Work Text:
It’s a day like any other in Felix’s mundane life, which means working on a Saturday and trying to make it on two cups of black coffee and the protein bar he’d found in his pocket. It’s a day like any other which means Felix is slightly too hot in the ridiculous uniform they make him wear, only welcome due to the dropping temperatures he has to face outside. It’s a day like any other in that guests filter in and out between rooms, Felix watches them as he’s supposed to, and he doesn’t wonder about their lives because, really, why would he?
It’s a day like any other when a man stops and crosses his arms to regard a piece. He’s tall, which Felix hates on principle, he’s well-dressed, which isn’t unusual, and he’s alone, which is. But whatever, a man stands in front of a painting. It sounds like the start of some particularly cheesy joke, and Felix keeps looking, waiting for his punch line.
It abruptly comes when the man drops his arms and walks into the next room of the gallery, out of sight. Felix sighs and searches for his next distraction.
One warning for the woman getting too close to a Degas and two daydreams later, and the man is back in view—it’s hard to miss his hair, clashing ostentatiously with the fragile subtlety of Monet’s water lilies. Felix is surprised. He expected the man to be long gone, having put in some obligatory hour for work or in the name of intellectual conversation for his next date.
The static in his ear from the employee radio jolts him back to the job on hand.
He patrols. He scolds a family for letting their child touch the wall. He eats dinner (old sandwich from the fridge, courtesy of last week Felix who knew he’d need it) because he takes the later day shifts. And when he returns, the man is still there, now planted in front of yet another famous landscape.
So Felix returns to his spot against the archway, and every so often allows himself permission to look at the broad back and the glinting waves of his hair, catching fire in the exhibition lights.
When the man leaves fifteen minutes before closing, Felix finds himself disappointed. It shouldn’t matter. The man is gone and now so is Felix, clomping down the familiar stone steps in the shoddy excuse for nighttime the city offers, destined to an evening of take-out and youtube videos before he passes out on his secondhand twin bed. A day like any other.
✥✤✣
It should be a day like any other, which it is, except it’s not, because the man is back. Later, this time, because it’s past seven and the crowd is beginning to thin. But he’s here, standing in front of the same painting. Still in a suit, still alone, and still tall, which means Felix is still annoyed. But now he finds himself slightly intrigued.
Not that Felix can talk. Here’s here every week too. Only difference is he’s getting paid (poorly) for it. But he gets the appeal.
It’s actually sort of funny: Felix is in this building six hours a day, three times a week, and he was originally only in the Annenberg collection to cover Ashe’s vacation. Maybe he just needed a change from the arms and armor, or maybe there was something weirdly inspiring about it. But when Ashe came back Felix struck a deal, and his Saturdays became full of purposeful brushstrokes and juxtapositions of opposite colors and tiny dots making up an image.
If he hadn’t done so he wouldn’t be here, watching some man in a business suit stare at a painting that he must have memorized by now, and thinking about how aside from that, it’s a day like any other. Which, really, is a little sad, now that Felix thinks about it.
✥✤✣
It’s been a month and Felix is starting to accept that his “day like any other” may have to adapt to accept the red haired man standing in front of the same painting, and that Felix is going to continue to be curious about it.
It’s almost exciting.
The thing is, Felix doesn’t really do change. Aside from his museum shifts he takes a class, helps his friend turned enemy turned friend again who’s taking over his parent’s business, and in the time between, attempts to remember how to create his own art. His apartment is a large one bedroom he was lucky enough to nab in the upper west, cheap and not pretty, and currently a mess of half-finished sculptures and unwashed tupperware. He has a handful of friends and still doesn’t understand why, no family remaining, and doesn’t even have a pet to stress over or keep him company on the nights he admits to himself he feels lonely.
It’s been like this for three years. It’s working well enough, so why change? There are worse things than being alone.
But this man—who Felix has come to notice has freckles dusting his nose and down his neck, weirdly-clean fingernails on weirdly-broad hands, and a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes when making passing conversation (always too far to catch the tone of his whispering voice)—is… yeah. It’s almost exciting.
Anyway, Felix has been fantasizing about swinging a sword, which he hates to admit is pretty on par for him. (But the collection just got a new set of katanas and Felix was allowed to see them up close and personal. They’ve been on his mind ever since, and only partially because he’s wondering about the best way to smuggle them home.) He doesn’t even realize where his eyes are until he blearily brings them into focus and finds someone staring back.
