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“Worst kiss?” Sylvain asks, tilting his neck back as he presses a bottle to his lips.
Felix looks away.
Dimitri mumbles something. Felix isn’t looking at them, but he can tell Sylvain and Ingrid are exchanging a glance. Probably raising twin eyebrows at Dimitri now. They’ve always been startlingly in sync for two people with completely different personalities.
“Sorry, what was that?” Sylvain prompts.
Dimitri squirms, but they all know how this story ends. There’s no getting out of it, not with how long they’ve all known each other.
“It feels rude,” Dimitri says finally. On anyone else, it would be a last ditch effort to avoid answering, but on Dimitri -- well, it’s still that, but he probably genuinely means it.
“What’s said in the circle stays in the circle,” Ingrid says solemnly. Felix wishes she wouldn’t make terrible life choices—drinking games with his oldest friends, all of whom he threatens to injure on a regular basis, just because Sylvain had seen Dimitri talking to a girl in the library and had decided that meant he was woefully uninformed about Dimitri’s life (his words, not Felix’s) and if he was, they all were, and clearly needed to catch up, right, guys?—sound like cult activities.
(For the record, Felix tried to say no when Sylvain made the sales pitch to him. Unfortunately for Felix, despite all his practice in saying no to Sylvain over the years, he’s still susceptible to the stupid face Sylvain likes to pull out on occasions, the one that makes Felix think of when Sylvain was nine and waving goodbye to the rest of them, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
Felix hasn’t told Sylvain this. Partially for self-preservation, but mostly because he doesn’t like the way Sylvain’s face folds in on itself when he thinks about being left behind, even if none of them had ever wanted to go.)
Dimitri bites his lip.
“Just say it already,” Felix mutters. There’s no point in dragging it out. He’s going to give in. He always does.
Sylvain is looking at him. Felix isn’t even looking up, but he can tell Sylvain is looking at him. His eyes are a familiar weight, distinct from anyone else’s.
Felix looks up, and frowns at the expression on Sylvain’s face. It’s difficult to pin down, even for Felix, who has made a study out of Sylvain Gautier his entire life.
Sylvain glances between Felix and Dimitri, his brow furrowing.
Felix blinks. What?
Dimitri, oblivious to all this (as per fucking usual), says meekly, “Annette.”
That pauses Felix in his deciphering-Sylvain’s-undoubtedly-incorrect-thoughts tracks, and he turns to look incredulously at Dimitri. The other two do as well.
“Annie?” Sylvain demands. He looks gobsmacked. Whatever his incorrect thoughts were, they’re clearly lost to this moment. “When did you kiss Annie?”
“Why did you kiss Annie?” Ingrid chimes in. She looks completely baffled. It’s the kind of look she normally reserves for Lorenz, so there’s a part of Felix entertained by it being turned on Dimitri.
More of him is busy staring at Dimitri the exact same way, however.
“It’s not what you think,” Dimitri says. Normally, Felix would be telling him off for having the gall to assume he knows what anyone else is thinking, but this time, he’s probably right. Mostly because Felix is too busy trying to wrap his head around the concept to have any actual thoughts at all. Dimitri? And Annette? What? “It was an accident,” Dimitri continues. He’s hanging his head now, a little like a dog.
“An accident,” Ingrid echoes. “How do you kiss someone by accident?”
“You’d be surprised,” Sylvain mutters, which has Ingrid levelling a glare at him then pointedly glancing at the jar in the middle of the table.
(The jar has four different things written on it. In blue, it says unbearable obliviousness. In green, it says lectures (about ANYTHING!!). In black, it says threats of violence. In red, it says being gross.
Sylvain had protested the terminology, but had been overruled for the sake of visible writing, because the laundry list of alternatives would have been impossible to read.)
“So not what you’re thinking,” Sylvain says, but he rummages in his pockets and throws in some money anyway.
“She kind of… fell,” Dimitri says, squirming.
Felix tries to work out the physics of that. Sylvain must be attempting it too, because he asks incredulously, “What, and fell upwards? You’re like twice her size!”
“Well, she was on a table,” Dimitri explains, as if that helps with fucking anything.
“I need a drink,” Felix mutters, grabbing one of Sylvain’s shitty beers. He turns to his side so he can use the edge of the coffee table to pop off the cap, but he does it too hard, and the cap spins through the air. Sylvain catches it, easy as anything, and shoots Felix a grin.
It shouldn’t make Felix’s chest warm. It really fucking shouldn’t. He’s seen Sylvain do things like this a million times—part of the package of Sylvain being good at everything he tries, the fucking asshole—and his reaction has always been to roll his eyes, even if he sometimes betrays himself with a fond shake to his head.
It shouldn’t make his chest feel warm.
It does.
