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The worst thing is, Sylvain ponders, it’s once again probably his fault.
The searing glow of the Sword of the Creator rends through the air and the chest of the Empire general, a whip of copper thunder dusting the wind with blood and guts and bitter victory. They’d been one of the last remaining Adrestian forces in this part of Faerghus, a final fortress wall before they march on Fhirdiad, torn down to mangled pieces by hero relics and implacable will. Sylvain thinks it too easy, to get used to the grisly sight of crushed armors and tattered capes and broken bones; it’s us or them, he tells himself as another doomed soldier runs stomach first into the Lance of Ruin pulsing in his hand, my friends or them, Dimitri or them — Felix or them, his traitorous mind whispers, too soft with affection for whatever they are now, and so he shushes it with another call of Bolganone, smells singed skin in the breeze and feels the burning touch of his dark armor reflecting the unforgiving noontime sun.
“Felix, be careful!” He hears Ingrid yell from overhead, and his gaze finds Felix almost on instinct.
There’s a cart of wooden barrels plummeting down the hill and headed straight towards Felix and his battalion. His heels dig into the sides of his mare, kick her into action, reins beating over her neck as he rushes to reach them — Felix slashes through another soldier, swift and precise, but he’s losing time, the battalion trying to shoot arrows at the cart as though three sticks are going to do anything against the containers of explosive powder — because that’s what it is, Sylvain’s sure of it, and the wooden wheels of the cart pound erratically against the bloodied grass as it barrels towards Felix, closer and closer and closer — Felix’s eyes find Sylvain’s like an unvoiced call for help, and when Felix shouts Sylvain’s name Sylvain raises his hand and makes the wind burn to ashes.
Sylvain thinks making the barrels explode before they can reach Felix will save them; the wheels crumble to dust and part of the cart catches on fire, and Felix’s whole battalion rolls to the ground to weather the last stand of their enemies, but—
Silence. Deafening silence where blasts and fire and screams should have been, and Sylvain doesn’t know if he ought to be relieved or scared.
Felix and his battalion rise slowly, completely unharmed save for the numerous shallow cuts and dents in their armors they’ve lost count of since the fighting began. Ingrid tells them all to stay away, just in case — there’s fine, chiffon-white dust spilling over the grass where the barrels have been broken, and Sylvain barely has the time to think it’s been windy today when a strong southerly blows Ashe’s warning and Annette’s cry and the powder right to Felix and his soldiers.
The deathly quiet on the battlefield is soon replaced by light coughing and sneezing as Sylvain gets closer; his legs swing down from his mare as he walks towards the group and sets the rest of the barrels and powder on fierce fire, the golden warmth of the flames illuminating Felix’s frame as he sneezes again — he sneezes just like the Garreg Mach cats, Sylvain thinks, small and cute and ready to tear your face to shreds if you ever mention it. It’s clear that Felix got the most of it: he was in the front, ever a shield to the hardened Fraldarius soldiers lending their strength to their young lord, guarding their liege as though Felix would ever need or admit to needing protection.
“Don’t worry, Sir,” one of the soldiers calls as he walks up to Sylvain, “there’s nothing to worry ab—”
The soldier crumples to the ground in a heap of shaking limbs.
Sylvain watches the rest of the Fraldarius battalion struggle to walk, their legs dragging through grass and bodies until they collapse under the weight of their armor and fall like shot-down wyverns, a cacophony of cushioned clangs filling the battlefield, muffled sounds of steel against steel when their strength fails them and their weapons drop. Even Felix, always so strong and resistant to any kind of fatigue — endurance trained through an ungodly, uncountable amount of hours — seems to sway on his own two feet like a masterless puppet, his steps an awkward waltz that reminds Sylvain of the clumsy dance they’d shared in the shade of the training grounds the night of the White Heron cup, until Sylvain walks up to him and he collapses against his chest.
“Felix,” Sylvain calls, ice freezing his vocal chords just this side of painful, “Felix, please, stay awake, what’s happening—”
Felix groans against the uncovered skin of Sylvain’s neck when his legs buckle under him. Shivers spill along Sylvain’s spine like hundreds of needles. “This is why,” Felix huffs, his words heavy with exhaustion, “I always tell everyone I— always work best alone, if I’d be— been alone, this wouldn’t— wouldn’t— wouldn’t have happen—”
The last word dissolves in a murmur fogging heat over Sylvain’s armor. Felix’s head rests against Sylvain’s heart, and there’s a strange kind of panicked peace filling up Sylvain’s lungs, the kind Felix must have felt when he’d breathed in what was probably poison, now that Sylvain thinks about it; it almost tastes like despair, and Sylvain wonders whether he can sip it right from Felix’s lips, whether he’ll have to hold their godforsaken promise right there and then — though he’s been ready for years —, whether he could kiss Felix’s death into himself like in the tragic romance novels Bernadetta used to write before Edelgard set her on fire on Gronder field.
