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1.
He lets the inn’s hostler fuck him in the stables by moonlight, which in theory is a fun mix of convenience and ambience.
Slightly less fun is the rough wood splintering where he’s braced his hands, the animal smells and scratch of hay around his ankles, but he didn’t come downstairs in the middle of the night with oil leaking slowly down his leg not asking for this. The hostler is sure-handed, with dark eyes and a subtle smile Sylvain first saw that afternoon, handing over his reins to the man. Their fingertips brushed with sufficient pressure that Sylvain felt it through his gloves.
“You like that?” Theodore—call me Theo—growls near Sylvain’s ear.
“Yeah,” Sylvain says, passably honest. He’s full, anyway, and there’s something about the breathlessness, the fuzz of danger at the edge of his awareness that feels hypnotically good, like watching the wave and snap of fire.
It’s not the done thing. The phrase occurs to him in a schoolmaster’s voice. Etiquette was just the word for how you got away with doing impolite things in the portion of your life that wasn’t for display. It’s his first time out from under his father’s rule and his brother’s long shadow and the damp and draft of Gautier keep. Even if it’s only temporary. In a stable at a roadside inn on the outskirts of Conand, there’s no one to say who Sylvain ought to be, and no one else to punish him for what he already is.
He arches his back, goading, and Theodore gets a hand in his hair. He yanks it hard, and another hand comes up around Sylvain’s throat.
“Want me to?” Theodore asks, and Sylvain nods. The hand closes; he chokes on a gasp. Little diamonds pop and fizzle in his vision. Between that and the grip yanking his head back and the cock in his ass, he hardly has room to think anything. Only yeah. Yes, with all the satisfaction of a man making a discovery he thinks will carry him forward a ways.
“You’re so tight.” Theodore lets go of Sylvain’s throat in favor of driving frantically up into Sylvain, short, sloppy thrusting. “Fuck. I’m—“
“Not inside,” Sylvain reminds him.
Theodore drops a hand down to work Sylvain’s cock. He’s bad at it, and his palm is rough, and Sylvain is equal parts irritated and gratified. He thinks he could probably finish like this, with the phantom sensation of a hand around his neck, a clumsy grip on his length, fucked like a trollop, nearly out in the open—and then Theodore curses and pulls out.
Gone, too, is the grip on Sylvain’s cock. The slick, nasty sound of Theodore getting himself off and the sudden emptiness makes Sylvain shudder. Warmth stripes his back in time with a guttural sound from Theodore.
To his credit, he’s back a second later to offer Sylvain a helping hand. Sylvain’s not as hard as he was a second ago. It’s awkward and a little too intimate, having this naked stranger stand beside him and attempt to jerk him off with his own cock going soft between his legs.
“You need something else?” Theodore asks.
Sylvain almost says no. Almost says it’s fine and thanks and goodnight. Instead he gestures to his neck. “Could you—?“
An inscrutable look passes over Theodore’s face, but in the end Sylvain comes with Theodore’s arm barred across his throat. Theodore tosses out a good boy Sylvain could really do without, though he doesn’t linger or promise anything afterward so it all evens out.
Sylvain scrubs the come off his back and stomach at the horse trough. He’s quiet on the stairs, opens the door soundlessly, but he’s only just stripped down for bed when Felix turns over and asks,
“How much did you lose?”
Sylvain’s pulse spikes. “What?” he says dumbly.
“Cards,” Felix says. Sylvain can’t make out his face in the dark. “The guy from the stables looked at you like an easy mark. Don’t tell me you blew through your whole traveling purse.”
He summons up a laugh. “I’ll keep you in luxury, sweetheart, don’t worry.”
Felix huffs. “I’m fine. And you can sleep on the roadside the whole way to the monastery for all I care.”
Sylvain climbs into his own bed with an affronted noise. Felix’s disdain is familiar enough that Sylvain’s heart rate is slowly settling. He studies the dark shape of Felix’s back.
After a moment, Felix speaks up again. “You can’t keep this up when we get to the academy. They’ll kick you out.”
No they won’t. Sylvain’s father doesn’t have any heirs left; this one has to stick. And the church probably loves a well-funded problem child. A bribe against expulsion spells favors and funding from Faerghus nobility. No one’s letting go of Sylvain willingly.