The man, perfectly surrounded by a thick copper frame that brings out his eyes, and it’s offensive that even at this distance Felix can pick up every wisp of his long lashes.
He’s been staring, and he’s been caught. Shit. A betraying flush of childlike shame rises on Felix’s cheeks. He should look away. He doesn’t.
The man tilts his head ever so slightly, boyish fringe falling across the freckled bone of his nose—considering him like Felix was another artwork to be hung on a wall and analyzed. Felix instinctively layers his arms over his chest, the mandated flimsy long sleeve button down his only armor. It’s not enough. That honey gaze slices right through to his vulnerable underbelly.
Felix has to count the seconds in his head or he’ll go crazy. Around number eight the man smirks—it’s awful, Felix hates it, and almost faints from the heat—shoves his hands in his pockets in a devastatingly casual move, and turns back around.
Felix ducks out of his shift fifteen minutes early, leaving the man to his painting, and Felix to his defeat. He hadn’t even realized he was playing a game.
✥✤✣
The man continues to return. Felix resolutely avoids his eye. He’s not sure why, but it feels like too much, too soon, even though it’s been months now and Felix has more than acclimated to the man’s presence. Maybe it was just the knowledge that he’d been caught, that the dynamic has shifted somehow, and Felix doesn’t know how to deal with the one being seen.
So it’s only when the man’s back is turned—so still that he may as well be a permanent addition to the sculpture garden—that Felix allows his fleeting gaze to linger on the sinful cinch of his waist exaggerated by his taut-buttoned jacket, the sweep of his palm when he subconsciously rubbed it through the back of his hair. Loses himself to throughs of long fingers curved firm around the handle of a paintbrush, or the cut of Felix’s jaw, or the length of his—
“Felix? You there?”
He jumps, cursing and fumbling with the radio, and the young couple nearby hurriedly scuttles into the next room.
When his shift ends he makes a pitstop to the museum gift shop, a pitstop to his go-to Thai restaurant around the block, and a full stop in front of the stone steps to his apartment. The outdoor light has gone out. Again. He curses as he messes with his phone’s flashlight—the last thing he needs is to be the front and center of tomorrow’s breaking headline: Idiot dies falling down stairs, pad thai found uneaten beside him. A tragic waste of the best peanut sauce this side of Central Park.
When he makes it, death-free, into his bare bones apartment, he throws the bag onto the counter. Even with dinner it’s habitual to stick his head in the fridge, needing the routine of sighing at the nothing there before thunking his head on the door. It’s cool. A different kind of cool than the biting chill of a record low temp fall. A cool that lets him close his eyes and waste valuable electricity while breathing in the stale smell of old vegetables.
He burns another minute in there before turning to staring at the blank walls instead. Maybe he should redecorate—or, according to Annette, decorate in the first place. Which had been a little rude, he did have some things around.
A couple finished sculptures scattered miserably on tabletops.
A painting Glenn did in his second year of college hanging crooked over the couch. It was objectively horrible.
He pulls the small, flat parcel from the inner pocket of his coat and walks to his room, frowning. It’s the saddest room of his sad apartment: white-walled, cluttered, almost made more pathetic with the cheap online curtains hanging limp from a tiny curtain rod. No posters, no paintings, just some postcards he’d snagged with his very pretty 50% discount, shoved to stick in the molding next to the door.
The first was some grand idyllic landscape by Bierstadt that he’d gotten years ago, on a rare, optimistic day when Glenn had offhandedly remarked that he liked it. They’d been bumbling their way through the American Wing when it’d caught his eye, standing so regally in front of it like he could step right into the landscape and become part of it.
The second was his father’s favorite, some pretty thing that Felix hated on principle when it was first pointed out to him. An old master’s work that was too precise and too religious for his taste. He still hates it, but maybe a little less after almost three years of staring at it. He forgets the name.
The bag in Felix’s hand crinkles when he pulls out the newest addition. It fits snugly above the rest, all swirling brushstrokes and thick paint. A wild landscape for an abstract person that Felix hasn’t even met, yet thinks important enough to save along with the few remnants he has left of his family. The impropriety of it all almost makes him laugh.
