Archive of Our Own

Sylvain finds out he’s not the first one, not the only one, before he’s even started. Almost before he’s even thought about starting, before he’s crouched, waiting for the gun to go off and begin the sprint. He’s passing the training grounds, early morning, back from a meaningless night with a meaningless person when a voice drifts out through the partially open doors.

“With that mouth of yours, you grow more like your brother every day.” Dimitri.

“Shut up.” Felix. He moves closer, peers in through the gap, and the axis of the world shifts. The prince has Felix flattened against the wall of the training grounds, one hand pinning both his wrists above his tousled hair, the other tangled somewhere in his clothing. Felix looks feral, angry, teeth gritted and jaw tight. Sylvain watches as Dimitri bends to Felix’s neck, watches as Felix’s eyes turn toward the ceiling, half-vacant and tight with something he can’t make out.

He turns, back on the route to his room that he had been walking, trying to ignore the thick pulse of blood beneath his skin, to banish what he had just seen from his mind, but it doesn’t go anywhere. It lingers through the day and into the night, when he finds himself sweating and straining to the thought of Felix’s storm cloud face, imagining it turned toward him in a way so alike and yet so different from the many arguments they’d had since Glenn died and took everything from them.

The next day he sees Felix again in the dining hall, sits to join him without asking, and as he stretches his arm out for something in the center of the table his sleeve tugs up and Sylvain catches his hand. Splotches of grotesque purple cloud the skin where the prince’s hand had pressed. Felix jerks his arm back quickly, unable to hide a wince though he tries valiantly.

“What happened?”

“Not that it’s your business, but I fell during a spar yesterday, my partner caught me a bit roughly. Leave me alone.”

“Really? It’s not like you to lose your footing.”

His eyes are hard and dangerous. “Leave me alone. I told you what you wanted to hear.”

The phrasing is loaded, but what is Sylvain to do. He presses. “Your partner didn’t suggest getting checked out at the infirmary?”

“For a bruise?” Incredulous.

“You never know. If you’re confident you’re fine then I’ll drop it.”

“I’m fine.”

They eat together in mostly silence. Other Kingdom students wave as they pass, Sylvain plastering his smile on and waving in kind when he notices, Felix absorbed in his food and standoffish as ever. Nothing out of the ordinary. When they leave, they leave together. Before they separate, each with their own business to look after, Sylvain stops him, hand on his upper arm where he doesn’t think there’s bruising. “Felix, you know you can tell me anything.”

“What is with you today?” He tries to pull free but it’s half-hearted and Sylvain tightens his grip. “If I need to say anything to you I will.” And at this he does shake free and then he’s gone and Sylvain can feel his absence like a severed limb.

It’s the night after Sylvain rips his heart out and tears his family apart. The lance his brother gave his life for glows and pulses, disgusting, in the corner of his room and he sits in a stupor on the bed. All because of a fucking Crest. He bites back the urge to vomit, again. There’s nothing left to expel.

A knock on the door, and he doesn’t answer but Felix enters anyway. “I’m sorry I’m late.” The didn’t have an appointment, a set time. “I wanted to be here yesterday but…”

But what? The Sylvain that existed two days ago might have said. “It’s fine.”

Felix closes the door and climbs onto the bed next to Sylvain. “Whatever you need. I promise not to push you away, just this once.”

His head, dropped back against the wall, rolls to face Felix. He says nothing. Felix’s hair is down, not in its usual bun, and Sylvain reaches up a hand, threads his fingers into it, seizes it and Felix gasps. His neck partially exposed, more tender blue flowers blooming there. “Tell me the truth.”

“It tells itself, what needs to be told.”

Other hand, fingers pressing against bruises, Felix wincing under his touch — the face from his dreams. “I want to know who did this to you, why.” Who dares to slowly encroach on their promise to each other. He knows so what he really wants is for Felix to say it.

He looks at him, eyes hard again, head still bent back by Sylvain’s grip on his hair. “You should know. There’s only one person this strong. This… hurt.”

He lets go of his hair, as if tugging it had been a threat against withholding information. It hadn’t, unless that was what had made him talk. The hand on his neck lingers without pressure. “Do you want this? Does he… make you?”

Felix shrugs. “I do. He eases up if I ask. I can take more pain than… others. I’m not immune to loneliness. It’s nice to be paid attention.”

“I could pay you attention.” He could pay him some right now, take the pain of Miklan’s screams out of his throat and fill it with anything else. Say the word. It doesn’t have to be this way. “If you want.”

“Would you?” Incredulous. “Out of pity?”

He shakes his head. “Friends give and take. I’m giving.”

“I came here to be the one to give.”

“Fine, you could give. If he wouldn’t mind, I suppose.”

His face closes off for a moment. “We don’t have any… arrangement. We come and go. No obligation besides that of a vassal state to its king. A true knight always does his duty, even to death.”

The specter of Glenn rising, unbidden, to join them in the room. His hand tightening again on Felix’s neck, hum of pain escaping his lips and thrumming shamefully to the pit of Sylvain’s stomach, pooling blood there. “Don’t talk like that. If that’s how it really is…”

“It’s not,” he mutters, embarrassed.

“Does he make you happy?” It feels like a stupid question as it leaves him but it’s out now, no take backs.

Shrugs again, head bracing back against the wall, pulling away from his fingers and so he drops them. “It makes me forget.”

“I saw you once.” Why he’s confessing he doesn’t know. Anything to keep him talking, maybe keep him here longer, even if it means anger. “In the training grounds with him. You looked…” The face he’d imagined so many times swims easily to recollection, raging, pulling away but inexorably pushed closer. “You didn’t look like you were forgetting.”

Felix’s face colors, pink in the light of candles Sylvain hadn’t thought to blow out earlier. “So you already know, idiot. Why didn’t you say anything, then or now?”

“I don’t know.” Maybe. “I wish I could erase the memory of your face from that day.”

Brows knitting. “Why?”

“It’s… complicated. I never want to see you look like that, hurt that way, again. At the same time…”

Something makes Felix glance down, then back up with new and wrenching understanding in his eyes. “Oh.”

He meets his eyes. “I didn’t know. Not until then. Sorry, I know this is weird.”

“Whatever you need.”

“Tonight only, I remember.” Voices soft. “I don’t want to make things complicated for you.”

“I’d be making them complicated for myself. More complicated. I have a lot of empty space inside me, you won’t be crowded.”

Heart twisting in his chest, he sighs to keep from shaking. “Just… be careful. Nothing I have is gonna fill that.”

“I know. Maybe nothing will.” He moves closer, hair and neck back in reach. “What do you want?”

You, safe and angry and under me. “I don’t know. Like you said just don’t push me away. Let me figure it out.” One night only. There’s already someone shoving into the spot that should be his, the spot that should have been saved for him. Shove back.

Suddenly though he’s shy, or cowardly, and his mouth is dry and even though Felix has made all the moves so far he needs him to make one more. Wondering what Dimitri’s reaction would be if he found out, thinking of the hot sickness in his own brain when he imagines Felix in the prince’s hands. Not his style, he hates jealousy and yet he feels it for the first time as keenly as a blade. A line he maybe can’t or maybe shouldn’t cross.

Felix is frowning. He ties his hair up, secret already exposed so no reason to hide his neck anymore, hands practiced and deft. His lips part but he thinks better of it, bites it back, and Sylvain can’t help but think of that mouth on his. He wants it more than he can stand, it freezes him in place. And Felix is waiting for him, he promised not to push, two immovable objects resting next to each other in the flow of time.

After a moment he speaks. “Did I… misunderstand?”

“No.”

“Then don’t you usually take the lead in these situations? I can’t imagine all those girls are the ones coming on to you.”

“Ouch.” Hand over pounding heart, but he’s not wrong. “Maybe I’d rather you came on to me. So if Dimitri asked I could say—”

“He doesn’t get to ask.” His voice is hard and cold. A new feeling joins the potion swirling in Sylvain — worry. “Touch me or don’t.”

