Work Text:
When Felix sits himself down on the workbench in the garage where Sylvain is shoulders-deep in the Jaguar’s guts, it’s with slightly malicious intent. Things with Sylvain have gotten complicated lately. No, that’s not it, exactly — things with him with regard Sylvain have gotten complicated lately. Sylvain seems blissfully oblivious. In fairness to him, which Felix is somewhat loathe to extend, he has been distracted.
“Everything is ready, I think,” he calls, propping himself up against the segment of the wall of tools behind him with the fewest pointy objects dangling from it. “All the arrangements have been made.”
The date. Tonight. With Dorothea Arnault. This is essentially the root of the complication, because Felix has been Sylvain’s friend for a long time and seen him through a lot of things, but a romantic entanglement hasn’t been one to this point. And now that it’s come up Felix has had a significant self-reckoning over his own feelings. They’re there, unfortunately, and they’re for Sylvain, and they’re strong enough to convince him to help the fool set up this ridiculously elaborate date-cum-grand gesture of rebellion against the father breathing down Sylvain’s neck. Felix is nothing if not selfless, he tells himself.
Almost.
“Yep!” Sylvain calls cheerfully. He’s always so cheerful. It makes Felix sick, or it makes him weak, which is the same thing.
“Do you know what you’re going to say?” Felix asks, fruitlessly.
Sylvain chuckles, poking his head out around the chassis. “Fe,” he says, like he’s trying to make Felix feel things for him, “I’m just gonna say whatever I feel like she wants to hear.”
Felix frowns. “You don’t want to practice? You’re always saying stupid things.”
“Come on,” Sylvain argues, “then it’s all gonna sound fake. My main appeal is always sounding genuine. I’ll play it by ear.”
“Fine,” Felix acquiesces. This doesn’t bother him. The words aren’t the part he was looking forward to rehearsing anyway. Sylvain puts down the wrench, wiping grease from his hands. The tendons stand out against the residue that remains, the muscles in Sylvain’s forearms flex below the rolled up sleeves of his mechanic’s jumper, and Felix’s mouth waters. “There’s just one more thing.” Sylvain furrows his brow, drops the oily rag onto the stand next to him. “Don’t laugh,” Felix cautions, with as much chance of working as asking the sun to rise in the west. “What will you do if she wants to kiss you?”
As predicted, Sylvain laughs. It’s sweet like honey, warm like caramel, he’s like a human ice cream sundae in summer heat. “I mean,” he says, when his breath is back, “I think I’ll just do what I always do. I’ll kiss her.”
This is the part Felix had thought might be the most difficult, but he’s practiced his argument in his head ten times since he followed Sylvain into the garage. “You won’t be able to coast,” he says, crossing his arms. “You have experience, yes, but Dorothea Arnault is no blushing country girl ready to be swept off her feet by lacking technique. You’re sloppy.”
“Damn,” Sylvain replies, just a little terse, not enough to warrant adjusting the course of the conversation. “I think I can figure it out, Felix.”
“Confidence is fine within reason,” Felix says, lifting his chin a little. “I just think you need to consider whether it’s enough.”
Sylvain’s frown turns serious, worried. The malicious intent is back in Felix’s ear, crowing over it. Sylvain is listening. He’s getting to him. “I mean… do you really think I can’t deliver?”
“If you say you can, I’m sure you can,” Felix replies airily. He’s actually sure Sylvain can. Sylvain has a very respectable body count. However, Felix is only leaning a little too hard into a core truth — none of the people Sylvain has been with have the kind of experience and expectations that Dorothea does. Felix only hopes Sylvain’s creeping self-doubt could rear its ugly head, just a little.
“She is Dorothea,” Sylvain says doubtfully.
“Like I said, if you’re sure you’ll deliver then you will,” Felix repeats. “I thought I might offer to practice with you, but if you’re ready, then…”
Sylvain’s eyes shoot to meet his, looking up from where he’d been watching his hands rub over each other. Felix may be deluded in his own feelings, he accepts it’s a possibility, but he thinks there may be curiosity in his gaze, reflecting the afternoon sunshine right back at Felix. “Work on it?” he repeats. He hasn’t completely discounted the idea. Felix considers it a win.
“I am also unique,” Felix says, a small gamble on the depth of their friendship. “I’d be the first person you’ve kissed that you want to see ever again.”
“Hey!” Sylvain chuckles, but he’s already out from under the car, moving toward Felix hesitantly, like he might change his mind and run away. He’s so tall. Fuck.
“Pretend I’m Dorothea for a minute,” Felix says, boldly, reaching behind his head for the hair tie holding up his ponytail. Might as well make it marginally more realistic, that and the fact that the thought of Sylvain’s hands in his hair is making Felix’s head spin, but Sylvain doesn’t really need to know that. They may not even get there.
“I’d rather—” Sylvain starts, but it cuts off when Felix shakes out his hair, running his fingers through it over his scalp, as if he has any chance of making it look like Dorothea’s chestnut waves. He’s quite a bit different, the results of a spiky black chop he’d given himself in the mirror of the bathroom after his most recent run-in with his father falling pathetically to his shoulders, but Sylvain just looks at him with his mouth open.
“It’s a stretch, I know,” Felix huffs. “Where do you put your hands?”