Instead he just stares at their dim outlines in a room where he hasn’t even turned on the light, the sounds of distant cars and laughing pedestrians his only company. Maybe there are worse things than being lonely. Maybe Felix hates the feeling anyway.
✥✤✣
It’s not a day like any other, because while lively chatter hangs over the crowd in a cloud of merriment as they herd towards the exit, the redhead doesn’t so much as shift his weight. Felix stares. And for the first time in over three years, makes an impulsive decision.
When the last pretentious anecdotes are left to die out unacknowledged behind them, all that remains is blissful silence. Each step of Felix's worn work shoes puncture unnaturally loud through it, closer and closer until he, too, becomes an observer.
The man continues scrutinizing the painting in front of him. After a beat, Felix turns to it. He’s stared at it a thousand times before, in a wing where paintings never change and the delight of visiting famous brushstrokes has long since died out.
He thought he'd seen everything worth seeing; but here, now, he isn’t quite sure.
“Do you ever wonder what he was thinking about when he cut off his ear?”
Felix jumps, a reflexive, “what? No,” slipping from his lips before he has a chance to truly consider the question. Upon another next second of consideration he frowns. “Who asks that?”
“Just a guy who’s genuinely curious.”
The man's attention, with all its intensity, shifts from the painting. It makes Felix wonder how the Mona Lisa can look so damned smug—just this single pair of eyes on him would have him disappearing into the painted shadows of his canvas.
“Are you here to kick me out?”
“Do you want me to?”
From the corner of his vision, Felix sees a strained smile creep across the other’s face. “Not particularly.”
“Mmm.” Felix keeps his eyes firmly on the painting. “Then no.”
They relapse into silence. Felix wonders how long they realistically have before another guard comes for them, then wonders how many tubes of paint it’d taken to finish the sky. If the artist had chosen instead to memorialize the sunset, would the blood from his ear be mixed in, hidden amongst the crimson and tangerine sky like a morbid joke with the punchline discovered on a century-long delay?
It doesn’t matter. He’s getting off-track here; it’s too quiet between them and Felix would be lying if he said he ever knew what to say—then again, he’d been expecting a different opener. Maybe a smile. Or a hey. Or even a “fancy meeting you here,” that Felix would hate but pretend to know how to work with. Not a conversation about some famous artist’s missing ear.
Yet after three months of watching from afar, this is what he has to work with. His daydreams dissolve along with his mediocre confidence.
“Uh, what about you?” The words slip out before he can catch them.
“What about me, what?”
“What do you think he was thinking about, when, you know—” Felix motions towards the side of his head.
“Ah.” The man tilts his chin upwards as if debating to share a secret, the small vibrant hairs at his neck catching his collar, hands clasping white around his back and wrinkling the jacket of a once perfectly-pressed suit. “Well, you know what they originally thought, right?”
Felix does not. He feels stupid for it, regardless if the only certifications for museum guard were an officer’s license and a high school diploma. Fortunately the question seems rhetorical. The man is leaning towards him, voice as conspiratorial as the glimmer showing behind his eyes. He smells like pipe tobacco and citrus, like he’d stepped fresh out of one of Renoir’s garden parties.
“They thought it was because of Gauguin.”
Felix automatically looks towards the other room. “Gauguin?”
“The one and only.”
He inclines his head and Felix turns, falling in step with the man as they head towards the left row of paintings.
“They thought the two had a falling out, and then Van Gogh lost it and—” he makes dramatic a slicing motion in mid-air “—schwip! Gone.
Felix pauses to scowl at the closest painting. He’d never been a fan of the clunky limbs and flat planes of color, anyway.
“But that’s not what happened?”
The man has stopped too, tapping at his chiseled chin with long fingers, eyes sweeping over the same painting Felix now has some weird personal vendetta against. He doesn’t hold any judgment in his thoughtful gaze.
“Well I mean it was, but not entirely. They also think it might’ve been ‘cause of Theo.”
Theo—that is a name Felix knows, mainly from the displays of letters he’s read when he gets bored. “Like, his brother?”
“Yup. Hiiis brother.”
It’s meant to be flippant but that’s a loaded statement—Felix knows them all too well. He doesn’t mention it. They’re walking again, past more Gauguin and a few Renoirs before stopping in the middle of the next room.