He doesn’t, he can’t, and Felix pulls back again. They spend the night locked each in their own loneliness. Around and around in the light of the burnt down candles Sylvain sees Miklan’s face, Felix’s face, both in pain, upturned to look to the goddess and beg for mercy.

When he wakes in the morning, head still sorely pressed against the stone wall, Felix is gone.

Sylvain holds himself together for a week. Seeing Dimitri in the classroom, around the monastery, is like having a beast circling him at all times. He’s starting to understand why Felix calls him a boar. He’s a fog on his brain; the professor calls him in the middle of the lecture but he can’t hear through the muffling layers of seen contusions rippling over him. Dimitri is blissfully unaware.

He knows this because when he sees him alone in the knights’ hall, for once without Dedue, maybe (the thought wrings him) waiting there for Felix, Sylvain is already half angry and his blue eyes are surprised.

He takes a breath before he speaks. There’s no reason for him to be angry at all, and he shudders to think of what might happen to Felix — what he might let happen to him, might want to happen to him — if he approaches this the wrong way.

“Sylvain, nice to see you. I feel as though we haven’t spoken lately. Were you looking for one of the knights?”

“Nope, just saw you, Your Highness.” He tries to grin and it feels like a winch pulling his lips across his teeth.

Dimitri’s face relaxes more naturally. “Oh, how kind of you to say hello. Did you enjoy the professor’s lecture today? I find Reason so fascinating, although I can never seem to grasp it. They’re a great teacher, are they not?”

His brain is on fire, swarming with bees, how is this conversation happening. Felix’s teeth clenched, his neck and wrists bruised, somewhere in the castle not with him, touched by someone else. “Yeah, they’re great. I’m pretty good at Reason — let me know if you want to study together sometime.” Taste of acid in his mouth.

“That would be helpful, thank you.” Smiling, innocently, not baring the teeth that he’s sure have left their mark somewhere he hasn’t seen. Sylvain’s stomach lurches at the thought. “I’ve never known you to be a diligent student; our professor must have something truly special about them to make you pay attention.”

Is he teasing him? “Well, the professor is pretty interesting. Like you said, they’re a good teacher.”

“So, I’m guessing you didn’t seek me out to sing the professor’s praises, although the goddess knows I’m happy to.” He’s smiling but it’s wolfish now, another animal in the menagerie, some kind of cunning. “What can I help you with?”

His cowardice from the past week plunges through him, a knife white hot and humiliating. He has to do this. Carefully. “Uh, I actually wanted to ask you about… something.”

“I’m all ears!” Earnest. The wolf is already gone. Dimitri is not a bad person, he reminds himself. He’s the prince. Someday he’ll be the king.

“It’s uh… I saw you a while ago. In the training grounds.” Dimitri frowns. He opens his mouth (Well of course, I’m there often to spar!) but Sylvain cuts him off. “With Felix.”

“Oh.” He reddens. “Well… yes. What about it?”

“I don’t want to get in the middle of anything,” he lies, “but just curious… what’s going on with you two?”

Blush deepening. “I… I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

“Maybe not. It’s just that Felix and I have known each other for a long time. He looks up to you whether he’ll admit it or not. I don’t want him to… get hurt.” It’s a lame finish. I don’t want him to be near anyone but me. The thought stings, sick envy rising like bile in his throat.

The color pulls from Dimitri’s face, blood down the drain after a battle. “He… I don’t ah… I don’t know my own strength sometimes, it’s true.” He frowns. “But we both want this.”

“Yeah, the physical part worries me a little too but I’m more concerned about like… anything else.” He can’t speak it. “Like I said I’m not trying to mess anything up, I just want to make sure you’re thinking clearly.”

“As much as I can.” Something of that animal eye is back. “It’s difficult around him sometimes, don’t you think? He’s changed so much since we were children.” A pause. “I guess he still wants to do everything with me.”

Sylvain laughs, mechanical, aura in his head like a balloon expanding to fill the space. “Yeah, that’s Felix all right. He used to tag along behind me too.”

They smile at each other, neither meeting their eyes, and when Dedue enters a moment later (there you are, Your Highness), Sylvain waves a hand that weighs a thousand pounds and leaves.

Fodlan shatters under them when Edelgard declares war, students scattering to their territories or to serve a noble house. Sylvain is no different, back to the Gautier territory to fight the Empire or the Sreng, lance coated in gore more times than he can count, wounds healed or not as the days tick by.

Then the news comes from Fhirdiad. Dimitri, arrested for the murder of the regent, executed in the square by Cordelia’s men. Sylvain hears the soldiers whispering it in the camp during the night and although he should be preparing for a battle with a group of surprisingly entrenched bandits in the morning he grabs a horse, leaves his general in command, and rides hard, overnight, back to the Gautier estate.

His hunch is right as he paces the hallways, angry and strangely impatient. It’s two days later when a lone rider appears on the horizon, late at night as though they too traveled under the risen moon.

By the time he reaches the entryway to meet them Felix is already bursting through the doors of the estate, face wild and on fire with a swirl of things Sylvain can’t understand. He isn’t sure what to do, Felix looks ferocious, but he stretches out his hand to him — pathetic. Felix grabs it though, not to shake but to drag him along hallways and up stairs they’ve walked hundreds of times in their lives together, away from the eyes and ears of the Gautier men. They reach Sylvain’s room and Felix pushes him inside, rough, slamming the door behind him, whirling on each other.

“Felix, I —”

“Stop.” His voice is hard. His shoulders are rising and falling hard too, breathing heavy and circles under his eyes blooming in grey. “I came because there’s no one else who knows at all. I don’t want you to talk. Just…”

He wants to talk, selfishly wants to step into the boar-sized hole open wide in Felix, but he says nothing. He watches him choke on his words. Sylvain steps forward, closing the distance between them, praying to no one for the strength that had failed him the night after Miklan. “Whatever you need,” he says. “Whenever.” And that’s all there is to say.

Felix stands there for a moment, reeling at the center of a vortex that Sylvain can almost feel himself. Dimitri would have gripped him by now, strong hands around his arms, tighter and tighter until jaw clenches and head tips back. It’s not Sylvain’s style but if it’s what Felix wants he can make it work. He’s no boar but he’s getting stronger each time he drives his lance through a heart or a liver or lungs.

Slowly, too slowly, he reaches out. Felix is staring at his hand extending, eyes and face hard and frightening. For the first time in a while Sylvain recalls the face he’d seen that night in the training grounds, hoping to propel his sluggish blood to pound through him, send him what he needs. He takes his wrist, holding tightly, too tightly, and Felix’s throat tears in a sound that’s too much and not enough like a laugh. He stops.

“What?”

“You’re weak.” He snaps his arm but Sylvain keeps hold, stunned by his assessment. “You’re nothing like him.”

“I know.” But you came here anyway. But I’m grasping you still. They stand in silence for a moment. Felix’s wrist is trembling in his fingers. “But I’m here and if you’ll let me I might be able to help.”

“Help what?”

“Help you. I don’t know. Be what you need even if it’s not what you want.”

He sizes him up for a moment. “That’s enough babbling,” he says. “I made a mistake coming here.” Again he jerks his arm away, and again Sylvain has him held.

“You’re not leaving, not tonight. Judging by your face you’ve been riding non-stop to get here, if you try to ride back you’ll drop off your horse.” He tries to make his voice more commanding, less friendly, and miracle of miracles Felix seems to respond. Maybe he is truly as exhausted as he looks.

“I suppose… you’re right.” He looks ready to drop to the floor all of a sudden, eyes and cheeks hollow, clutched in Sylvain’s hand until he releases him.

“Just stay in here, you can take the bed. I don’t feel like trying to explain to my father why we need to make up another room at this hour.” He eyes him suspiciously but doesn’t argue, shedding his coat and starting to unbuckle his leather armor. “Let me help you.” Sylvain slides his hands under the breastplate Felix is wearing, his body warm and angular, and he lingers a second too long before lifting it over his head.

“Do the gauntlets too.” He freezes, armor held over Felix’s head, eyes locking.