Dimitri is still attempting to explain things to Ingrid, who is massaging her temples as she tries to make sense of it. “It wasn’t as dangerous as the time Mercedes tried fencing—”
Felix snorts at the memory. Mercedes is one of the best people in the world—kind but firm, one of the few people outside of their group of childhood friends who’s ever been able to see through Sylvain and get straight to the heart of him, dragging it out of him with a sweet smile and sharp perception—but he hadn’t expected much when she’d decided to try fencing. It still managed to go even worse than anticipated, when Dimitri tried to teach her how to hold a foil and she somehow managed to fling it at him. She almost took out his eye. Felix had laughed so hard that Annette called him evil again. Sylvain filmed the whole thing.
“—but I did have to go to a dentist after,” Dimitri finishes, looking abashed.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I know Annie’s clumsy, but you’ve broken scissors by accident,” Sylvain says, raising an eyebrow. “Fully believe she could chip your tooth or something, but how did she fare?”
Dimitri’s cheeks flush. “She was fine,” he says slowly. “I broke her fall…”
Felix raises an eyebrow now. “She was fine,” he echoes. “Meaning something else wasn’t.”
Dimitri sighs. “I may have accidentally broken the table when I attempted to guide our fall,” he mumbles.
Sylvain bursts out laughing. Beside him, Ingrid is muttering something about property damage and can’t take any of you anywhere.
“Please someone else go,” Dimitri says, putting his face in his hands. Felix has the distinct impression that if it were physically possible, he would be curled up in a ball with his face buried in his knees. Unfortunately for Dimitri and everyone who has ever had to share a backseat with him, he is the size of one and a half normal humans, and is physically incapable of making himself seem small.
Except for when he’s standing next to Edelgard, but that’s more about how she exudes warlord energy even in a pleated skirt with long socks than anything Dimitri himself does.
Ingrid takes pity on Dimitri. “Sylvain,” she says, turning to fix her eyes on him.
“Felix hasn’t gone for, like, three questions,” Sylvain protests, but it’s half-hearted. And wouldn’t do anything to deter Ingrid anyway, Felix realises, clocking the expression in her eyes. Whatever’s coming is probably revenge for the last thing Sylvain asked her, about who she’d marry between the three of them if she had to pick.
(It had been FMK originally, but after Felix immediately demanded to be killed and Ingrid’s expression turned ashen when she realised she’d have to say, out loud, that she would fuck Sylvain (nobody had even questioned which of the three of them was the most marriageable prospect, though Dimitri did loyally attempt to point out Felix and Sylvain’s good qualities until Felix told him to shut up), Felix had kicked Sylvain in the shin until he acquiesced to change it just to marriage. The psychic damage had already been wrought, though.)
“Worst reaction to one of your love confessions?” Ingrid asks, raising an eyebrow.
Felix doesn’t want to hear this.
It’s not the idea of Sylvain being rejected that he protests to. It’s not like Sylvain ever even means it, anyway, it’s just that Felix doesn’t want to-- it’s bad enough that he-- hearing about it is just--
Felix doesn’t want to hear this.
He busies himself with his beer bottle, as if his eyes boring into the nutritional information label will somehow drown out the sound of Sylvain’s voice, when it’s one of the things Felix knows best in the world.
“Aw, c’mon, Ingrid, you’ve been around for multiple things being lobbed at my head,” Sylvain says, but his voice is -- weird. Felix frowns, shooting him a searching glance, but Sylvain isn’t looking at him. He’s got his hand on the nape of his neck, which isn’t anything new, but something in the line of his shoulders reminds Felix of when they were in high school and he would drag Sylvain to the gym to hold his pads for kickboxing. Like he’s waiting for something to strike.
“Somehow, I don’t think those ones haunt you,” Ingrid says dryly.
Felix doesn’t think anything of the phrase, but something clearly changes on Sylvain’s face, because Ingrid’s expression does something complicated. Curious and concerned at the same time. It’s not an uncommon look on her face, not when dealing with Sylvain, but Felix can’t say he expected it to present itself in this situation: the four of them sprawled across the floor, drinking beer and playing stupid games, the worn-down swear jar that’s seen too many years (and never once a tax for bad language) of their bullshit in the centre.
“Does something in particular stand out?” Dimitri asks before Felix or Ingrid can stop him. He’s so fucking sincere about it, is the thing. Painfully genuine. If anyone else had asked, it would have been them wanting to dig into Sylvain’s softest spots, cut him to the quick, but that’s not the case here. Felix knows Dimitri, as much as they (admittedly one-sidedly) argue these days, and he knows that Dimitri saw the same reaction as Ingrid, but instead of taking it as a thing to avoid, he saw something Sylvain might sincerely need reassurance about.
It’s possible that he’s not even wrong. Sylvain could. But Sylvain is ten different complexes wrapped up in the world’s most infuriating mask as a form of deflection, and it makes Felix want to sock him in the face on a constant basis, because he loathes all the way to his fucking bones Sylvain’s tendency to shy away from honesty unless it can be used to hurt himself.