The small self-portrait stares blankly off canvas, counterpointing subtle shades with bright yellow. The one ear that’s visible is intact.
“So, what about his brother?” Felix pushes bluntly, because now the man’s got him curious and he wants to know. And maybe he’ll reveal something of himself in the process, like more about the brother he obviously has. Or if he remembers which ear it was.
The man sighs loud to steady a wavering voice he can’t quite hide. “He was getting married, I think, and told Van Gogh in one of their letters. They were close and Van Gogh kinda depended on him, and felt abandoned. They think it triggered an episode.” He laughs, and the painting continues to stare at nothing. “Wild, huh?”
Felix shrugs, buying time. Was it wild? Felix doesn’t think so, and he doesn’t think the man really thinks so, either. When Glenn died Felix hadn’t known what to do with himself, can barely remember the two weeks after the accident. And yeah, his ears are fine, but he’s not sure he ever recovered. He’s not sure how to—or if he’s even supposed to. He normally tries not to think about it.
“Believable,” he finally answers, and the man freezes.
“You think so?”
A loaded question this time. Hinging on how Felix answers. He pivots, meeting eyes that are a little lost, revealing too much and not nearly enough. Felix swallows and tries not to get lost in their pull, failing miserably.
“Yeah. I do.”
The man smiles, wide and weirdly vulnerable and tempting. Felix tears his eyes from it and steps away before he does something stupid, like pin him against that pointallism park study and kiss him until the silent alarm triggers. Felix doesn’t have a destination in mind, just plants himself in front of the nearest painting and stares as hard as he can at Monet’s wistful signature.
“You know…” He hears the man sidle up next to him. “They say you kinda black out when those things happen. Or that the depression is so bad, it takes hold. That you play out the nightmares in your head but you’re wide awake.” Like he’s talking from experience. Felix lets him continue, disturbed and intrigued. “Which is true sometimes—I’m sure. But someone like Van Gogh… I dunno. I think there’s more to it than that.”
“What do you mean?” Felix asks despite himself.
“Well, I guess I’d like to believe he was thinking about some good things too. Like brush strokes and colors. His next painting. Or even the wheatfields.”
Felix glances up to see him staring towards the other room where the painting resides.
“Is that why you like it so much?”
The man lets out a chuckle shyer than Felix thought him capable of, a hand dragging to mess up the back of his hair. Felix wonders if it was as warm as its color, what the texture of it would be like slipping through his fingers.
“Maybe a little, but. If I’m being honest?” The hand drops and Felix tracks its movement as it flips around in front of him, creating gestural substitutions of a long-past visual. “Found it in an old book.” He smiles in a way that suits him. “It took up a whole spread. It was one of the first paintings I remember seeing. And–” he hesitates, like now is the time to worry about being sincere. It’s too late for that.
Usually Felix hates being too sincere, hates conversations like these at all. Yet he wouldn’t be able to bear it if the other man stopped now.
“And?”
The word is soft; it echoes loud through empty rooms.
“And… It was the first painting I learned about that made me feel free.”
He’s blushing now, not dramatic and splotchy like Felix whenever anything happens to him ever. Just a light layer, like someone started an undercoat of a painting and forgot about it, left to dry translucent out in the cracked sun.
He turns bashfully. “Sorry,” he laughs, harsh. Felix wonders if he’s ever admitted that aloud. Or if, like Felix, he keeps most of his true opinions locked away, only to be examined alone in the dark of a too-quiet, drab apartment.
“Don’t—” he grimaces. Feels that awful blush making its way to the surface of his exposed skin. “I just. Get it. So don’t be sorry. That’s dumb.”
The blush disappears into a toothy, cocky grin, and Felix instantly regrets his moment of honesty. “And don’t—”
“Felix?”
The static in his ear is a knife cutting through the atmosphere, and Felix yelps. The man’s grin widens and Felix’s blush darkens as he fumbles with the piece on his hip.
“What?”
“Oh, uh, sorry, it’s just. It’s been twenty minutes since closing. Is everything okay?”
Shit. Panicking, Felix improvises on the spot. (He’s a terrible improviser.)
“Yeah, sorry my, uh—” he looks to the man, who’s looking back with raised eyebrows and a very amused expression, “—friend is here. Unexpectedly. Visiting. And I lost track of time. Can you—” he turns back around, as though that will magically stop the guy from hearing the rest of his conversation. “Can you buy me, like, fifteen?”