“Okay.” He undoes the straps, trying to gauge the reaction when he tugs tighter to undo the buckles. Nothing, face a mask. He pulls them off, tossing them into a growing pile on the floor. “You can untie your own shoes, right?”

He eyes him for a moment, sizing him up or something else that makes him feel like a pinned specimen. Then he’s bent over, one foot then the other up on the edge of Sylvain’s bed, and then he’s pulling his shirt over his head, and then he’s stretched out and gleaming in the moonlight.

Sylvain sinks into a chair, the image of upturned eyes he’d struggled to remember earlier swimming before him easily. He tries not to think about it, not to look at the reality of it in front of him. The room is dark now that the candle is blown out, only light filtering through the small, high window over the bed.

“You’re still as much of an idiot as you were in school.”

“What makes you say that?” He can’t disagree. His blood is singing, alone against the wood. “Besides the fact that you believe it.”

“Come here.”

The energy between them is walking a tightrope, pulling one way then the other. “Why?”

“Because the boar is fucking dead.” The words are knives and they don’t make him want to approach. “He was what you were afraid of, right? That night after Miklan? He’s gone. Come here.”

“Felix, I don’t know if that’s a good idea right now.”

“It’s never been about ‘good’. You know that better than I do, right?” He’s elongated on the bed, bare ankles extended from the cuffs of his pants, hands crossed under his head with expanse of skin between. Sylvain imagines himself on top of him, pinning him down, hurting him for all the times he’s taken abuse and callousness from his mouth. Spitting on him for not being with him the night his brother died, the way he’d been there when Glenn was killed. He grips the arms of the chair to keep from rising.

“Stop it. Go to sleep.”

“How am I supposed to sleep knowing you’re burning over there?”

Fingers clench on wood. “I’m not joking. Stop it.”

He props himself on one elbow. “Make me.” And blood is hot, rising just below Sylvain’s skin, and he launches himself onto the bed, pushing Felix back down and slamming his hands back above his head against the headboard. Felix gasps and he growls.

“I will if you’re not careful.”

“Haven’t you waited long enough? There’s nothing in your way now.”

“This isn’t like you.” He’s trying to ease up, back off, but his body is alive pressed against Felix. “I don’t want to do… anything you don’t want to do. Or you might regret.”

His brows knit. “We’re in a war, taking lives daily, and you think I might regret this?”

His hand is pressing Felix’s wrists hard, clenching them, increasing pressure between skin and wood. Hot and angry. Bruising, even. “Do you even want this, Felix? What are you looking for?”

“I’m empty, Sylvain.” He winces under him, squirming, and Sylvain feels a shameful flush flood him. “What I want doesn’t matter but I don’t want this anymore.”

“Yeah.” Agreement, sympathy, empathy. “It won’t be the same as it was.”

“I’m counting on it. Let go of me.” He does, using his now-free hand to prop himself up just a little, not enough to slow his pounding heart. Felix rubs his skin for a moment, blood flowing back to his fingers. “As much as it pains me to say it, just… be yourself. That’s what I need.”

“Okay.” Okay. He bends his arm at the elbow, slowly, lowering back down and meeting his eyes, and at the last second he can’t do it and dips his head to press his lips to Felix’s neck. He exhales above him, filling his mind with the image of his parted mouth that would somehow represent a point of no return. Again kisses his neck, lingering, one hand rising to grasp his throat, large against its slenderness. The taut muscles of someone with a heavy burden.

“Harder.” The command comes from above and he does and he is, gripping and sucking like drawing poison from a bite. Felix’s hands take root in his hair, pulling him across the line in the sand to press their open mouths together, hard and angry, lips and teeth and tongue.

Hands reaching lower, night spinning away, but the pain in Felix’s face doesn’t bring the same feeling that it used to. Still they finish and Sylvain rolls off of him, wiping himself on a shirt he wasn’t planning on wearing and passing it to Felix. He tosses it on the floor afterwards, obviously to antagonize him but tonight of all nights he won’t rise rise to the bait.

“Any better?”

No answer.

“Is it weird that we’ve never done that before?”

“Stop.”

But he has no right to make demands and so he doesn’t. “I mean don’t you feel like we’ve been heading toward this for a long time? Like since we were kids?”

“No. I think you’re being sentimental.”

“So you never wanted this before?” In fairness he barely seemed to want it tonight, wanting something yes but not him.

He’s silent for a moment and Sylvain feels his heart lift a little, stupidly, pathetically at not being immediately shut down. “I don’t know if I can say that. I can’t let my guard down. It’s been lonely at times.”

They’re not touching though they’re both stretched on their backs, not looking at each other, but at this Sylvain reaches out and takes Felix’s hand. As expected, he tries to jerk away but he holds tight. “Just trying to be myself,” he explains. “What you need.”

He pulls away again but it’s half-hearted and again unsuccessful. “I’m not as tired anymore. Is there anything else you want to babble about?”

Unusual for Felix. Somewhere inside the kid that always trailed after him. “Only if you want. I’m always happy to babble.”

He considers for a moment. “Did I ever tell you where it started with the boar?”

“Are you sure that’s what you want to bring up?” He’s asking out of concern but there is a part of him that just doesn’t want to hear it.

“Yes. If I die in this war that means no one will know. Unless I tell someone.”

“You’d better not die.”

“If you feel a sudden and severe illness come on you’ll know I’m lying somewhere choking on my own blood.” A shiver passes through him and his hand twitches in Felix’s. “Sorry. I do think about it though.”

“Dying? Or our promise?”

“Both. I mean it too. I don’t want to be without you. This is already too painful.”

Sylvain wants to press on this, like fingers into a wound, but he knows he’s already pushing his luck where he is so he doesn’t, holding it like an ember in his chest. “So what about you and Dimitri?”

“It’s weird actually. I think he initially was interested in my brother. He was older and more gallant, I’ll admit. And I was an annoying child. So I don’t blame him. But after Duscur I squired in the west. Do you remember?”

“Yeah. We didn’t see each other in person for years.”

“Right. Well, I was with Dimitri the day he put down that rebellion. With the knight I was working for. Watching him lead everyone to the slaughter was… I don’t know. It was inspiring, terrifying. I hadn’t seen him in a while but we caught up a bit that night after the battle. We were both bloody still, I remember. He asked if I’d cried and I said I hadn’t since Glenn died and he said the same. He said I used to be a crybaby. It wasn’t cruel.” Another weighted silence. “Then at Garreg Mach it was like everything fell into place. I’d been fighting and killing for so long I didn’t really know anything else.” A pause. “Well, now someone else knows.”

“Maybe you should have told someone who doesn’t have to die if you do.”

“Maybe. I’m going to sleep now and reflect on my mistake.”

“Felix,” he says, like it’s the last thing he’ll ever say to him, “do you want to stay here for a little while? Just a week or so to… stabilize. Gautier could use your help, we don’t have a fighter that can hold a candle to you.”

“I said I’m going to sleep.” Voice firm, hard edge. “I left my father in the middle of significant mercenary trouble to ride here and give you my story. I can’t stay.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

But he doesn’t reply. The part of Sylvain, looming overwhelming, that wants to wake up tangled with Felix, hair and hands mingling together, is disappointed when he comes to alone in his bed, piled leather and clothing gone and the dirty shirt from the night thrown neatly into the hamper.

The reunion with the other students from the Kingdom is unbearable for reasons that stack on top of each other to stretch to heaven. Dedue is dead, fallen in Fhirdiad years ago helping the prince escape everything but his demons. Dimitri is alive but so different as to be almost unrecognizable. Even the professor’s hand, miraculously returned from the dead, cannot stretch far enough to reach him in the well of pain he’s sunk in.

For Sylvain though the mix of rage and fear and joy on Felix’s face since he’s returned is what stings and confuses the most. Even though they haven’t seen each other since the night Dimitri had supposedly lost his life in the capital he’d thought of him often, underneath him and raw, painfully open. When they met each other, both on the path to the monastery, Sylvain had thought he’d expressed well how much he’d missed Felix, like missing a limb or his lance by his side, but he had seen no such reciprocation. Not like when he saw Dimitri, awe-struck like seeing a ghost. Maybe he had.

