Work Text:
It was an otherwise normal morning when Sylvain was seized and dragged into a dim, cramped room for interrogation.
He hadn’t seen it coming. Testament to his dulling reflexes in his advancing years. There was a flash of movement—he reared, on instinct, only not quick enough—and then some unkind handling of his not-inexpensive shirt, and then, instead of carrying on down the well-lit, clean corridors of Castle Fhirdiad, Sylvain found himself in a storage closet, face-to-face if not nose-to-nose with Felix beloved Fraldarius.
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Sylvain said, groping around for a candle.
Felix lit one and set it to the side, atop a barrel and to the right of a tangle of mops and brooms. The cast of the flame flicked over his neck and the side of his face. Sylvain was sunk: if he hadn’t known it by Felix’s manner of invitation and choice of venue, he’d have spotted it now, written decades deep into Felix’s expression. He was mad. The closet was the least of it. Felix was angry to the point that they were going to have a talk about it.
Felix waited. Arms crossed with his back to the wall. The incandescence of his irritation reached for Sylvain like spikes he might throw himself on, if only he were so lucky.
Sylvain scrubbed a hand through his hair. Dusty; probably cobwebbed. “So,” he ventured. “Been a little while.”
Felix, impossibly, sharpened. Sylvain saw his features pull tight, his shoulders square and set. “I don’t chase people.”
Sylvain thought of a half hundred ways this was absolutely true and also glaringly false. “Alright.”
“You’re too old to still be pretending to be stupid, Sylvain.”
Sylvain met Felix’s eye, molten and fixed. Resigned himself. “I’ve been making you chase me.”
Helpfully, Felix didn’t reiterate anything about whether chasing was in his repertoire, which made Sylvain feel worse—cobwebs aside, Felix was being gracious. Was being, for a certain definition of the word, mature.
“You need to tell me,” Felix bit out, “how big this problem is.”
Pain caught Sylvain around the chest. “There isn’t one,” he said, too quickly.
“Lie to someone else. Not to me.”
“I didn’t even know I was doing it—“
“Avoiding me, you mean.”
“In my defense, we’re both busy—“
“We’ve had time to—“ Felix flung out a hand between them, gesturing. “Make-out. In the gardens. The kitchens. This closet.”
Sylvain’s voice got small and pathetic. “Would you believe that’s part of it?”
Felix looked stricken, in the bare moment before he stowed it away with brutal efficacy. “That answers it then.” He made a move like he meant to leave. Sylvain slipped between him and the door, and they stood close enough now for Sylvain to feel Felix’s breath on his cheek.
He put a hand on Felix’s hip. His heart was beating a messy gallop. “You gotta give me a second here, alright? I’m not always just pretending to be stupid.“
Felix clicked his tongue, in a way Sylvain took to mean: thin ice and continue.
“I uh.” Sylvain dragged his thumb over Felix’s hipbone through the fabric of his trousers. Looked down then up then down again. “Well. I like you.”
A tangle of things on Felix’s face, then: anger, surprise, embarrassment, maybe even a little bit pleased, but over all of it a wild bewilderment that said he had no idea how Sylvain managed to play a significant role in running the country, let alone put his shoes on the right feet in the morning.
“I’m blushing,” Sylvain said, hearing the desperation in his own voice. “I’m almost forty and I’m blushing in meetings with the king.”
“So it’s Dimitri you’re after.”
“You sit next to him!”
Some part of Sylvain was already on his knees, begging for understanding. Felix let the silence play out; Sylvain’s only hope was in the frown that said Felix had gone inward to rearrange his understanding of things.
“You’re almost forty,” Felix repeated at length. “You’re you. Don’t tell me you’re not used to dating.”
Sylvain could’ve collapsed then. He thought about making Felix take his whole weight and settled for burying his face in Felix’s shoulder. “You?” he said. “You think I’m used to it with you? You’re a hundred years too early.”
Felix’s voice was vaguely defensive. “I don’t know.” One of his hands had come up, seemingly on reflex, to settle on Sylvain’s lower back.
“It’s been hard to focus. When I’m around you.” Sylvain groaned. “God, I’m regressing.”
Felix gave him an awkward pat; Sylvain assumed it was meant to be conciliatory, and was amused and also torn in half by the magnitude of the gesture.
“In fairness,” Felix said, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever quite acted your age.”
“Like you’re innocent in this,” Sylvain said. He eased back enough to look Felix in the face. “Who is it that’s dragging me off for a quick grope in the library? On breaks between meetings? I’d accuse you of teenaged behavior, but that’s actually a big improvement over your adolescence.”
Felix’s gaze went cool and focused. “I can handle it. You’re the one walking back into those meetings with a problem.”
“A problem,” Sylvain repeated on a disbelieving huff of a breath. “You really come up with the sweetest nicknames.”
Felix’s eyes flashed with amusement. “Your dick has always been a problem.”
“I should’ve put you in charge of it sooner,” Sylvain said solemnly. Maybe then he’d have some immunity, he thought. A smile ticked up the corner of Felix’s mouth. He reached slowly and with obvious intent for Sylvain, only to wind up bypassing any more interesting parts of him to take up his hand.
Felix’s smirk was self-satisfied. Playful. Sylvain felt his face warm—the trouble was, his heart didn’t beat slower for where Felix put his hands on him. It was being touched, looked at, sought out: it was every one of these things, the fact of them at all.
“You have a meeting,” Felix said. His voice was level, uninvested, even as he dragged his fingernails lightly over Sylvain’s palm. Sylvain had never realized how many nerve endings he had there before.
“I do,” Sylvain said, swallowing.
“Hm.” Felix stepped closer. Sylvain had the distinct sense of being cornered. The hushed rustle of Felix’s clothes as he moved seemed loud in such a small space. The heat of Felix’s body was distinct and encompassing. Felix still hadn’t let go of his hand, only held it up and out of the way, lengthening the line of Sylvain’s body in a move like he was disarming Sylvain of a knife.
He shuddered as first Felix’s breath and then his teeth made contact with the skin of his neck. The sensation was there, exact and overwhelming, and then in the next second, very, totally, terribly gone.
“You should get going,” Felix said. He tugged his cuffs into order, staring Sylvain in the face with a flat expression like a challenge. He hardly even looked smug.
“Felix,” Sylvain said. “Felix.”
“If you want to be caught,” Felix said coolly, “can I suggest not running, next time?”
Sylvain let out a strangled groan. “You hunt! You like hunting!”
Felix and his private smile again. Just a shadow of a thing. He brought a hand to his mouth and licked his thumb and pointer finger in a way that Sylvain felt was targeted, lascivious, and deeply cruel. He tilted his face up to Sylvain’s at the same time that he reached over to pinch out the candle flame.