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Felix takes his first day off in years on the nineteenth of Guardian Moon.
It’s humiliating. His attendance record during his ill-fated year at school was spotless. He survived a war, the deaths of all his close family members, and noxious shells of purple magic cast by a demon-creature that used to be a classmate. He once marched through Ailell while battling severe hydration and also Lorenz’s company.
This abominable cold, however, has him flat on his back for the better part of a week. Worse, it shows no signs of abating. He’s twenty five, in the prime of his health, and he’s in charge of the yearly national summit. Dimitri has taken to calling it “annual synergistic roadmap planning”, a set of words that nearly drives Felix to regicide. Dimitri, for all that he speaks like an old man, is enamored with stringing together chains of meaningless words like a toddler.
Felix needs his body to cooperate and get out of bed. The imbeciles who comprise no less than half of the Faerghus royal court will run the whole thing into the ground if he’s not there. He doesn’t have the time for a headache.
Someone presses a towel to his forehead. It’s too cold and too hot. Dimitri…? Felix cracks one eye open and tries in vain to petrify the intruder with his baleful stare.
Why does he always want Dimitri, and how can he make it stop?
“As far as I can tell, Felix, it’s not a simple cold,” says Dedue, who returns Felix’s disappointed glare with a kind gaze. His bedside manner is impeccable, which is nothing short of frustrating.
“Where’s Mercedes,” Felix croaks in lieu of a direct response.
“Unfortunately, she’s busy taking care of sick children at the orphanage,” he says. “His Majesty asked me to check up on you, as I have picked up many of the practical aspects of healing from her.”
“Fine,” Felix grunts. The back of his throat is coated with something foul and sandpapery.
Dedue hovers his hand over Felix’s forehead.
“How’s the summit,” says Felix, wilfully ignoring the way Dedue winces at his temperature.
“His Majesty has everything under control,” says Dedue. It’s a lie, and one that Felix will discover in roughly twenty four hours.
“Thanks,” Felix says, because multiple people (Annette, and really almost every single Blue Lion, including the honorary ones) have made it a hobby to remind him in no uncertain terms that he was a raging asshole to Dedue when they were younger and because he’s learned that behind the heavy layers of of jealousy he actually does like him. Civility really does get easier with practice.
“You’re very welcome. You’re running a fever and I believe you may have some strain of flu. It may not give you any relief but it won’t hurt to take a vulnerary.”
Vulneraries are notoriously useless at curing illnesses, but every monied fool across Fodlan takes them as medicine anyway, just in case. Against all common sense, Felix had taken three as a precautionary measure on the first day of the summit, and all he got for his 900 gold was a stomachache.
“I will leave you to recuperate,” Dedue says as he stands. “There’s a fresh pitcher of water on your nightstand.”
He’ll never say this to Dedue’s face but Felix appreciates the way the man doesn’t coddle him. He extracts an arm from under the covers and waves vaguely in Dedue’s direction.
“Thanks again,” he coughs.
“You’re welcome.”
He turns his head back towards the canopied ceiling of his bed as the door closes softly behind Dedue. His head swirls with pain and snippets of the meeting agenda he spent two weeks finalizing.
There’s something important that he needs to do tomorrow, that he needs to be well enough for. The twentieth of Guardian Moon is special, and it has to do with the summit somehow, but the thoughts in his head are too fuzzy to dig through and his mind fights him in just the same way that Ingrid’s perpetually muddy childhood pegasus liked to.
There’s an important meeting about Fódlan’s Throat scheduled for the twentieth, but Felix already had all of those materials prepared months ago. If not Fódlan’s Throat, then Kupala? Edmund? Goneril?
The twentieth of Guardian Moon… he needs to prepare something important for Dimitri, but he can’t remember what it is, and the fog of weakness lulls him deeper and deeper into the dark until he’s too exhausted to care.
✧
He doesn’t remember the first time he met Dima. Glenn likes to say that they shared a crib, but Felix, at the wise age of seven, knows that the two month age difference means that they almost certainly didn’t, and everyone says he was a roly-poly baby, so what if he rolled over and smothered Dima in his sleep?
He tries not to dwell on that, because not sharing everything with Dima already makes him indescribably sad, but the concept of a life without him is unbearable. He’s already planned their deaths out: he’ll die with Sylvain, because a promise is a promise and he does love Sylvain, and if Dima died first then he would have to kill Sylvain instantly and then himself. But if Felix and Sylvain die first, Dima can follow them a few weeks later out of grief. A perfect arrangement, but Felix can’t help feeling that as good as this ending sounds, it would have been better if they could have been born on the same day. He’s already missed two months of Dima’s life.