It’s not long after they’re back that Felix starts wearing a turtleneck under his complicated outerwear. Maybe it’s stupid for Sylvain to notice but he does and he asks about it one day while they’re walking back from a council meeting.

“I can’t help it, Sylvain,” he says, and his voice is weak in a way that crushes his heart to hear it. “Seeing him again… I can’t explain it. You understand.”

“The earth started turning again.”

He nods. He’s silent for a moment and Sylvain waits with surprisingly bated breath. “I… I’d like to ask you for a favor if that’s all right.”

“So formal. Anything.” I’ll do anything for you. And he will — the last four years have been surprisingly enlightening to him on that front.

“It’s not exactly a pleasant one. Will you… will you watch out for me? No mother hen behavior. It’s just… it’s not the same as before. He’s not.” And in the glow of a torch mounted to the wall they’re passing in the deserted courtyard he tugs down the neck of his shirt.

Sylvain sucks in his breath as if the marks he sees could be felt on his own skin. Large bruises, clearly hand-shaped, encircle Felix’s neck, spotted with other ugly marks whose origins he doesn’t want to consider. “Felix.”

He jerks the fabric back up, but Sylvain reaches out quickly, batting his hand away, exposing his secret again. “Stop it. You’ve seen enough.”

“Are you safe?” His fingers linger in the space between shirt and skin.

“I… I don’t know. I can’t stop. That’s why I asked you — you’re invested in me not dying.”

“Dimitri wouldn’t… kill you, would he?”

“I don’t know.” And those three words encapsulate the sickening changes their friend, their prince, has undergone. Sylvain doesn’t know either. He lets go of Felix’s shirt but keeps his hand pressed to his neck over the fabric. “I’m sorry to burden you with this.”

“You’re no burden.” His face gleams in the moonlight and the torchlight and Sylvain wants so badly to cross the line again but he knows it’s not the right time, has to hope and trust that someday the intended hour will come. “You know that… you don’t have to forget. If you were… if it was…”

Felix surprises him, raising a hand to Sylvain’s mouth, pressing his fingers against his lips like a kiss. “Stop.” Voice gentler than expected. “I know. Someday I’ll be ready. I hope.”

“Okay. I’ll be here.” His lips move against Felix’s hand.

“You’re stupid. You have to know… the boar…”

“I am stupid. But I made a promise, so I’m here until I die.”

“You could break it, if you wanted.” He lowers his arm, rests his fingers on the hilt of his sword, more comfortable than holding a hand. “I wouldn’t blame you. I’m being… reckless.”

“After all the times you’ve called me that, probably with good reason? I’m never getting out of this.”

“Fine.” They walk back to their old dormitory together and Felix mercifully stops at his own room to say goodnight, maybe for Sylvain’s benefit. He stays until he closes the door, then stays longer just looking after him, then heads back the way he came to the first floor.

Mercedes opens her door when he knocks, looking surprised to see him. Her room is bright with candlelight, somehow more homey than the other rooms he’s spent the night in in this monastery. Annette is there, humming and twirling her hair while she pores over a book. She waves without looking up.

“Sylvain! I’m not the type of girl you’re usually visiting at this hour.” She smiles to soften the blow. “What can I do for you?”

“Hey, Mercedes, looking divine as usual.” It slips out, force of habit even though things are more serious than ever. “Annette too, the goddess must be smiling down on me. Listen, I was wondering if you’d do me a favor. I want to learn a heal spell or two.”

“You don’t seem like a man of faith.” Still smiling, stepping back to let him inside. “Still, it could be helpful to know a little bit, in a pinch. There have been an awful lot of pinches lately, haven’t there?”

Sylvain nods. It takes half the night, Annette falling asleep on Mercedes’ bed partway through, the mage patiently showing him the movements over and over again until he successfully heals a cut he’d sustained killing a thief, but he learns.

“Wonderful!” The moon of the Lions’ house is glowing, looking at him as though he’d done something much more difficult. “That should be enough for something small — you should still see me for anything more serious.”

“You’re a great teacher, Mercedes.”

“And you are a surprisingly good student.” She regards him thoughtfully. “You must be very motivated.”

He rubs the back of his neck, feeling exposed under her gaze as always, and with one more expression of gratitude he’s out into the greying night.

The months pass, slow and tense, live wires under the skin as war burns within and without. Battles and strategizing filling the day, anxiety and meaningless release in a blur of featureless beds and faces consuming the night. Sylvain has a chance to try out that healing spell, not often but more than he’d like.

There’s one time that stands out, Felix at his door with his mouth full of blood and his cheek blooming like the world’s most hideous flower. Injured as he is, that night Felix has to hold him back from attacking the boar himself, taking his chances with his unfathomable strength and indiscriminate darkness. Easier than accepting the fact that as always Felix is the one to seek it out. Felix, planted in front of him, pleading eyes and swollen jaw cranking his rage up higher and higher, weaker only than the humiliating and hopeless tenderness he inspires in greater measure. He sighs and takes his face in his hands and he has to use the spell three times before the color fades to something less noticeable.

He doesn’t let Felix leave that night, doesn’t push him to do anything but can’t let him out of his sight. It’s not like the last time, they both get into bed and he lets Sylvain hold him and the memory of the sweet crybaby from their pasts puts a weight in their chests.

Then Gronder Field happens, a vortex that catches them up all at once. Striking down their former classmates, their friends, Rodrigue sacrificing himself, Dimitri’s abrupt and, on some level, relieving return to reality. Daily Sylvain goes to the training grounds, waiting around for Felix to resurface, nightly he knocks at his door without receiving an answer.

It’s almost a week later, going mad with something like fear, when the boar prince finds him among the dummies, lance in hand for once. “Sylvain!” He calls a couple times; he hears him the first time but he’ll have to work for it. Eventually though, when he taps him on the shoulder with restraint that sears, he turns.

“Oh, your highness! My apologies, I guess I was just in the zone.” The mask slides on without having to think about it. “Looking to spar? I’m all warmed up and ready to go.”

He’s not sure exactly why he’s trying to avoid a conversation, the words that have swum through his head like salmon for days suddenly shy to come out, but he’s surprised when Dimitri nods, tossing his cloak to the side and picking up a training lance.

They circle each other for a moment, vultures with something dead between them. Dimitri is stronger, Sylvain has a longer reach and more opportunity to attack, and while usually the prince’s ruthlessness in battle would be a serious handicap Sylvain can feel something like anger rising in his own throat to cloud his judgment. He makes the first move and they’re off, thrusting and parrying, sweeping at the others’ knees, jabbing at a neck or shoulder. Dimitri lands the first blow on his ribs and it hurts, darting closer than a lance usually allows, shaft easily gripped halfway up in the hand of a beast, but Sylvain jerks the butt of his up and around to crack against the back of Dimitri’s head, pushing him forward and away from him enough to breathe.

Over and over, circling and striking and trading all the blows they’ve been holding for each other. They’re both sweating by the end, outer layers of armor long discarded alongside the prince’s cloak. Neither of them wins, they decide without speaking on a draw. They’re re-racking their lances, Sylvain wincing as lifting the weapon tugs at a freshly-drawn bruise on his forearm, when Dimitri breaks the silence.

“I think I… need to thank you. And to apologize to you.”

“What, for the trouncing you gave me?” The mask is glued on, or a part of him. “You really owe me one. You’re even stronger than I thought.”

“Well, that too. I try to hold back.” It could be seen as condescending, maybe, but even as disposed as he is to see ill intent Sylvain still can’t hold it against him. He’s probably telling the truth even if it is for sly reasons. “No, I mean for everything over these past three months. Over these past five years, really.”

Eyebrow raising. “I’m… happy to fight for the future of the kingdom, you don’t have to thank me, or apologize. It’s my choice.”

