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Most days, the first thing Felix consciously registers as he awakens is sound. Sometimes it’s a gentle snoring, sometimes it’s Dimitri’s nonsensical sleep talk. More often than not, it’s a telltale deliberate breathing that signals that Dimitri is up when he shouldn’t be. Today Felix wakes up to a different sort of sound.
It’s barely sunrise and Dimitri is humming quietly under his breath. Felix can just make out the catchy refrain of isn’t it-isn’t it-isn’t it, isn’t it. It’s one of the new songs, something soft and tentative and mortifyingly about Felix. Half of the album is about him, more or less, but this particular song is extra sappy and therefore extra embarrassing.
He’d be angry about Dimitri waking up early, or possibly staying up all night, but… Dimitri’s voice is clear and cheerful, and Felix can’t bring himself to ruin his mood. He gives himself a few moments to enjoy Dimitri’s voice, then turns over and cracks an eye open blearily.
Dimitri’s sitting up in bed, his face backlit by the glow of the tablet in his hand. The light reflecting against his face changes every so often, shifting in unexpected flashes of mother-of-pearl luminance.
Felix worms closer and nuzzles his face against Dimitri’s fuzzy thigh. Immediately, Dimitri sets a warm, heavy hand down on the back of his neck.
“Oh!” Dimitri says, slipping his fingers under Felix’s collar. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. I like listening to you.” It’s a rare admission, one Felix will pretend is because he’s too sleepy to filter his thoughts better. He burrows his face further into Dimitri’s leg. “What are you looking at?”
“A compilation of videos on TikTok.”
They’ve talked about social media and privacy before. Dimitri technically has a TikTok account (dblai, the worst possible shortening of his name), but it’s run by the PR team and mostly features studio shots and the occasional cat video.
Felix’s face is currently pressed flat against Dimitri’s bare leg, but Dimitri manages to sense the disgruntled scrunch in his face anyway. “This is Hilda’s account. Or management’s account,” he says with exasperated affection, stroking Felix’s back and snorting at the way Felix grunts into his leg.
Then his voice changes from affectionate to puzzled. “Actually, I’m not sure. The username seems to be… H-M-U underscore I-F-U underscore like underscore redheads.”
“Is that a company tablet?”
Dimitri nods.
“Let’s screw with Sylvain’s algorithm,” Felix says. “Serves him right for having shitty digital hygiene.”
“Ah. I might have already done that.”
“What are you watching?” Hopefully some hipster talking out of their ass on a niche topic, like arthouse films from the 1960s or Enlightenment-era Almyran engravings.
“Blaiddyd Bodyguard Cute Moments.”
A nonsensical caption. No chance of Sylvain getting bombarded by an algorithmically-generated slew of bad takes, then. Well, Sylvain-targeted bad takes, anyway.
“Sounds bland.”
“It’s cute, actually. It’s nice to see you through other people’s eyes.”
It’s nice to see you through other people’s eyes. Blaiddyd Bodyguard Cute Moments. The sleepy little hamster inside Felix’s brain makes a few tentative spins of the wheel before Dimitri’s words come together in his brain. Then it bolts. Felix jolts up and snatches the tablet out of Dimitri’s hands.
There’s a greasy teenager on the upper corner of the screen, pulling exaggerated expressions of adoration as he points down at the fullscreen video of… Felix adjusting Dimitri’s themed headbands. Felix unscrewing the cap of Dimitri’s bottle of water. Felix at a signing event, swapping in a fresh sharpie while Dimitri talks to a fan. Felix holding an umbrella up for Dimitri.
Felix is the “Blaiddyd Bodyguard”. He watches the whole saccharine compilation with mounting embarrassment, then passes the tablet back and leans against Dimitri’s shoulder. “I look like a fool. Why couldn’t they include the time I maneuvered that paparazzi into the lake?”
Dimitri, beast that he is, just noses into Felix’s hair and laughs before pulling Felix into his lap, forcing him to endure both his sleepy morning hickeys and the next related video. To add insult to injury, Dimitri dozes off mid-kiss in the middle of a mortifying compilation, leaving Felix a captive audience to the worst video he’s ever seen in his life: “Are Dimitri and his bodyguard in LOVE?”
They are, of course.
Felix’s good mood lasts until the company tablet pings with a new email. He sits up and tugs the tablet gently out of Dimitri’s slack grip with a sense of dread.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Tumbling Rock profile
From: [email protected]
Today at 6:34 AM
The draft is here! I think Camilla did a great job — let me know your thoughts!
