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“Felix, are you busy?”
Felix, who’d been sitting atop a crate and idly stroking the fur of a dozing Fraldarius Wirehair, looks up at Flayn and says, very boredly, “Yes.”
Flayn huffs and gestures around at his lack of activity. “But you are not doing anything!”
“And yet, I’m busy,” he maintains, the beginnings of a scowl forming on his lips as he recalls using his sword to cut through logs that were so rudely thrown at him the last time she’d asked for his help.
Flayn is unbothered, having never been deterred by his grouchy exterior. “Can’t you spare an hour or so to assist a lady with her chores?”
“I’ve got no reason to,” he shrugs, the cat stretching languidly in his lap before leaping down onto the ground. “Why are you even working today? Byleth—” he winces, hoping that Flayn didn’t catch his slip. “—er, the professor, told everyone to take a break and enjoy the weather.”
Now, Felix wasn’t exactly the type to ‘take a break and smell the roses,’ but even he had to admit that it was nice out today. Springtime at Garreg Mach usually consisted of wet, rainy days, but today the breeze was cool and the sun was shining without a cloud in sight. It’d be a shame to be cooped up inside.
Even for training.
So Felix was sitting outside, sequestered away in his own little corner of the monastery to pet some cats and enjoy the weather. He’d been content to do so until Flayn had so rudely come asking for help.
“It is a lovely day!” Flayn agrees, green curls bobbing. “Perfect for tending to the greenhouse, and I need a big, strong boy to help me pull out some pesky weeds!”
Surely she didn’t mean him?
“Go ask Dedue,” he scoffs. The man was always playing around with the dirt in the greenhouse.
Flayn shakes her head. “He is already helping out in the kitchen!”
“Ashe?”
“Out hunting with Petra.”
“…Sylvain?”
“Out with Ingrid. He said he’d come by later, but we need help now!”
Felix exhales loudly, rubbing his temples. “Who is ‘we?’” He questions sharply.
“Felix, are you busy?”
The answer to his question is suddenly standing in front of him, an apron tied around her neck and gardening gloves replacing her gauntlets. “By— Professor,” he greets, hopping off the crate. “No, I’m not busy at all.”
He does his best to ignore the irritatingly smug look on Flayn’s face as her gaze bounces between the two of them. “But you just said—”
His narrowed eyes catch Flayn’s amused ones. “I said I wasn’t busy.”
The grateful smile that Byleth sends him causes an odd feeling to stir in his stomach. He can’t really name it, but he doesn’t exactly hate it.
“Great,” she grins, taking his hand and leading him towards the greenhouse. “Because we need some help in the greenhouse. Some of the monastery children wanted to see what we do inside of there, and it’d be great to have an extra set of hands around to make sure they don’t totally destroy everything.”
“Yeah, fine. Whatever,” he shrugs, acting all nonchalant even as his heart pounded in his chest and all his senses honed in on the fact that her gloved hand was grasping his. His body was acting as if he’d never been touched by a woman before, and it was, quite frankly, embarrassing.
The humidity in the greenhouse immediately clings to Felix’s clothes, prompting him to unbuckle his jacket and cloak before accepting the apron that Byleth hands him.
As Byleth gets down on her knees to start prodding at the dirt, a gaggle of six children surround her, peering over each other to get a glance at what she was doing. She doesn’t push them away or ask them to back up, simply letting them get all up in her space to watch her garden.
She begins with walking them through the process of transplanting a plant from pot to soil. The kids - and Felix - watch with rapt attention as she carefully unearths the roots of a budding tomato plant from its pot. She loosens the gnarled bundle of roots that are clumped together before gently depositing the plant into a hole.
“You want the soil around it to be firm, but not too firm. Give a nice little pat to make sure it’s tucked into the ground properly,” she explains, sweeping damp soil into a loose pile at the base of the plant. She lets each of the kids give the soil a light pat, earning toothy smiles and proud giggles when she praises them for doing the absolute bare minimum.