“That’s not what I mean.” And you know it, left unspoken but heard. “I mean in regards to… well, to Felix.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I guess I’ve just done what he’d let me, for the thanks part. And as for the apology…” No polite or soothing lies come to mind so he lets the sentence trail off.

Dimitri shakes his head, still choppy blond hair flopping over his eye and his patch. “You and I both know Felix never lets anyone do anything for him. And yet, here I am, thanking you for just that. You’re special, Sylvain.” The words should fill him with the sun but he’s left hollow, more room for the anger that still thrums in him.

“Nah, not me.” Dimitri looks ready to press further but he cuts him off. “Have you… thought at all about the conversation we had about it when we were in school?”

He’s not sure the prince will even remember but he’s rewarded with a look of — shame? — in his eye. “Yes. I haven’t had much time or… motivation to think about such things, but since Rodrigue everything is becoming very clear to me. And that is what I’m here to apologize for.” He stands up even straighter, if possible, royal posture. “This has to end.”

“Uh, what does, your highness?” Doesn’t want to use his name for some reason, boar doesn’t spit off his tongue like it does from Felix’s.

“The mutual self-destruction he and I have been trapped in for so long.” It’s out, naked and open and Sylvain staggers back a step from it as if it were a Cutting Gale. “Sylvain, as you’ve reminded me several times during this conversation, I am the prince of Faerghus. If we win this war, and I pray to the goddess that we do, I will be the king. Our friend is right that inside me is a… a monster of sorts. But I know now that monster must coexist with the person I understand myself to be. I can’t keep splitting myself like this, it’s too…”

“It hurts, I get it.” And he does. “Why does this mean things have to end with you two? I know I’ve said it before, but —“

“It will be painful.” A pause. “Painful beyond belief, I imagine. But between us is nothing but a river of pain and we can’t keep drowning in it. Plus,” he adds, “I’m sure you can understand what happened at Gronder added a new layer of… complication. This is the best time for it, the sting will be buried.”

He hates it but it makes sense, as much sense as anything can make in this world torn apart by war. “Do you think you… love him? Do you think he loves you?”

Dimitri is silent for a moment that stretches like an ocean before them. “I don’t know if I did, in the way you mean — I needed him, I suppose I can say that much. I do now, of course, but that means I can’t hurt him anymore. Maybe that’s no longer what he needs but I can’t help him. Felix though…” He looks, surprisingly thoughtful, at Sylvain. “He’s hard to read.”

Anger is rising again, a beast to be put down. He tries to modulate his voice but it only works half as well as he’d hoped. “He isn’t. He’s an open book if you just put in a little effort. I knew all along what this would do to him.”

“And that is why I have to apologize.” His voice is soft, almost unrecognizable. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to do a lot more reading. If he really is as open to you as you say then you must know there’s only one path forward from here. And one more thing — I’m sorry for hurting you as well.”

“You didn’t—”

“You are a much more open book than you would like to think as well, my friend.” It’s almost reproachful, inspiring defensiveness. “Don’t wait for him to answer the door tonight when you knock on it. Good bye, Sylvain.” And with that he’s alone once more, and for the first time he notices that his arms are shaking.

He doesn’t knock at all, though it takes more time than he’d like to admit to push down the anger still rolling through him, longer than he’s ever felt that way at once. All this means it’s late and dark when he opens Felix’s door. The room next to his, where the prince usually sleeps, is demonstrably empty, as if Dimitri knew Sylvain would need to see it that way.

It’s dark but he can make out the shadow of Felix perched on the chair at his desk, knees pulled up to his chin with elbows hooked around them, looking smaller even than normal. The skin of his arms, exposed without all his outerwear, gleams in the moonlight, small fingerprints dotted in blue and purple over them, too small to be Dimitri’s and Sylvain’s heart is drowning. He doesn’t look at him, head tipped back onto the wood of the chair. He shuts the door behind him.

“Are you here to pity me?” His voice is quiet, hard edge present but lessened, pressing against Sylvain’s throat like a blade.

“No. Maybe just to be here.” He doesn’t move any closer, leaning against the door, holding himself back.

“So I’m guessing you know. Somehow you always fucking know.”

“He came to talk to me earlier. At the training grounds. The one time you’re not there, right?” Silence, insensitive maybe. “Sorry.”

With the light as low as it is, and the situation as unbelievable as it is, it takes Sylvain a moment to realize that the noise he’s hearing is the sound of crying. Felix is fucking crying. His gut feels full of the water overwhelming his heart. Usually disposed to be an easy comfort to someone in distress, he instead finds himself off balance. He slides down to sit on the floor, back still pressed against the wood holding out the world, and just listens.

“Are…” Choked, wringing his insides. “Are you just going to make me sit here by myself?”

He doesn’t bother to stand up, called by a god to a purpose, instead half-crawling to where the chair is, pointed away from the other furniture so he faces the center of the room. “Remember how it would be when we were kids and you’d come find me?” He doesn’t get a response but doesn’t wait either. “Want to do that again?”

Again he doesn’t speak but after a moment, which knowing Felix encapsulates an entire emotional war, there’s movement above him and then arms are reaching for him in the dark, finding his form, and then he’s dropped into his lap, curling up small against Sylvain and somewhere inside him the sun is trying to come out.

He gets one arm around Felix’s shoulders, bumping him a little clumsily without light to guide him but he can see the skin of his arms like the new moon, the glow of his face like a distant star and so his other hand finds his hair easily where his head lies over his lungs. Felix’s arms are crossed over his chest, holding on to one vestige of the walls he’s wreathed in, but Sylvain doesn’t mind the elbow in his ribs at all, not even pressed against the bruise the prince had left. He doesn’t even wince.

They sit like that for a while, Sylvain stroking his hair, feeling his legs move occasionally within the circle of his own where they’re crossed against the floor. Like when they were little Felix’s tears eventually slow and then stop. Just to have something to say, to open the line, he ventures: “If you want, you can even wipe your snot on my shirt like you used to. I’m much better at doing laundry now than I was then.”

“I should just for that.” He hiccups but he gets the words out. He also doesn’t move, doesn’t pull away.

Sylvain flexes the shoulder looped around Felix to ghost his hand over his forearm. “What’s up with these?”

He stiffens and to prevent bolting Sylvain tightens his arm a little. “Don’t ruin this.”

“What is there to ruin?” He tries to make his voice easy but it comes out a little strained. “Come on Felix, you can tell me.”

He still doesn’t pull away. His voice is small. “It was me.”

That’s enough. Lava fills Sylvain, Ailell in his veins, and he has to bite his cheek hard to keep the tide in check. He grips a little tighter, thinks he might feel Felix lean into him a little more. When the red at the edges of his vision, pain and rage, fades, he still finds he doesn’t have anything to say, fingers flexed in Felix’s hair which honestly feels like it hasn’t been washed in a week but somehow it doesn’t bother him as much as usual.

“It’s just… it’s too much.” His voice is still small but the hard edge is back. “My father dying for my… my lover…” Spat out like a rotten piece of meat, like a mouthful of blood, like a broken tooth. “And that’s what wakes him up, brings him back, makes him understand we can’t keep… doing this anymore…”

He’s probably right, he thinks, maybe hopes, but he says nothing. Just keeps them tethered together in the bend of his elbows.

“I almost feel like I should… apologize to you.” Sylvain can feel his jaw clenched against his body, knows how these words slip out without the lubricant of social graces, and they lance him through.

“Why on earth would you apologize to me?” Dumbfounded or angry still. “After all the years of shit from you, Felix, what kind of sin could you possibly have committed worth being sorry for?”

HIs arms fold tighter, elbow drawing away from its spot on his bruise and he misses it instantly. “I said don’t fucking ruin this.”

“I’m serious, Felix.”

