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Felix and Dimitri have known each other since—well a time when Felix was little more than a potato lacking object permanence. He’s two months older, which is to say, he was gumming his hand and slobbering all over himself in the room Felix was born in. Their mothers dressed them up and took them everywhere together; they played in the garden while the two women took tea and gossiped about other families. Decidedly, they are and always have been a package deal.
During the weekly get-together they hosted immediately after Felix came out to his parents at fifteen, he recalled Lambert smiling and asking Rodrigue if he should expect similar news himself soon. An anticipation had bubbled in Felix’s chest as their father's shared a laugh, treating it like a sure thing—it wasn’t.
Dimitri never came out as anything; their relationship never changed in spite of how Felix so desperately wanted it to. He pined and pined in silence for years while Dimitri battled with the demons of a mental illness that wanted to destroy him. “Sometimes I dream people have died in such vivid detail that when I see them again I think they’re a ghost.” He’d told Felix once while they sat together on the kitchen floor of their apartment; Dimitri’s sleep shirt soaked through from sweat.
“I won't ever let you think I’m dead,” he’d said in response, because if all he could do to love Dimitri was offer him support—that would have to do.
Felix and Sylvain now that was a different story. They met during Felix’s first year of university, he and Dimitri went to different schools in the same city. Which left Felix a bit lost as he wandered around the campus alone between classes. He’d found a small empty corner office in the unrenovated wing of the old physics building, and decided it was as good a place as any to study and kill time.
After three days his respite was disturbed by the most attractive fucking man Felix had ever laid eyes on whose name wasn’t Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. At first, they simply silently acknowledged one another on the occasion their paths crossed—sometime during it all they began to chat with one another—eventually Sylvain let it slip he hid out here when he’d pissed off his latest girlfriend, which Felix latched onto to crush any silly fantasies that may have been blooming.
Inevitably though Sylvain stopped coming to hide; but rather to see Felix, and he found he didn’t mind being trapped in Sylvain’s orbit all that much. Sylvain felt like someone Felix had known a lifetime even when it had only been six months.
More importantly though was when they’d gone out for drinks after their last final’s and Felix had consumed a little too much alcohol. When he’d wrapped his arms around Sylvain’s neck and said something painfully cringe about falling in love with him; he’d reciprocated.
The problem is, Dimitri and Felix are a package deal.
The problem is, Dimitri seems to hate Sylvain.
The problem is, Dimitri keeps acting like Felix belongs to him lately and it’s starting to really fuck with his head.
It’s summer break and Sylvain’s over because it’s one of the rare days where his summer work study—playing with fucking rocks—and Felix’s volunteering at an animal shelter, don’t conflict with each other's schedules. They aren’t doing anything besides sitting on the sofa holding hands because it’s too hot to do anything firstly. But also because Felix has seen Dimitri’s open discomfort, and has accommodated it by keeping any less than family friendly activities restricted to Sylvain’s apartment across town.
“I don’t know what to do about him,” Felix says, for probably the thousandth time, because he’s maybe a smidge paranoid that Dimitri’s mile wide possessive streak is going to run Sylvain off—and because Felix had a very awkward breakdown during sex one night where he admitted he was maybe a little in love with his childhood best friend. Goddess bless Sylvain, he certainly took the whole thing in stride.
“It’s an adjustment I’m sure,” Sylvain says, and he’s said some iteration of almost this exact thing before. “You’ve been attached at the hip forever, being at different schools is the first time there’s been any distance between you and now—well you’re seeing someone and splitting your time. He must be terrified you’re pulling away.”
“I’m not fucking pulling away!” Felix snaps and it’s wholly unfair, but he’s frustrated at the idea Dimitri could ever think that. Like he hadn’t spent sixteen years staring up in awe at the shine of Dimitri’s golden hair thinking he was the sun.
“Fe,” Sylvain sighs, tugging him closer by their intertwined fingers.
“I know, I know, people don’t always feel rational things.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out, alright.” Felix won't ever admit how nice it is to hear Sylvain say ‘we’, that he accepts Dimitri is an inextricably part of Felix’s life and if he was ever forced to choose—well it might kill him—but the choice would always be Dimitri wouldn’t it? Probably.
