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When he first sees the knight, locked up in that familiar gleaming armor, he fears for his life. He winces at the potential camaraderie he can see in the young noble, then cuts him down with eyes closed, hoping to the gods that he won't have to kill him outright.
The next time he sees him, the look of hurt and dire circumstance are replaced by a loud smile and waving hand, both sprinting toward him so he can barely blink before the knight is panting before him. This time the unfamiliar boy has been pried out of his Nohrian armor, perhaps to set the other soldiers at ease on his first day in camp. He sweats rather gracefully, whether he means to or not, Corrin thinks to himself. And his hair looks like down feathers, something your senses could get lost in. The prince snaps his eyes shut. Time to move on; get the newest recruit familiar with the castle grounds.
Silas insists they're childhood friends. Besties, even. He rattles off facts about Corrin that Corrin's never quite registered himself from his favorite foods to the origins of a scar he's always had. Silas insists they're friends.
--
Corrin takes his best friend around the back of the mess hall a few nights later. He's stared at nearly every inch of him and is running out of spaces he hasn't seen and it is driving him crazy. The area is private enough for them to speak quietly, and open enough to escape from easily, unlike the privacy of his treehouse. He begins, "Silas, just bed me already." And ends there when nothing more comes to him. A tad forward, but short and simple--true. Silas, having leaned forward to listen intently to his friend's troubles, blinks a few times, as if clearing dust from them. Neither of them have had a sip of wine and while Silas supposes it should be a relief considering tomorrow's battle, he almost wishes he had snuck a glass or two. He sputters for a bit, reaching for words that aren't quite right, and falls silent again before taking a deep breath and restarting.
"Corrin, I don't think I can--you're my best friend and..." He scratches the back of his neck as Corrin's gaze rips away from those mesmerizing green eyes to look at the ground instead. "I just need time, I guess-"
"And you'll have time. Of course!" Corrin's voice dies in his throat with a small sound almost like a whimper, realizing he had cut in too soon, too eagerly. Gods, he thinks, what a desperate fool. All he really wants to do is close the growing gap between him and his knight and kiss him. He wants to kiss every inch of him until nothing hurts anymore, until he can forget those nightmares he's had where he closes his eyes and when he opens them, Silas is lying there, bleeding out with eyes glazed over in pain. He wants to meet his chest with Silas's and hold him there so their hearts beat as one, synchronized to every last palpitation. But he wants to be the one to accommodate for once. He wants Silas, but more than that, he wants to live up to expectations and be the best friend the knight has fought so long and hard for. So he gives up, takes Silas's words as soft rejection and steadies himself for a month of trying to forget these suffocating feelings.
--
The next morning, Corrin wakes with headache and heartache both, not remembering much of the night beyond that quiet behind the mess and the way Silas's lips had grown chapped between then and when he excused himself for the night. When Jakob comes to wake him for the day, he is already fully suited in armor.
He wakes to the sound of soft crying. The dark of the tent is disorientating and the warm pressure in his hand is markedly different from the one across his abdomen. The next thing he knows, he's coughing up a fit and tasting blood and there are arms around his neck and shoulders, sitting him up and whispering tearful thanks to the gods. He falls back into murky unconsciousness as his bandages are changed, the last image registered in his brain the tear-stricken swollen redness of porcelain cheeks he's long thought of kissing.
He wakes again to Sakura's worried stare. She locks him in an embrace as soon as their eyes meet and this time there is no foul taste of blood, no soft prayers, but the tears remain. He is stiff all over, but his little sister is surprisingly strong, a pillar of warmth. She has watched him nearly the entire time he's been in the infirmary. She says many have visited but, as far as she's known, he'd never woken up. He dismisses what he saw as a product of delirium.
--
When he's well enough to walk, he's well enough to fight. He starts slow, brigands and thieves at Hoshido's border, until he can confidently slide around the battlefield with the ease of a serpent in sand. He never glances behind him, much as the temptation to do so stands.
Corrin makes passes a couple times more, for the sake of showing Silas his intentions remain, that they weren't a fleeting drunk-off-the-atmosphere proposition. Silas still needs time. He said he'd give the knight all the time in the world if need be, but he loses hope, drifting toward the arms of others to try and fend off the longing.
--
They go for a picnic. This time, the sky is clear blue and spring is flush with refreshing warmth. Silas is yawning and bleary-eyed as he sets down a plateful of watercress sandwiches and a container full of strawberries. His hands are worn, but new scrapes mark the sides and for the first time in a long while, Corrin smiles genuinely, reaching for a memory he must have lost of Silas, bruised and bloody but grinning with a mouthful of stolen strawberries.