“They’ll love me,” Sylvain says. “You’ll see.”
2.
He watches the moment pass: when he could step out of the way, and doesn’t.
It’s been a while since someone knocked the wind out of him. It’s funny, what one remembers and how. And when. The girl’s brother—one girl among the cohort he was seeing last week—looks at Sylvain, confusion mingling with disgust while from the ground Sylvain wheezes a laugh.
He was almost nostalgic for a second there. Miklan’s never gonna lay a hand on him again. Not him or anyone. He remembers the inert, cooling flesh as he checked Miklan’s pulse—three times over a half an hour, before Byleth insisted on dragging Sylvain away.
"You're fucking garbage," the guy spits at him. Then literally spits at him, while Sylvain rolls over onto his back. It's warm against his face. "I don't care if you're a noble. Your whole family is bad stock."
It's sad they're on opposite sides at the moment. Sylvain thinks he could really click with this guy.
"Tell Eleanore it was fun while it lasted," Sylvain rasps out. He takes the kick to his ribs with a choked off sound. He thinks he hears a crunch. It could just as easily be his imagination. Been imagining lots lately. Cold water moving under his skin like snakes; the Lance of Ruin, breathing; his brother's death rattle like a hypnic jerk, every time he starts to fall asleep.
The brother says he's not gonna tell Charlotte anything, then adds that if he ever catches Sylvain tossing pebbles at her window again, he'll break both Sylvain's hands.
Sylvain thinks about waving goodbye when the guy finally turns to seethe back into the night, but reconsiders. He drops his head back onto the paving stones of the alleyway. His ribs throb, his gut aches. Could be worse. No head injury. No lance through his stomach. No reconstitution of his physical form to become a huge, crest-powered monster, whatever that feels like.
Gingerly, he gets to his feet. He scrubs his cheek with his sleeve before feeling carefully along his ribs. With a hiss he jerks his hand away, then delves back in to the tenderest spot; he digs the pads of his fingers in, slowly, until black spots creep into his vision, until all of him narrows to that point of pain.
3.
Felix blocks him on his way out of the classroom and says, "You're going to die."
Sylvain smiles. "You and me both, sweetheart."
Felix's face screws up in a way which, while not cute, Sylvain is very fond of.
"Imminently, for you," Felix says. "Probably stupidly, also."
"In the meantime," Sylvain says, leaning his shoulder against the doorway, "why don't you go into town with me?"
"You have to stop fucking around," Felix says flatly. "You don't get to be a good-for-nothing and you don't get to be dead."
There's an or else there. Or else I'll resent you, and drag your dead weight forward regardless—the same way he does with Dimitri. That's the problem with Felix. He's never known when to let go. He still believes he can make a difference. If Sylvain let in the full scope of his feeling about this, it would flood him with its goodness and naive, humbling strength. As it is he sort of pities and sort of hates Felix, just in flashes, because Sylvain can't imagine the way forward that Felix believes himself capable of brute-forcing into existence.
"Alright," he says. "What's it take to be good for something?"
Training, Sylvain thinks, at the same time that Felix frowns suspiciously and says, "Training."
Sylvain waves one airy hand. "Lead the way."
Another show of terrible faith: Felix doesn't turn around to see whether Sylvain follows. Why this makes Sylvain's insides darken, he can't say. When Felix picks up a practice sword, he shakes his head.
Felix opens his mouth in the shape of a rebuke. Sylvain calls out to the other side of the training yard.
"Your Highness," he says, jovial. "You up for a round?"
Sylvain can feel Felix's glower on the side of his neck. Almost he could shiver with it. A nearly reptile satisfaction: his petty feelings that live with bellies scraping the ground.
Dimitri looks bemused, wiping sweat from his brow, but he's drilling alone and can't reasonably say no. He offers up a tentative smile, glance darting between Sylvain and Felix.
"Certainly," Dimitri says. "Ingrid will be sad to have missed this."
Sylvain could kid himself it's all friendliness on his part. Maybe there's some of that in him, some days. He remembers Dimitri after the tragedy, bandaged and shocked-silent at the funeral. It was the first time Sylvain ever thought of him as small.