“I am too.” Impasse but as usual Sylvain relents because damn it if he’s not soft throughout thinking of him opening up to him, even a little. He doesn’t argue his point, holds back the on and off years of interchangeable silence and impenetrable lashing out, the trade off for the glow inside him holding Felix. Damn it. He’s been silent but he breaks it. “I’m sorry because — and don’t interrupt me, I’m going to say this once and once only — because I know I was hurting you, not just myself, dragging us down and I’m still not ready to stop. I’m sorry because I brought us so close to keeping our promise, forcing you to clean up my mess, forcing you to see me in my humiliation. Part of me did it because I knew it hurt, I think. Seeing you looking at me like that… maybe some part of me was seeing a light, a path that didn’t end in destruction.” Sylvain’s heart is lacerated, spilling open, flowering. “That’s all.”

What is there to say? He holds on tight. “Do you mean that?”

“Is that a joke?” he snaps and it feels much more real, more possible. “That felt like breaking my own ribs open and you want to know if I meant it? Fuck you, Sylvain, of course I meant it.”

The thorns he would sink into, over and over, never minding the pinprick rivulets of red they open in the face of the bloom within. “Yeah, I guess I knew that. Sorry. It’s just… you’re never like this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk that much before. Or apologize to me, like ever.”

“Once only, like I said.”

“Right, that’s more like you. One apology, one night, one time only.” Felix is silent. Even Sylvain barely knows what he means. “I don’t want to smother you if you need space, but would you want me to stay here tonight?”

“You can do what you want.” A pause, then hard as steel, “I don’t want space. I want a vise.”

“Not my style, but I can try.” He braces himself to rise, moving the hand in Felix’s hair to sweep under his legs, tightening once more around his shoulders and feeling the change his arms splay akimbo. Not deterred, Sylvain stands, trying not to grunt. Felix is heavy and he’s pressing against the marks from his spar earlier, but he’s strong from the lives he’s taken, thrusting his lance into guts and eyes. He takes a step or two, getting in reach of his bed, and sets him on the mattress a little less gently than he’d wanted. More tired from everything than he’d thought. Felix lets out an oof, rolling away instinctively to put space between them, but Sylvain doesn’t mind.

He tugs off his shoes, placing them into a corner of the room, then his shirt follows folded neatly on top. He sits on the edge of the bed, waiting for a sign that he won’t be bitten or stabbed if he makes himself comfortable. Felix’s eyes are raking over him in a way that makes him embarrassingly conscious. “What happened to you?”

The rueful smile comes naturally, easily, like breathing, like putting on a mask. “It was my turn to go at it with the boar, although it was much less exciting than your style.” He’s not sure if this is pushing too far but Felix doesn’t respond, his stance doesn’t change, pushed back against the wall. “We had a sparring session earlier, and you know how he gets.”

“You’re lucky he didn’t break any bones.” The certainty in his voice sends a chill down Sylvain’s spine and he wonders what Felix might still have hidden from him.

“Yep, I am.”

“If you want… I uh… I learned a healing spell.” His voice is faltering, somehow more embarrassed over this than anything so far, embarrassed to be reaching out. “It’s not much but it could help later.”

“Later?”

He shrugs. “If you’re staying over I don’t want to jab you in your sleep.”

“You can jab me all you want.” He stretches out, finally approved to stay in Felix’s bed, hands behind his head. “Save your energy.”

“Okay.” He lies down too, rigid as a board for reasons Sylvain will never understand. “Will you um… could you…”

His voice trails off but he understands. A vice, a clamp, to hold him down, keep him from hurting more. “Why don’t I start by returning the favor?” Sylvain’s faith is stronger than Felix’s thanks to increased willingness to work with Mercedes, and practice on late night bruises and sprains. He takes his stiff forearms in his hands, gritting his teeth as if the bruises were his own, and the light of healing spreads over them. He’s not great but it’s better than nothing, and the marks fade slowly until they’re barely noticeable. “Anywhere else?” Felix shakes his head, still pressed flat against the mattress, just one of the strange things he forces himself to do to be more prepared for marches without the comfort of a pillow. “Mind if I check?”

“Are you trying to hook up with me?” His voice is blunt. “Don’t you think it’s a bad time?”

“I’m not trying to do anything, honest, just want to be sure I don’t miss anything.” He pauses, nature fighting selflessness, but as always with Felix he wins out. “I’ll leave it be though if you want.” And he releases his forearms and instead pulls them together again, pressing himself against Felix’s back as he gently turns him on his side. One arm under his neck, the other wrapping around his waist and clinging. His newly-unblemished arms are folded again but his head settles against the crook of his elbow without a fight. In the morning they’re both still there, still breathing against each other, and just like he said Felix has his hands clutched somehow each over a different bruise.

War rages around them, through them, and as Felix said he’s not ready to stop hurting, throwing himself into the chaotic middle of every battle they fight, putting his life at risk in his own calculated way each time. Dimitri at his side more often than not, racked with guilt but not at less than an arm’s length, two of the strongest fighters in the kingdom begging in strange languages to have their pain taken away.

Sylvain finds himself on the front lines too, not willing or maybe able to be too far away despite Felix’s rigidly maintained distance. To anyone else their friendship looked unchanged, laughter and sharp words and blunt swords and lances in the training grounds, but there’s an undercurrent now that threatens to pull them down. The promise weighs heavily as he watches the back of his dark head for a moment, pulling attention from three mages or two archers or a group of swordsmen at once, and Sylvain sighs and turns his wyvern to chase after.

Over and over, fighting and killing and risking their lives and coming back to the monastery and an empty bed and the ghost of a prince as weighty as the reality of him in the room between them.

Mercedes does most of the healing after the fact but sometimes Sylvain goes to Felix for the graze of an arrow or a mostly-turned-away lance and sometimes Felix comes to Sylvain for the slice of a weakly-swung sword and they help each other blindly, as best they can, hands lingering where they can’t reach any other time. Not yet.

Retaking Fhirdiad, saving Claude in Derdriu, smaller skirmishes with monsters, bandits, and Empire soldiers, all drift by in the flow of time and the body count grows. Dimitri steps slowly into a role that looks like that of a king, slowly out of the realm the others move in — the professor moves with him. Felix and Sylvain left behind to suffer in silence and in shouts.

It’s at Merceus, almost after, that Sylvain realizes he can’t keep dancing around this anymore.

Felix has been talking, more so than usual, about the Death Knight, a legendary opponent they’ve beaten back before at high cost. Almost never alone, always in teams so one can retreat if wounded without opening the group to a vulnerability. Sylvain knows he’s fascinated by the mysterious soldier, to him not much more interesting than an oversized tin can, but he didn’t realize just how determined he was until he’s already dealing with armored units, not his strong suit ever but especially not since his wyvern makes magical precision too difficult. As he lances one in the eye with a lucky shot between helmet slots, he’s surprised to hear two screams — the death rattle in front of him as he hauls his weapon back, and an infuriated howl from somewhere on his right.

The center of the battlefield. The core of the fighting. Only one person would be so mathematically reckless, and his name tears from his throat before he even realizes he’s flying up, out of the fray, careless of archers and flyers and careful only of one lone, stupid or desperate or suicidal swordsman.

From his vantage point he sees Felix swinging his blade, sweeping up, and thankfully at least the professor had given him an Armorslayer before the fight, as if they knew this was coming (and he couldn’t say for sure they didn’t). As he’s soaring closer, he sees the Death Knight stagger, horse and all, and he actually feels a strange and fleeting surge of pride in Felix before that’s replaced with fear and anger and ice and fear as he swings back, scythe long and gleaming in the light and slicing into Felix’s chest even as he tries to back away, then staggering.

He sees red, stars, and before he knows it he’s dropping from the sky, weapon swapped to his axe, hoping the sheer weight of it in his hand will be enough to force him back. Single-minded, tuning out the voice of Caspar Von Bergliez from somewhere in the fort, shouting for reinforcements. Let them come. His axe makes contact, clanging into the Death Knight’s breastplate and splitting it and he’s rewarded with a bellow and a retreat before he lands and dismounts all in one movement and the hot anger vanishes at the sight of blood pooling under Felix.

He’s flat on his back, open at the chest, under him as he collapses to his side, breathing but not deeply, throat gurgling and wheezing and going right to Sylvain’s stomach in a knot of fear. “You are not fucking dying today, Felix.”