--
Corrin wakes in the night, a silent scream caught on the edges of his throat, his heart thumping as if it wants to flee his ribcage. His hand claws at his sternum, the sweat and tears intermingling and blurring his vision so the wave of nauseating dizziness that overtakes him barely matters. He can't tell up from down or forward from backward and he can't help but wonder if this is how it always was, with no understanding of who or when or how he was. With only one point of anchor, one window of stability. He sees, in his mind's eye, that same blindingly bright smile, the one he'd worked so hard for. He remembers and it is glorious and innocent and--gods, is it painful. The strange boy his age, a tad bit taller and stronger from what he could see, with shuffling feet and a downturned gaze. Hair as silver as the clouds he'd always dreamed of touching, eyes as green as the forests he knew were waiting for him, scuffs on his skin like the knights he'd heard of in stories. Corrin remembers with vivid detail every glancing brush, every gaze met that had led him to breaking his best, and only, friend's shell. The memory is like needles in his mind, pricking every nociceptor at the tips of his fingers like liquid fire until he passes out, the last thing on his lips a child's shy declaration of love.
Silas has fitful sleep at best. He tosses this way and that until the ripped raw screaming of a couple of children forced to part leave him be. A promise he'd never spoken, an appointment he'd missed by what felt like eons. Meet in the garden at midnight after the picnic. He remembers. He still doesn't know why or what for. He does his best to forget. His nightmares are worsening and he doesn't want Corrin to ever see past the perfect exterior. He doesn't want Corrin to stop wanting that perfect exterior.
--
It is in the arms of another that he hears the news. Silas is stranded in a sea of Faceless, something the knight would normally be able to handle with ease if not for the wounded princess he is carrying. Sakura hadn't made it back to camp safely the night prior and the lord's best friend had taken notice while Corrin had been wallowing in his shallow self-pity. The lord heads into the forest alone, immediately sober with his cheeks clipped by the branches he flies by.
They return, fatigued and badly beaten, but safe. He takes his sister from Silas's arms and quickly rushes her to the infirmary despite her faint complaints. Later that night, he returns to another sleeping in his bed, but his tired mind dismisses the figure, tells him to sleep first, think later.
--
Corrin wakes to a cage of warm limbs tightening around his waist and tangling in his legs. There is a mess of what seem to his blurry vision to be dove feathers nearly in his mouth, brushing at the edges of his morning-soft lips. At first, Corrin is relieved, no empty bed meant no nightmares, something he doubts he could have handled the stress of atop injury. When the grip relaxes slightly, he closes his eyes to try and drift back into the haze of dreamless nothing for a while longer until he realizes. His eyes fly open as his hands push and shove against the broad shoulders of his favorite sight, trying to look away against the nettle-like hold those slightly parted lips have on him. This can’t happen, Corrin thinks, not like this, not when he’s not even awake, not when he feels so filthy and absolutely unworthy. By the time Silas is awake, he manages to squirm away, opting to sit on the floor where he’s fallen rather than let the pounding of his heart weaken him further.
Silas is hurt. He can tell by the warmth of the spot beside him that Corrin had woken up just moments before him, that his best friend had chosen the floor over his side. (After all, that is where he’d always like to be for Corrin) A frown tugs at the corners of his mouth and the ache in his arms allows for Corrin to bat his hands away when he reaches for him. He tries again and the hands that push him away are weaker this time, softer--a good sign as far as Silas is concerned.
“Leave me alone,” the prince croaks. And the hoarseness in his voice is a mix of morning disuse and bitter surprise. At him, Silas thinks. It was presumptuous of the knight to climb up to his best friend’s treehouse after the months he’d left him to throw himself to the wolves, lips longing and tongue loosened. He’s despicable, letting it all happen, anger bubbling at his throat in a possessiveness over someone who isn’t his. Corrin turns away, unwilling to leave his own room, but incapable of looking at his best friend any longer. The look on Silas’s face is forlorn, he knows, and when he shuts his eyes that look is all that is there, pained and lost, yet still so kind. He doesn’t deserve his kindness, both in the ways it hurts and heals, but he leans into the Nohrian’s warm touch all the same, feeling sturdy arms wrap around his abdomen, the steady rise and fall of his breath at his back.