So it’s not that Dimitri is necessarily wrong to ask, but they’re never gonna fucking know what Sylvain would actually want here, because Felix also knows Sylvain. And he knows that while Sylvain can and has lied to them all before, he’s never been as good at making himself lie to them as he does to everyone else, and when you factor in the way he’s been all night, loose-limbed from alcohol and loose-lipped from whatever desperate need for their attention that got him to pull together this haphazard reunion, Dimitri talking to girls in the library be damned--
Felix knows Sylvain, and he knows that he’s going to answer, because even if he’s the king of deflection, he’s never been good at outright telling Dimitri no.
It takes a moment, but then Sylvain exhales, long and low.
“It’s not really that interesting,” he says. “Like, wouldn’t even make the top ten most dramatic. I can say that with confidence because Hilda and Dorothea once made a list,” he adds. It sounds like an afterthought, but Felix doesn’t think it is. It’s deflection, or self-deprecation, maybe; making everything feel more flippant at the expense of himself. It’s making Felix angry, but what’s new?
He focuses his glare on the neck of his beer bottle, because if he doesn’t, he’ll focus his glare on Sylvain’s neck, and maybe wring it while he’s at it.
(Glaring at Sylvain is nothing new. It’s nothing Sylvain isn’t used to, nothing he can’t handle, nothing that is uncharacteristically harsh coming from Felix.
But it wasn’t that long ago that they found themselves in Claude von Riegan’s kitchen, Sylvain leaning against the cupboard with a half-empty bottle of vodka nestled against his chest, expression faraway. Felix hadn’t talked to him in about a week, ever since he blew up at him for completely normal—for Sylvain, anyway—behaviour, calling him insatiable. He’d said a lot of things that day, some things so honest that even now Felix doesn’t like to recall them, but that one had stuck in his head that entire week, because it wasn’t fair. Maybe it was true, but that didn’t make it fair, and Felix preferred to reserve fighting dirty for people whose feelings he didn’t actually care about. Unfortunately, that very much did not apply to Sylvain.
So Felix had been shoving down the creeping guilt to varying degrees of success for a full week until he quietly stole away into Claude’s kitchen while avoiding Annette in her search for a beer pong partner, and had found himself staring at Sylvain instead. Sylvain, who, for the first time in maybe Felix’s entire life, hadn’t greeted him immediately with a stupid joke or easy smile. Sylvain, who hadn’t even seen Felix, even though he was staring right at him.
(Technically, Felix-of-that-week thinks, that’s not true. It’s not the first time. But if he thinks too long about the other times, his fists ache with phantom stings and his vision goes red and tunnelled, focused on someone who looks a little like a rough-hewn Sylvain, if you erased the warmth from his smile and drew him in bold lines of hatred instead. And with Sylvain—real Sylvain, Felix’s Sylvain, even with his faraway eyes and fake grins—in front of him right now for the first time in a week, Felix refuses to think about Miklan.)
Felix had swallowed, long and low, before immediately getting irritated at his own cowardice and forcing himself to approach Sylvain. After all, it was Sylvain. Yes, Felix hated being wrong, hated being in the wrong, but if there was any world in which his pride mattered more than things being right with Sylvain, it wasn’t fucking this one.
He’d apologised, which had somehow been simultaneously excruciating and fine. That’s not the part that Felix has been thinking about ever since. It’s the way Sylvain had responded. His expression had cleared when he saw Felix, and he’d been -- he’d been confused at Felix apologising. Confused at why he was apologising, confused at the fact of it happening at all. Can’t say it didn’t hurt, but you have nothing to apologise for. I mean, you’ve said worse, Felix. Considerably worse… We’re not going to let your constant verbal abuse get in the way of our friendship, are we?
They’d talked longer than that—stayed right there in the kitchen and talked for hours about everything under the sun, even though Sylvain could usually be found in the centre of a party, not sitting on Claude von Riegan’s kitchen floor with Felix cross-legged opposite him, the long line of Sylvain’s left leg tucked beneath Felix’s right thigh—and they’d come out of it back to normal, but Felix hasn’t been able to forget those things Sylvain said.
It’s not that glaring at Sylvain would be unexpected, or that Sylvain would be worried by it. It’s just that Felix didn’t like the way it felt when Sylvain just brushed off those words, even if they were from Felix himself. Maybe especially because they were from Felix himself. It sat uncomfortably in Felix’s chest, the thought that Sylvain could say something hurt but didn’t merit an apology in the same breath.
Felix isn’t a nice person, and that’s not likely to change. He doesn’t think any of his friends would know what to do with themselves if it did, least of all Sylvain. And it’s not like Felix is going to stop glaring at him any time soon -- after all, it’s still his go-to reaction for most of the shit Sylvain comes out with, and rightfully so. Most of the time, he doesn’t even think about his reactions. He’s too busy, you know, reacting.