His lips move but all that escapes is a choking half-breath. Sylvain tries his healing spell, pathetic in the face of the awful gash, but it does seem to lessen the depth a little. He slots his arms under Felix, lifting him carefully though he still groans, thick and wet, and they mount his wyvern, rising more carefully this time with the additional cargo, the life he values more than his own, and they’re flying back to the rear guard, where the medic tent is, where Mercedes sees them coming where she’s directing the archers and she murmurs something to their leader and meets them at the flap.

It’s fully night when Felix opens his eyes, and Sylvain is by his side — hasn’t left it since he brought him here, in fact. They’re alone in the tent, more alone than ever as the rest of the army is spread throughout Merceus for the night. Only Mercedes is anywhere nearby but the dark circles under her eyes had allowed her to leave Sylvain with a murmured come and wake me if you need anything. He’s exhausted but his heart pounds him awake seeing the dim moonlight through canvas reflected in Felix’s eyes. Warm and amber, hot and tight with pain maybe or fear. “Where am I?”

“Fort Merceus, in Mercedes’ temple of healing.” The joke serves to keep the shake out of his voice. “You were hurt.”

He looks down, touches his chest over the bandages swathed over him, winces. “I had to fight him. Ever since school I’ve had to.”

“You could have taken someone else with you. Me, Dimitri, Dedue, anyone. You didn’t have to do it on your own.”

“Maybe I did.” His voice is low but Sylvain isn’t sure if it’s emotion or pain holding him back. “Did you… see me?”

“See you?” The strange gratification he felt seeing Felix foolishly level his blade at the hulking figure returns for a moment. “I was the one who had to fly in and save your ass.”

“Did you kill him?”

He shakes his head. “I got a good hit in. I don’t know what got into me but I split his armor and everything.”

Felix’s eyes widen. “Must have been a heavy blow.”

“I was… I don’t know. I was angry.”

“At me?”

“A little. You were never a risk-taker like that before so yeah, maybe.” It’s time, maybe. It’s not going to get less dangerous. He doesn’t dive but he dips his feet in. “Mostly I think I was scared, but anger was more useful.”

“Scared? Of the Death Knight?” He’’s almost scoffing. Sylvain’s heart warms; he’s going to be okay.

“Not especially. Scared of what happened to you, of you dying, of having to keep our promise I guess. I’m scared now too, I don’t know how to convince you to stop.”

There’s silence and low light. Felix’s hand ghosts absently over his bandages, drawing shapes without fully touching the wounded area. “I think I’m done.”

Sylvain has been staring at him, unable to look away as if he’ll vanish to be hurt or killed again but his eyes widen like he can take him in further. “What?”

“I think I’m done.” Now Felix meets his eyes. “Facing the Death Knight… I couldn’t even do that alone. I needed you there with me. The goddess wouldn’t even let me die without you.” He sighs and winces at it. Sylvain wishes he could peel the curve of the scythe from his skin, press it to his own, take away his pain, but in lieu of that he grabs Felix’s hand off his chest and fumbles a little in his efforts to keep from pushing on the wound. “The boar has managed to heal himself and if he can there’s no reason I can’t. I’m tired of hurting and hurting you.”

“Me too. Kinda. There’s something about you that makes it easier to put up with.” He wants to press further, wants to take the hearth burning inside him and share it but he’s fragile and they’re in a war and Enbarr is on the horizon, crowded and dark. He settles for the burn in his heart that Felix hasn’t pulled his hand away, that he’s looking at him with something like warmth reflecting in his eyes. “You should get yourself almost killed by the Death Knight every day.” His brows draw together. “Kidding, kidding, sorry.”

He looks around as if he’s seeing the infirmary for the first time, blinking a little owlishly. “Where is everyone?”

“‘Everyone’ being Mercedes? She left to sleep a while ago. No one else tried to fight a ridiculously powerful enemy alone so all the other injuries are taken care of already.”

He ignores the last part. “She left you alone with me? What if I take a turn for the worse?”

“She’s close, but don’t do that.”

“Okay. You should get some rest.”

“Okay.”

Waits. “So… go get some.”

“Nah, with no Mercedes to keep an eye on you? I’m staying here. I’ll sleep in this chair.”

“That’s stupid.” Curt. “I’m sure you’re exhausted from the battle. And from… how did you put it? You were so eloquent.”

“Saving your ass?”

“Right. Go to bed.”

“Sure,” he says, bending at the waist until his head is pressed against Felix’s thighs where they lay under the blanket — tense, he feels against his cheek. He closes his eyes and pretends to snore.

“Fine, be an idiot.” And at this he does pull his hand away, only to thread his fingers in Sylvain’s hair, light as a whisper, so light in fact he’s not sure it really happened. But the fact is that he is tired and even closing his eyes as a joke brings sleep on more quickly than ever before.

Without the looming shadow of Edelgard over them all, days seem a little brighter to Sylvain. Camped out for the moment in Enbarr, preparing for the long but triumphant march back north, home to the chilly arms of Faerghus and the castle in Fhirdiad, things like breathing and thinking are easier than they’ve been in a long while.

Some people aren’t feeling that way, though. Dimitri, arm in arm with their old professor with a layer of pain behind his eyes. Ashe, future uncertain, smiling as ever but something unsure in the quirk of his lips. And Felix, of course, never happy unless he’s striking someone down — but there’s no one left to kill. No more pain to dole out, no retribution to seek. Peacetime is not peaceful for someone like him.

“Never thought you’d beat me to your family title.”

They’re in the armory, sorting weapons and equipment into groups, staying or coming with them. Unsurprisingly, the leader of the Empire had some impressive items stored in there and of course Dimitri would only trust this kind of task to someone like Felix. Sylvain just tagged along, strangely nervous to be away from him, with an acknowledgement to the king that the swordsman was in charge of the final decision-making.

“I don’t especially want it. More so considering the rest of my family had to die for it to pass to me.”

He winces. “Yeah, sorry, that was insensitive.”

“It’s fine.” He palms the hilt of a twisted-looking dagger, weighing it thoughtfully before tossing it into the stay pile. “And what will you do until you become the Margrave?”

Brow raises as he passes Felix yet another shield from the unreviewed stock. “Wow, caring about me all of a sudden, old idiot Sylvain?”

“Gautier territory borders my own.” Voice stiff, another item on the heap to leave behind. Dimitri may have put too much faith in someone so dedicated to traveling light, abandoning baggage. “It’s practical for me to know who I’ll be dealing with.”

“Well, even if my old man isn’t ready to give up his responsibilities yet you’ll still be dealing with me.”

“And why is that?” He thinks he sees his hand tense around the lance he’s holding. He puts it on the pile of things to take with them, where it reflects the candlelight.

“Dying together was only half the promise, remember?” He grabs another few swords, unusual vulnerability preventing him from facing Felix, from seeking the eyes he knows would turn away from him too. “The other part was sticking together. I’m a man of my word these days, if you missed that. Plus, someone as prickly as you will need someone like me to make sure you don’t embroil the Fraldarius territory in another war immediately after this one ending.” He feels steeled. He turns to hand him the swords.

As expected, Felix is looking away, down at the floor where the lance’s tip is still gleaming. He doesn’t reach out for what Sylvain is trying to pass him. “Right, that was the promise.” He lowers his arm, sheathes pressing against his fingers where the blades hang. “I’m about to say something insane. Let me get through it.”

“That’s usually my specialty,” he says before he can stop himself, and Felix shoots him a glare before dropping his gaze again.

“What if we… combine our lands?” The swords Sylvain holds clatter from his loosening grip, slack like his jaw, brows shooting almost to his hairline and he has to force himself not to speak, not to make a noise. “This bloodline ends, one way or another, with me. Either because my fingers twitch for a sword, not for a woman’s hand, or because anyone I’ve ever wanted in my life would be unable to produce an heir… We can keep our promise, we can help put an end to the tyranny of Crests… destroy the memory of the boar between us…”

He trails off completely as his voice cracks. Some small part of Sylvain’s brain counts himself lucky for not being scolded at dropping the weapons, the overwhelming majority luckier still for the dangerously happy ending dangling in front of him. “Don’t be mad at me for asking,” he begins, and his own voice is far less steady than he’d like, burning in the light of the star rising inside him, “but are you serious?”