Dimitri Blaiddyd: return of the Crown Prince
Thursday, five am: I’m standing outside Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd’s penthouse, trying to contain my nerves. The fact that I’ve just gone through six different security checks in the last fifteen minutes doesn’t help. I’ve interviewed plenty of celebs before, but unsurprisingly, the labyrinthine procedures of security and nondisclosure agreements required for an encounter with the Crown Prince of Pop are a cut above the rest.
My finger is still on the doorbell when the door swings open and a short, angry-looking man in a bathrobe opens the door. He raises an eyebrow, grunts at me, and then refuses to allow me entrance until I take my shoes off. Then, without a word, he ushers me into the living room.
It’s large, spacious, and practically littered with medieval paraphernalia. Not the typical pop star living room — I was expecting more Hudson sectionals and KAWS sculptures, less racks of swords and lances — but beautiful nonetheless. My interview subject is already awake, bustling around the room barefoot and carrying a remarkable number of things. A cup of coffee in one hand, a thin comb-bound book in the other, and a cat perched on each shoulder.
When Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd turns to greet me, the dawn light sneaking through his windows suffuses his face with radiance, nearly distracting me from the unexpected sight of his rectangular reading glasses and the very expected magnificent curve of his waist to hip ratio.
Felix doesn’t even bother reading the rest. Instead, he swings his feet out of bed and prods the Zoom icon with such force that the LCD flexes. A few jabs later and Hilda’s cheery face and garishly bright hair appear on the screen suspiciously fast, which all but confirms his hunch that she’s been waiting gleefully for his reaction. She's already in the office; he can see Sylvain spinning idly in his chair behind her.
“Hello, lazybones, I thought you might call! I see you’ve barely made it out of bed!”
Felix creeps out of the bedroom and eases the door closed, but it’s too late — he can hear Dimitri stirring.
“Have her rewrite the article!” Felix catches sight of his neck in the corner of the screen and attempts to salvage his professionalism by tugging the collar of his shirt up. It only helps a little. “She’s objectifying him!”
“Not even a hello! Good thing no one hired you for your manners. Good morning to you, Felix, I thought the article was great. Camilla’s a Big D through and through.”
“Stop calling them ‘Big D’s! You’re his publicist!”
“Aw, but Big D is so… evocative, isn’t it? So sexy, just right for our big man’s sexy new era.”
“Oh!” Sylvain’s shout is pure delight as his head swivels around in the background. When he catches sight of Hilda’s screen, his expression brightens and he makes an alarming beeline closer. “Are you talking about the article? I loved it!”
He jerks to a stop, craning his neck over Hilda’s shoulder. “Nice hickey. Very professional. Where’s the big man? Did he see how lovingly she described his ass? Can’t wait to blow up the article and frame it for the office wall.”
“How lovingly she describes his ass is the problem,” Felix says, pressing his fingers into his temples. It’s barely seven and this short exposure to his colleagues is already tiring him out.
Dimitri emerges from the bedroom and tugs one of Felix’s hands away, twining it with his. Then he presses a gentle kiss to his brow. “Hi, Sylvain. I have no opinions on the article since I haven’t read it yet.”
Sylvain’s cackle is borderline diabolical. “Your Highness! Great job on the hickeys. You’ll love the article.”
“She’s not even a good writer. Her prose is trash, and you have trash taste for enjoying it.”
“Okay, ouch, you’re just bitter that she fangirled over the boss’s ass and called you an angry little man.”
Dimitri diverts Felix’s attention with a quick kiss, narrowly averting a crisis. “I’m not sure my ass is worth fangirling over?”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure the fanbase schism of ‘17 was—”
“I don’t care about her describing his ass. I care about how she did it. ‘Luscious and ripe like a summer peach, flush and robust with juices.’ With juices. If a man wrote about Edelgard like this, Twitter would destroy him.”
“That’s because Edelgard’s ass is flat as a—”
This time Dimitri moves too slowly. Felix hangs up.
By the time Dimitri’s finished reading the article, Felix is pacing back and forth, cradling their fattest cat in his arms as he wears a bald spot into the fluffy teal area rug in their living room.
“I don’t think the journalist likes you much,” Dimitri says gently, coming up behind Felix to wrap his arms around Felix’s front, which squishes Alondite slightly. She meows in complaint.
“She has no respect for your safety.” Alondite meows again, this time with insistent warning. “Of course she’ll hate me. I’m keeping her from potentially knifing you in the back.”