Felix sniffs and feels the great pressure of a stubborn blockage in his sinuses. It presses down on his nose, and every time he swallows he can feel it wobble precariously up and down his throat.
It’s not fair. He’s already missed two months of Dima’s life, even though they’re best friends. Meanwhile, Glenn makes fun of Dima even though he was blessed by their birth order to know him for two months more than Felix will ever know him. And when they grow up, Glenn will be with Dima all the time, even though he already has Ingrid. He hates Glenn.
The door cracks open a hair, letting in a gust of frigid, snot-freezing air. Felix hack-sneezes a great gob of gunk onto the quilted comforter. It doesn’t help; his nose fills up almost immediately after.
“Young Felix,” Lowell, their butler, says, “how are you feeling?”
Horrible. Terrible. Like the cacophony of a disturbed forest whenever his father takes Glenn out hunting without him. Felix’s eyes itch with the telltale prickle of tears, and his nose begins dripping anew. He thinks he must be related to the brook back in the Great Tree Moon Fraldarius woods, filled to bursting with spring rain. His tiny body, his tiny tear ducts, are too small to hold everything he feels.
Lowell calls Glenn “the young lord”, but Felix is always just “Felix”. He wishes he were Glenn instead of just Felix, sick and miserable. Nothing is fair in his tiny little world.
The twentieth of Guardian Moon is special. All of Guardian Moon is special — it’s the only month of the year that he gets to see Dima every day — but the twentieth is significant.
“Lowell,” he sniffles pathetically, “I want to see the Prince.”
He’s too young, too unmarred by tragedy, to have mastered the cold, demanding tone he will become famous for, but right now his pitiful whining is enough to move the hearts and hands of most people he encounters. Woefully, Lowell has developed a record-breaking immunity to even his most heart-rending appeals.
They’re here for a yearly summit, or so Dimitri will remind him far into the future, but right now Felix doesn’t care about that. He caught an awful illness on the way to Fhirdiad and his father has banished him to the Fraldarius rooms in the guest wing of the castle indefinitely. Glenn, with his typical twelve-year-old loving indifference, is doing everything in his power to make Felix feel better while also being absent for as long as possible.
“I’m afraid that will be impossible for now,” Lowell says. “But I’m sure the Prince misses you too. Perhaps I could bring you some juice or your armored bear stuffy?”
This is the wrong thing to say. Felix’s tears are a renewed spout, and he can barely make out his own words over the torrential noise of his blubbering. His mouth is a permanently misshapen pudding, trembling at the slightest provocation.
“Lowell,” he bawls, and the shape of these words in his mouth is familiar, well-used, even if they come out battling with his wails, “I hate you!”
Lowell, who is used to his overdramatics, sighs and leaves quickly, surely to fetch Glenn or Sylvain.
There’s a specific hierarchy of needs that every member of the Fraldarius and Blaiddyd staff are familiar with, tested and honed with pinpoint accuracy over the last seven years. The Prince is a balm for all of Felix’s ailments, but if he isn’t available, then Glenn or Sylvain of House Gautier will at least stopper the tears. Unless Felix is experiencing a serious crisis, they are not to fetch Lord Rodrigue — Felix will only cry harder from the guilt of tearing his father away from his duties.
But Felix doesn’t want Glenn or Sylvain. He has been denied Dima for twenty days, and unless someone can procure his best friend, Felix feels that he’ll die from heartbreak before he dies of this sickness.
Sylvain’s not here to die with him, though, and when he goes he wants to go holding Dima’s hand. So Felix makes up his mind and ignores the swelling of his face and the persistent all-over ache of his skin and sits up in bed, swaddling himself in his slimy comforter and shoving on his warm slippers, already a little too small for his growing feet.
He teeters his way to the door, stumbling into chaises and travel trunks on his way there. His hair, damp in places with salty tears, chills his scalp as he walks. After a shivering eternity he pushes the door open, arms trembling with flu-induced weakness. The resulting gust of cold air tickles his nose and he sneezes viciously, spraying snot and saliva everywhere.
“Happy between-birthday,” Dima says, healthy as a horse and sparkling like a morning sunbeam across a dewy field.
