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Like most of the best-known facts about Sylvain, the idea that he hates training is only half-true. Yeah he resents the necessity, not of movement, but of their bodies honed for violence.
Threats don’t give you time to prepare, Felix had said once or a dozen times, you have to do that part on your own, Gautier.
It wasn’t enough to sleep with a dagger, like they all had since they were kids. You had to be able to wield it better than the person who wanted you dead, else your knife was just a gift for your killer.
Sometimes Sylvain looked at Felix and wondered what the terminus of all this was. When, if ever, would Felix let his body be other than a weapon. If he’d always be shaped by threat.
What does Sylvain like about training then? Easy answer. He blocks a blow from Felix and disengages with a smooth step. There then gone like a glint of light off a blade is Felix’s smirk.
Some people think Felix only feels good when he’s winning. Truth is, he likes a challenge. Hates losing, sure, but loves to be made to work for it. In the strange, stilted language of Felix’s love, he’s said as much. Said of Sylvain, specifically.
Sweaty from a long match, water that missed his mouth run down his throat, he once turned to Sylvain and pinned him with a knowing look: You’re a tough win when you wanna be, he’d said, and smiled wryly.
Sylvain, hit by one of Felix’s hardest blows, one that had nothing to do with his sword, thought: Fuck. Then: For you, I wanna be.
So Sylvain showed up. War demanded it of him, anyway, but he showed up when Felix showed up and that made it a little easier to swallow. Today he was working for it, making himself difficult to put down in that way that made Felix look—fuck, it was hard for Sylvain to think of and still keep his focus—proud of Sylvain.
Frankly Sylvain didn’t know whether the idea made him feel happy or horny or, most probable and most concerning, both at once. That was something to unpick later, when the object of his batshit affections wasn’t bearing down on him with deadly precision.
Sylvain threw off a blow with sheer muscle, shoving against the deadlock of their weapons and forcing Felix to disengage. Felix’s thinking rarely showed on his face in a fight. His body and brain in a handshake, he just moved, pure instinct.
So when something does happen there—a feeling stealing onto Felix’s face, a stutter in his movements, it’s a pretty big deal.
Felix steps wrong, his posture jolting straight a moment while he looks confused; alarmed, maybe? Sylvain takes the point against Felix only because he’d resent Sylvain going easy on him, not making use of an obvious opening.
“You good?” he asks breezily.
Felix clicks back into focus, perfects his stance once more. Objectively flawless now, but Sylvain’s memory goes a long way back, certainly further than a minute. He can’t think of any other instance to compare Felix’s misstep to.
Felix clicks his tongue, drives Sylvain back with a few quick, whipping blows: a chastisement.
“Eyes on me,” he says.
Redundant, Sylvain thinks.
-
Not a word can be said against Sylvain, for how much he trains over the next two weeks.
Mostly with Felix, but he gets in a few good rounds against Petra, and Ingrid seems impressed that he’s finally decided to “apply himself.” But even when it’s not him who he’s up against, Sylvain’s awareness is fixed on Felix.
If anything, after that odd slip-up, Felix is training harder, impossibly. Longer hours spent going at it more ruthless and keyed-up. Outside of the training grounds and chores around the monastery, he’s made himself scarce. Gets up early and comes back late. No idea what fills the space between.
Sylvain would be a liar, to say he wasn’t counting: it’s the longest Felix has stayed out of Sylvain’s bed, even just for sleep, since they returned to Garreg Mach and had the option again.
He would ask what’s getting to him, but it’s historically proven a terrible move with Felix so obviously on edge.
Instead, classic maneuver, Sylvain throws himself in front of the problem.
“You want me to kick your ass again?” Felix says, a little meanly. His eyes narrow. “You’re not getting off on this are you?”
“I think you’d know, being so acquainted with what that looks like,” he says and Felix’s mouth twists in distaste. “Just trying to, y’know, better myself. Do what’s right for the country, or what have you.”
“It’s not a joke to be at war, Sylvain,” Felix says, and sinks into a ready stance.
“I know,” Sylvain says, and lets the sincerity bleed in.
Felix settles a bit to hear it, face lightening almost imperceptibly. His feet shift in the dirt, stance a little wider than normal.
Sylvain takes in the movement passively, doesn’t let his eyes follow.
Felix is as vicious for this bout as he’s been all moon. Maybe even moreso. Charitably, Sylvain thinks perhaps it’s because Felix knows he can take it.