But sometimes… sometimes he’s more aware of it now. That’s all.)
“Something doesn’t have to be dramatic to be important,” Dimitri says, sounding like a Hallmark card. Felix rolls his eyes at his beer.
“You talk to Mercie too much,” Sylvain complains, but he quiets. It’s not the silence of someone who doesn’t have anything to say—not a description anyone has ever applied to Sylvain anyway—but the lapse in conversation of someone mulling over their words.
Which, frankly, is far more restraint than Felix expects at this point in the night.
“It’s not a big deal,” Sylvain says eventually. The forced nonchalance in his voice makes Felix feel sick—fuck, is this -- does he actually -- is this real -- fuck fuck fuck—and he doesn’t want to look at Sylvain, doesn’t want to see what his face looks like when he thinks about someone he actually wants, because Felix has --
Felix has made his peace with Sylvain chasing after everyone with a pulse—peace, in this context, being redefined as has learned to tolerate the stabbing ache in his gut, to the point that he doesn’t notice it unless he thinks about it too hard, like an exposed nerve you learn how to live with—because he’s always known none of them really matter. It still sucks. It still feels like a kick to the chest sometimes, cracked ribs and short breath. But it’s survivable, because none of them have phone numbers Sylvain has memorised, like Ingrid’s, or birthdays he could recite half-asleep and drunk out of his mind, like Dimitri’s. None of them get to see the way Sylvain smiles when he means it, that crooked thing that slips out on Claude’s kitchen floor at two in the morning, like Felix does.
But this… If this is it, if this is real, then Felix doesn’t want to know what that looks like on Sylvain’s face. Because if he does, he will never be able to forget it. He will never be able to make his pointless fucking bargains with himself -- so what if they get him for a night? They don’t get this part of him, or this, or this -- because they will no longer be true.
Felix doesn’t want to know what Sylvain genuinely fucked up over someone looks like, but there’s something Felix can’t identify in his voice, a tight quality to it, and even if Felix has felt like this about Sylvain for as long as he can remember, they were friends first.
So he makes himself lift his gaze, but Sylvain isn’t looking at him. He isn’t looking anywhere near him. It normally wouldn’t be worth noting, but --
Sylvain sounds weird, and normally when he’s feeling off-kilter, he looks at Felix like he’s some kind of… anchor, maybe.
But Sylvain is looking at Dimitri—or maybe just past his ear, right over his shoulder, almost-but-not-quite eye contact—when he says, in that same tone as before, “I kissed his cheek. He wasn’t into it.”
Felix’s brow furrows.
Ingrid objects, “Is that all you did? I don’t think kissing someone’s cheek without explanation constitutes a love confession, Sylvain.”
Sylvain laughs. It’s not humourless, but there is a wry edge to it. “No, don’t worry, I did that part too,” he says. “I told him I loved him, and asked him to dance.”
“And what did he say?” Dimitri asks, voice gentle in a way he can never get his hands to be.
There’s a long pause. Then, with a shrug, Sylvain says, tone flippant, “He sent me to dance with some girl that was nearby.”
Felix can hear Ingrid drawing in a breath, and he’s willing to bet that Dimitri’s eyes are as big and blue as the fucking ocean right now, but he can’t focus on that. Instead, he whips his head up to stare at Sylvain, something he can’t identify coursing through him.
“He what?” Ingrid demands, and Sylvain is shrugging, opening his mouth, probably to say no big deal again, and Dimitri is making comforting noises he clearly picked up from Mercedes, and Felix cannot stop staring at Sylvain.
Surely --
There must be some sort of mistake.
Maybe it’s happened twice.
Because Felix remembers a party, months and months ago, where Dorothea’s tiny lounge had gotten too crowded, and Felix had escaped to the corridor leading to the balcony. He wasn’t planning on going outside or anything, but it was cooler there, which was something he had sorely needed.
Sylvain had been there too. Obviously. Felix doesn’t think he’s ever been to a single party without Sylvain being present. Even the time Annette dragged him along to one being hosted by one of her music friends without gathering the usual suspects, Sylvain had wound up there halfway through the night, eyes lighting up at the sight of Felix.
This party, though, had been a Dorothea party, which meant all the usual suspects were there, alongside half the fucking campus. Entirely too many people to try squish into the small apartment Dorothea shared with Petra and Linhardt, but nobody had ever accused the Black Eagles of lacking determination. Well, maybe Linhardt, but Dorothea and Petra definitely had the gusto to make up for it.
Sylvain had stumbled into the corridor, eyes lighting up at the sight of Felix. Recurring theme.
Felix hasn’t thought about that night since it happened, but now, with it all rushing back to him --
(“Hey,” Sylvain says, grinning. His eyes are soft, crinkling at the corners when he looks at Felix.
“Hi,” Felix says, raising an eyebrow at him. “You’re drunk.”