The sharp edge of his gauntlet grazes Felix’s cheek and pushes back the stray strands of hair plastered to his face, gentle and tender as the shape of Felix’s name sighed in the space between them, and when Felix breathes deep and content Sylvain—
Sylvain realizes this is an expression he knows.
It’s worn down by tragedies, reshaped with the weight of years, but he’d recognize it through a thousand others, Felix’s knife-edged lines softened by sleep and blurred into benevolence. He remembers the maze of their entangled limbs as they napped together during childhood summers spent in Fraldarius Castle, the picture of Felix’s dream-lost face as clear in his mind as it was when Sylvain watched over him almost decades ago; he’d seen it another time, when Felix probably thought he wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t care if he did, that one time Felix had dozed off next to him during Authority class a little more than five years ago, the unfortunate consequence of another night spent driving wooden swords into straw enemies. Sylvain mimics his own, younger self, from all these lifetimes ago, in the way he tucks another loose lock behind Felix’s ear, and keeps the cute, sleepy sigh falling out of him into his heart like a secret.
The scrape of metal armor reaches them before he has the time to rise up; Dimitri runs to them, hair matted dark with grime and other unspeakable things, eyes blue as the skies above Garreg Mach. Dedue and their Professor are walking in his footsteps, more for his sake than Felix’s, Sylvain knows — Dedue probably still hasn’t forgiven Felix for his treatment of their childhood friend, and Goddess knows what Byleth’s thinking. Dimitri’s voice has the stony, asperous quality dread usually imparts into throats, Sylvain, what happened, is he oka— His Highness’ lips snap shut and his single eye opens wide when he looks down at Felix. Sylvain giggles, an airy, relieved thing, barely mocking; it’s clear Dimitri realizes as well, although it’s probably been even longer than Sylvain since the last time he’s seen Felix like this.
“Don’t worry,” Sylvain says as he looks to Dedue and the Professor, “he’s just sleeping. I think.” I know, he wants to correct.
Both Dedue and Byleth raise an eyebrow a millimeter higher in impassive tandem as Sylvain explains about the strange powder in the barrels he set on fire. “Is there any more in there?” Dedue asks, his gaze drifting towards their prince again as Dimitri unclasps his cape, his movements gentle and forgiving in a way they haven’t been in years when the heavy, warm fabric billows into the wind to cast a tentative shadow over Felix.
“I’m not sure, we probably should ch—” The syllable warps into a snort as Felix squirms further into Sylvain’s lap, against Sylvain’s chest, his unconscious legs kicking away at the cape Dimitri tries to wrap him in. There’s a noise of discomfort and discontent falling in rough, adorable mumbles out of his mouth, the unsubtle scrunch of his nose and eyebrows when Felix catches Dimitri’s smell in the air around him, and Sylvain pulls him closer against him, lets Felix’s forehead fall to the crook of his neck as he fails to repress the satisfied, almost cocky laugh uprooted from his lungs. The whole thing reminds Sylvain of one of the Monastery cats, one that took a month and biweekly meaty treats to let Sylvain carry him and heal the awful cuts around its toebeans with careful, Faith-infused touches of a finger. When he raises his head again, Sylvain finds Dimitri’s sad, sad eye. He knows their prince too well not to know what pictures flash through his mind, still lifes of better, sweeter, long gone days of winter suns and autumn thunders and innocence — of all the things he wished to say, of all the quips he wished to forget and bury six feet under with the rest of the ghosts guiding his every move.
“There’s some powder on their clothes,” Byleth says as they poke at one of the snoring Fraldarius soldiers, the tip of their boot turning him over this way and that like a children’s toy. “Sylvain, bring Felix to Mercedes. She may be able to help.”
Sylvain knows better than to question their Professor, now, but still takes his time rising up and trying out comfortable enough positions for both Felix and him, doing his best not to jostle Felix too much as he slips an arm under his legs; Felix’s head lolls against his chest as they meet Mercedes in the middle of the field, healing shallow cuts on Ingrid’s arms, and when her gaze finds his she smiles that knowing, knowing smile that tells Sylvain he’s lost whatever guessing game she’d decided they were playing.
“He’s sleeping,” Sylvain repeats, more for Ingrid than for anyone else, before he lays Felix back down on the ground. Ingrid reaches to lay the back of her hand over Felix’s forehead, but Felix rolls away and back towards Sylvain before she can even touch him, and the look she shoots Sylvain in response is half-part fond and half-part deadly.
Mercedes runs a soft finger over Felix’s coat and tunic, rubs whatever she finds there in-between her fingers, her face fashioned into confusion and deep thinking. “This seems like some sort of dust. I wonder if it has been enchanted, somehow? Though I can’t feel any remnants of magic…”
“It isn’t magic.” Dedue’s frame towers over them in an ever-growing shadow as he makes his way closer. “There was some left on the grass near the soldiers. It has the texture and color of pollen.”