He braces himself for another glare, a sneer that never comes. Felix is unusually thoughtful, though he still doesn’t meet his eyes. “I think I am. After the battle, after the Emperor fell, something strange happened — I found myself looking for something. Someone.” He’s pink around the ears, Sylvain can almost feel his own pupils dilating trying to take everything in, to commit to memory the scene. “I’ll spell it out so someone as stupid as you are can understand: I sought you out.” He remembers clearly, blood of his enemies dripping from his lance and of his own into his eyes, the call of his name and the look in Felix’s eyes as he sprinted to him in the stillness of peace descending over Fodlan. Back in the armory, Sylvain pins himself to the spot, something like hunger stirring in his stomach but don’t ruin it. So intense is the effort to keep himself from surging forward that when Felix clenches his fists and takes a step towards him he’s barely breathing. His brows and lips are set in matching determination and when he speaks his voice has a touch of bitterness that makes Sylvain feel right at home. “I want to cut these gravestones from around my neck.”

His gaze does flash up to meet Sylvain’s, just for a moment, before his eyes are closing and he’s leaning forward and every centimeter of distance kept between them evaporates, as Sylvain crushes their bodies together, as their teeth clack against each other with open-mouthed lust, as Felix frames his hands around Sylvain’s neck, pulls him down to bow against him. It’s nothing they haven’t done before, secretly in guilt or rage or fear, but Sylvain can tell from the tremble in Felix’s fingers and the singing of his own blood against his skin that something is made new this time.

Something inside Sylvain is coiling slowly, unused for so long and now ready to be flexed. His hands flow from where they are clutched at Felix’s hips, too tight maybe, tracing up his body, up his neck, and into his hair where he holds on and tugs, hard. Felix hisses, winces, head bending back and away from the kiss. His panting fills the still air of the armory as Sylvain takes a moment to just see him like this, see him vulnerable and wanting with that tightness around his eyes he recognized years ago. Wanting him.

“Sylvain.” It escapes as a sound he’s never heard before, half moan half groan, and the spring within him jerks down into his guts and he’s drawn inexorably to fasten his lips to Felix’s exposed neck, skin stretched tight against his Adam’s apple where it breaches the neck of his shirt. Sylvain reaches to pull the fabric down, reluctantly separating hand from hair, satisfying himself with the pulse pounding against the backs of his fingers. Below the soft hold where Felix’s turtleneck hugs normally, he sucks a mark into the skin he finds, earning himself a wet exhale that sends lightning down his spine and into his stomach — wanting more but wanting just this. More of Felix’s neck bent to him, more of the freedom to press them together, more in the dawn of peace.

As Sylvain anchors himself to the hollow at Felix’s collarbone, he feels hips grind forward and down against his, pressing a groan to his skin to echo the one sounding above his head. Somehow years of struggle and pain between them makes Sylvain want to slow down despite the tightness growing in his groin, despite the times they’ve been like this, but not exactly like this, before. Leisurely, like a meal he’s savoring. His heart pounds in his chest, mirroring the beat thrumming against his lips and hands, impossible to ignore as his mouth searches for more and fails to find it entrapped in Felix’s completely ridiculous accoutrement.

“You’re awfully dressed for someone as ascetic as you are.” It’s ridiculous, maybe more so in context but certainly out of it, but it achieves the affect Sylvain is looking for. When he reaches down to Felix’s chest, starting to unbutton his coat, he’s met with no resistance, and in fact Felix’s own hands follow in his footsteps, like when they were children, undoing the buckles of his harnesses. Soon he’s smaller in his shirt and trousers, without even the turtleneck, simpler, and Sylvain takes his sweet time undoing the buttons of the former, palms and fingers lingering against the skin they find warm under the white cotton.

“Get a move on.” Felix’s voice is a growl half-caught in his throat, one more thrum to the root of his spine, the core of his organs.

Once only, one time only, he lays himself bare. “How can I? I love you like this, Felix.” The weight of the word, their promise, between them, and all that he has left is what he’s been practicing for for years, the lightness of his voice that fades in the face of everything else. But it’s something. His lips press to Felix everywhere, anywhere he’ll allow, broad expanse of untouched skin or focused zone of tight muscle or hard nipple.

He looks up at him from his sternum, eyes catching for a moment on the bruise at the base of his neck, and is surprised to find him looking back with something unexpected and unreadable in his expression under the haze — just for an instant, then his teeth grit and Sylvain feels fingers tangle and grip in his hair. “Gautier, if you don’t get on your knees immediately there are going to be consequences.”

He gasps against Felix’s skin, nerves lighting up like live wires at the edge of an order in his voice. One more jab, then he will, gladly, eagerly, ravenous. “My death, or you finishing in your pants?”

“Both —” Sharp exhale as Sylvain laves his tongue along the dent of his breastbone. “— could be on the table the longer you leave them on.”

He’s not on his knees, not yet, but it’s a short trip for his hands from Felix’s waist to the band of his trousers, the laces holding them in place, and Sylvain has done this part a thousand times with other strings in other rooms — never in an abandoned armory, though he can’t deny he’s thought about having Felix to himself on occasion when they practiced in the empty training grounds. This is close enough and the cords melt apart under his deft fingers, and they don’t fall far before they hit the boots at Felix’s thighs but it’s far enough. His shirt falls at last from its tenuous perch on his shoulders, unhindered by buttons or the grip of his waistband.

Sylvain stands to his full height again, bending potently over Felix, pressing one more hot kiss between their open mouths, tasting his tongue on his, before he does in fact drop to his knees. He can see Felix through his small clothes, and again it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before but his head is still spinning with the strange novelty of it all. He palms him through the fabric, toeing the line between savoring and teasing, and Felix moans over him which pushes blood to Sylvain’s groin and his hand under the last of Felix’s clothes, tugging them down his thighs. As he grips his cock, practiced and knowing what he likes, he’s hard and ready and unhurt and panting above him.

He only strokes him a few times, feeling how hot he is, how tightly his arousal has him wound. Sylvain hasn’t done this often, more used to being on the receiving end, but he knows more than enough about what feels good and drags a wet line along the base of his cock before taking the head in, pumping what he isn’t tonguing. Felix groans, planting his hands on Sylvain’s shoulders and gripping tight as he slowly works his mouth down his length, and something in the urgency of his clenched fingers implies the same first time feeling that still pulses through Sylvain and makes him, strangely, a little nervous. He sets the pace slowly, trying not to overwhelm him and end this too quickly, handfuls of his hips as leverage for his lips and tongue, letting the sounds Felix makes dance over his skin like electricity.

All his attempts not to rush fly out the window when one of Felix’s hands moves to grasp the back of his head, bucking into his mouth and Sylvain relaxes his throat as best he can and tries not to think about how hard he is just being in Felix’s grip. With one last stroke of his tongue and one choked call of his name, Felix releases, pulling out marginally to finish in Sylvain’s mouth and he swallows, looking up at him through half-lidded eyes before pulling off with a salacious pop. Felix’s throat bobs and he’s panting as Sylvain sits back on his heels, still deliberately disregarding the white hot coil in his stomach.

“So.” Felix says, re-lacing his pants with uncoordinated fingers, and Sylvain takes pity on him. If he lingers a little too long, letting his fingers trail over the hot skin at his waist, Felix doesn’t seem to mind. His voice is weak and disarming. “Is that a yes?”

“Hmm.” Mock-thoughtful, still at his feet but feeling completely in control. “I’ll have to give it some thought later when I’m less… distracted.” He glances meaningfully down at his lap. “This is a big decision.”

“I could clear your head right now, you fool.” And he tugs him up to kiss him again, over and over again, and then he does.