They're of a height, now. They square off with blunted lances while Felix, too angry and wary to do anything else, looks on.
It starts off good natured. The Prince and the Fool. Dimitri's textbook where Sylvain leans into lazy feints and half-hearted jabs. Then Sylvain starts to poke the lion through the bars of his cage. Testing little maneuvers—he watches Dimitri's face shift as he realizes Sylvain intends on an actual bout. It's no one's fault he looks surprised.
He makes Dimitri take him seriously. In his periphery he sees Felix fold his arms across his chest. A glance at him shows he's serious, absorbed, maybe something more than that? But Sylvain has no time to decipher it. He's breathing hard; his arms shake from absorbing the force of Dimitri's blows, rattling down the dulled steel. Dimitri is less and less present. Something else takes him over. Sylvain recognizes it, with the wind of Dimitri's swing ruffling his hair, just barely missing his face. Pure, deadly concentration, the instinct that replaces them all on the field, and Dimitri moreso.
It's a dangerous game Sylvain is playing. He can see each opportunity as it passes within inches of him. Maybe that's Sylvain's problem. He doesn't disappear enough on the battlefield. He's always still there, a little ways apart from his instincts, always wondering if he moved wrong, if he chose to move wrong—
Dimitri's lance smashes down into Sylvain's collarbone. The cratering, starbursting pain stops his breath in his throat. All his pathways diverted, sunk into the white shock.
The rest of the scene rushes back in in the next second. Two lances in the dirt. The ringing in his ears. Felix, yelling something. Sylvain grits his teeth. He thinks, humiliatingly, that he might cry.
Dimitri is a river of apologies. Sylvain can't even shake his head to put him off; it hurts too much. He's saying it's alright, mistakes happen. Felix bears down on him. Looks like he'd lay hands on Sylvain if he could. His vision wavers. Now Sylvain thinks he might throw up.
Felix disengages them both with curt words to Dimitri. Dimitri's expression is rent, guilt and the subsuming of guilt, whatever his great and terrible mechanism is set in motion. Sylvain knows these things from a distance. He can't really move his arm. Some soldier he'd make like this.
Felix walks a step ahead of him on the way to the infirmary. He's moving just a little too fast. Sylvain keeps his eyes on the back of Felix's head for something to focus on. He thinks of the expression he glimpsed on Felix's face during the bout, before Sylvain threw it—pleased, nearly; Felix has always appreciated skill, and doesn't disdain violence, not when it's paired with control...
The pain braids itself into the thought, over and around it, and he imagines what it could be like. If Felix wanted to hurt him, if he wanted anything at all from Sylvain. Maybe in trade... Maybe Sylvain could do as Felix wanted—train, show up, be useful—and live the rest of his life under Felix's thumb, or fist, or boot... whatever he wanted, really.
The hall shifts around him, the walls seeming to lean toward him and away. He opens his mouth to call out to Felix, then closes it again to swallow down bile. He makes it to the wall, still wavering in front of him, and stops to lean his forehead against it, sucking in little sips of air.
"You made this happen." Felix is upon him, suddenly, pressing into his line of sight. "You think you know how he is? That you can handle it? He's a monster, Sylvain. He could've killed you."
"Felix," Sylvain says weakly; weaker than he feels? Hard to say.
Felix is white with rage. "What good does it do, to waste yourself like this," he says, half to himself. "What good does it do, either of you, both of you—"
"I'm sorry," Sylvain says. He'd say a lot of things to get that look off Felix's face.
The wretched croak of his voice turns Felix's head. He sifts through unsuitable lies—he didn't know, he didn't mean to—and says again, "I'm sorry."
For a long, still moment, Felix just stares at him. Hunched as Sylvain is, they're nearly eye level. Sylvain feels like a beggar, low as an animal, too pathetic to inspire any real malice.
At length Felix looks away. He makes a disgusted sound, deep in his throat. "You should save it for someone who'll believe you," he says. He turns to walk away; Sylvain tries to straighten off the wall to follow. "Don't bother," Felix calls out. "I'll get Manuela." He doesn't turn to look back.
4.
Add a fractured collarbone (healed, though still sometimes tender, after faith magic that felt like breaking it a second time), Dimitri flinching when he catches Sylvain's eye, and Felix not even deigning to speak to him, and Sylvain pretty much has a free pass to skip out on training for the next few weeks.