Sylvain feels his face twisting into a frown. “Pollen? Is it even possible to get that much a quantity into barrels?”
Dedue’s face is as stoic as ever when he looks down at him, though Sylvain can decipher the slight way his mouth twists when they both spot the trail of drool trickling along Felix’s half-opened mouth right onto the grass underneath. “The plants that produce it have many a use, but they’re best known as medicinal herbs, and can be sold on larger scales to the right buyer.”
“Say, the Empress,” Ingrid says, finger over her chin.
Dedue nods. “They contain a powerful sleeping agent.”
“Oh, I know these!” Annette stands up from where she’s crouched next to Ingrid, looking like a tiny, fluffy bird as she dances towards Dedue. “I actually have some in my room! I blend them with my teas on the nights…”
White teeth come to bite at weather-worn lips, blue eyes meeting dull earth and melting into mud, and Sylvain doesn’t need Annette to finish her sentence to understand what she means — the nights that have become commonplace for them all, now, sleepless and nightmare-full.
“Dedue and I use them often,” Ashe mentions, all green-eyed innocence even as every head turns to him, as though he’s been here all along and hasn’t just slipped into the conversation from where he was picking loose arrows from scattered corpses all over the battlefield moments before. “We’d tried to make His Highness drink some back… then” — a vague wave of his hand says what no one wants to mention, now — “but he kept throwing our cups away, so I may have mentioned the herbs to the Professor and, you know, that if anyone were to inhale their pollen, even innocuously, like, for example, if someone were to blow some through a window…”
Sylvain’s classmates stare at him. Sylvain himself stares at him. Ashe stares back, unashamed. Dedue looks down at his hands. Felix snores.
“Anyway, His Highness has been sleeping better, recently,” Ashe finishes before anyone can accuse him of poisoning the future King of Faerghus, his nail picking in idle back-and-forth at the dried blood over an arrowhead.
The cough rattling out of Dedue’s lungs is as loud a dismissal as he would ever be willing to voice, Sylvain knows. “The Professor has instructed that we should camp for the rest of the day. Probably for the night, as well. Some of us are to carry Felix back, and the rest are instructed to help us and our soldiers with the battalion.”
“I will be checking on the soldiers,” Mercedes says as she rises, her compassionate smile curving in the exact way Sylvain has learnt it does when she spots an opening in the enemy’s defenses or an escape route from a grueling task. Her hand brushes over Dedue’s armor as she leads him away from their little group by the arm, still asking questions about the plant and its effects on Dimitri, but a yelp turns Sylvain’s attention back to the scene at hand: Ingrid is desperately trying to get her arms underneath Felix’s shoulders, his legs kicking at her shins and every centimeter of limb they find on their violent path. If her hair had been as long as in their Academy days, Felix would probably be pulling at it, too, unconsciously replicating scenes of their stupid childhood fights over who got to practice sword and lance stances with Glenn that day while Sylvain watched on with amused eyes and bruises of his own.
“Fine, fine!” Ingrid snaps, hands up in the air as though Felix could see her surrender. “Sylvain, you can keep him.”
“Why me?!” The exclamation is choked in the wrong way, the one that lets even someone as oblivious as Ingrid know of things she shouldn’t, and she when she raises an eyebrow and her mouth takes the shape of a rare, teasing smirk, Sylvain cuts off any sentence she’s about to say. “You know what— don’t bother answering that. You win.”
“I think I’ll go with her,” Ashe says from where he’s trying to wrestle Felix into settling down; unfortunately, Felix had been the one receiving grappling lessons from Byleth all these years ago, and Ashe remains unsuccessful, letting Felix bat his arms away before he leaves to join Ingrid where’s she’s already picking up soldiers and tossing them onto her pegasus.
Sylvain still remains a little surprised at the ease with which Felix lets his arm fall onto Sylvain’s shoulder, at the lack of resistance he shows to Sylvain sliding an arm around his waist to pull him onto his feet; Annette does the same on his other side, the height difference a little uncomfortable on Sylvain’s end but probably not as much as on hers, humming a soft song that makes Felix sigh in contentment as his head lolls into the crook of her shoulder—
“Ew, gross!” The freckles that dust Annette’s nose in sugar melt to indistinct caramel under her frown, blue eyes frosting over as she suddenly disentangles herself from Felix and leaves Sylvain stumbling back until Felix falls back against his chest. “God, there’s so much sweat and blood and— no, sorry Sylvain, can’t do this, good luck,” and Sylvain is left wondering whether there still is a trace of the fifteen-year-old girl who used to bury axes into mannequins underneath her Gremory gowns as she walks to Sylvain’s horse and leads her away and back to the remaining soldiers.
The whole way back to camp, Sylvain wills himself to ignore the warmth of Felix’s breath against his nape and the perfect fit of his frame against Sylvain’s back.