The twentieth of Guardian Moon is right in the middle of their birthdays. A sloppily decorated cake is clutched in Dima’s hands, its whipped cream topping smeared haphazardly all across the top. There’s a smear of color on top that Felix guesses was once writing. One part of the cake is crushed at an angle. It glimmers, now, with the cloudburst residue of Felix’s sneeze. Some globby yellow sludge slumps across the edge closest to Felix.
He’s ruined their birthday cake. He’s sick and he’s miserable and he’s ruined their cake.
“Oh, Felix,” Dima says, and Felix loves him so achingly for the way he can read Felix’s mind. Dima shifts the cake to one hand so he can catch Felix’s tears with the other. “It’s alright. I asked the kitchen to make us a cake but I accidentally bumped it on my way here and no one was around to help. You haven’t ruined anything, I assure you.”
Felix loves Dima the most for his uncanny ability to speak like an old man. Most people find it unsettling and endearing in equal measure, but to Felix it’s just proof of Dima’s brilliance. Brilliance that will almost certainly be dimmed by the horrible mechanics of Felix’s nose.
“I sneezed on you,” Felix says. “You’re going to catch my illness and die and I’ll be tried for regicide.”
Regicide is Glenn’s favorite word of late, and he loves to employ it against Felix.
“Nonsense, Felix. I won’t get sick. Father says those who bear the Blaiddyd crest are healthier than wild bulls.”
“You’re prettier than a bull,” Felix says. It’s the only thing he can think to say. Even when he’s sick, distressed, and panicking, Felix knows one truth in his soul: Dima is the most beautiful person he knows.
“Thank you. Happy between-birthday, Felix.’
“Happy between-birthday,” Felix echoes.
His tears have magically melted away. He opens the door wider to let Dima in, then shuffles unsteadily towards the table closest to the fireplace. Dima follows and sets the cake down.
“Will you sit?” Felix asks, fluffing up a pillow and placing it on the chair.
“Of course,” Dima says grandly, sitting on the pillowed chair as if it were a throne and not a rickety old piece of junk that Glenn likes to fart on. He pushes his knees apart as far as they can go and opens his arms. “Come here, Felix.”
Felix sniffles and climbs onto the same chair, leaning into Dima’s warm chest and wrapping his blanket around the both of them. Despite being two months older and his abnormally large head, Dima is just a tad shorter than him, so Felix has to scrunch up on himself to fit in his lap.
Rodrigue will surely throw a fit when he’s discovered that his youngest son has been spraying his sickness all over the Crown Prince, but the damage has already been done. Felix is too high, either from delirium or his proximity to Dima, to care. He sighs and rubs his face into Dima’s neck.
Maybe it’s because everyone likens him to panna cotta, pale and wobbly, that Felix has always hated sweets. But he finds he’s looking forward to eating their cake. Maybe it’s the sickness numbing his tongue, or maybe it’s that he’s here with Dima. He reminds himself to scrape the top layer of cream and clotted slime off before they cut into it, so Dima doesn’t put Felix’s germs in his mouth.
It doesn’t matter, because they’re both asleep within minutes, Felix lulled by the heat of Dima’s body and Dima by Felix’s gradually slowing sniffles.
By the time the summit is over, the entire palace will have been turned upside down in search of the Crown Prince. Rodrigue will find them curled together on a chair and throw the promised fit. The cake will be nigh inedible, the whipped cream melted by the heat of the fireplace into a pool on the table and Felix’s snot congealed on top of the cake like algae on a pond rock.
None of that matters. Felix has Dima, and he’ll have him forever.
✧
Ultimately, it’s not the heavy footfall, the momentary freezing draft of wind, or even the strange sensation of wobbling that jolts him back to some facsimile of consciousness, but the cold, blunt kiss of metal on his face. He pries his eyelids open slowly. The world has a strange, goopy quality through his crusted eyes. He’s still swaddled in Dima’s lap in front of the fireplace, but somehow Dima seems much bigger than usual.
“Dima,” Felix slurs with exhausted fondness. “Your claws are cold.”
The bar of ice that must be Dimitri’s gauntleted finger jerks in retreat, then returns to his forehead and slowly tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear.
“I missed you,” Felix whimpers, tucking his face back into Dimitri’s neck. Dimitri jerks notably, then settles. That’s fine. Felix wouldn’t like it if someone smeared their snotty nose across his neck either, but Dimitri has always allowed more from Felix than from anyone else. “Lowell said you were busy.”
“Lowell?”
“He said I couldn’t see you. He tried to bribe me with Sir Gallant instead,” Felix complains.
