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“You’re pretty,” Dorothea says with her palm pressed against his cheek and her thumb resting on his lower lip. “But I’m sure you already know that.”
“I do.” Sylvain’s breath is warm against her fingers, mouth twitching into a smile. His face is stained the same shade as his hair, leg jumping high when Dorothea rests her other hand on his thigh. “Still, it’s nice to hear it. Especially from someone like you.”
“Someone like me?” she croons, teasing her syllables in a lilt. Too much vocal training for a girl like her who can spin sentences into songs and bring men and women alike to their knees. Begging of course. “And whatever do you mean by that?”
“Ah, Dorothea.” Sylvain leans forward, pursing his lips in a chaste kiss against her thumb. “Let’s be honest with each other. People like us have no need to be coy.”
“People like me, people like us,” she mimics. Dorothea’s finger settles on his Cupid’s bow and slopes down again. “Sylvain why are you here? Did you break some unfortunate girl’s heart again?”
Sylvain’s entire face twists, his frown a faint impression against her touch. The sudden shift in his expression makes her stomach flip; Dorothea begins to move her hand away when his fingers catch her wrist, firm at first, then loosening as a light and delicate touch. She looks up at him, then back at his hand, noting how easily she could break away when she wanted to. If she wanted to.
“I was only joking, Sylvie.” Any attempts at sounding breezy break with the crack in her voice. “I know you’re trying to change your wayward ways.”
Sylvain is now cradling her hand in his. The pads of Dorothea’s fingers are surprising rough, a byproduct, she once said, of being able to shoot fire and thunder and gusts of wind out of them. “I’m not here because I broke some unfortunate girl’s heart,” he says, parsing each word. “I’m here looking for mine.”
“Your...?”
“Heart.”
“Oh.” How unexpected in the way Dorothea had distantly hoped for it to happen without fully knowing that she wanted it to happen.
Maybe not like this, with the top three buttons of his shirt undone, resting on her unmade bed the night before their monthly assignment. Maybe not like this, where she had opened the door to her dorm without question when he knocked outside, flushed and asking to come in.
Maybe like the way he dances around her with flirty and challenging words. Maybe like the way he laughs, ticklish under her spell, when she takes to healing him first after battle. Or the way she stuffs her pillow between her thighs and rides and rides, watching him train atop his favorite horse, lance in hand, behind her eyelids. Funny the way things happen in the least humorous of ways. Funny the way she finds herself caring too much, too late. Funny the way she thinks that’s what it means to—
“Dorothea, I—“
“Don’t say anything.” She tucks a stray hair behind her ear with her free hand. “Please, just don’t say anything, yet.”
He doesn’t. Sylvain looks at her, confused and a little pained with his mouth flattened into a singular line. Dorothea can smell the fine oils on his skin at this distance, something high quality like frankincense. The material of his jacket shimmers in the yellow candlelight, each ripple saying real and expensive and the two put together at once. Suddenly, he’s Sylvain and Sylvain Gautier at once, the latter making her throat squeeze.
“I have no Crest.” Dorothea inches closer despite her voice being far, angling her face to one side. “No family lineage.”
“You of all people know that I think all of that causes more trouble than it’s worth.”
“Then, you only care about looks.”
“Don’t you?” It’s a poor tease, Sylvain knows it as he says it, but he makes the smallest attempt to pinch the fear in her tone. “We talked about this already, remember? Loving someone til they’re old and wrinkly?”
“But you say things as though they mean nothing at all.” She closes her eyes this time, purposely summoning the nameless faces of all the girls she has caught, and on occasion comforted, after crossing paths with him. “Like words don’t matter, like they can’t be special—“
“I love you,” Sylvain exclaims. “I’ll keep saying it until it matters to you.”
Dorothea stares. “Again.”
“I love you.”
Sylvain doesn’t know if he kisses her first, or if it’s Dorothea that comes crashing into him. He does, however, lose his footing, flailing backwards, as the springs in her mattress squeak far too loudly. Her hair curtains around his cheeks, fingers laying claim under his chin, and she’s kissing him. Despite the sudden force, Dorothea kisses him gently, marking the corner of his mouth, his lower lip, drawing away slowly, only to pull him back in.
“That,” she says between breaths. “That sounded like you meant it.”