***
The fabric walls of the medical tent barely muffle the snores and noises of the Fraldarius soldiers when Sylvain finally reaches it. A living, breathing mountain of spare blankets and clothes makes its way along the beds until the top of it is uncovered enough for Sylvain to recognize Annette, who returns to Mercedes each time she’s empty-handed to be loaded up with another pile of fabric to strip away alongside the sleepers like a puppy would shed winter fur. There doesn’t seem to be any free bed; Byleth directs Sylvain to lay Felix right on the ground with an absentminded wave, evidently discussing the finer details of the strange condition with their resident healer, until the rest of their friends form a standing circle around Felix’s shape as though they’re about to carry out a summoning ritual, and Mercedes takes their Professor by the arm to lead them towards the rest of them.
“How much time do you think they’re going to remain like this?” Dimitri asks, his good eye flitting from Felix to the rest of the soldiers in a metronome.
A thoughtful hum leaves Mercedes’ lips, her hand coming to rest against her own cheek. “Hard to say; from what I know of this ailment, it could be anywhere from a dozen hours to an entire week.”
“An entire week?!”
“We won’t allow this.” Byleth’s face, as usual, betrays no emotion but firm determination, their cold, uncompromising gaze staring each of them right into the face before looking down at Felix, too. “We’ll get back to the Monastery tomorrow, or we’re at risk of an ambush by the Empire forces.”
“You think they were playing the long game?” Sylvain asks. A lock of Felix’s hair waxes and wanes along his breaths like an obsidian sunray, and Sylvain crouches next to him to push it back, again, like it’s second nature, like it’s a sacrament. “That they were planning to use it at the end because they knew we would camp and we’d be vulnerable?”
When he looks up, he finds Byleth watching him with curious eyes and a curiouser smile. “... We cannot overrule the possibility,” their teacher ends up saying after a few seconds. “The sooner we leave, the better, but we have to wait for at least some of our men to get better, especially if they end up developing other symptoms.”
“Are there any?”
“Not that I know of,” Mercedes answers with the voice she uses to reassure the orphans who wander to the Monastery gates. “Well, except…”
A shaky exhale leaves Felix’s lips; Sylvain’s gaze snaps to him and traces the shivers coursing in currents through his body, observes the way he’s curling in on himself like he’s six years old and having nightmares again, slides to the weak shake of his arms and fingers as he reaches for Sylvain and takes hold of his wrists to crawl closer — and Sylvain freezes.
His mind echoes that he should look up at the rest of his friends, that he should give them an explanation or a denial or a trademark, carefully-careless smirk. That he should hide— whatever this is, whatever they are. Instead, he stares down at Felix, his Felix, the Felix of his childhood and his present all at once, the Felix he’s learnt to know in the secret shade of the Garreg Mach gardens and the candlelight of his own dorm room, the Felix he doesn’t allow himself to desire, much less think about, especially in the presence of others. The soft, stuffed-cotton, suffocating sensation he’s taught himself into ignoring fills up his lungs again, creeping along his nerves as though trying to replace his bones with a more pliable version, and as he gathers Felix closer into his arms, he wonders what he’ll read on his friends’ faces, disconcert or disgust or dismay.
There’s no emotion of the sort into the lines of their expressions when he gazes up at them again — not even surprise, it seems: Ingrid is smirking as though she knows all of Sylvain’s secrets — and perhaps, perhaps she does — while everyone else coos about Felix’s unusual, childlike cuteness. Felix’s shivers recede when Sylvain hugs him tighter against him, runs his fingers along Felix’s back in an attempt to stave off the chill.
“Except this,” Mercedes finishes in a giggle. Her eyes crinkle at the edges like tiny stars, not unkindly. “They will probably feel very cold. I keep the tent warm with fire magic, but there are no more beds. I suggest you get Felix a heap of blankets. …Or a bedwarmer.” There’s that knowing smile on her face again, and if his friends happen to see Sylvain flush as he carries Felix off to the Gautier tent, he’ll ensure everyone dismisses it as exertion from Felix’s weight.
***
His tent flaps twirl and billow open along the breeze, and Sylvain spots the sundial Byleth drew on the ground showing a little past five.
He’s been instructed to write a report about the skirmish, sparing no detail, for Margrave Gautier to pore through and help devise a plan to rejoin their small army with his bigger one once they reach Fhirdiad. Sylvain wonders how he’s doing, back in their frigid home, wonders if he still has to fight back Empire-allied Srengi and siege on meager resources until the Lance of Ruin comes back with Sylvain and his crest conveniently attached to it. The quill he’s holding scratches an idle line over the greeting when some shuffling shape bumps into his arm.
It’s been… hard, trying to write the report for the past hour with Felix next to him.