“I’m not sure that’s exactly why,” Dimitri’s tone grows mischievous. “But I also think she dislikes you for the exact reasons that I love you. She truly captures your essence.”
“Get him, Alondite,” Felix says. He laughs in satisfaction when Dimitri yelps prematurely as Alondite scrambles up onto Felix’s shoulder. When she bites Dimitri’s nose and he yelps again, Felix laughs even harder.
I see Dimitri again a month before the first stop on Notorious, his first headliner tour in nearly six years. I manage to make it past a veritable battalion of burly private security at Fhirdiad Arena, but I run into the same angry little man from his apartment before I can reach Dimitri’s dressing room. The gargoylish bodyguard ignores my press pass and once again blocks my way, forcing me to decamp to a floor seat and hobnob with the other journalists.
When Dimitri appears on the stage in a glittering, crystal-studded black catsuit, we all gasp. Even though it’s just a rehearsal, we’re starstruck by the length of his legs, the strength in his calves, and the flex of his thighs, visible just over the cut of his over-the-knee boots. His singing voice is powerful and emotive, even more arresting in person than it is in a recording. But it’s not just the singing that leaves me breathless: everyone’s beloved Prince, in his new era of black leathers and slinky bodysuits, gyrates effortlessly onstage like an angel of sex.
I catch him backstage after the crew’s debrief, tired but exuberant, masculinity still sweating out of his tiny pores. As his team removes his perfect smoky eyeshadow, the angel of sex transforms into a boy-next-door. Though it’s been years since he was that young, bright-eyed guitar-toting boy singing at country fairs, the Crown Prince of Pop still retains some of that youthful aura. He’s truly beautiful, made even more stunning by his contrast with the dour, lemon-lipped, demonic bodyguard dabbing a cotton ball across his face.
“You know, there were other people doing my makeup but she still decided to single you out.”
Felix shivers as Dimitri draws the brush through his hair in a practiced movement, savoring the way the action sends fizzy tingles down his spine. It had been uncomfortable for the first few weeks — Dimitri tended to err on the side of too gentle, raising unpleasant goosebumps on Felix’s neck — but like everything else in their relationship, practice makes perfect.
Felix holds the hair tie up. “She’s wasted at least two hundred words complaining about me. That’s ten percent of the article.”
“It means she’s paying attention to how important you are to me. I’m quite pleased with how much you appear in the piece.” Dimitri says, gripping Felix’s hair in one hand as he takes the hair tie with the other. “Ponytail or bun?”
Felix shrugs, which Dimitri correctly interprets to mean ponytail. He coaxes the last tangled ends of Felix’s hair through the teeth of the brush, then does that horrible thing where he kisses the end of Felix’s gathered ponytail before securing it with the elastic.
Technically they’re done, but Felix knows from experience that the boar, sap that he is, will sulk dramatically if he’s not allowed to add this last step to Felix’s hair routine. So he endures as Dimitri runs his fingers through Felix’s hair one last time and pats the flyaways down carefully. A useless action; Felix’s stray hairs are impossible to tame. But they both know it’s just an excuse for Dimitri to prolong their morning ritual.
“I’ve always loved your hair like this.” Dimitri twists the ponytail in his fingers.
“You and apparently everyone on TikTok,” Felix grumbles.
“I’m very pleased about that. It means other people see you the way I do.”
“As a lemon-lipped gargoyle!”
“All the better to kiss,” Dimitri says, and makes good on his declaration.
I wait until the last minute to ask him the question that’s been on everyone’s mind. After weeks spent basking in the glory of Dimitri and his sublime physique, I’m afraid of the answer that might break my heart. But I can’t leave without knowing, either.
“Love?” When Dimitri laughs, it’s as if time stops for a moment just to listen to him. “Yes, I’ve experienced it. To tell you the truth— Hm? Hang on.” His abominable bodyguard has escalated from scowling to tapping Dimitri’s shoulder aggressively, which manages to pull Dimitri away from sharing the biggest news of the century. Once they leave the room, I do my best to eavesdrop, but their conversation is half whispers, half meaningful silence, and completely unintelligible.
Dimitri returns to me shortly. His bodyguard moves to hover in the doorway and glare at me. “My apologies. We were talking about love, weren’t we? I am in love right now, actually. It’s been a long time coming.”
