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“Felix!”
All it takes is a shout. He doesn’t register it at the time, its significance, but it comes back to him later. After reporting Control, after planning their next moves, after replaying the battle trying to figure out where they went wrong – where he went wrong – what he actually remembers is Locus shouting his name.
It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. Locus shouts his name frequently, or growls it. Mostly in anger or frustration. Sometimes in warning, when he doesn’t see a blow or a shot coming.
That’s all it is now, he thinks, when he replays the scene in his mind. Locus shouted his name because otherwise Carolina would’ve peppered him full of holes. It was a warning. Nothing else.
So why can’t he let it go?
It follows him for weeks while they try to track down those fucking sim troopers. Every time Locus says his name, he runs it against the echo in his head, compares the tone, the intonation, the context. Felix.
Whatever it is, it’s there every time. It’s there when Locus is angry with him. It’s there in the middle of the fight, when a shout of his name could be anything from a warning to a command. It’s there when the way Locus growls his name translates to “Shut up, before I shoot you.”
It’s there on the rare occasions Locus thinks he’s brilliant instead of a pain in the ass.
Unraveling the puzzle of the way Locus says his name becomes something of an obsession, the thing he turns over in his head at night while lying in his bunk. It always comes back to that first shout, with Carolina pointing Locus’s own gun at him and only a split second to raise his shield.
He dissects his name like a scientist dissecting a new species, pulling apart the pieces and setting them aside to be studied.
Context: Heat of battle, in the line of fire of an unnoticed enemy.
Intonation: Exclamatory.
Tone: Warning. Afraid, even.
And that’s where he gets stuck: on the fear in Locus’s voice. On what that means, that Locus might be afraid for him. That they might be afraid of losing each other.
It finally hits him one night, back at base, when he should be thinking about the ambush they plan to launch against the United Chorus Army in the morning. Instead, he’s sitting in his bunk tossing a knife from hand to hand and turning “Felix!” over and over in his mind.
Realization punches him in the chest, sends him jumping to his feet. It’s such a simple solution, but so far outside his realm of understanding, of what they are to each other, that he almost doesn’t know what to do with the information.
He thinks, briefly, about what it could mean for them and finds it to his liking. And because he’s not an idiot, unlike his goddamn partner, he decides to do something about it. Now.
Locus is cleaning his guns, the way he always does the night before any planned conflict. The way he does most nights, even when there’s no fight expected.
“You love me,” Felix says, and watches the way Locus tenses, sets down the gun in his hand so carefully, so deliberately that he has to be buying time.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not. You love me,” he says, more sure this time. “You want me.”
He smirks, pushes himself off the wall and slinks over to his partner. Puts the right amount of heat in his eyes and licks his lips just so. Seduction is a tool, but that doesn’t mean he can’t use it with intent.
Doesn’t mean he can’t wear it like a cloak against rejection, because he’s sure he’s right, he’s so sure, but being wrong in this would be intolerable.
(He doesn’t ask himself why that is.)
Locus watches him approach with visible trepidation, turns in his chair with battle-ready alertness. Like he’s prepared for a fight. His fingers twitch around a gun that isn’t there.
But Felix isn’t here to fight. He leans down, hands gripping the back of Locus’s chair to keep him there, and studies his face. Sees the cracks in the careful blankness of his eyes. He raises one hand slowly to hook his thumb behind his partner’s jaw and cup the back of his neck. He can feel him swallow.
“Say my name,” he says.
“What are you doing?”
“Just say it,” he demands. Doesn’t wince at the waver in his own voice, but wants to. He is not the one who’s supposed to be fracturing here.
Locus closes his eyes. Leans into his touch, however minutely. “Felix,” he sighs.
Felix shivers, because he’s listening for it now, and he was right. “Oh my god. You love me.”
“I don’t.”
“Shut up, you idiot,” he says, gleefully, and kisses him.
As first kisses go, it’s not exactly what he would have imagined (or what he had imagined in the past, alone in his bunk and away from his partner). He would’ve expected teeth and bruising force and every ounce of anger and proclaimed hate between them to come pouring out from their mouths. He would’ve expected a fight – a warzone, like everything else in their lives.
What he gets is tender. Locus kisses him like he’s made of spun glass and delicate things instead of fire and sharp edges, hands coming up to gather him close, and damn him if his heart doesn’t skip a couple of beats. This is not the kind of heat he’s used to, this teenaged-crush butterfly flutter, but he melts into it. Kisses Locus back softly, gentle press of lips and tentative touch of tongues.
They fall away from each other naturally, foreheads pressed together and breathing hard (more from discovery than exertion).
In the back of his mind, Felix feels another bubble of realization burst.
“Fuck,” Felix whispers against Locus’s lips. “I love you, too.”