For all his mercilessness, something starts to happen to Felix halfway through the round.
He’s off-balance and there’s moments where he almost seems to be holding back, preoccupied, only to double down on the power behind his blows when he remembers himself. The speed he’s known for is set aside for force.
He’s more than capable of both, and his stamina is no joke, but Sylvain is too used to head-on contests of power for this to work for Felix for long.
They’re locked in a cross when he notices the fine tremor in Felix’s arms.
“Fe,” he says low and concerned, and that’s enough—it’s clear Felix knows he’s caught. His cheeks go red, ears too, and it isn’t from exertion.
“Shut it,” he says, and shoves, giving himself room to disengage.
He looks livid and unsteady when Sylvain falls back to circle him. There’s little finesse in his next move; he rushes forward, like he wants or needs something to hit right then and no later.
Sylvain sidesteps, Felix twists to follow, his face pure rage, and then it happens. There’s a sound like tearing fabric. Felix looks as near to terrified as he ever has. He drops his sword arm and with the other hand, grabs his own ass.
Sylvain’s brain goes slow from shock to fast with panic. Careful and quick, he gets his lance in the end of Felix’s shirt and tears it from the hem sideways up to the shoulder.
“Shit, sorry,” Sylvain says, loud and abashed. “Lucky hit, my bad.”
Sylvain shucks off his own shirt and hands it over to Felix, who’s looking more conflicted than Sylvain’s seen since Felix would cry at anything and hate himself for it after.
Felix changes fast. Sylvain’s shirt reaches mid-thigh on him. His gaze flicks over Sylvain’s shoulder, to the far side of the grounds where Bernadetta and Ashe shoot at targets enchanted to move.
“I think we’re good,” Sylvain says quietly, and takes it upon himself to rack both their weapons.
Felix’s sword is pried out of his grasp with alarming ease.
“We?” Felix says harshly, after a moment’s pause spent dumb.
“Yeah,” Sylvain says easily. “Us. Let’s head back?”
Felix’s lips purse, but through gritted teeth, he says “After you,” and it’s more a command than a courtesy.
A perk of being in the lead is Sylvain lets himself into Felix’s room. Felix calls him a bastard, but it’s not like he has anywhere else to go, and he slips in after.
Felix stands in front of the door, eyes flicking to the dresser across the room, and to Sylvain, who stands in the distance between it and Felix.
“Fuck you,” Felix spits, which is fine, because he doesn’t mean it, and fair, because Sylvain let the silence pile up on Felix deliberately.
“Felix, I love you.”
It settles Felix’s shoulders somewhat to hear it, his expression a fraction less severe, still just as annoyed.
“So I hope you know, whatever’s going on, I’m only ever on your side. Even for you, I feel like going it alone all the time has to suck.”
Felix’s eyes go barely and briefly wide. The glare he levels at Sylvain afterward seems to go on a long time.
Then, Felix crosses the room stiffly, stands at his dresser, and back to Sylvain, he pulls Sylvain’s shirt off over his head.
Just like Sylvain had assumed, the seat of Felix’s pants had torn. What knocks the wind out of him is the cause. Felix’s formerly small-but-cute ass, his toned-but-not-much-to-hold ass—it bulges out of the hole in the fabric, large and round and substantial.
It’s not monstrous, nor even terribly disproportional. If anything else has changed, it’s that his thighs seem a bit thicker, too, and that only makes sense. It looks—right, somehow: a part of Felix, as opposed to something tacked onto Felix’s body.
It’s just that it also happens to be on par with some of the more well-blessed girls that Sylvain has been with. Looking at it, and the goddess herself couldn’t stop Sylvain looking, it’s clear that the sheer girth of it is what’s ripped the seams in the first place.
Felix turns, and Sylvain’s eyes, which have some other—albeit lesser—uses still, fly to Felix’s face.
“There you have it,” Felix says in a harsh whisper.
Sylvain swallows.
“It’s a lot of it,” Sylvain says. “And I’m pretty sure you have it. But fuck, I hope you’ll share.”
Felix makes a frustrated noise, translation: you’re horny and impossible, and unlaces his ruined pants.
“Please, please turn around,” Sylvain says, no dignity to be found.
“Why do I know you. Why are you still here,” Felix mutters, very red, and adds beneath his breath something that sounds like: stupid and brain in your dick.
But he does turn around.
“Fe,” Sylvain says in a strangled voice.