She moves onto a few potted flowers next, the process basically the same. He recognizes a few flowers, like a bright bunch of daisies or a blooming rose bush. Byleth asks him if he wants to give it a try, but he just shakes his head and keeps his hands glued to his sides.
He’d never been particularly good at gardening, his movements too rough and abrupt to handle things that were so delicate.
Byleth just smiles as he tells her so, and he’s praying that she attributes the redness of his cheeks to the warm, humid air. “Well, I can show you which weeds to pull, instead.”
“I can do that,” Felix nods, relieved that he won’t be completely useless.
Weeds are okay. They’re supposed to be jerked out of the soil. He can do that.
Byleth asks Flayn to watch the kids for a minute, guiding him around to a different flower bed. This one is lush and green, alive with flowers and herbs and small, growing fruits and vegetables.
She points out the different weeds, some of which have flower-like tops that definitely had him fooled for a minute. It makes Felix think, because he’d never expected someone like her - a mercenary who’d grown up on the road - to have knowledge of something he considered so…domestic.
“You know a lot about gardening,” Felix comments as she rises from her knees, shaking some stray dirt from her gloves.
“My father liked it,” Byleth admits quietly. That makes Felix pause. She’d never talked about Jeralt. Not after that stupid boar had used his name to liken her anger to his own back at the Bridge.
Her brow creases slightly as she considers something, as if trying to figure out whether it’s worth adding. “Well, my mother did. She was— she was really sick, especially when she was pregnant with me, so he learned how to tend her plants. She even taught him a lot about flowers. The meanings and symbolism behind each of her favourites.”
She reaches out to graze the snow-white petal of daisy. “When we were on the road, he used to pick all kinds of flowers for me. He even did it here, leaving these little bundles in my room every week until he—”
The words hang in the air as Byleth shakes her head, and Felix pretends not to notice the glassy sheen in her eyes.
(He never quite knows what to say in situations like these— often finding it unreasonably hard to properly respond to another’s sincerity and openness. The vulnerability of it all made him uncomfortable, because the only right way to respond in a situation like this was with the same open-heartedness he feared.
He blamed it on the shit-show that was his childhood.)
“I think I know what I’m looking for, now,” he says softly, gesturing down at the growing pile of weeds at his side.
Byleth swipes at her eyes with her sleeve, streaking some soil across her cheek. Felix has to physically stop himself from reaching out to wipe it away, lest he spontaneously combust at the simple contact. “Are you, uh, going to be okay if I send one of the kids over to help you?”
“Sure,” he nods. All he had to do now was pull some weeds with a few brats. Easy.
(That was how, on what was supposed to be Felix’s day off to pet some cats, he’d almost ended up fighting a six year-old.)
Things were going fine, at first. He and the kid had made things a competition of who could pull more weeds, clearing the flowerbeds in record time. As he worked, he stole a few glances in Byleth’s direction to see how she was doing. He looked up whenever she laughed (just to see what was so funny, not because he wanted to see her smile).
Under the afternoon sun she looks nearly luminescent, skin glowing and eyes shining as the rays wash over her visage. It’s different than Felix is used to seeing, during late nights under flickering candlelight that casted shadows over the contours of her face.
He likes seeing her like this, shining brighter than what should be humanly possible.
So maybe gardening on his day off wasn’t too bad, if he got to experience Byleth in the afternoon light. He was somewhat content as he started on the last row of plants, when that damn kid just had to open his big flapping mouth and ask,
“Why do you keep staring at the professor?”
Felix snaps his attention back to the boy, who’s watching him quizzically. “What?”
“You keep staring at the professor,” he repeats, so completely serious looking for a six year-old. His eyes immediately flick to Byleth, who is just within hearing distance— “You just did it again!”
Felix’s right eye twitches as he tries to mask his annoyance. “Keep your damn voice down!” He hisses, looking over his shoulder to check if Byleth had heard. If she had, he was pretty sure that he’d pass away on the spot. “I am not staring at her.”