“If that’s ‘cuz I stumbled, I’ll have you know that Hilda knocked into me,” Sylvain protests, but he’s smiling. He looks at ease, warm and relaxed and so fucking beautiful that Felix almost looks away.
“Hilda is an entire foot shorter than you,” Felix says flatly, but he can feel amusement tugging at the edges of his lips. Sylvain’s hard to resist like this, when he’s happy, especially with all his attention fixed on you.
“That girl could knock down Dimitri if she tried hard enough,” Sylvain says, which Felix doesn’t believe for a second, but would greatly enjoy seeing. Sylvain ambles closer to him, until Felix can feel the warmth radiating off Sylvain’s body. They’re close enough that Felix could nestle himself under Sylvain’s arm if he wanted, tuck himself tight against Sylvain’s chest.
He doesn’t do that. But he could. Sylvain would probably even let him.
Sylvain has always let Felix do a lot of things, though, so maybe that’s not saying much.
“Hey,” Sylvain says, his voice quieter than before. Felix looks up, humming a hmm? in response, before stopping still at their proximity. Sylvain’s face is closer than he thought, eyes looming large as they flick over Felix’s expression. “You having fun?”
Felix wills his heartbeat to get itself back under control. Sure, it’s been a while since he was so close to Sylvain, but it’s not like being the sole focus of his attention for a moment is anything new. Felix often is, at least until someone shows up who Sylvain can flirt with.
“It’s fine,” Felix says, shrugging, but there’s no bite in his tone. Sylvain’s smile grows wider, like that’s the best news he’s had all night. Like all he wants is for Felix to be having a good time.
Then Sylvain leans down, swiping his lips gently across Felix’s cheek, catching the corner of his mouth. “Good,” he murmurs, the word sinking into Felix’s skin. Blood rushes there, Felix’s entire face heating up, and he realises Sylvain must be drunker than he’d realised, if he’s so -- so --
Sylvain is always tactile, always loves slinging an arm around Felix or nestling in as close as Felix will permit, but this is something else.
“Hey,” Sylvain murmurs, not quite as close anymore now that he’s moving back from the kiss, but still near enough that his breath dances across Felix’s cheek. “Dance with me?”
Felix’s eyes go wide, glancing up at Sylvain. Who, for his part, is just smiling at Felix. Not that broad grin from before, but something quiet and a little crooked, softer than it is amused.
Part of him wants to say yes. Part of him wants to shove Sylvain away and ask what the fuck he’s playing at. Most of him is resigned, though. It’s not Felix’s presence making him relax enough to smile like that, after all. He’s just had enough alcohol that he’s running on autopilot. Or, no, that’s too far, Felix knows. There’s enough of Sylvain there that Felix knows he’s not just going through the motions. He’s probably just had enough alcohol to get him to run on his instincts, though, and of course Sylvain’s instincts at a party are to dance. All the better if there’s someone nearby to dance with, no matter who it is.
It’s not a bitter thought. Not anymore. It used to be, when Felix was fifteen and even worse at managing his emotional output than he is now, when he sometimes felt like he was going to drown in all those feelings that were too big for his chest. Now, though, it’s… not a happy thought, but a resigned, matter-of-fact one. These are the facts of the universe: water is wet, the sky is blue, and Sylvain Gautier hates being alone.
(These are the facts of the universe: water is wet, the sky is blue, and Sylvain Gautier will never want Felix Fraldarius.)
A moment too long passes, and then Felix scoffs. “You don’t want to dance with me,” he says, shaking his head. It won’t be suspicious if Felix doesn’t smile, because Felix doesn’t smile much anyway, but he manages to quirk his lips up on one side, just in case.
Sylvain blinks at him. “I always want to dance with you,” he says, disarmingly simple. Felix can feel his mouth pop open, and he forcibly shuts it. “You’re my favourite, Fe. You know that, right? I love you.”
Felix entertains, for just a moment, that Sylvain means it. That he means it like that, that he loves Felix the way Felix loves him. Like he wants to do everything with him, as long as it’s him.
But then he thinks about Sylvain stumbling, and his eyes that are maybe too-bright at the sight of him, and the way he ducked down to swipe a kiss across Felix’s cheek, the same movement of head and neck and shoulders that he makes when he leans down to whisper sweet nothings he doesn’t mean into some girl’s ear, and Felix just --
The moment passes. Felix swallows hard, looking up at Sylvain until he can’t, until it hurts more than usual. He’s good at ignoring it. He really is. You can’t be in love with your best friend for as long as you can remember without developing some coping mechanisms to learn to co-exist with the fact. But Sylvain like this snuck past his defences, and looking at him right now makes Felix remember some of his more uncharitable thoughts, about how Sylvain’s form of self-punishment leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. And the worst part is that Felix knows he’s a hypocrite; knows that while he’d always think it was stupid and shitty, he wouldn’t waste undue time on making Sylvain clean up his act, not like Ingrid and Dimitri do -- knows that if he weren’t one of the towns razed down by the hurricane of Sylvain’s self-hatred issues, he wouldn’t spare more than a few sharp comments and occasional eyerolls for it.
