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‘Dear Sylvain,
I write to you to ask for a small favour. I know you are close with my child, and this is why I ask this of you - this letter is an act of trust, and I request you take it seriously.
As of late, I have had many conversations with my child that I can only understand as strange and completely out of the ordinary, considering past behaviour and words we have shared. However, I believe these issues may be ones you can sympathise with, and I hope you will permit a short visit for the sake of putting my uneasy mind at rest.
I hope you understand my meaning and will be able to help during these difficult times.
Ever grateful,
Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius.’
The letter was brief for one from Rodrigue, and sparse on any specific details. It was also sparse on the one thing Sylvain really needed to know: the exact problem he was facing. He couldn’t fix something he didn’t understand.
That said...there was something about the phrasing that gave him at least a couple of hints. Given that Rodrigue asked him and not Dimitri for help with this (because Goddess knew the person involved always wanted to see Dimitri, even these days), and the careful detachment in the letter’s words-
Well, Sylvain could take a guess. He wasn’t surprised, anyway; this had been coming for a long time.
It was raining when his guest arrived. There was no real fanfare, just a short announcement from a soggy guard that had Sylvain rushing out in greeting.
His friend dismounted with a heavy plop of boots hitting the ground. “Well met!” Sylvain called, dispensing with the name he could guess wouldn’t be all that welcome. “Did you have a good journey?”
“What does it look like?” came the snappy reply. A frown. A tug at skirts, now spattered with mud. A quick pull at blue hair, tied up off the face in a way that only half disguised how choppy and uneven it was. Someone had taken a knife to it, perhaps.
Sylvain rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, okay,” he said, offering up a small apologetic smile. “You’re right. Sorry.” He went over to the other side of the disgruntled, exhausted horse and handed the reins over to one of the guards, gesturing towards the stables.
“Can we just get inside?” Again with the tetchy tone. Sylvain was starting to get a picture of why Rodrigue so desperately wanted him to help. The tension was slightly exhausting already, and he didn’t have to live with this all hours of the day.
“Of course,” he replied, trying to gesture graciously towards the doors. His friend practically stomped past, feet sticking in the mud all the way. “We’ll get you warm and dry, don’t worry.”
Inside, Sylvain was dying to actually address the issue, but he knew he had to approach it carefully. It wasn’t- it wasn’t easy to talk about. He knew that as well as anyone else, perhaps better, though he liked to think that talking about it with him would be better than with someone like Rodrigue.
Instead of speaking up immediately, he led his friend through hallways and up sets of stairs until they both reached his bedroom. Away from prying ears and far away from anyone who could say the wrong thing.
Other than Sylvain, who could definitely say the wrong thing, but desperately hoped he wouldn’t. He didn’t want to let anyone down here.
“So,” he said, once he’d lit a fire in the grate and ambled back towards the sofa. Opposite him, his friend’s posture was no more relaxed than it had been when they were both out in the rain. Tense, closed up, and definitely not ready to talk. But this couldn’t really wait - not when it was so obviously causing so much pain.
“So?” A guarded tone. This was going to be difficult.
“You’re upset,” Sylvain said. A scoff. “And uncomfortable. You can spill, whatever it is. I won’t judge.”
“I’m uncomfortable because I want to be alone.” Bullshit. The person he knew never wanted to be alone, and Sylvain had learned plenty enough about the self-isolating tactics of his friends in the past year. Maybe too much.
He hadn’t let Ingrid hide herself away, and he wouldn’t let this friend do it either. So he was going to do something, even if it wasn’t what was wanted in the short term. “I’m not going to leave you alone until you tell me what’s up,” he said. He tried to put as much insistence into his tone as possible, hoping it would just get through.
Another uncomfortable gesture. This time, shifting on the seat beneath, smoothing hands over dirt-encrusted skirts, pulling them away like they’d been burned. Finally, an open mouth and small words that tumbled out as more of an exhale than a sentence. “You know the feeling when everything is wrong?”
Sylvain nodded, hoping he seemed encouraging. “Well, that. But everything. My clothes, and my voice and name, and- I’m not- I don’t know how to tell anyone, because I can’t just say, and Glenn, and- I can’t do it.”
Sylvain hummed, hoping that he didn’t need to understand exactly what his friend was aiming for there. He honestly hadn’t understood even half of it, but he could work on what he did. “Do you want me to ask you, so you can take a shot at answering?”
A closed off, guarded movement. Slightly curled inwards, hunched over, hiding things that didn’t need to be hidden anymore. Not here, anyway. “Okay.” Everything about that word felt small, afraid.
Sylvain remembered being there. “Are you a man?” he asked.
“...Yes.” His voice shook as he replied.
“Sure. What do you want to be called?”
No hesitation. “Felix.”
“Okay.”
And that was that. Felix sat, still curled in on himself, and let out a long, shaky exhale. He didn’t cry, but he did shake. He shook like a leaf, clinging onto one edge of the sofa, trying and failing to steady his breathing.
It looked wrong to Sylvain, to see Felix not cry and yet be so completely...not collected at the same time. But this was a new Felix, a Felix with a dead brother and a best friend who’d nearly died, and he didn’t cry. Not anymore.
The old Felix liked it when Sylvain took him into his arms and held him while he cried, but in the face of all of this Sylvain didn’t know what to do. So he sat and waited for Felix to calm down. When he’d stopped shaking, he still seemed out of breath, and there was a scattered, lost look to his expression.
Sylvain, as always, was going to have to take charge to make others happy. So he did. “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to do something about this.”