When Silas buries his face into the prince’s neck, the last thing Corrin expects to hear is, “I love you,” and he freezes in place at the breathy warmth of that exhalation against his skin, sending shivers down his spine. “I love you,” the knight picks up confidence though his grip tightens as if afraid Corrin will run away, “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner.” And all of Corrin’s breath is lost at the shattering realization that he hadn’t given him the patience he’d promised, that he’d hit him with a request like lightning and hadn’t waited for the replying thunder.
Hot tears well up and drag across his lower lids so that he has to shut them and choke back the hiccuping sob that interferes with his speech, his gratitude, his own apologies. When Silas plants a chaste kiss against his neck in the wrong spot--a spot he knows does nothing for him--the tears overflow. At first, he is silent, wordless beyond his gasps for air, but when Silas slides around, holds him by the shoulder and wipes at his eyes, a waterfall of everything he’s held back floods his throat.
Ranging from “I’m sorry” to “I love you,” the phrases only stop when Silas cups the side of his face and gives him a reassuring smile, the same one he’s seen by a campfire’s dim light, the same one currently coupled with those bright green eyes that intrude his thoughts so often, now looking at him, into his core. When the knight hesitates partway into leaning for a kiss, Corrin grabs him by the collar, lips harsh and tense against the other’s, startled and untouched. They move into a rhythm slowly, awkward and a bit too sharp compared to what the Nohrian once imagined, but their breaths hitch all the same. They part for air and Corrin thinks to himself that with his fingers tangled into the soft mess he’s always, always, dreamt of losing himself in, his best friend looks utterly perfect. He wants to lock the image away in his brain for eternity, something he’d never dare to forget again, their first kiss, cheeks flushed and searingly hot, eyes dazed and unsure of where to look, the moisture of his own breath against lips so full, so pliant to his will. Once the image is stowed away in full detail, he locks lips again, cutting Silas off mid-word and taking the chance to explore the edges of the part of his lips with his tongue. A moan muffles itself into his mouth, surprising its owner, and drives him forward on a search for more sweet spots. He finds that there are many, much to Silas’s nervous pleasure, and works his way down the other boy’s throat so that the sounds reach him all the clearer.
The way Silas clutches at his back, fingers clinging to his shoulders with no regard for the effect they draw pushes him on, compels him to show him exactly what sort of effect he has. He pants against his throat for only a moment, but a moment is enough to pitch Silas’s hips involuntarily toward his own before Corrin is sucking away at the bend of his neck again, planting kisses across his collarbone hungrily.
--
As Sakura tends to their injuries that afternoon, she attempts to heal the light, painless bruising painted across Silas’s arms. He lays his hand on her festal, offering too-quick thanks as he declines in favor of saving camp supplies.
The Hoshidans no longer stare at the knight, now a familiar face in their motley crew, but they do stare at his best friend. It irks him, more than he wants to admit, though seeing the way Corrin flinches from him in their sights stings worse.
At night, Corrin easily kisses the tension away, dispelling his worries as if they are dust on his flawless exterior. For every “I love you,” whispered between them, there is a doubt that cuts deep, both unworthy of the other, too frightened, too enamored to ask.
--
They fight the war. They bring home trophies made of scars and weary relief. Yato is changed, but Corrin is so the same--his best friend, his partner for life--and glimpses of a light smile remind him of days spent training for the chance to see it again, to feel that same happiness thumping away in his chest and leaving him warm. He cradles the prince delicately in his arms, engulfs him in a kiss, unabashed as others watch on. It is his victory cheer.
Silas is Silas both on and off the battlefield. Everything he does is with grace, with conviction. And in his eyes, there is the glint of mercy as he cuts down foes, the gleam of triumph as Corrin falls into giggles and snorts for him. The unease of eyes upon him settles with time--as past comforts escape the monotonous hum of life at war, so they do from his mind. Each time, Silas is by him, gripping his arm as if to pull him back to reality, where his sword of destiny and the strength of his army lie. There is a solidity to him Corrin has never known anywhere else, so that each return from battle becomes an arrival home, the gentle scent of Silas’s favorite apples, the relaxing sight of him as his armor falls away.
When he drifts off, he thanks the gods for stopping his blade from piercing through the boy the day their lives once more intertwined, for the countless opportunities to once more see that toothy, strawberry-stained grin. Silas shifts when Corrin’s arms wrap around him, a drowsy contentedness mirroring his own on the other’s face as sleep overtakes them.