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Mercedes says to write a letter, but Felix has never been good with words.
Tomorrow is Enbarr. Tomorrow is death. Tomorrow is victory. Tomorrow will change everything. So why write? Why worry about words when there is so much else to worry about. Felix could be training, could be going over battle plans with Byleth, could be reminding Ashe to watch his left flank – he always forgets – could be asking Annette to calm his mind with a song. Any number of infinitely better and more valuable actions.
Get your feelings out, Mercedes had said, pressing parchment and quill against Felix’s chest. It may be our last chance.
She’s never so fatalistic. And so, Felix writes. Or, tries to.
“No luck?” Sylvain sits down across from him, spreading lazily across the desk like he’s wont to do, as if every chair or bench is his own personal throne.
“I wanted privacy,” Felix grits out. He had hidden himself away in an old classroom, hoping for some quiet. As if there isn’t enough quiet already – these rooms used to be brimming with students, halls echoing with laughter and gossip and all the things Felix thought were useless until the reality of war ripped them away. Now, he wonders.
Felix spends too much time in his own head; he knows all too well the unsaid words he keeps there. There’s only one word on his letter – a name, actually. He hides it hastily.
“If you ask me, we should be drinking,” Sylvain must have had a run-in with Mercedes too, because he’s holding a rolled-up bit of parchment, worrying it between his fists, wringing it like a washcloth. “If this is our last night on earth, it should at least be fun.”
Felix scoffs and, though he will deny it, the corners of his lips tilt up. “Typical. Go drink, then. I’m sure Caspar will join you.”
But Sylvain doesn’t leave, or move, or look like he’s even thinking about it. He smiles, in his way, rests his chin on the palm of his hand, and looks at Felix. He’s always looking at Felix. “Nah, I’m good.”
“You are so…” Felix pauses to swallow the lump in his throat. Get your feelings out – as if he had ever been that adept at hiding them. “Sylvain. I have something to tell you.”
“Yeah?” The curl of Sylvain’s lip is infuriating.
“Just—” Felix closes his eyes. Maybe he’ll pretend Sylvain isn’t here. Maybe this is just a fever dream. Maybe they’ll die tomorrow and this will all be for nothing. “Just, be serious. For once in your life.”
“I’m always serious.”
“I’m not kidding, this is important!” Felix snaps, and when he opens his eyes he sees Sylvain’s posture tighten – the way it does on the battlefield, the way it does during strategy meetings, the way it had when Felix was wounded in Arundel. Sylvain had slept in that chair in the corner of the infirmary for week, refusing to let Felix out of his eyeline, as if the ghost of his attacker could return any moment. You’ll get sore sleeping like that, Felix had scolded him. Just gotta keep you safe, baby, was Sylvain’s rationale, coated in irony and misdirected intentions, as always. He thinks Felix can’t hear him at night, whispering desperate pleas, begging Felix not to leave him, not to die.
Felix unsticks his throat, “We’ve known each other for… since we were kids. You’re always so irresponsible.” He ignores Sylvain’s soft interjection of hey! “You run off to flirt with women, and get yourself into trouble, and fight like— like no one cares if you come home or not.”
“Felix…”
“And I always feel like I have to look out for you. Day in and day out,” Felix’s face is hot, his throat is burning – is this was this is supposed to feel like? Is this is what all those sleepless nights and whispered promises and long-suffering looks were for? “I’m trying to say, I— I don’t mind it. I want to be there for you. For the rest of time.”
The air’s never felt so still; Sylvain’s never gone so quiet. These are words they’ve said before, in any other form. But this feels different, and the tension before a battle is nothing compared to this, to the mood that settles around them like fog, dream-like. Linhardt had once told Felix, maybe in jest, that a person’s eyes dilate when they look at someone they love, and right now Sylvain’s eyes are just a sliver of honey-brown and a black hole of want and confusion and years of denial. Felix swallows.
“Oh my goddess,” Sylvain finally says.
Felix can’t read his tone. “You hate me, don’t you?” He mumbles, bottom lip wobbling dangerously. Fine, just forget it, he wants to say. But you can’t unsay something that’s been said – and he doesn’t even really want to. Maybe Mercedes was right. He wants Sylvain to know, no matter his answer.
Something rustles in Sylvain’s hand, and when Felix looks back, he’s uncurling the crumpled letter in his hand slowly, deliberately. “No, it’s just… I wrote the same thing. I wrote a letter. I asked— I said I want to be with you. For the rest of time.”
It’s Felix’s turn to go quiet, eyes fixed firmly on the woodgrain of the table, on the tiny cracks in the floor tile, on the scuffed leather of his boots – anywhere but Sylvain’s face, earnest and freckled and handsome (stupidly, stupidly handsome.)
“Sylvain—”
“Goddess, this is so—” Sylvain is as restless as Felix is still. He messes with his hair, buries his face in the crook of his elbow, grins so wide his dormant dimples start to show. It’s been a while since Felix saw him smile like this – real, unfiltered, untethered. Maybe not since they were kids. He missed it.
Ah. He loves him. And maybe – maybe, maybe, maybe, like a prayer – Sylvain loves him too.
“Well,” Sylvain catches Felix’s eye. “Do you want to?”
“What?”
“Be together. For the rest of time,” Sylvain’s voice cracks, and Felix would laugh if he wasn’t already so close to crying. “Say you do.”
“Sylvain you are so… infuriating.” He might already be crying, and Sylvain reaches across the desk, that small gap suddenly an indescribably large distance between them, and strokes a thumb across Felix’s cheekbone, wiping a tear. His hands are so warm, have they always been this warm, have I really never noticed before? “I don’t know what to do with you.”
But he does, they both do.
“Just say you do.”
Tomorrow is Enbarr. Tomorrow is the edge of dawn. Tomorrow is the beginning of everything; or the end.
Tonight, there is just this: A tentative kiss, followed by another, and another; a new promise, years in the making; Sylvain’s hand against his cheek, warm and kind and, surely, strong enough to carry Felix’s heart.