Work Text:
When Annette first got Felix his job at the aquarium, he thought he’d work there for one miserable summer before it became a long-forgotten footnote on his résumé, next to a lie about conflict resolution skills and fluency in Spanish.
But then she showed him how to feed the sharks, and he was hooked—pun absolutely not intended.
For the first time since his dad took him and Glenn to Medieval Times, Felix was utterly transfixed. He couldn’t stop watching their lithe, serpentine bodies cutting through water like it was air, their gills pulsating in some ancient rhythm, their emotionless eyes that dared someone to cross them—
And they say to never meet your heroes.
So here Felix is, over a year later, still tending to all animals of the gilled, scaled, and invertebrated variety. And despite the smells, the long hours, the bleach foot baths, and even himself, Felix loves his job—he really does.
With one exception.
It’s a familiar, self-destructive pattern. Every Tuesday and Friday, Felix clocks out at 3:30 pm and makes his way to the Open Sea Exhibit, and he has no reason to believe this particular Tuesday will be any different. He grabs his customary popcorn from Mercedes or Dedue along the way and nods solemnly to Gloria, the Great Pacific Octopus. She waves a lazy tentacle back. Felix and Gloria have an understanding.
Felix finds his usual spot in the back of the small stadium seating and tries to hide behind one of the many strollers while he waits for the 3:35 pm show to begin.
The 3:35 pm show on Tuesdays and Fridays is particularly popular with the stay-at-home parent crowd. It’s no different than the shows any other days of the week—the information is the same, the demonstration goes through the same motions—
But no other show is performed by Sylvain Gautier.
Sylvain Gautier is one of those aquarists who loves otters, a fact he unashamedly volunteered the very first day Felix met him. He was fresh from a dive, his skin-tight wetsuit heroically living up to its name, the clingy fabric betraying exactly which muscle groups he liked to work out. He used one hand to push back his sopping hair—somehow still so infuriatingly, maddeningly red—and offered the other to Felix. Felix apprehensively took it in his, and while the handshake couldn’t have lasted more than half a second, it was more than enough time for Felix to vividly imagine the rest of his life with this otter-loving asshole who had probably already forgotten his name.
So Felix hates Sylvain’s show. He has to hate Sylvain’s show, or why else would he force himself to sit through it twice a week, every week, for an entire year? He hates his unfunny jokes that he repeats with the same delivery every time, he hates how he flirts with the single parents that fawn over him, and he hates how he takes the time to respond to each and every kid’s question—even the really stupid ones like where the fish sleep at night or how long you’d survive inside a whale (never mind the fact that most whale esophaguses are so small they’d have a hard time choking down a cellphone, let alone a nosy toddler).
But most of all, Felix hates how Sylvain’s smile makes him feel like a starfish turning its stomach inside out.
3:35 pm hits, and a hush falls over the eager crowd as Sylvain saunters out with his headset. Usually he’s wearing the typical aquarium uniform: blue polo tucked into khakis, but some days he has the audacity to show up in a wetsuit.
Today is a wetsuit day.
“Good afternoon, undersea explorers!”
The children cheer; the parents titter to each other excitedly. Felix is pretty sure he recognizes some of their faces and scoffs as he shoves another handful of popcorn into his mouth. What kind of pathetic person feels the need to sit through this drivel more than once?
“Today we’re going to learn all about fish, sharks—”
Sharks are fish, dumbass.
“—Cephalopods, whales, and my favorite—”
Otters.
“—Otters.”
How original.
Felix grinds his teeth, each crunch of popcorn imbued with a blazing menace he tries to telepathically beam across the room.
Sylvain, as always, seems immune to his psychological warfare.
“Alright kids—and parents,” Sylvain flashes a smile to the adults and Felix swears he can hear the collective heart rate of the room increase. Whether or not that has anything to do with his own pounding pulse is irrelevant. “Let’s meet our tentacled-friends, the cephalopods. First, can anyone tell me what the difference between squid and calamari is?”
About six dollars.
“About six dollars.”
The adults roar with laughter at the stupid joke that Sylvain tells every show. The kids giggle along without really understanding why since Sylvain hasn’t actually told them anything at all. Felix stares straight at Sylvain’s obnoxious, grinning face, eyes boring into his freckles because he needs Sylvain to know that his jokes are terrible, and he’s not knowledgeable, and he’s not charming—
And that’s when Sylvain winks at him.
Like, actually, fucking, winks at him.
It’s not like the over-exaggerated ones he flashes to parents whenever he has to dance around a kid’s question about whale sex. This one is subtle, quick as a snap—
And somehow Felix knows it’s just for him.