Sylvain recovers from whatever had come over him, and he takes another step closer, slotting himself between Felix’s knees where they’re spread over the workbench, and Felix has to hold in a gasp. It mostly works, he thinks, which is good practice for when Sylvain reaches those stained hands out, settling them over Felix’s hips, pulling him forward just a touch. “This works for me, usually,” he says. His voice has a hint of gravel in it, which is doing absolutely nothing for Felix’s rapidly disintegrating altruism and absolutely everything for the pounding of his pulse at every point.
“Okay,” Felix says, shifting just to feel Sylvain’s fingers tighten and loosen against him with the movement. “That’s fine.” Sylvain looks at him, one brow raised, and Felix rolls his eyes. “Don’t make it weird.”
“It’s not weird,” Sylvain agrees. Another step brings them almost flush against each other, and Felix finds his bravery fading just a little, burning up in the heat coiling right below his stomach.
“Fine.” He settles himself against the bench again, lifting his chin again. “Look me in the eyes.”
“You think Dorothea is gonna boss me around like this?” Sylvain asks, and Felix frowns.
“I don’t have to do this,” he reminds Sylvain, as if Sylvain needed anything even remotely like this, but he looks properly cowed.
“Sorry, Fe,” he says, and then Felix regrets pushing him on it a bit because when he does meet his gaze it’s worse than searing, it’s soft and open, nothing to hide. “I’ll be good.”
Felix clears his throat. “Good,” he manages to croak, leaning forward, draping his arms over Sylvain’s shoulders so he can lace his fingers at the nape of his neck. His skin is warm, damp from the torque under the car, the ends of his hair are soft. “Dorothea will probably be all over you. Pretend that’s me.”
Sylvain chuckles, soft again. He’s still looking right at Felix. “You know a lot about it, huh?” he asks, and Felix rolls his eyes.
He can feel the blood thumping in his carotid artery. They’re so close. “You can stop looking at me now,” he snaps. “Close your eyes.”
Sylvain is surprisingly obedient in spite of the fact that this all has to be as natural to him as breathing, letting his lids fall, letting his eyelashes sweep down over his freckled cheek. It’s like he’s made to be admired, and Felix does not find him wanting. “How’s this?” Sylvain murmurs. They’re so close now that Felix can feel the movement of his lips in the air near his mouth, can see the sheen on his tongue in his mouth when it opens.
“Good,” Felix says, but it comes out more like a breath, a breath he knows hits Sylvain’s lips before he pulls him down, fits their mouths together.
Felix had expected it might be like a lightning strike, but it’s more like lighting a match and tossing it into kindling. For a second, nothing happens, it’s just him and his best friend and the garage and their lips pressed together. Then the first flame flickers up, and Sylvain tilts his head just a little, just enough to slot against Felix a little more naturally, and it feels like a fire spreading from his mouth and his hands all throughout his body. Sylvain’s hands grip his hips, tugging him closer, pressing them together and Felix can’t help but reciprocate, hooking one booted ankle around Sylvain’s waist and pressing down.
It’s like his brain shuts off, letting each of his body parts do what they please, one hand weaving into Sylvain’s hair, his mouth opening against his, letting Sylvain’s tongue slip between his lips, chasing that heat like it’s the middle of winter.
It’s too good. It’s too much. Sylvain is more than prepared to lay the kiss of a lifetime on Dorothea. Any longer and he’s going to wonder what the hell Felix’s angle is, and with that thought Felix puts the palm at Sylvain’s broad chest to good use, pushing him back, sending him stumbling, eyes flashing open. Felix drags the back of one hand across his mouth, panting, willing his eyes to clear the haze he can feel in them, the embers smoldering inside him during all this stupid planning fanned to life at long last.
Sylvain looks stunned. Felix isn’t sure what that’s supposed to mean, isn’t sure he has the strength to figure it out or deal with the results of trying. “Okay, fine,” he says instead, shakily.
It’s embarrassing until Sylvain asks, “What?” just as unsteadily.
Felix can feel his face heating up, so he hops off the workbench, whirling to pick his bag up from the floor. “I think you’ll manage.”
“Fe,” Sylvain says, voice sounding just slightly tender, and it’s like the gust from a bellows on those cinders inside Felix. He snaps his head up to look at Sylvain. “You’re blushing.”
“Fuck you,” he spits, not nearly enough acidity in his voice.
“No, it’s nice.” He’s reassuring. “You look nice.”
“If this is how you repay a favor,” Felix spits, insulted at the betrayal under his own skin, the flush he can feel deepening across his cheeks, “I don’t know if I’m rich enough to be your friend.”
“I mean it! No kidding,” Sylvain says. His smile is a little dazed. It’s another piece of the puzzle Felix isn’t ready to parse out from where he’s been backpedaling out of the garage. “It makes you look sweet.”
Felix whirls around, stomping past the old BMW in the lot outside, throwing his hands in the air. It’s easier than facing Sylvain again, easier than reminding himself of all the things he’s been trying futilely to stamp down while he tries to get Sylvain what he thinks will make him happy. It’s far easier than acknowledging for more than a second that they’d both seemed to be enjoying the kiss, that Sylvain had pulled him closer, that Sylvain had gasped into his open mouth as they parted.
“See you tonight?” Sylvain calls. Felix flips him off, still unable or unwilling to turn around, to maybe meet his eyes, to be forced to remember everything. Wherever Dorothea is, Felix hopes she’s ready for one hell of a date.