His injury is a fresh line for that month's girls, but he doesn't net much sympathy. He meanders down the hill into town, to an inn he's heard rumors about. Lots of rooms with people of specific tastes and just a few rules. He's only got the one, himself— Nothing permanent, he tells the man he meets there. He's older, light hair and light eyes, long fingers.
Contorted, his hair pulled; Stephen puts Sylvain in lipstick and fucks his throat. Normally Sylvain wouldn't accede to it, but it's a hard itch he's got under his skin tonight. He thought the humiliation might touch it—pretty girl, aren't you? Nothing satisfies. His collarbone twinges.
Stephen presses up against Sylvain's back, some time after wiping the lipstick off his balls, smoking with one hand and jerking Sylvain off listlessly with the other. Sylvain's nearly there, eyes closed, grinding himself down into the feeling of being stupid and ill-used: just right for the Gautier heir—when the image of Felix's back flashes suddenly into his mind's eye. The tense set of his shoulders, the shivering vulnerability of his nape.
Then, a collision: Sylvain yelps, the image dissipates, his orgasm tips over into utterly joyless discharge. There's a searing point of pain on his hip where Stephen has extinguished his cigarette.
Sylvain rounds on him. Looking foolish with his sad, softening dick out.
"You seemed bored," Stephen says.
Sylvain gawps. "Are you out of your fucking mind?"
Stephen shrugs. He retreats to the bed to light himself another cigarette, watching while Sylvain pulls his pants on. "Not so fun slumming it after all, huh?"
"You don't know what you're talking about," Sylvain spits. It sounds petulant, stupid. His hands are shaky on the laces of his pants.
"You're up at that monastery, yeah? Only thing special about you is your daddy's treasury. Bet it keeps you in some pretty dresses." Stephen exhales a stream of smoke. "You're just another bored, rich slut preoccupied with the problems you tell yourself you have."
"You're sick," Sylvain tells him.
"And you came looking for me," Stephen says with a smile.
The walk back to the monastery is long. All the apothecaries are closed up for the night; without vulnerary or even a bandage, the fabric of his pants chafes the burn on his hip. It's raw and angry when he strips down again in his room. As accusatory as punctuation, that little end mark sits there and points him back at himself. He brushes the pad of his finger against it experimentally and steels himself against the flinch.
He's had worse. That's the thing, right? More than once he's been left to die. He thumbs the burn again, harder. It's all true, what they say about him. Good for nothing. In his mind Felix's mouth shapes the words, and then some. Bored slut—Sylvain can almost hear him. He wraps a hand around his cock, gives it one tight squeeze. Pathetic, Felix says. Insatiable. He exhales through his teeth and makes himself uncurl his fingers. He braces his hands on his desk. His head hangs down between his shoulders and the burn looks back, one lidless eye.
5.
He does go back to the inn. He tries out alternatives—the girls he sleeps with don't mind slapping him; some of them really don't mind—but he's too aware of building a certain notoriety. His reputation is robust and rotten enough without asking for what he really wants.
By various hands he's bent over, hit; held down, choked. They call him pretty and it's always at least a little insulting. He drinks more. He sees Stephen in passing, without speaking, across the inn's dimly lit common room. The burn on his hip heals over without assistance and he misses having a spot that hurts reliably. A punishment he wears under his clothes, never letting him get too far from the idea that if this is how he wants to live his life, then he deserves what he gets.
He thinks of himself as keeping the balance where the world refuses to. They're dispatched to Remire, which must live in the goddess' blindspot. They're in up to their knees in mud, trying to wrangle villagers when a deeper shade of hell breaks loose across the field. Sylvain sees it, in the split second before Felix locks it down: his wrenched-open expression while Dimitri calls for blood makes Sylvain's throat tighten.
He looks for Felix after the battle. Finds him stripped to the waist and scrubbing blood from his hair. Sylvain's pulse jumps at the pale, rarely-seen skin of his scalp showing through. Felix hasn't really spoken to him since the incident in the training yard.
"I told you," Felix says without looking. Like there's just the one ongoing conversation, about who's heard and who isn't.
"I know," Sylvain says quietly.
