Work Text:
Felix only recently started working at Blue Lion Enterprises. It’s been maybe a month or so, and it isn’t too bad. The workload is manageable, and the office atmosphere is pretty cozy without too formal of a dress code or huge cubicle walls separating the workers. Felix isn’t the most social person, but even he has to admire that this family-like atmosphere at work is really nice. Yet, sometimes, his coworkers can be a bit much.
And by that, he means one coworker specifically: Sylvain. Sylvain sits across from him and had been one of the first people to welcome him to the company, getting up and slapping him on the back with a cheeky smile. It was in that moment that Felix realized how much of a pain in the ass he was going to be, especially when Sylvain’s smile only grew at Felix’s scowl.
See, the thing is, Sylvain seems to enjoy Felix’s reactions to things.
Like when Felix complained about how noisy Sylvain is. Felix can always hear his voice, whether he’s chatting on the phone with a client or he’s slacking off in the break room and making conversation or if he’s just sitting there at his desk and humming to himself.
It drove Felix nuts, to the point where he finally snapped, not even a full week into his new job.
Felix had peeked over at Sylvain. “Hey.”
Sylvain hummed and peeked over, meeting Felix’s gaze. “Oh, hey, newbie. Got a question?”
Felix frowned a little at the ‘newbie’ thing but chose to address that another time. “Can you shut the fuck up over there? Some of us have work to be doing.”
Sylvain raised an eyebrow, but his lips were quirked up in a little smile nonetheless. “Sorry! I can’t tell how loud I am sometimes.” He waved at Felix and went back to work. The sound of him rapidly typing away at his computer was much more tolerable to his chatter because at least it meant he was getting things done.
Not even five minutes later, Sylvain had started squirming in his chair, letting out some of the shrillest, ugliest squeaks that Felix has ever heard.
Felix slammed his hand into the table. “Sylvain, what the hell?”
Sylvain had the audacity to laugh when Felix glared at him, a look so intense that Ashe, sitting beside them, felt the need to jump in.
“Okay, Sylvain, that’s enough, don’t you think? Let’s be nice to each other.” Ashe paused. “Let’s not be chair-ible to each other!” He’d laughed, but he stopped immediately when he realized that Felix had turned his glare from Sylvain to him.
And from then on, things have only gotten worse.
-
Felix finds a sticky note on the fridge, clearly written by Sylvain. It says, Imagine looking like this. Below the text, there is a poorly drawn picture of what looked to be Felix with the words ‘lol short’ right above it and a pair of devil horns on his head—or were they cat ears? Felix can’t tell. It’s too crudely drawn.
It’s around one in the afternoon. By this time, tons of people were bound to have seen it. How humiliating. How frustrating.
Felix grabs his own sticky note and sticks it on top of Sylvain’s note, replying: Aren’t you like 40? You write like you just learned how to hold a pencil.
The next day, another note is stacked on top of Felix’s.
I’m 28 :(, the note reads. You wish you looked this at age 40. There’s a heart scribbled next to the note, which Felix only rolls his eyes at.
28? You act half your age. Grow up. He slaps the note onto the fridge before opening it and grabbing his lunch.
The post-it note war doesn’t stop for about a week. The fridge becomes a colorful, all-out battlefield. Curses and insults and bad drawings overlap and cover practically all of the fridge door until the notes start to lose their stickiness and get too heavy, littering the floor with pinks and oranges and blues and yellows.
That weekend, they get an e-mail from their boss.
From: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd
Subject: Sticky-Note Feud
Good morning, Lions,
As of late, it seems that there has been a growing mess in the breakroom area, particularly near the refrigerator. Sticky notes are covering the refrigerator and the surrounding floor area, which inconveniences the custodial staff and may pose as a hazard to other Lions who may slip on the scraps of paper on the ground. We are able to see who the culprits of this sticky note mess are, but we will speak to them in private.
Resulting from that, I am now putting a light ban on sticky notes bearing personal attacks. Sticky notes written in such a manner are now no longer permitted in the breakroom.
