Chapter Text
For the fourth time so far that day, Sylvain ended up flat on his ass on the floor of the training grounds.
“Get up.”
Felix was pointing a training sword at him, stance aggressive, looking every bit as deadly with a hunk of wood in his hand as he did with an actual blade.
Normally, Sylvain would have made a stupid joke about being up all night with company, or just poked fun at the way Felix was already starting to get wrinkles from all the frowning and scowling he did, but for once he wasn’t in the mood.
“I yield,” he said instead, scooting back until he could use his training lance to push himself to his feet. “Sorry, Felix. I guess my head’s just not in it today.”
“I can see that.” Felix tapped his foot, not quite impatient, more annoyed than anything as he tapped his training sword against his leg at the same time. “What’s your problem? I didn’t hear you bring home some girl last night, so it can’t be that.”
“Does that mean you usually listen for me bringing girls to my room?”
He teased, but his heart wasn’t in it any more than it was into getting beaten into submission. He was sore all over, and not the good kind of sore.
Being an ass still earned him a smack in the side with a wooden sword, which was to be expected and was his own fault, really. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to whine about it, though.
“I just couldn’t sleep, okay?”
Since Felix had apparently accepted the yield (not that he had much of a choice, and honestly, even Felix wasn’t that much of an asshole— not usually, at least), Sylvain went and replaced his training lance in the weapon rack and started to stretch his exhausted muscles.
He could tell Felix was annoyed that he cut their training session early (although Felix mostly seemed to be annoyed any time he wasn’t training these days), but there was something else to his hovering, too.
Thankfully being friends with someone since they were born gave you a bit of insight into their thoughts and feelings, because Sylvain wasn’t sure how he would be able to deal with Felix otherwise. Not that he was exactly emotionally available himself, but Felix was a very special kind of closed off, the kind where he couldn’t even ask a simple probing question like, ‘Why couldn’t you sleep last night, Sylvain?’ for fear he might be, oh, emotionally available or some kind of nonsense.
Not like he was bitter or anything.
“You know, restless. Tossing and turning. Couldn’t relax.” He chuckled, winking at Felix. “Maybe I should have brought a girl home, huh?”
Felix threw his sword at him and said nothing, leaving him and the sword, which Sylvain put up alongside his own training weapon.
Yep, pretty much the reaction he’d been expecting.
See, the thing was, it wasn’t really that uncommon for Sylvain to have trouble falling asleep at night. It was actually probably more common than him actually being able to have a good night’s sleep without trying. He knew all the methods; drinking warm milk, tiring himself out with training, pretty much anything anyone had ever suggested to another person to help them sleep at night, he’d tried.
Usually something worked. And what he’d said about bringing girls home wasn’t entirely inaccurate. Sure, things usually never went very far, but a roll in the hay was an easy way to make his brain turn off for a little bit and tire his body out at the same time, even if it was just a quick bit of hand action. But the last time he’d tried that, it had ended with him not even able to keep himself interested and having to give his lady friend some ‘extra attention’ before sending her home.
He might not have thought much of most of the girls he brought back to his room, but that didn’t mean he was going to send them home unsatisfied. That just wasn’t good for his reputation, after all!
There was just… Something bothering him as of late, and he couldn’t really put his finger on it. Nothing had really changed. There had been some excitement when the professor had arrived, and even though having her around made everything a lot more interesting, that had all pretty much died down. Their missions had been… Nerve wracking, maybe, but nothing he hadn’t come to expect, seeing as he was the Gautier heir and all.
So why he was so damn restless all the time, he just couldn’t say.
Some of the others had tried to talk to him about it— Ingrid for one, and also Mercedes, and even Ashe had asked him at dinner one night if he was feeling okay. But since even Sylvain didn’t quite know what was wrong, he hadn’t needed to lie to them when he said it was probably nothing.
Really, having trouble getting to sleep was the least of his worries. It was actually almost refreshing to have a normal problem for once.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t annoying, though. He could put up with everyone worrying after him by throwing up a smile and teasing them about caring about him, but something like what had happened with Felix that morning was a much bigger problem. Not only because getting distracted in training was dangerous and could get him hurt pretty badly, or because if he acted like that during a mission he was going to get himself killed, but also because Felix was the one person who not only wouldn’t be fooled by his stupid non-chalant act but also because Felix wouldn’t just politely ignore it anyway.
He’d never been good at assuming Sylvain was capable of taking care of himself. Which, fair enough, he supposed.