Underneath him, Dimitri laughs quietly. The sound is deeper than Felix is used to, but it’s still undeniably Dima. His chest rumbles up and down, jostling Felix, so he swats at Dimitri’s breast irritably. “Stop it, Dima.”
“Of course, Felix. My apologies.”
His voice is much lower, too, but Dimitri's old-man intonation hasn’t changed a bit. Felix sighs in contentment, burying his face deeper in the warm junction of Dimitri’s collarbone. “I’m going back to sleep.”
“Alright,” Dimitri says, his voice fond yet hesitant. Strange. Why would Dimitri be hesitant?
“I’m glad you’re here now,” Felix slurs, and then the world blackens and blurs and Dimitri’s answering reply is lost to the rushing whispers of sleep.
✧
Awareness creeps back to him like a skittish animal, his waking observations scuttling into his head one by one. A soothing, all-encompassing warmth. Dimitri’s familiar smell: oiled leather and the woodlands of his childhood. The cheerful crackling of logs in the fireplace. The bitter taste of his own tongue. The nasty feeling of eyes so crusted that they’re glued shut. The fact that his arms are currently encased in something so soft yet so unyielding that he can’t break free to lift his hand and clean the crust off his eyelashes. He groans.
The strange casing around him relaxes immediately, and he sighs in relief as he wipes the gritty sleep-sand off his eyelids. When his eyes are finally freed, he cracks them open, only to shut them firmly. He counts to ten, then opens his eyes again.
“Felix!” Dimitri’s head swims into focus. Then his neck, then his shoulders, and then Felix confirms with a sense of dread that his initial assessment was accurate and he is sitting in Dimitri’s lap.
“How are you feeling?” Dimitri’s voice is strangely hopeful.
“None of your business,” Felix says, his ingrained reflex of denying Dimitri kicking in at his weakest moment.
“Oh,” Dimitri says, wilting. Past his shoulder, the room is bright and well-lit. It must be late morning, then. How long did he sleep for…?
Dammit. Felix coughs and tries again. “Sorry. Not good.”
“Oh,” says Dimitri, with more energy this time around. “Can I help with anything?”
Felix barely bites his refusal back. “Water,” he says instead.
“Of course,” the King of Faerghus says, his hands already cradling a cup. Dimitri brings it to his lips and tilts it slowly. Felix opens his mouth and chokes on the deluge almost immediately. The water flows past his chin and splashes across the blanket as Dimitri hastily tilts the cup back.
He’s too tired to say anything, and really he should have expected this to happen. He levels a glare at Dimitri instead.
“My apologies. One more time?”
Felix nods and straightens up, taking the cup. Dimitri doesn’t try to help him this time, only watches silently as he tips the cup and drains its contents. The shock of cold water sends him into an instant coughing fit and intensifies the heavy weight inside his nose.
Dimitri’s hands hover indecisively, reaching out and pulling back, but ultimately hang awkwardly in the air.
“How was the summit,” Felix says, when his coughing subsides.
“Good,” says Dimitri in a tone that tells Felix the situation is more complicated than just good.
“Boar.”
For some reason, Dimitri looks disappointed. “We encountered some issues, but nothing we can’t handle. I do not wish for you to worry while you’re sick, Felix. Please trust that I have it under control.”
Maybe it’s the way Dimitri looks at him pleadingly, silhouetted by the warm glow of the fireplace, firelight dancing across his hair, but Felix doesn’t push it.
“Fine. Why are you here. Why am I here?”
“Am I not allowed to visit you when you’re sick?” Dimitri asks, clearly avoiding the topic. If he thinks he can avoid answering the question, he’s got another thing coming.
“Not unless you want to catch whatever damn illness I have.”
“That is a risk I’m willing to take. Don’t you remember, Felix, that those who bear the Crest of Blaiddyd are hardier than most?”
“I remember,” Felix grumbles as he sags back into the pillows. “Now why am I here.”
“This is your room, Felix.”
“Don’t be stupid. You know that’s not what I mean. I distinctly remember falling asleep in bed.”
Dimitri tenses. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Do I have to spell it out for you? Why am I”— Felix jabs a weak finger at himself —“on your”— at Dimitri —“ lap?”
“Felix…” whatever the answer is, Dimitri clearly doesn’t want to tell him, which means that he won’t like the answer. Because Dimitri probably carried him out of bed, in some misguided attempt to rekindle their childhood closeness.
“Just tell me,” Felix says. “I won’t get mad.”
From the look on his face, it’s clear that Dimitri knows he’s lying. To his credit, Dimitri schools his gaze and soldiers on like a brave warrior facing certain doom.