He looks nothing short of adorable, buried into Sylvain’s bedroll underneath Sylvain’s spare evening jacket, the one Sylvain found fell a little too large on his shoulders when Sylvain had removed his dirty coat and traded it for the soft, clean satin of the garment; Felix had burrowed under the covers with his arm draped over Sylvain’s middle, barely letting go when Sylvain had gone to fetch quill and paper from Ashe’s tent, immediately rolling back against Sylvain’s side as soon as he was back again. Sylvain’s body temperature had always been higher than Felix, even when they’d been kids. It was probably pure instinct on Felix’s part to look for something warm in the depths of his sleep.
Sylvain’s fingers crumple another piece of paper to start up the report again, and when his hand errs astray, cards through Felix’s undone hair, long, charcoal lashes flutter open in struggle against the heaviness of somnolence. The rough groan that echoes through Felix’s ribcage ripples along Sylvain’s waist in tides when Sylvain tries to snatch his hand away, before Felix follows it until it rests on his crown.
Amusement and awe and adoration leave Sylvain’s breathless chest in a tiny exhale.
“Hey there, sweetheart.” Sylvain allows the word into existence, even when he knows it does nothing but make Felix blush and stomp away in the best of circumstances; he tells himself this is a mere test, a test to see if Felix is feeling any better — a test to check whether he can get away with letting his deeper affections known now that Felix keeps blinking in and out of consciousness.
Felix cannot stomp away, but he does not blush, either: he crawls closer instead, pulls Sylvain against him, breathes in deep through the linen of his shirt as he buries his head into Sylvain’s side. Sylvain wonders whether Felix can feel the war drum of his heart, trying to hammer his chest open like a battering ram.
“‘m hungry.”
The request is as demanding as it was when Felix was a spoiled little kid asking the kitchen maids for scraps before dinner, sharpened up by sleep, roughed down into baritone, and Sylvain now understands better why Felix’s cute whines charmed everyone into doing his bidding all these years ago. When he sighs and tries to get up, Felix’s arms try to hold him back, weak cat claws digging into shirts they’re unbothered to tear.
“You do know I have to leave for that, right?”
Sylvain can almost feel the way Felix’s face twists into a pout against his skin. “No.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“Promise?”
When Sylvain looks back at him, Felix’s gaze is unfocused, twin topaz with polished edges.
“Promise,” Sylvain answers. He always keeps his promises.
Sylvain reaches the campfire with the weight of Felix still curling around him like phantom pain; Annette is chatting animatedly with Ingrid and Dimitri while Dedue brews tea in a kettle over the firewood, songbird voice raising high into the trees and disturbing the leaves there along the unconscious, permanent wind magic surrounding her presence.
“What are you guys talking about?” Sylvain says as he leans to grab some fruit and bread into the basket at Dimitri’s feet, both for Felix and him.
Annette rises and grabs his arms as she looks up at him, frowning in adorable annoyance. “How no one ever told me Felix could look this cute! How come he’s never like this?”
“It’s true he used to be a sweet child,” Dimitri laughs as Dedue hands him a cup of chamomile, his gaze soft and open like it hasn’t been in years. “Always crying for either Glenn or Sylvain to carry him around when he didn’t want to walk.”
“Even back then,” Ingrid says through her own sip of tea, “he used to play all day long with us, but it was always with Sylvain that he wanted to nap.”
Sylvain doesn’t remember a lot from his childhood, locked away too many ugly memories into the fathoms of his own mind; the days they used to spend together, though, shine like a beacon through the haze still, candlelit canvases in gilded galleries — of idle days playfighting for the right to call oneself knight to Dimitri’s king, of soft evening reciting stories and tales in tree castles, of long nights sleeping and waking and sleeping again with all of them in the same room and Felix against him.
The nights he spends with Felix now are of a different kind, hum-short and honey-sweet and with no one but himself beneath the covers when it’s time to rest.
Annette’s cheeks puff as she blows over her cup. “It’s not fair that only Sylvain gets to keep him.”
Felix’s soft, sleepy features flash through his mind like a premonition, murmured words and Sylvain’s name falling out of his lips, and Sylvain thinks it is very fair.
“What can I say, it’s common knowledge that I’m irresistible,” Sylvain says with a wink. He doesn’t mean it, not really — never in Felix’s case.
“Sure.” Ingrid rolls her eyes in the same way Felix does when he’s slightly annoyed with him, but not bothered enough to storm out. “Go on then; go feed your boyfriend.”
Sylvain feels his cheeks flaring up like he’s a fucking teenager. At least he’ll be warm enough for Felix when he’ll be back. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Sorry, did I say boyfriend? I meant your awful pet cat.”
Said awful pet cat is curled in the approximation of a ball when Sylvain walks back into the tent powered on sheer embarrassment, drops the fruits and the bread next to the bedroll as Felix stretches and reaches for him, arms winding around his waist as he’s crouched and pulling him in until Sylvain almost falls right into Felix. Felix presses his chest against Sylvain’s back as they lie there, the weight and embrace of his body reminiscent of when Felix had snapped and pushed Sylvain’s whole body against a wall with his own the first time he’d kissed him; Sylvain can feel each of Felix’s eyelashes brushing against the crook of his neck, can decipher Felix’s lungs filling up with ghost sighs, wakeful and drifting, and lets his hands reach for Felix’s hair, scribble supine scratches along his scalp.