The other thing about Felix, though, was that whole emotional availability thing. Not only was it pretty exhausting being the emotionally mature one in their friendship, but it also meant that despite getting worried about him, or whatever passed for worried when you were Felix Hugo Fraldarius, he never really… Tried to approach Sylvain and talk to him about what was wrong. Mostly he just hovered in the background, being even more rude and nasty than usual until Sylvain got fed up with it and spilled the beans.
So it was frustrating now, because he had no idea what to tell him except what he had already told him; he was having trouble sleeping. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he was trying to lie to Felix.
He was good at lying, but not to Felix.
Even more than that, it was surprising when Felix cornered him after class (which he had spent zoning out, not quite able to fall asleep right there on the table like Linhardt did just about everywhere, but not having the energy to actually focus) and practically pushed him up against a wall, trapping him with his arm boxing him in.
“When are you going to get over this and stop moping around?”
“I haven’t been moping— I just haven’t been sleeping,” he said immediately, even though as soon as he said it something didn’t feel quite right, and that was only made worse by the way Felix looked at him; annoyed, like he’d said something wrong or, in this case, something stupid.
“Tch. You’ve really forgotten, then?” Felix snorted as he pulled his arm back and stepped away, turning to head off to the training grounds like this had all been a big waste of his time. “I guess that’s a step in the right direction. Try to get some sleep, dumbass.”
Sylvain stared after him.
Sylvain didn’t get some sleep.
For one thing, it was still the middle of the day, but even when he did turn in for the night— after spending the entire day actually focusing on his school work for once and hacking at a training dummy like he was dealing with his problems the same way Felix did since he apparently knew something he didn’t— he wasn’t surprised to find himself staring at his ceiling, exhausted but wide awake.
He thought back to what Felix had said, about what he could have possibly forgotten that would leave him feeling like this, that constant sense of dread in the pit of his stomach that made him lie awake at night unable to fall asleep no matter how tired he was…
Then, that night, after having given up on any hope of actually getting to sleep, Sylvain was sitting at his desk staring at a book without absorbing anything he was reading, when he glanced over at his calendar to check what day the next round of certifications exams were, knowing Professor Byleth was going to want him to try for his next certification and he was in no shape to be doing something like that if he was completely sleep deprived.
The Verdant Wind moon. A little red circle helpfully reminded him that their certification exams were going to happen on the 23rd, more than a week away, which gave him plenty of time to get his shit sorted and pull himself together. Not that he actually cared that much about his grades, but Professor Byleth had a weird way of motivating him and making him actually want to succeed, and not only because she was cute.
(Although that surely played a part, just not as big a part as he or anyone else would have expected.)
It was the rainy season, but Sylvain didn’t think that had much to do with anything, since the weather didn’t do much to his mood otherwise. (He lived in a tundra, for starters, so the weather Garreg Mach had to offer paled in comparison to the weather back home…)
When it hit him, though? When it finally hit him? It was like a brick to the face, and he realized quite suddenly why Felix had called him a dumbass.
The 17th of the Verdant Rain Moon. Three days away.
Miklan’s birthday.
On further reflection, which he had lots of time for because he most definitely didn’t manage to get to sleep after that revelation, he decided it was actually very unfair of Felix to call him a dumbass because he forgot about something like that.
It had been twelve years, after all. Twelve years seemed like a perfectly reasonable amount of time to go and forget something like your disowned brother’s birthday. Nevermind that he’d spent two of those years moping about it and another four or five spending the week leading up to Miklan’s birthday in a crippling depression that, wouldn’t you know it, involved a lot of him having trouble sleeping and mostly just being useless for a while.
That was years ago, though. He had pushed all of that out of his mind and moved on. He hadn’t had one of his little ‘Miklan episodes’ for like, six years now, so why was he suddenly falling back into that stupid old pattern? Especially when his memory wasn’t even good enough to recall why he was feeling like shit until Felix actually pointed it out to him?
It made sense that Felix remembered before he did, though. Felix might have been even better (or worse, depending on your perspective) than he was at the whole ‘shoving your feelings down and ignoring them completely’ thing, but he never forgot anything.
He never let himself forget anything.
Sylvain wished he had forgotten about it, honestly. Or at least hadn’t brought it up. He probably wouldn’t have even thought about what was causing the problem if Felix hadn’t pushed him up against the wall after class and made him think about it. Now he had two days to think about something he had gone out of his way to forget.