Please feel free to leave notes on the refrigerator—such as advertisements, flyers, reminders, and other decorations—but do not use it as a space to air your grievances with one another. Please seek to settle disagreements with one another or come speak to me or Dedue. We will be happy to help you work through your issues.
If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Thank you for your cooperation,
Dimitri Blaiddyd
And sure enough, Dimitri does call Felix and Sylvain to his office to speak in private on the following Monday. He lets them off with a really light warning—especially after Sylvain admits that he put up with the first note, leaving Dimitri completely unfazed—and doesn’t bother asking if he needs to step into this situation. He knows better.
He dismisses them. The meeting didn’t even last two minutes.
-
Felix steps into the room with all their fax machines and printers and copiers, and he’s surprised to find Annette and Mercedes huddled around a printer, giggling. He doesn’t know what in the world could be so funny at ten in the morning on a Tuesday, but he supposes that he’ll never know. Those two seem to live in their own little world.
But he does get to know.
When he gets to the printer beside them and looks over curiously, he finds a picture taped to the wall. He can’t quite make it out from where he’s standing, but he can definitely recognize the impact font, the font that memes use all the time.
“Oh, Felix!” Annette tries to stop laughing, but she bursts out giggling again. “Um, someone left something here about you.”
He pushes past them and finds a deep-fried picture of a small, black cat with its eyes as two, red flares. Across the top, the text reads, ‘FELIX’ and the bottom simply reads, ‘BOTTOM TEXT.’
“Should we report this as some kind of harassment?” Mercedes asks politely, but her face is still pink from laughing.
Felix sighs and shakes his head. “Leave it. I don’t care.”
Felix retaliates by snapping an unflattering picture of Sylvain and spending his free time at work photoshopping a clown wig and nose onto it. He tapes it on the wall beside the dumb cat meme Sylvain hung up. Sylvain finds it the next day, but he doesn’t say anything about it, instead flashing Felix a knowing smile from his desk.
That doesn’t last long either. As soon as Sylvain’s second picture gets hung up in the printer room, Dimitri sends them another e-mail, though this one is sent directly to Felix and Sylvain only, warning them to stop.
-
Felix strikes first this time. He isn’t going to idly sit by and wait for Sylvain to get to dunk on him. Felix comes into work earlier than Sylvain and gets to work.
He makes a mess of Sylvain’s desk. He scatters papers all over Sylvain’s neat desk, spills pens and paperclips, rearranges the (unimportant) things on Sylvain’s little bulletin board, and sticks a note on Sylvain’s computer screen that simply bears Felix’s signature.
He sits back and waits for Sylvain to walk in, greeting him as he does every morning—with a small grunt and a bored look to his eyes as he types away at his computer. He nearly loses his stoic façade, almost cracks a smile, when Sylvain lets out a huge gasp and drops the empty cup of coffee he’s holding. He comes over to Felix’s side of the cubicle.
“You’re evil,” he tells Felix with a pout. “You’re completely heartless, Felix.”
Felix only flashes him a smug half-smile, which only makes Sylvain sigh. Sylvain hangs his head dramatically as he walks over to his desk to tidy up the mess Felix left him.
“You’re seriously like a cat,” Sylvain mutters, just loud enough for Felix to hear.
Felix can kind of see why Sylvain likes to pull pranks like this. It’s funny watching Sylvain sulk like that, but he does feel a little bad about it, especially knowing how Sylvain hates messes. So Felix walks over and silently helps Sylvain tidy up, ignoring the smile Sylvain gives him.
-
When Felix comes back from a quick bathroom break, he finds that he’s missing his pen. He figures he lent it to someone. But this is his good pen we’re talking about—a fountain pen worth like $25 that he got as a gift. He wouldn’t lend that to just anyone. He checks under his desk, in his pockets, in his pen holder, but it’s not there. He frowns.
Sylvain probably has it.