Ashe heaves a crackling sigh. “Alright. But you owe me! Dinner next week!”
His voice is too earnest. He won’t hold Felix to that.
“Fine, yeah, I owe you. I’m turning this off now.”
Ashe’s reply cuts into silence as Felix twists the dial. When he turns back around—the man still watching him, arms crossed in this annoying way that makes the front of his suit bulge—he realizes that he doesn’t even know his name. That would've been a more normal place to start. Or, at least, it would’ve been better than the ear thing. He tries backtracking to a better beginning.
“So. You have a name?” Felix considers diving into the ocean of the nearest painting.
The man graciously tries not to laugh, then ungraciously fails, and Felix curses his family line for how red his neck is probably getting.
“Sure do,” the man answers, once he recovers, “Sylvain.”
He extends one of those large hands, and Felix only pauses a moment before accepting. It’s as warm as he expected, and he almost feels bad for how clammy he is in comparison.
“Felix.”
“Hah, yeah. I heard. Plus it was on your badge.” They drop hands and he indicates towards the lanyard, complete with the miserable black-and-white scowling picture, slung around Felix’s neck.
“Oh,” he says, dumbly. Right. Guess it’s too late to rip it off and burn it now.
“Sooo Feeelix…” Oh, Sylvain should not say his name like that in a public place. “Since we have a little more time—which painting is your favorite?”
He pulls himself together and scoffs. “How do you even know I have one?”
Sylvain shoots him a disbelieving look that Felix reads as there’s no way you work here and don’t have a favorite, and he gives up before trying and stalks to the next room. Broad, easy steps follow him to his destination.
“Fine.” He gestures needlessly at the painting they’ve stopped in front of. “Here.”
“Ah hah hah. Interesting.” Sylvain does that head tilt thing again. It makes him look like an excited puppy dog, which, Felix reasons, he basically is. “You know of all the artists, I wouldn’t have guessed Cezanne.”
What the hell does that even mean?
“What’s wrong with Cezanne?”
“Nothing, nothing! Cezanne is great. Could stare at his work all day. It just, hm. It says a lot about you.”
Felix is filled with a weird sense of forbidding, like he’s accidentally just given a vital part of himself away.
“I think you’re reading too much into it.”
He doesn’t think that. Sylvain’s probably reading into it the exact correct amount, because when Sylvain returns week after week, Felix has his own guesses about Sylvain, too. Annoyingly confident. Too smart for his own good. Romanticizer, idealist. Definitely a little fucked up.
Felix has only been proven right thus far, which only makes him more adverse to hearing his personality analysis dictated to him. It’s been too long since anyone’s even attempted to read him. It’s unnerving, what Sylvain might say. What it might mean.
Sylvain doesn’t care one little bit about Felix’s internal maelstrom, smirking with an affected, “Oh am I? Let’s find out.”
He points at the painting and dramatically airtraces a finger around the building’s outline. Pulls back and taps at his chin, hums. Felix realizes he’s lightheaded because he’s been holding his breath.
“I’ve got it.” Sylvain looks over at him, triumphant, and Felix bristles. “You, Felix… love houses.”
Felix exhales an undignified snort of derision. “Are you fucking kidding?”
“Nope! You love ‘em. Can’t get enough. I gotta tell you, I think you can do better than this one though. Maybe something with a second floor?”
“You are—” Felix searches for the right word, comes up empty. “You are. Just. You’re so.”
Sylvain doesn’t help at all, just grins and lets him flounder. He’s being so annoying and Felix should hate him. Instead he’s captivated. And amused. And maybe… slightly disappointed.
“So, that’s your insight,” he deadpans, “that I like houses.”
He shrugs. “Am I wrong?”
Honestly, Felix hasn’t even thought about it. “No?” Has he even thought about moving? About his life next year? Next week? There are reasons he hasn’t thought about it, now that he’s thinking about it. “I dont know.”
“Mmm. Well you don’t hate them outright, so I’ll take that as a win.”
Felix crosses his arms in reply, the plastic from his dumb I.D. digging awkward into his wrist.