There’s a tentativeness to the teasing in his tone when he tells him “Aw, kitten, did you miss me?”
“Yeah.”
Felix’s reply is immediate and deep as an underwater exhale against his neck. Felix’s fingers thread under Sylvain’s shirt and snake up his chest to lie against his heart, listening to the beat echoing through his ribcage in waves, and Sylvain has the hopeless belief that perhaps, just perhaps, Felix is trying to make his own heart harmonize to the bass line of Sylvain’s existence.
“Your hands are cold.” They always are; Sylvain remembers the cool burn of fingertips and nails against his skin with icebound clarity, his nerves never letting him forget the secret touch of his—
Lovers? Was this what they were, now? Sylvain wouldn’t quite call it that way, even after a few months of concealed, feverish kisses and urgent fooling around, just another way to blow off some steam until it wasn’t — it never truly was, not for Sylvain, at least — and they’d found themselves sharing each other’s living space too many times to call it casual. Sylvain always let Felix initiate their encounters, at first, always left him a way out in case he felt like startling away, a stray cat feeding from still hands. And Felix never stays, not even if Sylvain wants him to — always leaves at the edge of dawn to train and train and train, even after Rodrigue died and they’d taken to share a bed at night to quieten the unvoiced tremors of Felix’s restless nights.
“It’s you who’s just so warm,” and Sylvain feels more than he hears the words, mouthed against his skin in not quite a kiss.
“Does it bother you?”
Felix digs his nails into Sylvain’s skin. Sylvain wonders if he wants to tear his heart out. “I like it.”
Sylvain’s fingers tangle deeper into Felix’s hair in an effort to bring him close, closer, closest, and Sylvain sips in the sigh that flutters into the minute space between them, and when he recognizes it as his own name — Syl, Felix calls him, like they’re ten and twelve again — Sylvain spins around to taste it from the source and kiss Felix to fainting.
***
“I can ride,” Felix says, and stumbles over flat ground as soon as he tries to pull himself up on his horse.
It doesn’t come as a surprise to any of them, Sylvain least of all — Sylvain, who counts the rare, precious occasions when he wakes before Felix and watches him dawn into consciousness on the fingers of his right hand, who’s watched Felix fail to awaken until eleven, half-blind and nodding back off into slumber until Byleth themself came to shake him into awareness, who knows how little of a morning person Felix is on days like this one, torpor-blurred like an out-of-focus backdrop in a painting.
“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep it off with your battalion?” Dimitri tries; he nods to the convoy in which they’ve loaded the Fraldarius soldiers, still deep under the pollen’s trance, probably sleeping soundly for the rest of the trip.
“I’m not sleepy,” Felix snaps as he tries and fails for the tenth time to climb on horseback.
Ingrid’s arms are crossed in front of her chest as she stares him down from her pegasus saddle. “The only thing you’ll manage is falling off your horse and smashing your head against the ground as you ride if you keep this up.” Sylvain hates that he has to agree with her, but the sand streams through the hourglass, and they’re still at risk of an ambush, and since desperate times call for desperate measures, he grabs Felix by the waist and throws him right onto the saddle.
“I’ll ride with you,” Sylvain says. It’s not a question, and Felix doesn’t seem to take it as one, his gaze unfocused as he rights himself up when Sylvain swings a leg behind him and climbs onto their horse. His arms frame Felix’s hips as he reaches for the reins, cage Felix in so that he falls nowhere but into him; Felix seems to fall back against Sylvain’s chest by instinct, his head resting against Sylvain’s shoulder as he struggles to keep his eyes open.
He sees Felix’s cheeks puff up from the corner of his eye. “Your armor’s cold.”
“Sorry, sweetheart.” He’s not truly sorry, but he still whispers the words like he is, makes them caress the side of Felix’s face in the mirage of a hand, of a kiss.
Felix merely hums his forgiveness as he lets his head fall further onto his shoulder, and when Sylvain kicks their horse into motion, he’s nodding off again.