Well, Felix isn’t going to go over there for a pen. He’s got work to do. He’ll ask Sylvain for it later. He knows Sylvain won't do anything to his pen anyway, so he's really in no rush.
When Felix comes back from his lunch break, he finds that his pen is there, sitting neatly in the middle of his desk, but his file organizer, the black, tiered trays that sat stacked on top of one another at the corner of his desk, is missing.
Again, Sylvain probably has it, and Felix has work to do. He’ll get it later.
When Felix comes back from a short conversation with Ingrid in the printer room, he finds that his file organizer is sitting back where it was before and that his entire fucking keyboard is missing.
Felix finally stands up and walks over to Sylvain’s cubicle.
“Give it.”
Sylvain, with two keyboards on his desk, gives him an incredulous look and asks, “Give what, Felix? What are you talking about?"
Felix reaches forward and grabs his keyboard from Sylvain, tucking it under his arm as he walks back to his desk.
-
Felix is hard at work, as he always is, when he finds a crumpled-up ball of paper flying over the cubicle walls and landing on his desk. He unfolds it, but it looks to be a misprint of one of their documents. There isn’t anything weird written on it, and Sylvain’s handwriting it nowhere to be seen.
Felix crumples it up again and sets it aside.
Not even a minute later, another crumpled-up ball of paper flies over the wall and pegs Felix right in the forehead. And then another comes after, landing on Felix’s hands at the keyboard. And then another, flying right over Felix and landing at the feet of Dedue, who is walking by. He picks it up off the ground and raises his eyebrow at Felix.
Felix doesn’t get a chance to explain that it wasn’t him. Yet another ball of paper comes over and lands in Felix’s lap. Dedue gives him a look of understanding, shakes his head, and walks the ball of paper to the recycling bin.
“Sylvain,” Felix growls.
"Oh! Sorry!” Sylvain calls, exaggeratedly innocent in the way that only means that he is completely and utterly guilty. “That was meant for the recycling bin. You know, the one behind you?”
Felix huffs and throws the paper balls into the recycling bin. He shoots a withering look at Sylvain, who’s standing up and resting his arms on the cubicle wall separating them.
“Oops.” Sylvain drops one more ball on Felix’s desk.
It’s haphazardly crumpled up, and when it hits the desk, it opens up a little, revealing a big heart drawn in red permanent marker. Felix sighs and throws that in recycling too.
"Get to work, Syl.”
-
Felix decides to get some revenge of his own after Sylvain launched a bunch of crumpled-up balls of paper at him. He throws a few over the cubicle wall over at Sylvain and waits to hear Sylvain’s reaction.
Sylvain doesn’t say anything, though Felix can hear him laughing softly to himself.
Felix throws one more over for good measure. He hears it land on Sylvain’s head—that little sound of a bunch of hair brushing against paper.
“That was meant for the shredder,” Felix deadpans when Sylvain’s head pops up over the cubicle wall, a small grin on his face. A pause. “Actually, no. Fuck it. That was meant for you, asshole.”
Sylvain laughs and cocks his head, clasping his hand over his chest. “Aw, how sweet, Felix! Giving me love letters in the middle of the workday! I don’t know if that complies with company policy on PDA, though.”
Felix rolls his eyes, his cheeks starting to burn a little. “Fuck you.”
“Do you want to?” Sylvain raises his brows suggestively.
"Sylvain. Shut the fuck up.”
Sylvain hums. “Make me.”
Felix kind of wants to grab Sylvain by his tie and crush their lips together—and that look in Sylvain’s eyes only shows that Sylvain is hoping that Felix will—but he’s acutely aware of their surroundings. He just turns his head away and huffs.
-
Felix finds a sticky note on the Tupperware of his lunch and raises an eyebrow, debating if he should turn this in to Dimitri and Dedue. He ultimately decides not to. He knows who wrote the note anyway.