Felix doesn't answer. There's the patter of water as he empties a pail over his head.
"Let me help," Sylvain ventures. Felix glares at him through the dripping sheet of his hair but doesn't say no. He steps in close and takes up a rag to wipe away the blood and grime on Felix's shoulders and back. For just a moment, Felix goes entirely still. Then his posture ripples like he's taken a deep inhale and he dips his head to wring out his hair, tearing carelessly through knots with his fingers.
Sylvain keeps his movements as careful as if someone had a knife pointed at him. The quiet stretches out; in it is a vestigial need to help, and Sylvain wants to reach for that breach in Felix's walls, even if the privilege has been denied to him since the Tragedy.
He swallows. Wets his lips with his tongue. "His Highness has a lot of eyes on him now, at least."
A pause. "And you think that will help? My father and your father will platform him anyway." Felix scoffs. "They don't have anyone else."
Sylvain takes a breath. Felix's muscles are one mass of tension under his hands. "We're here. And Byleth isn't an idiot; they see what's happening. We'll do what we can."
"We," Felix repeats hollowly. "Now it suits you to be part of this?"
Sylvain stills. "I was born into it. Same as you."
"But I've been here." He tears himself out from beneath Sylvain's hands and turns to face him. He looks animal to Sylvain, drawn up and sharp. "And you've been where? Fucking your way through the town? Bent over in the Knights' Quarters?"
"I didn't think you put stock in rumors," Sylvain says lightly, but his mouth's gone dry.
"I don't have to. I'm not stupid, or blind." Droplets of water sling themselves from the tips of his hair as Felix tosses it out of his eyes. "You turn up when you're forced to, and then you fight like you don't care if you live. You're a liability. You'd be safer as a courtesan."
Sylvain blinks. He finds he's surprised at the dull hurt that knocks against his breastbone. What others can do with a fist, Felix can do just by speaking. "Okay," Sylvain says. He drops the rag into the empty pail with a wet slap. "Thanks for the advice. I'll keep that in mind."
"You're still not listening," Felix spits. "What is it going to take?"
Sylvain spreads his empty hands. He'd say he doesn't know, but he sees it as clearly as Felix does. Hell, Sylvain saw it first. A punched-out and perfect circle of sky above a well: it was his hole to die in, and he's carried it with him ever since.
The march back is miserable. It drizzles the whole time and Felix is, predictably, not speaking to him; plus there's the anxious, unsettled energy of Dimitri and his wary entourage of Dedue and Byleth. Sylvain dallies at the stables when they return to the monastery so as to have less company in the baths.
His mail has been delivered to his room in the meantime. He cracks the wax seal with his thumbnail and skims it idly while he lights the candles—except partway through he ends up frozen in place, a single candle held up close enough to the paper that a stray breath would make it catch.
When he's done he folds the parchment neatly along its creases, dresses, blows out the candle and leaves.
He goes at first to the tavern. Thinking maybe he'll leave it at that. Knowing he won't. He's got a buzz by the time he wanders out again. Back to the inn, to whoever looks good and will have him. He finds a taker: dark eyed, long hair, with a scar running through his lip. Sylvain licks it.
They drink more. Sylvain is moving in the afterimage of himself before long, the room gently pulsing, all his limbs loose. Gabriel says he has a friend on the way, and does Sylvain mind? No, he doesn't. Gabriel has him by the hair, tilts his head to kiss him. When Sylvain closes his eyes he has a sense of vertigo, and then he recognizes what it really is: looking down into that hole in the earth, feeling no sympathy for the child huddled in on itself down there. Someone should've nailed that well shut. He deserves what he's always gotten; in this way, the order of the world is kept intact.
Gabriel doubles. His friend, Sylvain thinks vaguely, but doesn't retain his name. One in front and one behind. Sylvain doesn't know he's running his mouth until someone sticks their fingers in it. Feels good. Feels correct, to be held in place. What do you want? they ask him. He looks over his shoulder to find where the voice came from, his brain sloshing and heavy.
Whatever, he hears himself say. Whatever is fine.