He starts out strong: “I came in to check on you yesterday after our synergistic roadmap planning concluded for the day.”
Felix nods, stifling a sneeze. That part is reasonable, minus the ridiculous terminology. A good leader would check on the welfare of his sick generals.
Continues: “But you looked very cold, Felix, so I added another fur to your bed.”
Again, reasonable. Dimitri has always been considerate — it’s a value that Felix always thought was terribly suited to the throne but endearing on Dimitri.
Then falters: “And then— then as I was leaning over you to tuck you in securely, so I could be sure you would be warm…”
Perhaps a little too considerate, but in this case that’s Felix’s problem and not Dimitri’s.
Stumbles, then finishes pitifully: “and you— you, ah, called my name.”
Felix stares. Dimitri’s explanation is so shoddy he doesn’t know where to start.
“I call you Dimitri now,” he says, resisting the urge to add boar to the end of the sentence. “It’s not that unusual. I probably sensed you coming in.”
“Only… you did not call me Dimitri,” Dimitri says sheepishly. “Er…”
Oh no.
Felix can only recall parts of his dream, but he distinctly remembers the way the name Dima had felt, like warm, spiced cream on his lips. It was a soft, precious thing, worlds away from the current, horrendous mixed blob of sensation in his body: the furnace of his face, the sandpaper scraping inside his throat, the huge gelatinous clump corking his nose.
Dimitri turns his pleading gaze on Felix, then says earnestly, “Promise me you won’t get mad.”
“No!” he starts, just as Dimitri opens his mouth.
“You”—
—Felix already knows what will be said, and he has no desire to hear it from this version of Dimitri; undeniably changed, older and scarred, but somehow still as tender and sincere as he ever was. He needs to stop Dimitri from saying it aloud, lest die suffer from the resulting heart palpitations. He knows from long experience that it’s impossible to stop Dimitri mid-sentence when he’s deep in his feelings, but if he can forcibly block his mouth, that’s a different story. He makes up his mind as he watches the blush stampeding across Dimitri’s winter-chapped cheeks—
—“called me”—
—Felix’s body, sensing some great crisis, tenses. His throat bobs and he swallows painfully, triggering a terrible chain reaction of itching from his esophagus up to what feels like his brain. The itch builds, a million tiny booted feet stomping against the inside of his sinuses in an enormous concerted effort to unstopper his nose. He tries to hold it in, but—
—“Dima.”
—Felix sneezes so hard he rockets himself backwards off Dimitri’s lap.
Before he can fall to his shameful death, done in by a stuffy nose and a prison of musty blankets, Dimitri’s arms wind around him. They freeze there, Felix dipped dangerously low in Dimitri’s arms, Dimitri leaning over him, his face a mix of concern and mirth. This is the closest Felix has been to Dimitri’s face since they were children. He takes an impractical, ill-advised moment to admire the brush of Dimitri’s hair against his jawline.
Then his viper of a brain kicks in.
“Boar!” Felix grunts. pushing and beating at Dimitri’s chest, but his heart is weak and his voice is half-hearted. Dimitri only smiles and leans back, pulling Felix back onto his lap with no effort. Though he surely knows that Felix is safely upright, Dimitri doesn’t let go, trapping Felix in a double cocoon of blankets and arms.
“You promised not to get mad,” Dimitri reminds him, his tone an endearing mixture of reproach and merriment. “Though I concede that you didn’t promise anything about sneezing.”
Felix relaxes his fists and resolutely ignores the current proximity of their bodies, their faces. “You deserved it.”
“Did I?” Dimitri asks, and that shining, abominable joy is back in his eye again, emphasizing the handsomeness of his face even despite his terribly unflattering blush. There’s a dollop of yellow snot on his collar. Felix hopes it stays there and earns squatter’s rights. That would teach him. “What if I caught your sickness and died? Then what, my shield?”
“If a Crest-bearing Blaiddyd died of flu, I'd say it benefits the Blaiddyds more than it hurts them.”
Dimitri laughs gleefully at that. It’s so unbearable that Felix has no choice but to dig himself into a deeper hole, just to avoid looking at and listening to it. “You still haven’t explained why you picked me up and swaddled me like a babe.”
“You latched on and wouldn’t let go. I tried to pry you off, but you just… whined and cried and,” Dimitri’s eye is earnest as his arms tighten minutely, “I couldn’t hurt you like that, Felix.”
