvain’s eye.
He’ll kill them both, looking like that. Their lines will end this afternoon they’d better hope Ingrid tells their fathers they died in noble battle.
And then Sylvain is on his back, blinking painfully, as Felix shoves him down. He won’t look away from Sylvain, the both of them tethered, and then his shaky hands rise of the buttons of his vest.
“Give me another lesson,” Felix says.
This time, Sylvain gets to stare.
“Come on, Gautier,” Felix pants, struggling out of his vest, throwing it with more bravado than he could possibly feel onto Sylvain’s floor. “I’m sure you’ve got more to say.”
“As long as you’ve got the time, sweetheart,” Sylvain says, smiling fit to break something, and pulls Felix down to him.