For a bit he's underwater. For a bit, he feels good. Moved from place to place, decanted, contorted. Driven out of himself. He's warm then cold then very cold. He hears his own name. Felix, he thinks, happy for an instant that evaporates almost immediately. If Felix could see him now— See how he really spends his time, split open by strangers, begging when they tell him to beg— Felix would never. Felix has never begged for anything in his life. He looks back down into the pit, the hole dug for water but repurposed to hold him.
His name again, louder and closer, but distorted. Sound bounces around strangely in the well. Someone grabs him by the arm. He remembers this part, not as clearly, but he supposes it did happen.
"Stop it," Felix is saying to him. "Sylvain."
Felix is a smudge beside him. Makes no sense that Felix would be here, so he's probably not. Sylvain just nods and smiles and tries to keep moving, but he's caught on something.
"Sylvain, I will fucking tackle you."
Sylvain jerks and scrambles in some direction, hard to say which. He's met with force. His breath is knocked out of him. Something unyielding under his back. He can't sit up, either; not with Felix on top of him.
He's yelling at Sylvain: "What are you doing?"
Felix's face is as pale and demanding as the moon. His eyes are wide. Sylvain puts his fingers to Felix's cheek, just to see. Felix exhales oddly, like it hurts, but it can't, Sylvain's not even doing anything.
"You're here?"
"Yes." Felix shakes him by the shoulder for emphasis. "You're injured."
"No'm not," Sylvain says. Behind Felix's head is sky; Felix's hair blends seamlessly into the dark sheet of it.
"You idiot. You idiot. Are you joking? It looks like someone tried to fucking strangle you."
"Oh," Sylvain says. "That's fine." His vision comes in and out of focus, turning the pinprick stars to fuzzy smears of light then back again. "They get something, I get something. It's fine."
Felix's voice—if it is Felix and his voice—makes something turn cool and frightening inside Sylvain. "What are you saying?" Felix asks.
"Nothing," Sylvain says, turning aside from that fear, putting it back in the place where it doesn't matter. "Are we heading back to the monastery? Wouldn't wanna... wouldn't wanna miss class."
There's a second of nothing, then the weight on him shifts. Felix appears beside him, crouching, gathering Sylvain into one half-solid piece and hauling him upward. Sylvain stumbles, and Felix shores him up with his own strength, unbending, miraculous.
"It's okay," Sylvain says to him. Seems important. "You're okay."
"Just shut the fuck up, Sylvain. Can you walk?"
What use would that be? Just lay him back down, wherever he is. Either someone will find a purpose for him, or he'll lay there long enough to become nobody's problem. "Sure," he says after a moment, but the watery glimpse he gets of Felix's young, wretched face makes him feel like he's said much more.
6.
Sunlight knocks around the room, pausing first to pay special attention to the inside of Sylvain's skull. He groans, flings up an arm to shield his eyes and finds it's made of lead.
"You're up," Felix says, from the place beyond the dark of Sylvain's forearm. It sounds like a warning more than a question.
"At what cost," Sylvain croaks. His throat hurts from the inside out. The rest of him feels like it's been run through a laundry mangle. He has a feeling he doesn't want to see Felix right now, let alone the state of himself.
The silence presses on him. He drops his arm with a sigh, and rolls over in the direction of Felix's radiant hostility.
It's worse than he thought: the room's blinding, all the shutters open, and Felix is sitting in a chair beside the bed—which is Felix's bed, because this is Felix's room, fuck. The parts of his brain made muzzy by sleep are beginning to firm up, rigid with dread.
"Good morning," he says, pulling himself up to sit. His voice is a rasp.
"Afternoon," Felix says. "Do you remember how you spent your night?"
Felix is so intent on him that Sylvain's spine prickles uncomfortably. Rubbing the grit from his eyes, he answers, "Oh, you know. Homework, choir rehearsal. Volunteering with orphans."
"You save getting cigarettes put out on you for weeknights, then?"
Sylvain brings his hands down slowly. He tugs discretely at his shirt. His clothes from the night before, rumpled, but intact, mostly. "Didn't we have a talk about rumors?"
"It's not a rumor," Felix says. "I heard it from you."
Sylvain stretches. Tries to look casual, but his body feels wooden. "I tell bad jokes when I'm drunk."