“In all seriousness, I’d rather hear what you have to say about it than make assumptions. Don’t need to etch in that frown any further, it might stick like that if it hasn’t already.” Felix’s scowl deepens on reflex, and Sylvain wiggles his eyebrows. “Yeah. Like that.”
They simultaneously turn back to the painting sitting innocently in front of them. So many times Felix has stood here; he figured one day he’d get tired of it, get over it, move on. Turns out, as much as he wishes it to be so, he’s never quite been able to pull away. He thinks of the postcards in his bedroom. Of a smile he hasn’t seen in three years. Of another he hasn’t seen in five. It brings something bitter up his throat to sit on the back of his tongue.
He stares and stares and stares until his eyes water from staying open (and no other reason.) He’s never given words to this before. Hasn’t needed to, or maybe it’s just another one of those things he tries not to think too hard about.
“It’s unavoidable,” he hears himself say.
His blush starts to return, but Sylvain doesn’t look over—just waits with an impassive expression on his face. And Felix releases it all like a dam being unblocked.
“The house is ugly. Or it should be. But it’s—it’s not. It’s still—” the rest of the words form in his head and he makes a face at himself. They sound pretentious and way too emotionally driven than Felix knows what to do with. They tumble out anyway to crash into pieces at their feet. “It’s beautiful in its devastation. It’s fucked up—it’s so fucked up. It’s basically in half, it shouldn’t even be standing, yet here it is. And then this painter comes along and decides it’s worth seeing. Then the dumb thing becomes famous and gets hung in some big-name museum and makes thousands of people care about it. It’s just some forgotten house.” He hears his voice crack. “It was going to stay forgotten, probably. But instead it’s here and idiots come to marvel at it and say how beautiful it is. How does that even—how does that even work? Why can’t people stop staring at this stupid painting?”
Sylvain’s watching him now, mouth slightly parted, lips glistening from the tongue that’d just swiped across them—it gives Felix something to focus on other than the torrent of mess that he’s just spewed out. His face is definitely approaching overripe tomato territory.
When he caves and meets Sylvain’s eyes, he can’t quite gauge what emotions are storming beneath them. After a moment they settle, and he shrugs.
“I’d say it’s probably for the reasons you just said.” The corner of his mouth lifts in a teasing way that makes Felix want to slap him. Or kiss it. “They sound pretty personal.”
Fuck it. He doesn’t really think about what he’s about to do—or he does, but decides they’re already here after hours and he doesn’t really care and even if he loses his job, well, he wasn’t really in it for the money anyway. Just for that fake sense of doing something accomplished with his life.
And it’s not like he’s seeing Sylvain after this anyway, right? He can hate himself later in bed before vowing to never talk about his life again to anyone, ever. It’s a reasonable plan.
He’s already moving, roughly undoing the buttons of his uncomfortable uniform, glad for an excuse to toss off the lanyard, over-jacket falling to the ground. Sylvain’s eyes are widening in a dissonantly comedic way that Felix can only half-appreciate as he yanks his shirt open. They both stare down at the ugly gash cracking him through the middle, not dissimilar to the one carved down the middle of the painting.
Felix looks back up and states, a little more overdramatic than intended, “It is personal.”
Sylvain continues to stare. It’s disconcerting. Felix is about to regret it when Sylvain looks him in the eye and says, “Damn… you’re ripped.”
Of all the possible responses, Felix definitely wasn’t expecting that.
“Are you—” he squints threateningly, “was that a joke?”
“Heh. Apparently not a funny one,” Sylvain answers, but his grin has taken over his face which means he thinks it’s funny, and Felix is incessed that he thinks it’s funny too. It makes the whole situation a little less incredibly bizarre. Maybe.
Sylvain stares back down at the scar and the grin fades into something soft. Felix feels way more exposed than he did a second ago.
“I uh, get it. I’d take off my clothes to show you mine but I’m not sure how good it would look if we both stripped down in the middle of the post impressionist wing, so you’ll have to take my word for it.”
That sparks Felix into moving, buttoning his shirt crooked in his haste and wrapping his discarded jacket around him. Sylvain’s eyes piece right through it, as they always seem to do.
Felix should regret showing him. He expected to be embarrassed. Mortified. Disgusted. Instead he only finds himself curious to see the scars on Sylvain’s body, too.