Sylvain continues like nothing’s happened, like he didn’t just fire a heat-seeking missile straight into Felix’s heart. Felix’s head spins, his face flushes, a kernel of popcorn slips from his fingers onto the speckled marmoleum. He can no longer hear the words he knows by heart, can no longer remember the fun facts that Sylvain has dropped with the same cadence every Tuesday and Friday for the last year.
He bolts up, popcorn spilling down the steps to pelt the backs of unsuspecting children sitting criss-cross-applesauce below. The parents shoot him dirty looks, Sylvain quirks a quizzical eyebrow, but Felix can’t care about what anyone else thinks of him because he needs to leave. Now.
He dashes out of the auditorium, tears through the other exhibits without so much as a wave to Gloria the Octopus, and sprints to the employee parking lot, cursing himself as he scrambles into this car because he flew too close to the sun and got burned by a fucking wink.
Felix slams his key into the ignition and races home with red, sweaty palms and dry, white knuckles. As he flies down the freeway, he makes a promise.
He’s done going to the 3:35 pm show on Tuesdays and Fridays. He’s done angrily munching on his popcorn and sniffing with disapproval at the jokes he knows all too well. In fact, he’s going to avoid the marine mammals exhibits altogether, because Felix Fraldarius never wants to see Sylvain Gautier ever—
“Felix, you’re on Fish Prep with Sylvain.”
A little over a week has passed since the... incident , and Felix has done right by his own promise. Both a Friday and Tuesday came and went without Felix hearing anything about fish being easy to weigh because they have their own scales, or that sharks swim in saltwater because pepperwater makes them sneeze (never mind the fact that there were, like, actual freshwater sharks on display just two rooms over, but who was Felix to stop Sylvain from miseducating the leaders of the future?).
And he doesn’t miss it. Really! In fact, it gives him more time to focus on his own hobbies, like playing video games and trying not to think about Sylvain, or going to the gym and trying not to think about Sylvain, or taking up knitting and trying to make Glenn a lumpy sweater because he really is that fucking desperate to do anything that will make him stop thinking about Sylvain.
But Annette has little regard for Felix’s personal achievements.
“No.”
“Fe—”
“Annette.” He crosses his arms and glowers at his impossibly small friend, feeling instantly guilty when she shoots a pleading look back up at him.
“Come on, Fe,” Annette whines, “I just got promoted to Lead Aquarist and I want to do a good job!”
When Felix’s arms don’t uncross, Annette changes her tactic and crosses hers in return.
“Felix. As your manager, I am ordering you to report to Fish Prep.”
And to that, Felix has no choice but to obey. He swallows a growl and trudges through the employee corridors before slamming open the door to the Fish Prep Station. The smell immediately assaults him and reminds him why this is everyone’s least favorite job.
That impossible red hair reminds him that things can always get worse.
“Hey, partner,” Sylvain leans on the steel counter with a smirk, which melts into a “Shit!” as his elbow slips on the surface.
Felix does not ask if he’s okay.
“Hi.”
Having fulfilled his customary greeting quota, Felix wordlessly moves to the opposite end of the counter and snaps on a pair of rubber gloves. He plucks his favorite knife from the drawer and starts cubing the fish meat.
“You don’t waste any time, huh?” Sylvain gives a nervous laugh, which fades as Felix refuses to acknowledge him. “Cool, cool...I’ll just get started on the vitamins then.”
There are a few minutes of merciful silence, punctuated by nothing but the methodical chop of Felix’s knife and the gentle squelch of Sylvain popping vitamin pills into fish corpses. It’s almost meditative.
But Sylvain seems hell-bent on disrupting Felix’s inner peace.
“So,” Sylvain treads the waters carefully, no doubt wary of a shark attack, “I, uh, haven’t seen you lately. At my show, I mean.”
Felix doesn’t look up from his cutting board. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh really?” Sylvain’s voice lilts and betrays a devilish smile. “That must have been someone else hiding in the back of all my shows for a year.”
In the counter’s reflection, Felix can see the flex of Sylvain’s bare forearms as he leans in closer. There’s...something else mixed in with the stench of fish now, something that smells like pine and woodsmoke and someone who spends more time than you would think on their hair. Felix feels a bead of sweat drip down his temple. He tries to forget that the temperature in this room is set to 50 degrees.
Sylvain gives an exaggerated sigh, a sign that tells Felix he feels far too in control of the situation. “Too bad I didn’t get their number before they vanished without a trace—well, other than the trail of popcorn carnage.”