“Yes, you were! You like like her!” The kid suddenly starts to insist.
Felix is pretty sure he chokes on his own tongue, mortified. “What the— I do not like like her!” He snaps, but his face is flushed red and his heart has leaped into his fucking throat.
The kid - the brat - still doesn’t seem convinced, eyes accusing as they bore into Felix’s very soul. “Yuri said that people sometimes stare when they find someone really really pretty! You think the professor is pretty!”
The blood under Felix’s skin begins to boil, because of course it was something that stupid, sewer dwelling wolf had said. “I don’t give a damn what that underground fuckwit says—”
“That’s a bad word!”
“I don’t care! Listen here you brat—”
Byleth enters into the conversation with ease, immediately easing some of the tension between him and the six year-old. “Is everything okay here, sweetheart?”
Felix huffs, crossing his arms over his chest as the little boy does the same. “Yeah, everything’s going great.”
Byleth blinks owlishly at him, her mouth opening and closing a few useless times. “I was— I was talking to our little friend here…”
Goddess, he wanted to sink into the soil and disappear forever. Felix’s face is set aflame as she gestures to that damn brat, who sticks his tongue out at him.
It takes every drop of strength in his system to resist threatening to cut that tongue out and—
“Why don’t you trim a few of the bushes instead, Felix? Flayn could use some help,” Byleth suggests, kind enough to ignore the obvious longing he had to hear her call him sweetheart.
Who the fuck had he become?
He hates the way Flayn is giggling when he stomps over to help her.
“That was quite entertaining!” She teases, handing him a pair of gardening shears.
“Go choke,” he scowls, brandishing the gardening tool as threateningly as he can manage (or about as threateningly as one could whilst wearing an apron and gloves).
He manages to deflect any more of Flayn’s stupid comments, brushing them off with a tch and a murderous look.
Byleth is in the process of ushering the children out of the greenhouse when Flayn finally corners him. He’s practically hissing and spitting, but again, she remains unperturbed.
“You know…I bet the professor would really appreciate some freshly picked flowers,” she says, loosely twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “Maybe some fresh daisies…”
“She can pick them herself, then,” Felix huffs indignantly, tossing the shears into a nearby toolbox.
Flayn stares at him for a long moment before shrugging, skipping on out of the greenhouse.
Felix, like the idiot he is, immediately starts plucking a few stray daisies from their flowerbed when her footsteps fade away. Surely the gardeners wouldn’t miss a few flowers, right?
When Byleth returns to clean up, Felix takes a few hesitant steps in her direction, doing his best to tidy his hair and shake the dirt from his gloves.
“Oh, you’re still here?” Byleth asks, looking over her shoulder at him. “Thank you for helping me out today, I really appreciated it.”
“It was nothing,” he shrugs, the flowers in his hands trembling slightly as he holds them out to her. “I— uh, these are for you.”
Byleth turns to face him, and Felix’s heart skips a beat when her face lights up. “Oh! Thank you.” She stares at the simple blooms in awe, the look of amazement so raw and genuine that he’d think she was seeing them for the first time.
Then she’s stepping closer, so close that Felix can smell the green, dark smell of the greenhouse clinging to her skin, mixed with a hint of something sweeter. “Do you know what daisies symbolize?” She asks, her nose grazing the tip of his own.
Felix can only shake his head, because he can’t trust his voice.
Her hands are idly stroking his arms. “Innocence. Purity.” She pauses, now so close that Felix shudders at the feel of her breath fanning across his cheek. “True love.”
His heart straight up stops beating. He may pass out before she can— Oh shit.
Her eyes flick down to his lips, and Felix leans in—
“Hey!”
He jerks backwards when the loud shout of greeting echoes around the greenhouse, heralding Sylvain’s untimely arrival, the redhead having the audacity to show his goddamn face.
“Sorry I’m late— oh.”