He’s pretty sure, but then there is just something about Sylvain he cannot place. Like their souls know each other, like they're kindred spirits, like they were as inevitable and destined as Felix and Dimitri. Like losing Sylvain might actually kill him; like it already had killed him—in another place, at another time.
Felix realizes he’s well and truly losing his mind, actually.
“I do not deserve the patience you have for me,” he mutters, but gives Sylvain a little smile and leans forward; silently asking for a kiss.
Dimitri—with his impeccable timing—chooses that moment to walk in the front door. He’s supposed to be working; teaching his little gaggle of imprinted ducklings how to swim on Thursdays. Instead he frantically closes the door behind him and now you could hear a pin drop the room. Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Doesn’t day camp usually go until two, something happen?” Felix asks, not wholly because he’s annoyed but also because he knows how easily Dimitri can become overwhelmed by disruptions to his routine.
“Ah—the pool was closed for an unannounced maintenance today. The kids were sent home at noon,” he answers with a wholly disingenuous smile. “I thought maybe we could go to the conservatory but I see you’re—occupied.” The way he says it makes Felix’s skin crawl a little.
There’s a judgement to it, an accusation of abandonment when Felix has been by his side in his ugliest moments. Breaking a bathroom mirror because his reflection was wrong, sitting on the floor of the kitchen because he’d dreamed of Glenn’s death again. Felix has held him close and protected him from every conjured phantom wishing to destroy him. It hurts as much as it makes him angry. An ugly feeling rattles around in his chest, it wants to call Dimitri a selfish, wild animal—he doesn’t understand why—but he’s come to accept whatever it is; it's always had a home inside him.
“I can take off,” Sylvain concedes, because the man is so sensitive to tension he may as well be wearing a shirt declaring he grew up in a broken household.
Dimitri regards Sylvain, and there’s a definite disdain in his eyes—but the longer Felix looks at it the more it begins to resemble something that feels like it belongs in the bedroom. And Felix is hit with a devastating revelation that his best friend might be equally jealous of both of them.
“Hypothetical question, if Dimitri swung that way do you think he’d rail me?” Sylvain had asked one night—while his fingers were somewhere that wasn’t at all conducive with having a conversation about if Dimitri would be down to fuck. But Felix is fucked up, and didn’t that fantasy just scratch an itch he didn’t know he had for the entire nineteen years he’d been on this planet.
The hilarious thing is Felix and Sylvain must share a single brain cell on this particular matter, because they exchange a blatant look right in front of Dimitri. This is what happens when your boyfriend is somehow both a top, and a size queen. Reformed slut his ass.
Dimitri inhales deeply—like he’s running through the breathing exercises his therapist gave him—then exhales slowly. “It’s… fine, I know you’re both busy too and don’t see each other much.” Saints, does his therapist need a pay raise. He practically threw Sylvain out of the apartment the second he’d walked through the door three weeks ago because he wanted to go to a movie with Felix; at eight.
“You know… we could just… all go,” Felix mumbles, finding the fabric of the sofa really interesting at this moment, because he’s worried how Dimitri will react. Sylvain keeps himself quiet and Dimitri opens his mouth to say something, gets stuck for a moment and ponders with his brows furrowed together.
“Sure. Let’s do that,” he agrees, and it feels like some kind of revelation.
So Dimitri and Felix really like plants—it’s Glenn’s fault because the man’s obsessed with them, his entire house is overrun by them—his partner’s pretty sure they’d be broke if Glenn wasn’t a hot shot cardiothoracic prodigy on the bleeding edge of the field. The conservatory has always been their place. Neither of them have ever taken a date or friend besides each other here. It’s a big red line that says: do not cross. Yet here they are, in the arid biome, sitting on a bench near Felix’s favourite cluster of succulents and cacti. He’s squished in the middle of the two of them and it makes him feel content because Felix is apparently positively thigmotactic—like an earwig.
Turns out, Sylvain knows a lot about plants too; which of course he does, he wants to be a paleobotanist. He’s a geology major with a botany minor, and Felix has no less than six plant fossils in his bedroom that the man has given him; like he’s a crow courting its beloved with a shiny rock. Dimitri is enthralled by this information, asking a million questions like a curious child that Sylvain never rebuffs. At this point if Felix wasn’t content in his sandwich, he’d absolutely be third wheeling right now.