Felix makes the wrong incision into his fish and mentally curses Sylvain for distracting him. He doesn’t know what he did to boost Sylvain’s ego, but he certainly would like to go back to a few minutes before when Sylvain was squirming like a trout caught on a hook—pun also not intended.
Felix snaps his eyes up and glares at Sylvain from across the counter.
“Why don’t you shut up and keep stuffing vitamins into your fish?”
Sylvain visibly shudders.
Felix scrunches his nose. “What?”
Rose blooms on Sylvain’s freckled cheeks, followed by the sharp thorns of his smile.
“I guess I just like it when you tell me what to do.”
The knife nearly slips out of Felix’s hand.
* * *
Felix taps his foot impatiently at the Front Desk. He needs Annette to finish training the new kid at the computer so he can clock out and finally get the smell of fish and pine and woodsmoke off of him and think about something other than Sylvain’s forearms pressed against the counter.
“Is this the button I press?”
“Not quite,” Annette corrects with the patience of a touch pool stingray during a preschool field trip, “Try again, Dimitri.”
Felix growls, “Can I please just clock out—”
“Hi again.”
Annette, Dimitri, and Felix gaze up at Sylvain, who looms over the ticket counter.
“How can I help you?” Dimitri beams at him with his best customer service smile. Or maybe all of his smiles look like that. Felix wouldn’t know—there’s a reason he doesn’t work the front desk.
Sylvain flashes one back. “I’m just waiting for Felix to clock out so I can ask him a question.”
Felix does not join in on the smiling.
“You’re holding up the line.”
“Fine, then I’ll buy a membership,” Sylvain turns to Dimitri again, “Can I buy a membership?”
“Sure!” Dimitri cheerily types something into the computer slow enough to get pulled over in a school zone.
Felix is not so amused. “Sylvain.”
“What?”
“You work here.”
“So?”
“You get in for free.”
Sylvain shrugs, his stupidly broad shoulders straining against the tight sleeves of his navy polo.
Dimitri looks up from his screen expectantly. “Would you like the Octopus Package or the Sea Turtle Package?”
Sylvain considers the question before his eyes light up with something devious. “Which one comes with a free guest pass?”
“Um…” Dimitri turns to Annette for reinforcements.
“The Sea Turtle Package,” Annette whispers.
“The Sea Turtle Package,” Dimitri repeats dutifully.
Sylvain rummages for his credit card and hands it to Dimitri with a sly smile like he’s slipping him his phone number. “I’ll get that one then.”
Felix snorts because now it all makes too much sense. It makes sense why Sylvain is holding up the line, why he’s acting so coy and cocky, and why he specifically wanted the membership that comes with a free guest pass.
He’s going to use the aquarium to take other people out on dates.
Sylvain may have winked at Felix last week, but Sylvain winks at everyone. Sylvain may have flirted with him in the fish prep room, but Sylvain would probably flirt with the fish themselves if Felix hadn’t been there. It was Sylvain’s curse, that all he had to do was sneak someone a smile—hell, even just glance in their general direction—and it was enough to make them feel like the only fish in the sea.
And Felix had been stupid enough to fall for it.
“I’m just going to clock out on the downstairs computer,” he mumbles to no one in particular, and before anyone in particular can object, he runs away from the reception desk.
Felix tears down the stairs through the employee labyrinth and tries to swallow the hot, sticky feeling climbing up his throat like boiled sugar. He squeezes past his alarmed coworkers that smell like bleach and fish and algae. He makes it to the downstairs office in record time, his breath shallow and hoarse as he punches his employee number into the computer to clock out. His fingers shake, and he tells himself it’s for any reason other than Sylvain because Felix has never cared about Sylvain, and he always hated Sylvain’s show, and he hates how much he likes the otters, and—
“Hey!”
Felix whips around to find the person he never cared about struggling to catch his breath in the doorway.
Felix narrows his eyes. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, actually,” Sylvain holds his hand to his chest and allows himself a few more ragged breaths. “But first, did you already clock out?”
“Yes?”
“Okay good, that makes what I’m about to ask slightly more ethical.” Sylvain wipes his palm on his khakis, then extends his hand to Felix. “Do you want to go to the aquarium with me on Friday night? Like on a date?”
Felix blinks at the sweaty hand.
“You’re asking me on a date.”
“Yeah.”
“To the place where we work.”
“Well I did just drop like $100 on that Sea Turtle Package so you can’t say I’m cheap.” Sylvain’s hand nervously finds the back of his neck as he laughs weakly at his own joke.
Felix considers the fidgeting, heaving, perspiring man before him.
“Okay.”