The ride back to the Monastery is, fortunately, uneventful; there’s no Empire ambush waiting for them off-trail, no bandits looting the small villages they pass on the way, no forest beasts crawling into shadows when they cross the clearings. Sylvain is grateful — the emotional motion sickness he feels at having Felix this close to him, in broad daylight, is enough to keep him restless, his fingers tapping an odd rhythm along the reins as they ride. Sylvain had soon given up into having Felix ride the traditional way: his body kept sliding off to the side and away from the cage of Sylvain’s arms, his head falling over and forward at the slight imperfection on the path they rode, and Sylvain had ended up coaxing him into sliding his legs over to one side and resting his head against Sylvain’s chest and his back onto Sylvain’s arm. Sylvain has to live with the uncomfortable yearning twisting his guts into knots each time Felix blinks back awake and raises his head to look at him, gaze dazed and cheeks heat-bitten, has to deal with the knowledge that if Sylvain were to stare down at the wrong time, at the right time, their lips would brush. Their friends’ eyes are on them, too, not at all times, but just enough to be on the wrong side of unease — they are not lovers, they aren’t, if only for the sole reason that Sylvain knows Felix doesn’t feel this way towards him and probably never will, yet that truth cleaves at Sylvain’s soul like the cut of a thousand daggers.
Felix seems a little more awake when they reach Garreg Mach, but it’s a subtle amelioration, one that merely speaks of a few hours of rest at best; the rest of the battalion is still deep in stone-cold sleep, and Sylvain thinks it a testament to Felix’s willful, stubborn nature that he even manages to stay awake long enough to be half-lucid. Mercedes gallops ahead, probably to reach the library first and Manuela’s office second, words about finding a cure lost to the wind as her shape recedes. Ingrid’s pegasus flies overhead to herald their return, and as soon as the gates close behind their convoy and their horses come to a stop Felix slides off the horse, fluid as still water. It’s a miracle that he barely trips when his feet touch the gravel of the marketplace, Sylvain muses, looking how his condition seems to have remained the same; there’s a trickle of sweat behind his ear, and when Sylvain wipes it away with a nonchalant thumb as he climbs down their horse Felix shivers and stumbles back into him.
“Let’s get you to your room,” Sylvain whispers as the others help Dimitri and Byleth carry the soldiers to the infirmary, and shivers to the coldness of Felix’s fingers, tangling with his when Sylvain takes his hand to guide him back to the dorms. His feet lead them near the baths, and he looks at Felix’s sorry state, mussed-up hair and dust-cloaked hands and sweat-stained face, and when he pulls Felix through the doors and into vapor-warmth Felix does not put up even a pretense of resistance.
The bathhouse is silent and comfortable as Sylvain helps Felix undress. Felix’s eyelids keep fluttering close as Sylvain carefully removes his jacket and his shirt before folding them over a bench; his hands stutter through undoing the clasps on Sylvain’s armor and unlacing the ties of his undershirt when Sylvain gently pulls off Felix’s boots from his legs, one by one, and when Sylvain unbuttons Felix’s trousers Felix presses a chaste kiss to his forehead. Seconds fade into minutes and steam when Sylvain removes the rest of his clothes — it’s the first time he’s seen Felix fully naked, he realizes, when he finally follows him to the center of the room and into hot water, even as they’d kissed against each other and let their hands wander under each other’s clothes in the dark corners of the Monastery. Felix’s back settles like a cooling stone against Sylvain’s chest when he settles into Sylvain’s lap; his hand grabs for a bar of soap on the edge of the bathtub, and when he hands it to Sylvain as his hair flumes down to the water’s edge once he’s removed the tie, Sylvain cups water over it, watches scented droplets caress down Felix’s shoulderblades and the nape of his neck.
“Tell me if it hurts,” Sylvain whispers in fear of disturbing the religious quiet of the bathhouse and scaring Felix away. It feels more intimate than anything he’s ever told him.
Sylvain takes his time trying to decipher the emotion that percolates through him as he untangles Felix’s hair with soaped-up fingers. It’s a step away from the love he usually feels for Felix in such close proximity; it’s more akin to the warmth he’d once felt once that hurt, wet cat had trusted him with mending up its wounds some time ago, and Sylvain thinks the word wonder will suffice for now. Felix dozes off in his lap as Sylvain threads his fingers through his hair, relaxes against him until Sylvain can reach down to cup some more water and rinse the foam off into froth, grazes his finger against the one scar across Felix’s stomach — the last and only time he’d got to know Death from up close and Sylvain had made mincemeat of the Empire soldier who’d thought to touch him.
“Syl.”
“Sorry. Does it hurt?”
“I love you.”
The awful, awful relief of sorrow dyes the crushing elation in Sylvain’s heart.
Felix’s eyes are closed as his head rests against Sylvain’s shoulder, oblivious to everything, including the thunderstorm fighting its way out of Sylvain’s chest, Sylvain hopes. Felix looks content, and bliss-soft, and most importantly, slumbersome; Sylvain knows the pollen is still affecting him, knows he’s barely clearheaded, knows he probably doesn’t know or mean what he’s just said. Still, his arms tighten around Felix’s waist, his lips kiss unuttered possession along his shoulder and the smooth expanse of his neck. “Come on,” Sylvain strangles out, “let’s get you out of there, and I’ll go see if Mercedes has found a cure yet.”