He looks away, and he catches sight of a girl who looks a little like him, with dark hair pulled into a messy bun, tendrils framing her face. She’s eyeing them both—eyeing Sylvain—and something about the way her lips twitch reminds Felix of Dorothea. He doesn’t know what does it, if it’s her eyes roving all over Sylvain or the Dorothea-esque expression or the resemblance of her silhouette to Felix’s—and he has absolutely no desire to examine that further, no matter what Annette would say about it—but he finds himself turning back to Sylvain, twisting a little to nudge him in her direction.
“Felix?” Sylvain asks, sounding confused. And maybe something else, just a little: small or vulnerable or hurt, maybe, which is -- Felix can’t even begin to deal with that right now, and he puts it down to that part of Sylvain that has always hated being unwanted, probably because he thinks it’s his natural state of being -- but that’s okay, because Felix is pushing him towards someone who will want him, and who won’t even notice if Sylvain doesn’t mean anything he says to her, because she doesn’t know him.
“She’s looking at you,” Felix makes himself say. Gritted teeth, unfortunately, but Lysithea says that’s how he sounds normally, so it’s probably fine. “She wants to dance with you.”
(And, if he’s honest, so does Felix. But unlike Sylvain, Felix has a sense of self-preservation, and he knows he won’t handle it well, not when it doesn’t really matter. And unlike a nameless girl checking out Sylvain at a party, he needs it to matter.)
Sylvain’s feet stall, but Felix gently—gentlest thing he does all night, and doesn’t it fucking suck that it’s this?—nudges him again. Sylvain looks down at him, eyes doing something searching and complicated, and Felix can’t meet them. He’s always been too-emotional, for all that Dorothea jokes he has a knife where most people have a heart, and Sylvain spent their entire childhoods wiping away Felix’s tears. He can’t look at Sylvain right now, because Sylvain will know.
“She wants to dance with me,” Sylvain echoes. There’s a weird inflection in his voice, an almost-emphasis on the she, but Felix doesn’t think about it. Can’t think about it. He just nods, and Sylvain sighs. Felix’s desk partner for his Thursday tutorial, Hapi, sighs a lot. Felix doesn’t blame her. He would too, if he was in a band with Balthus von Albrecht, Yuri Leclerc and Constance von Nuvelle. He’d probably have committed a crime by now, even.
Sylvain’s sigh is nothing like Hapi’s, but it’s over too quickly for Felix to dissect why. Sylvain squares his shoulders, looking up at the girl. He falters for a second when his eyes catch on her hair, and Felix quashes the flash of hurt in his chest, that little voice saying see? Even when it’s you-but-not, he doesn’t want you.
Felix watches him take another step forward, then a second, and then he turns on his heel, ducking out to the balcony. He doesn’t need to see the fake smile spread itself across Sylvain’s face when he talks to her, doesn’t need to see him lean down to tuck her hair behind her ears. He’s too afraid he won’t be able to find any difference between that tableau and the way he looked at Felix before.)
-- Felix can’t stop replaying it in his mind.
“What,” he says, interrupting whatever Ingrid and Dimitri are saying. They look at him, but his eyes are on Sylvain, who slowly drags his head up to meet his gaze.
He shifts uncomfortably beneath it, but he stays looking at Felix. His hand starts creeping up towards the back of his neck, though, and from the bitten-down sound Ingrid makes, Felix can tell she’s noticed. That she’s got an idea of what’s happening here.
“What?” Sylvain asks, sounding unwilling to reply to Felix for the first time Felix can remember.
“What,” Felix repeats, feeling like the world is spinning around him. “That wasn’t -- what. You didn’t mean that.”
Sylvain’s eyes flash with -- something, hurt or frustration or something else too quick for Felix to catch, even with all his well-honed reflexes, and he says, “Uh, I don’t think that’s your call to make, Felix.”
There’s a rustling beside him. Felix is aware, distantly, of Ingrid and Dimitri getting up, whispering fiercely between them. “We’re going to get… water…” Dimitri says, punctuated by Ingrid’s exasperated huff, and then footsteps, slowly fading.
Felix is distantly aware of all of that, but he’s too busy focusing on Sylvain to care.
“Sylvain,” he says. His heartbeat is too loud in his own ears.
“It’s fine,” Sylvain says, managing a wan smile. He rubs at his neck, lips quirking to the side. “I don’t know why I said anything. I should have just -- there are better stories. Maybe I’ve even got one that could make Dimitri laugh.”
Something doesn’t have to be dramatic to be important.
Felix doesn’t make a habit of remembering things Dimitri says, but he suddenly thinks about that again, about how that was what got Sylvain to say what he did.