“Wait, really?” Sylvain’s eyes light up in genuine surprise, and it’s with a slight twist of pride that Felix realizes Sylvain thought he might actually say no.
Felix’s lips twitch into something that almost resembles a smile.
“Sure.”
* * *
On Friday evening, just twenty minutes before he’s supposed to meet Sylvain at the aquarium, Felix frowns in the mirror.
“I don’t know, Annette,” he grumbles into the phone, tugging at the hem of the sleeveless turtleneck he’s been agonizing over for the past half hour, “It might be too much.”
“I’m sure it looks great, Fe,” she says for the hundredth time, and Felix can hear her flipping through the pages of a textbook on the other end.
“It’s just,” Felix spins around to see if the velocity will make his pants any less tight. It doesn’t. “He’s only seen me in the aquarium uniform before. Which leaves a little... too much to the imagination.”
“Worried he won’t know what to do with himself when he sees your big, muscly muscles?” The shape of Annette’s words spell out a smirk on her face.
“No,” Felix scowls, then grimaces at himself. “Maybe.”
“Look,” Annette puts on her best mom friend voice, “Just send me a picture and I’ll let you know if it’s too much.”
Felix sighs, then holds out his phone to snap a picture. It’s his first mirror selfie. Even he can tell he needs more practice.
“You’re not allowed to laugh.”
“Felix Fraldarius, when have I ever laughed at you?”
Felix considers the ramifications of answering her question honestly before he decides that he needs her help more than she needs the truth.
Her phone pings on the other end, and she gasps.
“What?”
Annette doesn’t respond. If Felix strains his ear, he thinks he can hear the sound of her head furiously shaking back and forth.
“Ugh, it’s too much, isn’t it? I should change—”
“Wear it.”
Felix dares a peek at himself in the mirror again.
“Are you sure?”
“Wear it.”
So it’s with bare arms and tight pants that Felix arrives at the aquarium for his date with Sylvain.
For his date with Sylvain. For his date with Sylvain. The prepositional phrase swims circles in Felix’s brain until it outgrows its cerebral tank, shattering the glass and causing an unspeakable disaster that could only be stopped by—
“You made it.”
Felix spins around at the honeyed voice, and any possible snarky deflection dissipates the second he sees him.
Sure, there was more than one danger to dating a coworker, but the one Felix had been most concerned about was that he had never seen Sylvain in anything but work clothes. And while he’s already pontificated on the benefits of the wetsuit ad nauseum, he was secretly a little worried that Sylvain might not have good taste in normal clothes.
Felix is happy to report just how wrong he was.
There’s the shoes, for one. They’re some sort of faded, leather-like boots with neat laces, scrubbed to a polish, but not an overly immaculate one. Tucked into the boots is a dark-wash denim that makes Felix question everything horrible he ever said about jeans (the tight fit also makes him wonder how quickly he can think of an excuse for Sylvain to turn around). The denim contrasts sharply with his tight, knitted sweater in such a rich cream color it gives Felix a craving for full-fat eggnog, which is ridiculous because Felix hates eggnog. The sweater’s high collar nearly chokes Sylvain, and Felix wants to whisper something filthy against every strained line on his neck. Honestly, the whole effect is starting to make Felix angry—every time he tries to wear a chunky knit, he just looks like a capsized cat.
Sylvain stops just three feet away from him.
“You look um, nice.” He shyly laughs at himself and Felix wants to drown himself in the sound. “Like really nice.”
Felix swallows. “You look,”— so hot, so fucking hot, it actually makes me livid— “Nice.”
Sylvain’s lips twist into a smile the tepid compliment didn’t deserve, and he holds out his hand to Felix. Felix is starting to recognize a pattern.
“Wanna head in?”
Felix takes his outstretched hand, and this time he has more than half a second to plan their life together because Sylvain takes it as an invitation to interlace their fingers. They’re warm and rough, like the sand on the quiet beaches of his hometown. Sylvain guides Felix to the entrance and swings the door open for him.
Felix can’t stop thinking about how sweaty his hands are.
At least, until he notices how empty the aquarium is.
“Where is everyone?” He looks up at Sylvain—yes, up, because it turns out Sylvain was even taller than Felix had imagined up close.
Sylvain doesn’t return Felix’s demanding stare as he answers. “I may have…rented the place out.”
People can do that? And Sylvain did it for him?
Now Felix is actually confused.
“Why?”
Sylvain finally meets his eyes with a teasing smile that bends and warps his freckles. “I thought you might be nervous with everyone around.”
“I wasn’t nervous,” Felix lies.
“Well then, I was.”