Sylvain makes sure Felix is okay six times before leaving him to walk back to the dorms alone, but the thought of leading him back to his room after what he’s said leaves Sylvain short of breath in a way that compares to his current breathlessness as he runs through the Monastery — climbing the stairs two by two, running into the maids and staff strolling about, until he stumbles right into Mercedes as she exits the infirmary.
“Mercie—”
“I’ve got some good news, Sylvain,” she says; her hands reach for his out of instinct, smooth over the trembles of his back as he pants.
“Have you… found a cure?”
Mercedes sighs in time with the circles she draws between Sylvain’s shoulderblades. “Not yet, but at the very least, we won’t have to be worried about Felix’s state. He is most probably fine.”
That makes Sylvain pull himself up, makes him knife confusion into the frown of his eyebrows. “Fine? What do you mean?”
“I went to the library with Ashe, to research the properties of this plant. It’s very peculiar — the strength of the sleeping agent varies greatly, and barely affects Crest bearers, let alone Major Crest bearers.” Mercedes’ smile is sweet-and-sour with teasing. “The pollen should have left Felix’s system twenty-four hours at most after ingestion.”
Sylvain stares, nonplussed. “Then why is he still under the influence of the plant right now?”
Sylvain’s sentence makes Mercedes stifle laughter beneath a dainty hand. “I’ll let you in on a theory, Sylvain. Have you considered Felix was merely pretending to be ill so you would dote on him?”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Sylvain drags a hand over his face, resettles his still-humid hair into place. “So you’re telling me Felix’s full of shit?”
“This isn’t how I would phrase it, but—”
“That he was lucid the whole time?”
Mercedes giggles. “Maybe not the whole time; he truly was hit very hard, and the first few hours were probably rough. But this morning, until now… I wouldn’t be so sure.” Mercedes’ hand rests on the curve of his bicep, warm and kind as her face. “It is not my place to ask, but… Did something happen?”
Sylvain’s voice wavers in exhilaration. “You could say that.”
“Something good?”
“... Yeah.”
Mercedes’ smile is unreadable as she utters her next words. “Then what are you doing here and not by Felix’s side?”
Sylvain leaves Mercedes with a skip in his step and a kiss on her brow.
Felix is curled up in his bed when he opens the door to his room; Sylvain’s former academy jacket is draped across his shoulders as he’s buried into Sylvain’s covers, the ebbs and flows of his chest regular enough to let Sylvain believe he’s asleep until Sylvain bends over him and his gaze snaps to Sylvain, alert and awake and aware, and Sylvain kisses any sentence out of his perfect fucking mouth.
Sylvain unravels the seam of his lips like a slow dance, draws patterns of love along his cheek with a thumb until it reaches down to rest against the pulp and coax sighs from Felix’s throat. Felix nips at Sylvain’s lower lip, teeth pulling until Sylvain opens up for him, Sylvain savoring the unspoken flavor of all the truths he didn’t want to believe in right against Felix’s tongue, marking a pathway to the heavens alongside Felix’s neck until Felix shivers enough to curl back into the warmth of Sylvain’s chest. Felix’s arms reach up to cross behind Sylvain’s nape, fingers playing with Sylvain’s hair until Sylvain tilts Felix’s head up again — Felix’s own locks are in disarray across his face, and the useless puffs of breath he huffs to try and blow them away attract the bright, rolling thunder of Sylvain’s laughter inside his lungs.
Sylvain has since then mastered the art of pulling Felix’s hair back behind his ear. “Do you wanna cut your hair short?”
Felix’s answer is immediate. “No.”
“Good,” Sylvain exhales. “Long is the way I like your hair best.”
“Good,” Felix answers in kind. “It’s for you.”
“Yeah, I think I got that.”
Felix’s eyes burst like dying stars before he buries his face into Sylvain’s neck, winds his arms tighter around him so not even he can watch his expression.
“How long have you known?”
“That you were pretending? Mercie just told me.”
Sylvain shivers when Felix huffs into the crook of his shoulder. “Figures she would be the one who’d tell you. All of the others are too easily fooled, anyway.”
Sylvain’s fingers thread through Felix’s hair; it has dried, a little. “You know you only need to ask for me to take care of you, right?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
A hum buzzes along Sylvain’s vocal chords as he looks for his next sentence, as though he’s approaching a cat with careful, careful steps. “You? How long have you—” loved me, Sylvain wants to ask, and he’s grateful that Felix cuts him off, because the words get stuck in his throat, sap-thick.
“All this time. Always.” The deep breath Felix takes is very much awake. “Forever, if you’ll have me.”
Sylvain pulls back, just a little, just to let Felix see the way mirth colors his cheeks peach, the way it tends to do whenever Sylvain thinks about a lifetime with him, a billion lifetimes with him. “Forever seems like an awfully short time to show you exactly how much I love you.”
“Yeah?” Felix laughs, a tiny, raspy thing, the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. “Better start now, then, Gautier.”
Sylvain kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, until he kisses sleep right into them both.