He thinks about how, when Sylvain searched for an important thing, a rejection that mattered, he came up with Felix.
“But you never…” Felix says, trailing off. He feels bewildered, more than he has words to express. It’s like a broken circuit, where everything is being input but he can’t make it all connect. “Sylvain, you don’t -- you don’t look at me.”
“What?” Sylvain says. There is a buzzing noise in Felix’s ears, but he pushes forward.
“Our whole lives, you’ve always -- literally every girl who looked at you sideways, and you never mean it.” Felix feels like he’s trying to catch Lysithea’s veil floating through the wind, wispy fabric always just slightly out of reach. He doesn’t know how to make sense of this, of any of it, and he’s getting worked up. “You never mean it,” Felix repeats.
Sylvain is staring at him now, open-mouthed. There are so many things flashing across his face, mask completely fallen to the side, but Felix can’t keep track of them, still trying to work out what the actual fuck is going on.
“With them,” Sylvain breathes.
“What?” Felix snaps, momentarily pausing in his rising frustration.
“With them,” Sylvain repeats, stronger now. He surges forward a little, moving closer so that his right knee bumps against Felix’s left. “I never mean it with them. Felix, you’re not—”
“I know I’m not one of your girls,” he snaps. “I don’t need you to tell me that. Like I said, you don’t look at me.”
But Sylvain is shaking his head now, looking frustrated and startled and the kind of delirious Felix has only ever seen on Dimitri’s face in the moments when he loses himself. “What? No, listen, that’s not why,” he says, looking determined. “That’s not -- that’s not it. You’re nothing like them because I always mean it with you.”
It rings through the room. Probably the kitchen too, catching Dimitri and Ingrid off-guard. Maybe the entire world is frozen right now, listening to those words come out of Sylvain’s mouth, delivered right to Felix’s stupid, defenceless heart.
“What?” Felix asks, feeling numb. Utterly dumbfounded.
“I meant it that night,” Sylvain says, eyes a little wild, a little desperate. His hand isn’t on the back of his neck anymore, because they’re both settled on Felix’s knees now, like he’s afraid Felix might disappear if he doesn’t hold on.
Felix can’t move, though. Wouldn’t even if he could, but there is nothing in him that remembers how to do so anyway. It’s like all the motor function of his body has been brought to a standstill by Sylvain’s words, Sylvain’s face, Sylvain’s proximity.
“I meant it that night, Felix,” Sylvain says again, like he needs Felix to understand. “I always -- I always mean it with you. You’re my favourite. You’ve always been my favourite.” He lets out a ragged breath, huffs a frustrated laugh, and says, “I always choose you first, Fe. I’m always making these stupid deals with myself, seeing how much of you I can get before you tell me to fuck off for bothering you, and hoping you never actually mean it, and—”
“You’re fucking joking,” Felix says, incredulous. There’s a lock of hair falling from his ponytail, and he brushes it away impatiently. “Of course I don’t mean it. You, on the other hand -- what the hell are you talking about? You always choose me first? I can’t even count how many times I’ve watched you go charm some fucking fool who doesn’t know any better.” Hypocritical, Felix thinks again, because he’s that same fool too, even if he does know better.
“I didn’t think you cared,” Sylvain says. “They -- they wanted me around, and I thought you didn’t.”
Felix shoots him a furious look, eyes hot, and Sylvain raises his hands. “Not, like… I didn’t doubt we were friends—not really, not much, and especially not after the other week at Claude’s, just—but.” He pauses. “It just sometimes seemed like you didn’t want to be around me,” Sylvain says finally.
“You were wrong,” Felix mutters, scowling at the place where their knees are touching. He can hear Sylvain’s breath hitch, and he almost throws him a scathing look, but then he pauses. Thinks about the conversation, thinks about how fucking obvious it feels, how much it seems to Felix like he’s been running after Sylvain with his bleeding heart in his hands this whole godawful time, and then thinks about Sylvain’s breath hitching, about the hunched set of Sylvain’s shoulders, and realises that maybe Sylvain is stupider than he pretends to be. No, not that. That’s not fair. That’s not true.
But maybe Sylvain’s self-worth issues run so fucking deep that he’s not picking up on every goddamn piece of Felix bleeding into this conversation, every blaring sign that Felix has wanted him his whole fucking life.
“The only times I don’t want to be around you,” Felix says slowly, making himself look up at Sylvain and hold his gaze, even as he forces the words through gritted teeth, “are when you’re talking about your conquests, or trying to get me to talk about girls, or come out with you, like it would somehow be fun for me to be on a double date with you and some girl you don’t care about and some girl I sure as fuck don’t care about.”
Sylvain blinks at him, and Felix wants to scream. Wants to get away from this, because if he thought he was at risk of wringing Sylvain’s neck before, it’s nothing on how much he wants to kick something right now.
“You—” Sylvain begins, then pauses, clearly puzzling something out.