He wasn’t going to be getting any sleep.
“Hey.”
It would have been a totally normal greeting if not for the fact that Felix kicked the leg of his chair when he said it, nearly knocking him over and definitely making him jump out of his seat, since he was halfway to falling asleep in it.
He didn’t even have enough energy to be annoyed at Felix. Not that he usually bothered anyway, since being annoyed with Felix didn’t usually get him far or do much except make him feel weird and bad afterwards, which he thought was pretty unfair since Felix was almost always annoyed with him.
He did manage a decent glare at him as he scooted his chair back into place and settled back in it, getting as comfortable as he could manage in a hard-back wooden chair without tilting it back and giving Felix even more ammunition to put him on the ground.
If he had the energy he would have made a joke about getting Felix on top of him an awful lot lately, but it seemed like sleep deprivation affected his sense of humour just as much as it affected the rest of his mood.
“I figured it out,” he said, not even bothering to return the simple greeting. Maybe Felix would appreciate him getting to the point for once. “Would have preferred just forgetting about it, but hey, thanks anyway.”
He couldn’t resist being just a little snippy— it was the whole ‘no sleep’ thing getting to him— but if Felix cared about him being a snarky bastard, well, he’d just be a hypocrite. And he didn’t seem to, just snorted and dropped into his chair next to him and crossed his arms the same way Sylvain had, almost mockingly.
“Whether you remembered or not, you still weren’t sleeping,” Felix said. “At least now you know why. Maybe now you can get over it and get back to being your regular annoying self. At least that Sylvain trains sometimes.”
There weren’t many people more flippant than Sylvain. He would turn just about anything into a joke, no matter how inappropriate the situation, which had gotten him scolded or smacked by Ingrid too many times for him to count. But right now Felix was challenging him for his ‘biggest jackass’ crown, and the most impressive part was that Sylvain was pretty sure he wasn’t even trying.
He had that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach like right before he said something stupid to a woman that got him slapped, the feeling where he knew what he was going to say was stupid but he was going to say it anyway.
“Wow, thanks, Felix. Great advice. Is that what you did with Glenn? Just ‘got over it’? No wonder you sleep so well at night.”
He had his hands folded behind his head and had ignored his good sense so he could lean back in his chair as he said it, but the moment he finished saying it he knew what a mistake it had been, because the next thing he knew he was on the floor, head throbbing from bouncing off the stone, and all he could see was Felix’s boots— sideways— as he walked away.
Sylvain knew he was in a special kind of trouble, that he’d fucked up especially bad, when Felix didn’t even bother insulting him or giving him some kind of parting scathing comment. But, hey.
He’d never said he was any good at this whole ‘communication’ thing.
Sylvain Jose Gautier had been 7 years old when his older brother had run away from home.
It had absolutely destroyed him.
Now that he was older, of course, he understood. Miklan had been born without a Crest, and the Gautier family was particularly harsh about that, for reasons Sylvain didn’t quite understand since the rest of the nobility seemed to consider it ‘a bit much’ (which in noble speak was practically horrific). Even the king’s own Crestless brother had been given a dukedom and allowed to live a quiet life, even if he was excluded from the line of succession, which to Sylvain sounded more like a pro than a con.
Miklan had also been in love with another man. Which was one of those things you just… Didn’t talk about. You didn’t openly disparage it because the Church’s stance was that love was love and it didn’t matter whether you were a man, a woman, neither, both, or any combination of the above. But you didn’t openly support it, either, especially if you were from one of the Crest bearing families, because your entire life had to revolve around continuing on your bloodline and love didn’t matter more, couldn’t matter more than the family legacy.
Sylvain had more than once considered following in Miklan’s footsteps, leaving the whole ridiculous Gautier family ‘legacy’ behind, not have to worry about being chased for his Crest or having his whole life decided for him. So yeah, he understood now.
But try explaining that to a 7 year old who had just lost the most important person in his life, with no explanation as to why except the one provided by his scowling father, whose impotent rage at being so openly defied even if he’d never seemed to give much of a shit about what Miklan did before that moment meant he wasn’t exactly a sympathetic ear.
Sylvain had always looked up to his older brother, no matter how much his father tried to keep them apart, or at least keep Sylvain busy enough with all of the ‘family heir’ crap he’d shovelled onto him to make sure he didn’t have time to properly be ‘poisoned’ by Miklan. Which was how his father had always talked about it after Miklan had left.