They both know Dimitri’s not just talking about accidentally being too rough with a sick patient; Felix can tell because Dimitri’s face is redder than a sunset and Felix’s feels much the same.
“It would be improper of me to lay in your bed, so I had no choice but to bring you along when I sat down.”
“Alright,” Felix says as magnanimously as he can, given his blush and the thunderous galloping in his chest, “I accept your explanation of events.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Dimitri says, his eye creasing in a smile.
There’s a silence as Felix scans the room for something to say, even as he’s cognizant of Dimitri’s gaze fixed firmly on his face. The search ends in utter failure, so he tethers his stare to the glob of slime spread across the gap of one of Dimitri’s buttonholes.
Slowly, the silence turns comfortable, almost companionable. He almost gets used to the feeling of Dimitri’s arms wound securely around him, even begins to selfishly savor it, despite knowing this closeness is artificial, rarer than mythril, and that if he wanted to live the rest of his life missing Dimitri more he couldn’t find a better way to do it than this.
And then Dimitri just has to ruin everything.
“Felix,” he says slowly, as if he’s musing. “Do you know what day it is today?”
The reminder jolts Felix out of his comfortable daze and sets his hairs on end.
“What do you take me for? The future of Fódlan’s Throat is scheduled for the entire afternoon. You should be getting ready for that, not… not here doing this.” Tending to your sick, idling advisor, useless as a snapped blade.
“It certainly is important, but...”
Dimitri is a fool. “What could be more important than international relations after a five year war?”
“Well, ah, you certainly have backed me into a corner. In truth, it isn’t more important, but it is important to me in its own way.”
Every other word that comes out of his mouth is nonsensical. It’s infuriating. The concept of regicide once again dances insistently across his mind.
“Speak plainly, boar.”
“It’s the twentieth of Guardian Moon.”
“Yes.”
“Happy between-birthday, Felix.”
They haven’t celebrated a between-birthday since before the Tragedy. It’s been over a decade. Dimitri should have forgotten — Felix nearly had, before the dream — and moved on with his life. He hates and loves Dimitri with his whole, aching body. Maybe he should get him sick. He feels lightheaded already, with all the blood rushing to his face and the blockage in his nostrils allowing only a trickle of air to enter his lungs.
“I hope you don’t mind that I brought a cake for us to share,” Dimitri continues, smiling as he reaches behind himself with one hand and lifts it into view.
It’s a hideous, dense-looking thing topped with a mountain of cream and blackberries. What a waste of taxes. Neither of them can taste right now. Where did he get blackberries?
“I had them shipped from the south,” Dimitri says proudly, his smile growing wider.
“You’re a fool,” Felix says, and Dimitri’s smile intensifies so much he nearly glows.
“Will you eat with me, Felix?”
“Fine,” Felix says. If Dimitri wants to squander his funds on tasteless frivolities, that’s his business. Felix won’t say anything about it, but he won’t be happy about it either.
(He is.)
“Ah,” Dimitri says, the blush flitting across his face once again, “I forgot to bring two forks.”
He holds the single silver fork up between them. “Perhaps we could share?”
“Share— boar, you are the densest man I know!”
“What? We used to do it all the time. Don’t you remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Felix says, and Dimitri’s whole body radiates with delighted surprise. “That’s not the problem. I’m sick.”
“So you’ll share cutlery with me after you’re better?” Dimitri’s voice is terribly hopeful.
“You,” Felix seethes, feeling like a boiling teakettle. He'd stomp his foot if he weren't currently on Dimitri's lap. “You— I hate you.”
“Yes, of course,” Dimitri says agreeably. “I’ve come to understand that you mean yes when you say that. I shall have to add this to my list of things to look forward to.”
“I,” Felix stumbles, “I loathe you.”
Dimitri, inordinately pleased with himself, carves a chunk of cake out with the fork, then holds it up to Felix’s mouth.
“I can’t eat that,” Felix says. “You won’t be able to have any.”
“That’s fine. I wanted to watch you eat it all. You used to eat with such gusto as a child. Will you, Felix? For me?”
I hate you, Felix thinks, and I hate cake, but he opens his mouth anyway.
“So,” Dimitri says, in between feeding Felix fat, mildly sour blackberries over tasteless cream, “Can we do this again after you’re better?”
“I hate you.”
“Yes, yes, Felix. I know. I must confess, this situation makes me very happy. I hope you feel the same.”
“I really hate you.”
“Felix—”
“I won’t say it again. Shut up and feed me the cake.”