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Dimitri changed Felix’s mornings. He used to jolt out of bed and not look back, up with the sun and out with it too. He never found much comfort in excessive rest, despite the fact that he demanded it of Dimitri—the boar needed it, that was the difference. Felix didn’t. But now, with the power to ensure the boar got it, he found himself sucked in, too.
Their bed was comfortable. The dawn was soft as it fell on his cheekbone through the curtains. And Dimitri’s arm was draped heavily over his waist.
He had to get up anyway, as hard as it was. They happened to stir at the same moment, the both of them twisting lazily in the linens, Felix stretching out an arm, Dimitri’s hand grazing over his bare stomach. Somehow he had to find the strength to escape it. The outside world still existed, after all. He had work to do.
Felix could feel Dimitri’s eye on him from behind when he made to slide out of bed, even as stealthily as he moved. He slipped his feet out from under the blankets, untangled himself from Dimitri’s solid embrace, stepped across the room, and still he felt that gaze trying wordlessly to reel him back in.
Then came the low rumble of a voice he’d been expecting. “Felix…”
He sighed. “Go back to sleep, boar.” He said it as threateningly as he could manage without sounding actually angry, because of course, he was not actually angry. He couldn’t be angry with that soft, pleading voice. Or with Dimitri at all. Maybe it used to be something like anger behind his insistence that Dimitri do a better job of taking care of himself, but it was always nearer to frustration. It was easier for him to recognize that now. A frustration born from affection.
“I think you’re discounting your own importance in my ability to do so,” Dimitri muttered to him. Felix could hear that his face was still half-buried in the pillow. Even the mental image distracted him from his work of collecting his clothes from the wardrobe. Cheek pressed against the fabric, jaw slack, eye drowsy.
He couldn't turn around and be dealt the killing blow. He couldn't—
He did, and there it was. Dimitri had balanced his weight on his elbow and let the blankets fall to pool around his waist, exposing his ridiculously substantial chest. Felix was far more scandalized by this than he had any right to be, his face having been buried there mere hours ago, breathing him in, his tongue tracing over the threads of scars. The look on Dimitri’s face was uncomplicatedly earnest and vulnerable. Sleepily, Dimitri asked: “Don’t you want to go back to sleep, too?”
It had only been a few months—Felix was still unused to giving into softness without a fight. Dimitri, however, had taken to it like a duck to water. Better than Felix ever would’ve thought possible. He sought out small affections wherever he could, brushes of the tips of his fingers against the back of Felix’s hand, careful arrangements of his posture so that their shoulders touched when they were seated together, private smiles in quiet moments. It would have sickened Felix if it hadn't instead found it sustaining him.
“If I don’t make it to the training ground before everyone else is up, it’ll be teeming with idiots and take me twice as long. I’d miss our first engagements of the morning, or be so irritated during them that I get kicked out for insolence. Is that what you want?”
Dimitri clicked his tongue. “No, certainly not. An insolent Duke Fraldarius is a frightening prospect indeed.” A conspicuous pause. Felix went through the half-hearted motions of dressing himself while he waited for whatever nonsense the boar had to follow this with. “Though, if I may ask, who would be kicking you out, in this scenario? Are you anticipating someone in attendance with greater authority than the king?”
Felix turned again, despite himself, and saw Dimitri with a grin he’d expect to find only on a cat with a bird’s feather in its jaws. It was always such a curse that Dimitri never seemed more handsome than when he was pleased with himself, and that he found ample opportunity to be so in Felix’s presence.
“Will the king be in attendance?” Felix asked, attempting to play the same game, fiddling with the sleeves of the loose shirt he'd pulled on that he no longer had any intention of buttoning up, not now that he was focused on the way Dimitri’s plush lips curled over his teeth, the way a rogue lock of hair fell over his scarred and empty eye socket. “It appears to me the king has no plans for his day outside of being an irrepressible nuisance.”
Dimitri’s smile widened. “It’s a shame my right-hand man has not been able to help me better allocate my time. You know, I thought—“
Felix could not possibly cross the room to shut him up fast enough. As soon as he was in the bed he captured Dimitri’s mouth with his, a move met with such enthusiasm that Felix could be forgiven for thinking Dimitri meant to devour him. Gently, though—it was not quite the same as the hunger present when they would fall into bed together at night, it was something warmer and more calmly persistent, and Felix wanted to fall into it like into a pool of bath water.
It was easy to do so when Dimitri’s arms wound around him, weighing him into a calmness that managed to sap even the performative fight out of him. All he could do, once the kiss broke, was to press his cheek against Dimitri’s chest and feel the way the rhythmic thud of his heart shook through his bones.
“Now, was that so hard?” Felix felt the rumble of Dimitri’s voice through his chest more than he heard it from his mouth. He grumbled in indignation and Dimitri kissed the top of his head.
“This is just to convince you to sleep more.”
“Mhmm.”
Though he didn't feel the need to reiterate his seriousness here, he did look up at Dimitri, placing his hand softly against his cheek, letting his thumb follow the curve of the grayish circle beneath his eye. “It’s been easier?”
“It has.”
Felix just purred quietly. He was glad to hear it and he believed Dimitri knew this. He stretched his neck to kiss just beneath his eye, then beneath the eye that was missing. Dimitri made a pleased noise and brought one arm around both of Felix’s shoulders, holding him against his chest.
“For me, too,” Felix admitted, finally, under his breath, content to let his voice be absorbed into Dimitri’s skin. It had been easier—all of it. Not just the sleeping. Making things right with Dimitri had lifted some burden Felix had hardly even been aware of, and allowing himself this kind of… intimacy with him had all but evaporated whatever had been left of it. He hadn’t seen that coming. He’d only known he was giving into something that had been gnawing at him from long before he’d given it a name. The end of the war had allowed him the room for that weakness—only the softness of Dimitri’s smiles in a soft morning had shown him that it had never been weakness at all.
Dimitri yawned, big and dramatic, showing his teeth. “You’re right,” he said through the yawn, turning into Felix’s lingering touch as his mouth dropped closed. “I could use a little more.”
“I told you,” Felix growled, harmlessly. “You should’ve listened to me sooner.”
Dimitri hummed. “Just imagine if I had,” he murmured into Felix’s hair, and Felix could hear that he was already half taken by sleep. But Felix did imagine it, and it made him feel as though he was already dreaming.