The flimsy tan shorts Sylvain knew well: they’d previously covered Felix a little too well, in Sylvain’s estimation. Now they’re wedged firmly between asscheeks they were never designed to contain, the hem ridden up high on each of them, leaving inches of flesh to hang out of the bottom. They look so small, so insubstantial, so—in the way.
If Felix’s pants had been undersized but hanging in admirably, his smallclothes were a miracle.
“What the fuck happened,” Sylvain says distantly. “Whose hand do I shake.”
Felix turns back around looking lethal. “Our promise ends here, I think. Sorry, Sylvain. You’ll die first.”
“Fe, no, wait. I can be good. Gimme a second.” He slaps his face with both hands a couple times, more for show than anything.
Felix clicks his tongue and fishes a shirt out of his dresser.
“That was my last pair of pants,” he mutters, when Sylvain looks at him curiously.
Sylvain takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Fe. I thought maybe joking would help. That was a mistake.” Felix stands with his arms crossed. “Are you okay? Do you know what happened?”
Felix seems to consider him awhile, annoyed, naturally, but the tell of his anxiety is how he bites at the inside of his cheek.
“I don’t know how it happened,” he says finally. “It’s been… growing, slowly, for a few weeks.”
“And that’s why we haven’t…?”
“Yes, Sylvain, that’s why we haven’t fucked.”
Truly, that wasn’t the extent of what Sylvain was asking, but he wasn’t about to derail things now. Again. Felix scowls resolutely at Sylvain’s ear and continues.
“It’s not painful, and it doesn’t seem like anything else is wrong. It’s just… fucking weird. It feels fucking weird. And it gets in the way of my training. I can’t get accustomed to it. All that fucking… weight. It throws me off.”
Sylvain nods, calibrating. Felix’s body, a thing perfectly under his command, carved out by his will, and it changed on him without warning or recourse. It’d be a blow to anyone. For Felix, it’s an outright betrayal.
“Have you spoken to Mercedes about it? Linhardt?” Sylvain asks softly.
Felix looks fully away. “I haven’t spoken to anyone about it, obviously.”
Except you, rang the clear postscript.
“If it isn’t painful, and if you can… work around it, while fighting—which, c’mon, it’s you—then,” Sylvain lays a hand on Felix’s hip, “I think you have a right to privacy, and to seek consultation on your own terms.”
Felix snorts. “None of my pants fit. None of my fucking smalls fit. How am I supposed to take care of that privately?”
“I’ll shop for you,” Sylvain says. “C’mon Fe, gimme a harder one than that.”
“People are going to notice,” he grumbles. “My shirts are only so long. I don’t know how I’ve managed since it got this bad.” He cast his eyes to the ceiling. “… Of all people, the boar was looking at me oddly the other day.”
Sylvain has to put that one far away, shove it beneath all his very real concern for Felix, his wellness and his relationship to his own body. The idea that Felix’s ass would be what hauled Dimitri back from the depths is something Sylvain will never, ever say aloud.
When Felix kicks him hard in the shin, Sylvain doesn’t ask why.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “No, seriously. I’m sorry you’ve been dealing with this alone. We’ll figure it out, okay?”
Felix meets his eye, briefly. He’s not so angry or closed off that Sylvain can mistake the relief on his face for anything else.
“Thanks,” he mutters, then pauses. “Now get it over with.”
“What’s that?” Sylvain asks, and for the life of him, he can’t keep the guile out of his voice.
Felix gives a short, irritated huff, and steps forward into the vee of Sylvain’s legs. He seizes Sylvain’s hand and plants it firmly on his own ass with a slap he probably doesn’t intend.
“You are so unbelievably good to me,” Sylvain says reverently. “Are you sure?”
“Yes I’m fucking sure,” Felix hisses. “Are you dumb?”
Assured and at least a little dumb, Sylvain squeezes, brings his other hand up to do the same. He plants his chin on Felix’s abdomen, near the bottom of his sternum, and tilts his head back to watch Felix’s face.
Felix looks determinedly elsewhere. But he’s going pink again. Sylvain kneads experimentally, gets his hands in the crease between Felix’s ass and thigh and lets the heft of both cheeks rest in each of his palms. They spill over, just a bit more than he can hold.
When he slides his hands back up from the bottom, Felix’s smalls get stuck on his thumbs, pulling tighter between his asscheeks, and Sylvain can feel how it’s practically become a thong.
Felix is worrying his bottom lip with a force Sylvain thinks he should maybe be concerned about.