Felix looked up at him with so much hope in his eyes, so much light, that Sylvain almost wanted to cry. But he’d learned long ago from his father and brother that Gautier men didn’t do that, so he settled for a crooked smile and stood from his seat.
It was almost completely dark in his room, and any remaining daylight was long gone, but Sylvain could make do. He made his way over to the desk and fetched a couple of candles, a chair, and a pair of scissors. “Come on,” he said, tapping the chair with one hand.
Felix stared at him, but stood stiffly and moved to the chair. Sylvain balanced the candles on the various surfaces around him and leant down to get to work. It was tricky, and not made any easier by how dark and thick Felix’s hair was (or how badly he’d cut it before), but when he was done it was...something. Shorter, for sure.
“Sorry about how it looks,” Sylvain said with a shrug. “I haven’t cut hair before.”
Felix shook his head firmly. “I like it,” he said, though he hadn’t even seen it. He kept running his fingers along the back of his neck, ruffling the short, jagged ends of hair there.
“Good,” Sylvain replied. “We’re nearly done, and then I’ll let you go to bed.” With that, he crossed the room to his wardrobe. There were definitely things in here he didn’t need, and he knew Felix must get no joy from the heavy skirts needed to withstand the cold of Gautier.
“There you go,” Sylvain said, pulling out articles of clothing half at random. It was a little too dark to see, but he tried to go for the ones that looked smaller. Felix was- well, at this point, it looked like he wouldn’t grow much more, and he was shorter than Sylvain. He wouldn’t want the big coats.
When he’d picked up a few items, he dumped them almost unceremoniously into Felix’s waiting arms. Felix looked at them with wide eyes filled with something akin to wonder.
“Thank you,” Felix said, and just before he turned down the corridor, Sylvain caught sight of a smile forming on his face. It was good to see.
The next day, Felix came down to breakfast in a set of Sylvain’s clothes. The trousers were rolled up at the bottom, the belt around his waist was tight, and the sleeves slipped past his fingertips, but he looked...comfortable. Happy, even.
“You up for talking about this again?” Sylvain asked, gesturing towards Felix’s clothes. Felix swallowed but then nodded.
“If we have to,” he said. “I guess it’s- important to talk about it.” He looked down. “What it means.”
Sylvain nodded. It was damn important. They finished their food in silence before making their exit, Sylvain only telling Felix to ignore the servants who were definitely looking at them both. Of course, they knew that the Fraldarius child was visiting. They just didn’t know the truth.
They went out into the grounds, wandering until they found a spot that wasn’t covered in frost and was far away from listening ears. “So, shoot,” Sylvain said. “What do you think we need to talk about?”
Felix frowned a little, his brow furrowing as he thought. “I don’t really know where to go from here,” he admitted. Over and over, he twisted his fingers in his lap; he was nervous.
“Well, you need to tell your father,” Sylvain said. Felix tensed. Sylvain wasn’t sure what had happened between the pair of them, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. It would make all of this a lot harder, except… “I think he knew. He asked me to lend a hand.”
“I know,” Felix grumbled. “But it’s… I mean, I know plenty about what being a man is. But I’m still- I don’t have any other siblings. I’m the heir, and that means-”
“Don’t think about it,” Sylvain said firmly. He wanted to believe that Felix could have something better on that front than he could. “I’m sure your father will understand why you might not want to think or talk about that side of things. We don’t all have to do exactly what some members of the nobility would demand.”
“It doesn’t do anything about the truth,” Felix said with a shrug. “People will want me to marry, just as they always have.”
“Not everyone marries,” Sylvain shot back. He himself would, one day. That was an inevitability. “Some people have to, sure, but others…”
“Maybe we should get married,” Felix said. There was the tiniest of smiles on his face, one that looked almost sly.
Sylvain couldn’t help but splutter. Now this was a far cry from the slightly timid, reserved Felix from the day before. His words could even be described as flirting, and that was- okay, Sylvain genuinely didn’t think he could process that one. He’d never seen Felix flirt with anyone, not even once.
Once he’d recovered, redirecting his gaze back to Felix’s still so mischievous eyes, he managed a light chuckle. The fake, practised one that Felix still hadn’t learned was fake. Sylvain hoped he never would. “You know me, Felix,” he said. He tried not to hate the slight patronising note he slipped into his tone. “I just like the ladies. And you’re not one.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Felix grumbled. Sylvain wasn’t clear what it did mean, but whatever it could be it wasn’t good. Wasn’t something either of them should be thinking about.
Despite that, he looked almost pleased. Sylvain knew the feeling; there was something that overrode everything else when someone actually acknowledged that thing that had previously been buried so deep inside.
It was a good feeling, to see that thing he’d felt so many times reflected on Felix’s face. To be the one who caused that feeling, even. Sylvain leaned over and ruffled Felix’s now much shorter hair (and Goddess, it looked even worse in daylight but it didn’t even matter). “I can say that as many times as you need. Felix.”
Felix’s smile could have outshone the sun in that moment. Sylvain almost wished he could go back to a time when everything was simple enough that the sound of his own name could cause so much joy.
“You know what?” Sylvain asked, staring up at the tent’s low ceiling. He heard Felix shift next to him, bringing his head to rest in the crook of Sylvain’s neck.
“What?” Felix asked.
“Maybe we should get married. When this is all over.”
Felix was quiet for a moment. For a second, Sylvain thought he’d done the wrong thing, but then he felt more than heard Felix’s soft huff of amusement. “Took you long enough.”
“Is that a yes?”
Felix nestled in closer. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”