They regard the piece for a while longer, and Felix, like he often does, has half a mind to take the painting from its hook, shove it with him in the back of a cab, and hang it on his crumbling bedroom wall to stare at until he falls right through the crack.
“Hey,” Sylvain interrupts, and when Felix turns to him there’s a hand outstretched for him. “I think our fifteen minutes are up, and I’d rather not be barred from visiting.”
Felix blinks. “You're still going to come back?”
“Well sure. Now I've got two reasons to visit.” He winks, Felix hates it, and hates even more so how it makes his heart jump.
“Don’t be stupid.”
He waits too long to take the hand to feel right about it—plus he needs another minute after exposing his entire torso to Degas’ ballet dancers. In hindsight it was a little inappropriate. Sylvain doesn’t seem bothered, just tucks the hand in his pocket and falls in step with him as they twist and turn through the halls and down the main staircase. Softly whistles a tune that fills Felix with odd nostalgia while he returns his radio and pulls his coat and scarf from its hook.
“No coat?” Felix asks, slinging his over his shoulders and frowning down at his uneven shirt.
Before he realizes it, Sylvain has stepped into his space, fingers gentle as he begins to slip the buttons from their incorrect holes. Felix, completely stunned into silence, can only watch.
“Nah,” Sylvain answers, making his slow, torturous descent down Felix’s chest, “I run hot.”
Holy Sothis in hell, how can he say that so—so casually while Felix is seconds from jumping out of his own skin? It’s rude, and Felix would tell him so if he could make the connection between his brain and his mouth work. He fails. Thankfully Sylvain is quick and Felix wastes no time in wrapping his coat and scarf around himself, needing as many layers separating them as possible to quell the sheer uncontrollable need that’s decided to take up residence in his gut.
It’s only made worse when they step through the revolving doors into the darkness of daylight savings, and Sylvain halts him with a tentative hand on his sleeve.
“So uh, I suppose it would be presumptuous of me to ask you to dinner.”
Yup, there goes the need, bursting through his veins like wildfire. He does his best to keep it from showing on his face.
“You didn’t exactly lead with the best opening line. You seem a little unhinged.”
Sylvain laughs, a little too loud in a way that isn’t unpleasant. “I might be. But I’m not planning on losing an ear anytime soon, if that helps convince you.”
“It doesn’t.”
That should be the end of it, but neither of them make to leave. Eventually Sylvain leans himself against the railing, staring up at the lit facade of the museum, while Felix takes to watching post-sundown stragglers and clusters of pigeons searching for abandoned crumbs.
The silence between them isn’t uncomfortable—which is mildly surprising, though Felix feels like it’s his turn to initiate conversation. He didn’t exactly accept Sylvain’s proposal. He isn’t sure if he should, but it also makes him nauseous when he thinks about rejecting it. He compromises by changing the subject.
“What made you start visiting?”
Sylvain doesn’t take his eyes from the building. “My brother died a few months back, and I didn’t really have anywhere else to go.”
Something in Felix grows cold. “Oh. That’s shitty.”
“Thanks, it’s… it is what it is.” He shoots over a tight smile. “We weren’t close or anything. But I was trying to be. I—I wanted to be. Maybe. I still don’t know.”
Felix nods. He wonders which out of the two of them had it worse—at least Sylvain didn’t have to experience the grief of what it means to be close, the one that carved out a space in Felix’s chest and left him failing to fill the hollowness. But maybe there was something to be said about the postcard, and the painting, and the good memories left behind.
“Yeah,” is what he says, stupid and unhelpful. He winces, tries again. “Death sucks no matter if you’re close or not. You’re left miserable no matter what.”
That doesn’t feel helpful either, but the smile on Sylvain’s face is real enough, if not slightly sad. “You always this pragmatic?”
Felix shrugs. “I guess.” Maybe less so, after today. Sylvain nods, seemingly satisfied with that, eyes drawing upwards to the milky clouds tinged with unnatural orange.
“It’s weird. Thinking I’ve missed some sort of chance to get things right. I’m uh, estranged from my parents, so I kinda just—”
“ —don’t have anyone left,” Felix finishes, and Sylvain lets out a bitter chuckle.
“Yeah. Yeah I guess that’s what it is. I don’t think I’m ready to accept that.”
“It’ll take time.”
“Mmm. Talking from experience?”