“How’s it feel?” he asks, dipping a finger between his cheeks, stroking over the fabric stuck there.
“Idiot,” Felix says, low and harsh. “You know.”
“Feedback is an essential part of learning.”
“And yet—“ Sylvain pulls at one of asscheeks, and Felix’s breath hitches. “And yet,” Felix grits out. “You’ve never managed to figure out when to shut your mouth.”
Felix is hard in his smalls. Not fully, but they’re so tight around his cock and balls that there’s no room to hide.
“You like it,” Sylvain says. “My dumb mouth.”
Felix gives the loudest, most irritated click of his tongue yet, and shoves hard at Sylvain. Sylvain falls partway to the bed, and Felix slings a leg over him, seats himself at the top of Sylvain’s thighs.
Sylvain stares, his mouth fallen open, as Felix lifts himself and with a terrible smirk, swipes his ass forward and back over Sylvain’s clothed but unmistakable erection.
Sylvain reclines fully and curses loudly, fists balled in his bedspread.
“Yeah,” Felix says, low and spiteful and a little amused. “I’m the one that likes it.”
“Baby,” Sylvain grinds out. “I— You—“
“Use your words. How does it feel?”
It feels like Felix is balancing most of his weight on his knees; it feels like there’s all that heft to his new ass, all that gravity, and he’s keeping to himself, teasing Sylvain with just a sliver of what he has on offer.
“Holy shit, Felix. I—Please, please say you’ll let me fuck you, I’m not gonna make it.” Sylvain’s mouth runs off without him. “I’m gonna die and some poor fucker is gonna have to carve the most embarrassing headstone Fódlan’s ever seen. Baby, please, please let me in, I don’t want that on my conscience.”
“Yeah, yeah. You want me on your dick. Some things don’t change.” Felix sits up and hooks his thumbs in his smalls, works them down and pulls them off the end of his leg. “That’s reassuring, I guess.”
Sylvain sets a record for undoing his laces.
“Seriously, I will not last if you keep teasing,” he warns, handing over a vial of oil as Felix kneels, poised above him.
Felix rolls his eyes, but he’s already working himself open with merciless efficiency, and Sylvain knows he isn’t the only one desperate for it.
Felix has to use both hands as he fingers himself, a new development; one is clearly angled to hold onto his asscheek and keep himself open.
Sylvain’s dick leaks steadily onto his stomach.
He’d have asked Felix to turn around if Felix wasn’t liable to walk away entirely, if Felix wasn’t already slicking up Sylvain’s dick and lining himself up above it.
Sylvain’s breath stops short at the first brush of heat. The clutch of Felix’s ass seems to come fast and go on endlessly before he’s fully seated, but really, Sylvain knows, that’s just his dick surrounded on all sides by Felix’s plush asscheeks. And when Felix does bottom out, when he sits back on Sylvain’s cock, Sylvain can feel Felix’s ass on his thighs and balls in a way that’s never been so noticeable before.
“Fuck,” Sylvain says, and Felix, flushed and pleased, his eyes gone a little glassy already, just smirks as his prelude to Sylvain’s total undoing.
Felix starts out riding him deep and thorough with that signature control of his. Sylvain can only come along for it, subject entirely to Felix’s whims, grateful for whatever he doles out, even or especially punishment.
Felix’s face as he works up and down is dusted pink, sweat beading at his hairline, mouth wet and open while his breath comes hard. He’s beautiful; always has been.
“Thank you, baby,” Sylvain pants out, brushing his fingers along the skin of Felix’s thigh. “For trusting me with you.”
Felix’s smirk was terribly fond, in its own way, the one that was obvious to Sylvain.
“It’s a little early to be thanking me,” he says, and with a slick, wet sound, he pulls off Sylvain’s dick entirely.
Sylvain whines, starts forming an apology, a plea—Felix rolls his eyes, turns to face away from Sylvain, then seats himself back on Sylvain’s dick. All the way to the hilt in one smooth motion.
Then Sylvain whines for real. Felix decides on a new and punishing rhythm, giving up little gasps and groans while he wrecks them both on Sylvain’s cock. His asscheeks slap against Sylvain’s stomach with an audible clap, and it’s all Sylvain can do to watch his dick disappearing in Felix’s ass, grip Felix’s hips just to touch him, and try not to spend instantly.
“Thank you,” Sylvain slurs out, certain it’s not premature this time, or, alternately, that he could never say it enough.