Looked good so I helped myself to some. Thanks, babe. <3 -Sylvain
Felix crushes the sticky note in his fist and opens up his lunch. Sure enough, there’s a small chunk of it missing. It’s not a large chunk by any means, but it’s just the principle that Sylvain would eat part of his lunch.
“Sylvain,” Felix hisses under his breath. He throws his lunch back into the fridge and throws the sticky note in the garbage, walking over to Sylvain’s desk.
Sylvain catches his eye and tries to hide his smile.
“Hi, Felix,” Sylvain says as Felix storms over. “How can I help you?”
Felix slams a hand on Sylvain’s desk, and what happens next is possibly the most unfortunate thing that has ever happened to Felix, other than losing his mother, brother, and his father.
Caught between saying, “You wanna fight?” and “Fuck you,” Felix ends up practically yelling, “You wanna fuck?” at Sylvain. In the middle of a pretty busy office. Where his coworkers are all seated at their desks, now staring up at Felix with wide eyes.
Felix feels his face turning beet-red. It doesn’t help that Sylvain is laughing hard, practically turning as red as Felix from how much he’s laughing.
“I meant. I was trying to say. You wanna fight. Or fuck you.” Felix tries to explain it, but what’s said has been said. It doesn’t change the fact that most of the people in the Blue Lions Enterprises office just loudly ask Sylvain if he wants to fuck.
He wants to crawl into a hole and die.
“Maybe later,” Sylvain manages to say through his laughter. “Again, company policy probably doesn’t allow for salacious encounters.” He pauses. Low-lidded with a suggestive smile on his face, Sylvain says, “But I can definitely ask if you want me to.”
Felix covers his burning face with his hand. “Fuck off, Sylvain.”
-
It’s been a month full of these kinds of antics, mostly started on Sylvain’s end but definitely sustained because Felix bothered to indulge Sylvain. There have been a few times when new hires see them and wonder if they’ll be okay, wonder if there needs to be some kind of reassignment of seats or an intervention of some kind, but the Blue Lions are always quick to assure them that this isn’t anything serious with a smile or an exasperated roll of the eyes.
Overall, it’s been a pleasant experience. A good job with reasonable hours, pay, workload, coverage, and breaks. Good boss and coworkers. It’s been nice.
Especially when the end of the day comes around. That’s always Felix’s favorite part of the day. Not because there’s no more work to be done or because he doesn’t have to worry that someone is going to come up to him and try to hold a conversation with him or because the sky looks nice around 5 pm. No, there’s a different reason why 5 pm hits so different.
And it’s because he gets to be with his husband, not his coworker.
Sylvain always comes over to Felix’s desk with a smile, waiting for Felix to tidy up. He is always happy to wait for as long as Felix needs, watching him with a fond look as Felix pulls his coat on and stands up.
Sylvain looks around, as if to see if any of their coworkers are around, but upon seeing no one around, he’ll put an arm around Felix’s shoulder and pull Felix in for a chaste kiss on the lips. Felix smiles the tiniest bit and melts into the kiss, missing the feeling of Sylvain’s warm lips against his own immediately when he pulls away.
“Man, I’m tired.” Sylvain sighs. “Hey, let’s order food tonight."
“Well, what do you want?” Felix asks, walking with Sylvain to the doors of the office. They give a wave to Mercedes and Annette, who are standing at the reception desk and getting prepared to leave themselves. The girls wave back.
“I’ll eat whatever. You pick.” Sylvain smiles warmly, reaching into his pocket and taking out his car keys. He spins them idly on his index finger.
Felix leans against Sylvain with an exasperated sigh. “Let’s get pizza.”
"Pizza! Craving something greasy, huh?” Sylvain hums. “That does sound pretty good right about now.”
They both climb into Sylvain’s car, their hands intertwined over the center console as they listen to Felix’s playlist and talk about the day they had at work together. Sylvain laughs happily recalling his little pranks; Felix smiles tiredly, rolling his eyes.
Felix Gautier can’t stand his prankster coworker sometimes, but he absolutely, positively loves his husband.
Even if they happen to be the same person.