Felix closes his eyes, pressing the frozen halves of his eyelids together. “It’s been years and I’m still not over it, so. Take that as you will.”
It’s weird saying it so bluntly, out loud, for someone else to hear. But it’s cathartic in a begrudging way, like he’s been avoiding the first step of managing this, allowing his holding pattern of denial to keep a grip on his disintegrating emotions.
A hand rests solidly on his shoulder. The weight is oddly grounding.
“Hey… I’m sorry if bringing this up was too much. Are you okay?”
Felix opens his eyes to Sylvain’s shadowed face. Is he? “Probably not.” Another too-honest admittance. “But I think I will be. It’s not too much. Or, it is, but I think it’s okay, or something.”
Sylvain smiles and leaves his hand where it is, thumbing over the rough-spun wool. Felix allows his gaze to meander across Sylvain’s wind-bitten cheeks and long eyelashes, allows the contact to be comforting instead of unwanted. It’s the first time in years he hasn’t taken someone’s goodwill as a challenge to resist. He’s been so tired. It’s a relief to yield.
When a nearly-imperceptible shudder passes through Sylvain, Felix frowns.
“I thought you don’t get cold.”
Without thinking, Felix yanks the scarf from his neck and tucks it around Sylvain’s, tying it off. The muted green pattern works wonders against Sylvain's orange hair, and—though Felix doesn't know it yet—it’ll take months for him to admit it aloud.
“Fool,” he says with no bite, and Sylvain’s eyes sparkle in the light from shitty street lamps.
“Can’t argue with that.” He pauses, sucks in a breath. The hand on Felix’s shoulder drops to twist around his other one. “Hey, Felix?” He’s looking at him from under those damned lashes, and Felix gets another spike of adrenaline, a straight shot to the heart. “I know you haven’t even said yes to dinner, but uh… can I kiss you?”
Oh. Felix is more surprised than he probably ought to be, the “why,” falling from his mouth before he can swallow it. Who asks someone why they want to kiss them? Well Felix does apparently, the idiot that he is. Sylvain, however, seems to be utterly charmed, letting out a little chuckle that is way more endearing than it has any right to be.
“Honestly, I could spend all evening listing my reasons, but it comes down to this: You’re interesting. And I might be in love with you.”
Felix sputters, unsure whether he should run or laugh or lean in. “I’ve changed my mind. You’re definitely unhinged.”
“But no less sincere.” His gaze doesn’t leave Felix, plumes of their breath vaporizing in the cold space between them. “You can say no, you know. I won’t be offended.”
But Felix doesn’t say no. He steps forward and curls a frozen fist into the lapel of Sylvain’s suit to tug him closer. Hm. Maybe he is interesting.
Or maybe he’s just as unhinged as Sylvain.
“Don’t take this as some sort of proposal,” he mutters, and Sylvain’s delighted laugh rumbles against his lips when he touches them with his own.
Even the brief press is warm. Felix pulls back slightly, just to see if Sylvain is looking, to catch an expression that’s a little too fond than he knows what to do with. The next second broad palms are holding Felix’s face and they’re both diving in for more.
Felix hates his museum job—it’s got him thinking about how Sylvain kisses the way Van Gogh paints. Tongue sweeping in languid, swirling strokes into his mouth, painting daylight colors behind Felix’s eyelids full of sunshine and animated shadows. Expressive and raw and layered, and Felix understands Sylvain’s need to stand in front of that painting, day after day after day, searching for some hidden meaning behind it.
He searches until his fingers and lips and toes are numb. He’s not sure if he finds something, but when he pulls back again Sylvain’s nose is pink and his eyes are bright, and Felix hears himself say, “let's do take out at my place.”
Sylvain’s answering smile is too damn pretty. “Does that mean you’re accepting my dinner invite?”
“It means let’s do take out at my place,” he huffs, not clarifying anything. Sylvain’s hand wanders into his own as he winks.
“Well then, count me in.”
Felix tugs and Sylvain follows—leaping down the board steps, catching scents of roasted chestnuts and the bite of oncoming winter and the exhaust from too many cabs. They’re walking, then running, then sprinting across the still-busy intersection of East 82nd, hands still joined, and Sylvain’s laugh disappears in a November breeze.
Felix isn’t alone, and it’s not a day like any other. His smile goes unseen in the dark.