He continues before I can register the sinking of my heart, changing the subject so smoothly it feels passé to push any further. “I’d like to keep this secret a little longer. My publicist has cleared me to share this with you, but I’m sure you understand that my status as a celebrity hardly affords me any privacy. In fact—” he shows me his phone, a chunky little brick straight from the 2000s. No camera, no wifi connection, just a tiny gray-green display and a keypad “—I don’t even have a smartphone. With everything that’s happened, privacy is very important to me. Did you know digital billboards can track you based on your phone’s bluetooth signal?”
I didn’t. When I express my surprise, he looks almost proud. “Felix told me that.”
Who is this Felix, anyway? Dimitri takes his time answering. When he does, his smile is sweeter, more genuine than anything I’ve seen on a public figure. “My dearest friend.”
They’re on their way home from a shoot when Dimitri squeezes Felix’s hand and broaches the forbidden topic again. Of late it feels like Dimitri asks every other day. Felix says no every time, but somehow Dimitri has an endless wellspring of optimism.
“Would it be so bad? If we… made it public?”
Felix glares at him but doesn’t release his hand. In the driver’s seat, Ingrid makes a frantic show of turning the radio up.
“I am tired of people misunderstanding that I am dining alone when I am actually on a date with you,” Dimitri says. “Remember that time we went to Dedue’s and they took a photo of me looking at the menu?”
The Dimitri Blaiddyd sadly eating alone meme. “True.”
“And I’m sure my fans would welcome you as the Prince Consort of Pop. You have your own fan base on TikTok, you know. We could finally go on that Disneyland date you’ve been dreaming of.”
“It’s your dream,” Felix hisses as he tries to wriggle his fingers out of Dimitri’s grip. The longer he allows Dimitri to hold his hand, the more likely he is to cave. “We’ve been over this. You’re basically forcing me to quit!”
“You can retire early. I’ll be more than happy to support you for the rest of my life. Just think, Felix, you could be my angry little trophy wife.”
Felix’s cheeks flare entirely against his will. “I will not be your trophy wife!”
He finally manages to untangle his hand from Dimitri’s, but the moment he snatches it away Dimitri recaptures it unbearably casually and shoots him a mischievous look. Felix’s stomach ties itself into a pleasant knot.
“Why not? In truth, I would enjoy it immensely. Just think of it, Felix!” Dimitri’s tone turns dreamy. “I come back home tired after a long day at the office, but the sight of my beloved in fluffy slippers and an apron…” He sets his chin on Felix’s shoulder and kisses his jaw.
“Guys, I’m still here,” Ingrid says, staring straight ahead with an expression of resigned discomfort.
Dimitri laughs and draws away. “Sorry, Ingrid.”
“No you’re not.”
“Perhaps not,” Dimitri admits, then turns back towards Felix. “Going public would probably stop people like Camilla from writing weird articles. And I would have another way to keep all those inappropriate strangers off my back.”
Inappropriate strangers. Dimitri’s polite name for all the assorted lowlifes, creeps, and bastards associated with being a worldwide celebrity. He has a point. It wouldn’t deter the truly unscrupulous, but it might still reduce the number of toads in Dimitri’s orbit.
“But you were never one to seek the spotlight.” Dimitri looks down and twists his fingers together in his lap. His tone drops into hesitation. “I know you’ve made a big sacrifice in allowing me into your heart and I don’t take it for granted. I would understand if you… didn’t want this kind of life with me.”
It stings a little, that Dimitri could even imagine that any part of their relationship is a sacrifice.
“Shut up, boar, you don’t know anything,” Felix says angrily, tugging Dimitri’s face back towards himself. “I chose all of this. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
He kisses Dimitri fiercely.
“Oh my god,” Ingrid says just loudly enough that it carries over the sound of the radio. “No wonder Ashe quit.”
Felix pulls away and scowls at Ingrid in the mirror, but she’s looking dead ahead and barely even blinking. “Fine. We’ll go public.”
“Truly?” There’s no trace of the hesitation in Dimitri’s voice now, only elation. Felix frowns and looks over, and— there it is. Dimitri’s terrible smug look of victory.
“You tricked me!”
“Will you take it back, then, my love?” Dimitri already knows the answer; his voice is full of joy.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” Felix says, and kisses Dimitri again.
“Stop, I swear to god, I will pull this car over on the freeway and make a scene and then you’ll both be sorry—”
Editor’s note: Three days after we published the print version of this article, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd announced on social media that he is in a relationship with one Felix Fraldarius, mentioned in this article as an angry little man and a gargoylish bodyguard, among other descriptions. We regret the editorial tone and have sincerely apologized to Mr. Fraldarius for the discourtesy.