He’d be the first to admit Miklan had probably not been the best influence on an impressionable young mind— he cursed like a sailor, for one thing, and he could have a nasty temper, and he could be way too rough sometimes— but he was the farthest thing from poison Sylvain could imagine. He’d been young then, sure, but Miklan? Miklan had been the best thing about being home.
And then suddenly he was gone. One night he’d given him a too tight hug, told him he loved him, and left with a ruffle of Sylvain’s hair, all like he might do if he was setting off for a week.
Sylvain never saw him again.
He probably would have never known why he even left if not for the letter Glenn sent to Rodrigue, and the outrage it had caused. That was when his father had officially disowned Miklan, but considering he’d left of his own accord, Sylvain was pretty sure that didn’t bother him at all and was just his father’s way of airing his frustrations.
And… Glenn. Another complication. For a while Sylvain had blamed Glenn for the loss of his brother, and even though he didn’t say that to Felix’s face, he was pretty sure he knew and felt the same way about Miklan. They were dumb kids; things like that happened when you didn’t really understand what was going on, especially when your parents were too busy being mad or sad or whatever to actually sit down and talk to you about it.
They never talked about it. In fact, Sylvain wasn’t sure he’d so much as said Glenn’s name since his disappearance.
It really made what he’d said all the more stupid in retrospect, but hey. There was a reason intelligence and common sense were two very different things.
Sylvain had been 7 when Miklan had disappeared suddenly and without a trace, not that he imagined his father did much to actually look for him. He might have been enraged about Miklan leaving without his permission, but that didn’t mean he cared about him. Just like he’d never really cared about Sylvain. And his mother had tried to care, or at least that was how he saw it, based on the vague memories he had of her half-hearted attempts at bonding with him in his early years— but she’d never really been able to manage it.
Miklan had been the only member of his family who ever really cared about him, which was probably what surprised him the most about Miklan just picking up and leaving— how he could just abandon him with a family that didn’t care about him?
Again, he understood now— or at least he understood a bit better than when he was a kid. His parents didn’t love him, but he was the heir, which meant he was going to be well taken care of. He had friends who cared about him even if his parents didn’t. Running away meant that Glenn didn’t have to go off and become a knight and die in some stupid battle, or end up married to Ingrid.
Just because he understood didn’t erase the ache he’d felt.
But, that was a long time ago. 12 years. Like, long enough that he should have had some measure of distance from the whole thing, if only because he didn’t even have that many clear memories of Miklan, that was how young he’d been. Sure, he’d never really talked to anyone about it or done anything to really try to heal and move on, but hey, he was from Faerghus, where the cool thing to do was just sort of stew in your own trauma until you snapped, right?
It was what all of his friends did, anyway. And Sylvain hated to be left out.
It was two days before Felix spoke to him again.
It wasn’t like they didn’t see each other. They didn’t stop going to class. It wasn’t some big, dramatic fight. Ingrid shot him a few dirty looks out of the corner of her eye whenever she saw him and Felix sitting an entire room apart from each other, not speaking, but he was sure Felix was getting the same treatment since it wasn’t like Ingrid would have any idea what they were fighting about. (No way Felix would tell her something like that. Sylvain was clueless, he wasn’t dumb.)
Just, one day they weren’t talking. Then, the next day, they were.
Problem solved, right?
“Did you finally manage to get some sleep? You don’t look quite as useless as you did.”
“A little,” he answered honestly, since he had actually managed to get some shut-eye. He was pretty sure it had more to do with finally being too exhausted to avoid sleeping any longer than because he’d actually dealt with any of the shit that had caused him to lose sleep in the first place.
It had always passed before. It would pass again. Miklan’s birthday would come and go and he’d be left with an ache that he ended up forgetting the reason for, hopefully sooner rather than later, and everything could go back to normal. Maybe next year he could go back to not having to deal with it at all; it had been years, after all…
“Good. You can train with me, then, and make it up to me for that pathetic display last time.”
Sylvain groaned, but since it was the closest thing he was going to get to both an apology and forgiveness from Felix, he wasn’t about to turn it down.
“Fine, fine. But after that, we’re going out for dinner, alright?”
Sylvain knew Felix felt bad when he didn’t argue with that, just grumbled and accepted it in silence.
“I thought we were going to dinner. This is not dinner.”