Felix hates how charming Sylvain is when he’s honest.
Sylvain squeezes his hand. “Popcorn?”
“Sure.”
Sylvain hops over the concessions counter and fills up one of the red-and-white striped paper bags. Felix tries not to think of the amount of food safety violations he’s just committed.
From across the counter, Sylvain holds out the overflowing bag, his mischievous eyes all but winking. “Try not to spill it this time.”
Felix snatches the bag and flicks a kernel into Sylvain’s chest. “Watch it.”
Sylvain rubs the spot with a playful “ ow” , and slides back over the counter.
“When was the last time you went to the jellies exhibit?”
“Yesterday?” Felix does not hide the judgment in his voice. He’s not sure how many times he’s expected to remind Sylvain that he works here.
“Smartass,” Sylvain rolls his eyes, biting his lip when they’ve come full circle back to Felix, “I mean like, really went.”
Sylvain takes Felix’s silence for a no, which is a mercy considering the ridiculously filthy things Felix was actually thinking after that lip bite . Sylvain’s fingers tangle in Felix’s again, their hands slipping easily into the familiar shape as if they’ve done this a thousand times before.
“Come on.”
* * *
Felix is in the sea jellies exhibit almost everyday, and yet he can’t remember the last time it felt so… blue . He wonders if perhaps it’s the lack of people; there are fewer objects absorbing and diluting the hue and fewer references for his eyes to recalibrate the color balance. He stares at his alien hand, then peers up at Sylvain. His eyes, sparkling like lapis lazuli, drink in the exhibit with unabashed fascination. His soft, periwinkle lips part slightly at the sight. Sapphire stars dot his cornflower skin, like a deep, underwater universe incapable of exploration.
Felix marvels at how even in all of this blue, Sylvain’s hair could still be so red.
“What do you like about animals, Felix?”
Sylvain doesn’t look at him when he asks the question, eyes still alight at the undulating jellyfish in their tanks.
Felix swallows as the start of an answer catches in his throat. What he likes about animals isn’t something he’s ever really thought about before; it’s just something he’s always known.
But if he really thinks about it, a pattern starts to emerge.
It’s a pattern of increasing challenges and never-ending problem-solving. There is something about caring for animals—about knowing animals—that’s impossible to master, because every day is different and every situation demands something more from him.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s also what Felix likes about Sylvain.
Felix may never understand how someone could be so cocky and so nervous, so sure and unsure of themselves; how someone could seem so sturdy and solid and just seconds from shattering. And sure, Felix doesn’t really know Sylvain, not really—not yet— but he wants to. He wants to so, so desperately. He wants to peel back his cover and devour every page, marking his favorite passages and starring the ones he doesn’t understand yet. Because Sylvain is a book Felix never wants to put down—could never put down—leaving him hungry and desperate to always find something hidden, something new, in between the lines where he can scribble secrets into the margins until the ink floods his palms and stains his skin.
“There’s always more.”
The words fall limply out of Felix’s mouth, spilling into the great ocean of the room. He knows his answer is far from satisfactory, but he couldn’t possibly divulge the extent of his feelings. Not on a first date. So he nervously shifts the focus away from himself.
“How about you?”
“Sorry?” Sylvain’s eyes widen, as if Felix has caught him by surprise. Felix isn’t sure why Sylvain finds it so unusual that someone would ask a question about him.
“What do you like about animals?”
Sylvain looks away, back at the jellies, and takes a deep breath.
“You always know where you stand with them.”
“Is that important to you?” Felix takes a brave step closer. “To know where you stand with someone?”
Sylvain turns to Felix, his eyes widening again as he notices their closer proximity. He gulps and tries to slip into a practiced smile, but it fails him. Felix smirks. Flustering Sylvain is dangerously addictive.
“I guess?”
“Do you know where you stand with me then?”
Felix inches in, daring himself not to break eye contact. Sylvain puts his hand behind his neck in the same nervous way he always does when someone asks him a question he doesn’t know how to answer.
Felix wants to scream the answer at him.
He decides to kiss him instead.
It only takes Sylvain a second to melt into the embrace, those periwinkle lips finding a familiar place in between Felix’s. With one strong arm, he encircles Felix’s waist and pulls him in even closer, prompting Felix to grasp Sylvain’s sturdy shoulder for balance. From there, his hand finds its way up, up, up to Sylvain’s hair until Felix’s fingers are so lost in the crashing, auburn waves that he thinks—or perhaps even hopes—they’ll permanently stain his hand red.
Somewhere in the whirlpool of their kiss, the popcorn spills. Neither of them can be bothered to care.