He meant it, Felix thinks to himself. That’s what he said. He meant it.
“Did you mean it?” Felix demands, eyes hot. He hates repeating shit, and he knows what Sylvain said, but he just -- he just -- “Sylvain, fuck you, did you mean it?”
“Yes,” Sylvain breathes, then, more firmly, “Yeah, Felix, I meant it. I love you. You’re my favourite. I wanted to dance with you, I always want to—”
Felix doesn’t find out how that sentence ends, because he surges forward and cuts him off with a kiss. His knee knocks hard against Sylvain’s, his hand thudding into Sylvain’s chest, and they collide with too much force, too many teeth, but Felix can’t bring himself to care about any of that, because Sylvain’s hand is coming up to bury itself in Felix’s hair, and he’s kissing Felix back.
Sylvain is kissing Felix back.
Felix’s hand on Sylvain’s chest curls into the fabric of his shirt, tugging Sylvain close, and Sylvain -- Sylvain, who has protested clinginess since Felix’s very first memory of Sylvain talking about girls, Sylvain, who goes in close when flirting but always dances out of reach when he’s snagged someone’s attention, Sylvain, who Felix has always thought never looked at him -- Sylvain lets out a low groan into Felix’s mouth, and goes willingly, pulling Felix half into his lap as he tries to bring them closer together.
“You’re so fucking stupid,” Felix says breathlessly, half-pulling back from Sylvain’s lips to tell him so. It’s made difficult by the way Sylvain instinctively chases his mouth, trying to kiss him again, which makes Felix want to combust right on the fucking spot, but he manages to say it. “You’re so—”
“How long?” Sylvain demands, looking intently at Felix. He’s got that look on his face he gets when he’s thinking through quantum mechanics theories, or puzzling out equations that are giving Annette trouble: the one that says he’s re-calibrating everything he knows about the universe to account for new information, to figure out how that changes the landscape of what he’s looking at.
Felix looks him straight in the eyes, almost glaring, and says, exasperatedly, “Always.”
Sylvain’s eyes go wide. “Shit,” he breathes, then, “Really?”
“Yeah. Jackass,” Felix snaps back, but he can’t bring himself to be too frustrated, can’t give his words the bite he’d usually naturally infuse them with, because he’s got one hand curled in Sylvain’s shirt, and Sylvain has one hand buried in his hair, and Felix is half in Sylvain’s lap, and Sylvain kissed him back.
There’s a sudden crash from the kitchen, startling Felix so much that he almost bashes his forehead against Sylvain’s. Luckily, Sylvain’s reaction was to turn his head to face the kitchen better, so instead Felix ended up with his face buried in Sylvain’s neck. Kind of embarrassing, but certainly more comfortable.
Sylvain, halfway through calling out to Dimitri and Ingrid when Felix planted his face in his neck, cuts off into a strangled sound. Then, recovering, he asks, “You guys okay?”
“Don’t worry about it!” Ingrid yells back.
“My deepest apologies!” Dimitri calls at the exact same time.
“Well, that’s reassuring,” Sylvain mutters, but he turns his gaze back to Felix, who has retrieved himself from Sylvain’s neck, but remains very close. Sylvain smiles down at him. Felix doesn’t think he’s seen this particular smile for a long time, maybe not since they were children. Warm and sunny and fucking infectiously bright, like Sylvain is so happy that it’s spilling out of every inch of him.
Felix’s cheeks go warm.
They need to talk about it. Felix isn’t an idiot. He knows there’s more to -- whatever they’re doing now than can be accounted for with some hard-hitting realisations and a desperate kiss, world-changing as it was for Felix, but. Right now, he’s content to exist in the light of Sylvain’s smile.
“Maybe he broke another table,” Felix suggests, and Sylvain groans, laughing.
“Don’t say that,” he exclaims. “You’ll jinx it!”
“I thought you’d be excited by some property destruction,” Felix says, smirking.
“I’m not Edelgard,” Sylvain retorts, but his expression manages to resonate warmth even as he casts a long-suffering look towards the kitchen. “Should we check the damage?”
Felix nods, clambering to his feet. “Yeah, come on, then,” he says, reaching a hand down to help Sylvain up. “My money’s on a broken cabinet.”
“Oh, man, I wish Edelgard and Claude were here to see that,” Sylvain says with a snort, letting Felix pull him up.
Felix expects him to let go, but Sylvain keeps hold of his hand, tugging him alongside as he heads into the kitchen, calling out, “Did you let him use a dagger, Ingrid?”, which garners lots of protest from Dimitri and exasperated amusement from Ingrid.
Not that Felix notices. His gaze is caught on Sylvain’s hand, wrapped around his, as he leads him into the kitchen.
(These are the facts of the universe: water is wet, the sky is blue, and Felix Fraldarius feels at peace walking hand-in-hand with Sylvain Gautier, no redefinition necessary.)