Sylvain ignored the way Felix was impatiently tapping his foot behind him, humming to himself as he perused the offerings of the merchants. He gave Anna a wink as he perused the various baubles she had on display, debating whether any of them would make good gifts for any potential dates. He’d been slacking on that front, considering he’d been too tired to even think straight, never mind try to keep up on his flirting.
He was pretty tired now, too, considering he’d still only gotten the bare minimum amount of sleep to keep himself going and had spent over an hour getting knocked around the training arena by Felix, but he had a weird amount of energy he didn’t want to waste. He just hoped it wasn’t his body’s last hurrah before giving out on him entirely.
“We’ll go in a minute,” Sylvain said, trying to placate, probably doing anything but, but not really caring. “Hey, Felix, what do you think of this one? Think any of the girls would like it?”
He held up a necklace for inspection that he had barely taken a second glance at, but Felix on the other hand didn’t even bother to look at it at all.
“If all you’re going to do is stand around buying presents for girls you’re just going to dump in a week anyway, I’m leaving.”
Felix turned to walk away, and Sylvain practically sprang forward to grab him by the elbow and keep him from walking off.
“Aw, c’mon, Fe,” he said, releasing Felix’s elbow as soon as Felix made to elbow him in the ribs with it. Felix didn’t like feeling trapped, and Sylvain wasn’t gonna keep him if he really wanted to go, but.
But.
Felix also didn’t like to be guilt-tripped, but it was less likely to get him punched, so he said, “I trained with you, you have to keep up your end of the bargain.”
“There was never a bargain, Sylvain,” Felix said, glaring at him, but there wasn’t any real heat or ice or venom in it, and he went along when Sylvain pulled at his elbow again. “And I certainly never agreed to wander around looking for presents that are just going to sit and collect dust in your room. The only reason I’m even going to dinner with you is because I’m hungry and you’re paying.”
Sylvain doesn’t actually remember saying he was going to pay, but hey, the fact that Felix kept his training to only just over an hour so they would still have time to head out and get back before curfew (not that Sylvain was worried about that, not that Sylvain had ever worried about that) meant he should probably just be grateful, shut up, and shell out.
“It’s market day, Felix, let’s just take a quick look around, huh? Not much longer, I promise.”
He tugged him away from Anna’s stall and towards the blacksmith, figuring that at least looking at weapons would be more interesting to Felix, and he could probably stand to pick up a few things if he really was going to be taking his certification exam soon…
Felix did perk up a bit more when he had an entire table of sharp things laid out in front of him, so Sylvain took that as a win. He was going to drift over to the lances, honest, but he stuck by Felix just a moment longer to see if his eyes happened to linger on anything— gift ideas were hard to come by for your friend who really didn’t care about anything but swords when that was a topic you weren’t really familiar with… And he wouldn’t say it out loud, but after spending an entire day without Felix so much as looking in his direction and having to studiously ignore his own feelings, it was nice to just spend time like this, really made him feel like things were getting back to normal—
“Look, they have some right here. Just buy something to replace that rusty old piece of garbage already.”
“I can’t just buy a sword, it has to be the right sword. Honestly, it’s like you don’t even know me.”
It wasn’t that odd for Sylvain not to recognize someone’s voice. He didn’t always pay attention to details like that, there were plenty of knights and staff that he’d only ever seen in passing and probably a bunch he’d never seen at all, let alone heard, and on market days it wasn’t uncommon for people to filter up from the surrounding town to poke around, since all the best merchants knew to go to where the rich nobles’ kids flocked.
Something about that voice, about those voices, though— a dozen comments and conversations just like that one went in one ear and out the other around him, but those voices made him pause, made him look up from the sword Felix was scrutinizing so closely he wasn’t sure he’d even heard them…
And he froze.
He didn’t say anything. Not a word, not a noise, as he felt all of the blood drain out of him. As he felt his mouth go dry and his throat constrict. As he felt time slow down around him, as the sources of the voices stopped perusing the blacksmith’s wares and took notice of him now that he was staring at them wide-eyed instead of being hunched over Felix’s shoulder looking at swords. He barely had enough presence of mind to grab for Felix’s arm, too tight, making Felix tense up under his touch and start to say something before he cut himself off with a choked noise.
Later, he would assume they all looked pretty hysterical; four men standing there gaping at each other with eyes the size of dinner plates. In the moment, though? He was sure he would have stayed frozen there forever if one of them hadn’t stepped forward, stepping around his companion, hand outstretched like he was reaching for a skittish animal, and voice cracking as he said,
“Hey, Sylvie. Long— Long time no see, huh?”