In some other life where he’s used to being forgotten and cast aside in favour of another, he’d probably be getting anxious right about now. Allowing worry to creep in that his best friend and boyfriend are going to abandon him—for each other. Thankfully, Felix has never had those anxieties, because Glenn stopped being the favourite when he almost got kicked out of medical school for fucking a teacher in the cadaver lab, so there’s that. He says it was his last chance at having a slut era before he finally settled down. So in the long tradition of Fraldarius men before him, he was locked in and fully committed to it. All to say, their dad realized they were both spectacular wrecks in unique ways, and decided he could love them both equally, actually. Well assuming love is shaking one's head and sighing because one of your sons has decided to do something exceptionally ill-conceived again.
Felix lolls his head onto Dimitri’s shoulder while Sylvain has his arm around his waist. It’s warm in the room, and he’s cozy, it probably looks odd to anyone walking by. He doesn’t care because he's a positively thigmotactic earwig who was born to be crushed in between these two men, thanks.
“You look like you’re falling asleep, Fe,” Sylvain says, laughing as he runs his fingers through some of Felix’s loose hair.
“I would be if you’d shut up and let me,” Felix grouses back, which makes Sylvain laugh harder. Dimitri snorts, dropping his arm from across his chest to rest against Felix’s leg.
It’s a curious moment, Felix looks up at Dimitri’s face and realizes it would take pretty much zero effort to close the distance between them, and kiss him. With his boyfriend, stroking his hair. Actually he’s absolutely going to do it, he thinks.
Sylvain’s the older and wiser one; so he clears his throat before Felix does anything rash and slowly says, “I’m pretty hungry, maybe we should go back to the apartment.”
Yeah. Sure.
Unfortunately, Felix is also cursed with being a Fraldarius man, which means having zero tact once he’s committed to something. That’s why in all his 5’8 angry glory, he slides into the back seat of Sylvain’s fucking Honda Civic where Dimitri is already squished and pretty much straddles him to shove his tongue down his throat. In his boyfriend's car—who is audibly failing to suppress his laughter.
“Will you fuck Sylvain?” Is the first thing out of his mouth when he breaks the kiss and Sylvain actually just fucking loses it, which honestly seems fair at this point. Dimitri is about as red as a human can possibly be—they are in the back seat of his boyfriend's Honda Civic.
“You really are all like this,” Dimitri breathes out, as if there had ever been any hope for Felix after Glenn proved the family curse true.
“Dima, are you going to answer me or are you just going to keep looking at me like that.”
“How pray tell am I supposed to respond to being propositioned by my best friend while sitting in his boyfriend's car?”
“Yes. Or. No.”
“To clarify, you’re asking me to answer yes or no on if I will have sex with your boyfriend.”
“I—” Felix stops, because he suddenly realizes how actually fucking insane he must sound currently. Because really, when had Felix ever bothered to communicate like a normal person might?
“I mean, if I’m allowed any input,” Sylvain says as he watches them through the rear view mirror, sheer delight painted across his features. “It doesn’t have to just be sex.”
“Ah… and you two have—discussed this?”
"Not really!” Sylvain says way too fucking cheerily. “Nothing besides that Felix has been in love with you since you were toddlers and I think you’re incredibly attractive anyway.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Babe, you’re the one trying to devour him in the back seat.”
Dimitri looks like he’s experiencing the rapture in both the literal and theological way. Like Sylvain’s words have both brought him the greatest joy imaginable, and heralded the end of the world.
“I—Felix?”
“Look, I just…I’ll share him if it means I can keep both of you, okay?” Felix mutters, and he’s sure he’s as red as Dimitri is at this point.
“…Okay,” Dimitri whispers and gives Felix a reassuring squeeze. “But I think we should discuss it—properly.”
Felix slips off Dimitri, conceding. He doesn't bother getting into the front seat, instead just scooching across the back seat to the other side and belting himself in.
He spent the car ride reckoning with the full magnitude of the situation. Felix had no clue how it was going to shake out; for all he could tell he might have irreparably ruined everything in the span of ten minutes, all because he saw Sylvain and Dimitri getting along once. Incredible work on his part if that was the case.
Still there was this niggling feeling in his brain while he stared out the car window, and Dimitri and Sylvain continued to amicably chat about plants and rocks. That there was something inextricable—something destined about the three of them—and it was going to turn out just fine.