Felix's hand shoots out; he grabs Sylvain, shoves back his sleeves. Rope burns, red and obvious, circle his wrists like bracelets. It was lost to Sylvain amid the tumble of all his other little pains, but the sting comes alive under Felix's gaze.
"Your ankles, too." Felix meets his eye. His voice is even, dogged and terrible. "You've got bruises on your neck. They look like somebody's hands."
It's disorienting, how fast a secret empties out. Sylvain blinks and wrenches his arm out of Felix's grip with a suddenness that seems to surprise them both. He rises from Felix's bed—he's not a convalescent; there's nothing to wait on, nothing to fix.
Barefoot and a little unsteady he makes for the door. Felix is on his heels and grabs Sylvain by the shoulder, wrenches him around and shoves until his back hits the wall. Sylvain could probably break Felix's hold, though he can expect a fight; it all depends on how far Felix wants to take this whole thing, whether he really wants it to hurt—
Felix puts his hand on Sylvain's throat. Sylvain stops calculating.
He looks Sylvain in the eye. "This is what it takes?"
Sylvain's lips shape Felix's name but he can't make himself put any air behind it. Felix squeezes. It's never been quite like this, never so bare or so close. The wet clicking of Sylvain's throat sounds loud in the room. Here is someone who knows him, has known him since childhood, peeling him open for a look at the person he's turned into.
Sylvain's eyes slide shut. He gives himself up to Felix's judgement. His lungs spasm. Little sparks pop in the dark behind his eyelids.
It's just as the instinctive panic really sets in that Felix lets go. Sylvain sucks in a ragged, reflexive gasp. Felix's breathing is heavy. He puts a hand on Sylvain's collarbone, in case he had any ideas about making a getaway. The room tilts around them; Sylvain's dizzy and half hard. Felix is the song in his head, just one word on repeat.
Felix regards him levelly, though his eyes are dark. Sylvain licks his lips; it stings, must be split. He means to suggest—something. Less clothes, maybe.
Felix opens his mouth first. "Last night," he says, "you were on the bridge, outside the cathedral. Someone sent me looking for you. Said you looked fucked up. You were leaning over the edge when I found you."
"I was drunk," Sylvain rasps. "I was probably looking for somewhere to throw up."
"No," Felix says, "because all the way back to the dormitory, you kept telling me you needed to 'get down there'."
Right. The hole in the ground. The untouched damp and the smell of earth and old stone. "I don't remember," he says.
Felix looks at him like he's trying to burn a hole through him. He puts his fingers to Sylvain's mouth; lines his thumb up in the center of his lower lip, right against the tear somebody made last night. Felix presses down. Sylvain hisses. Faintly, he tastes blood.
"You're not getting out of this," Felix says, likely because saying but you promised, is beyond what Felix can stomach. There's too much of the child he was in it.
"And this," Felix says, driving his nail against the split in Sylvain's lip. "For this, you come to me. Not some idiot that'll happily kill you."
"I don't think you know what you're asking for," Sylvain says.
Felix smears blood over Sylvain's lip. He can tell Felix thinks the matter's settled already; nevermind that they haven't even kissed, that he has no idea whether Felix has a single romantic feeling for him.
"What," Felix says. He wipes his thumb on his vest. "Don't tell me you're picky."
It lands with a thud inside Sylvain. He huffs a bare laugh. It's funny; this sentiment, paraphrased, was put to Sylvain just last night. His father's exact words: don't allow your fatuous preferences to interfere with the future of the family.
His letter, penned while Sylvain and his classmates watched Remire eat itself alive, introduced Sylvain to his future wife. A crestless noble girl from Charon. The wedding's set for just after graduation. It's no wonder Sylvain was trying to climb back down into that well. Time had lasted forever there.
"Sylvain," Felix says. "Are you listening?"
Sylvain gives him a half-smile. Something wry and private if not entirely truthful. "Yeah," he says. "I don't doubt you can kick my ass."
"You should've known that from the start," Felix mutters, but he looks mollified. "It would've saved you the trouble."
Sylvain thinks about kissing him then. Then he thinks about the portion of his life that's really his. These few moons away from his family and their legacy of towers and borders and crypts. He can have something, in the meantime. He can have this: this pity, or babysitting, or whatever it is. Felix's hand on him instead of another's. Marks to last a little while, and then fade.