Chapter Text
Sylvain slept off the worst of his injuries for twenty-four hours. In that time, Felix tried - and failed - seven times to sneak into the officer’s triage and check on his status. An increasingly irate and sleep-deprived Linhardt von Hevring turned him around every time. Felix walked away from his seventh attempt with the sting of Nosferatu sparking across his cheek, which he forced himself to take as a good sign - if Linhardt had enough Faith reserves to sling offensive magic at nosy intruders, then Sylvain had nothing to worry about.
He sat Annette down in the privacy of her own tent late that night after supper and told her everything he hadn’t been able to over letters. Fraldarius. Julianne. Mattocks. Ranka. Then Sylvain, the culmination of it all. Annette sat very still but said nothing until Felix admitted he had nothing more to tell her. At that point, she only had one thing to say.
“Don’t you dare let him take one step out of that tent,” she said, “until he hears every word you just said to me from your mouth.”
“I don’t…” Felix quirked his mouth in a frown. “He and I don’t talk the same way you and I do, Nettya.”
“Oh, says who? You’re just making it harder for yourselves, thinking like that. How do you think you got to this point in the first place?”
“I’ve known him too long to change it now.”
Annette leaned forward and flicked him - hard - between the eyebrows with a pout. “Felix, pardon my language,” she declared, “but you’re a Goddess-damned dummy.”
She really did know exactly what to say, somehow. It was an impeccable talent for which Felix hoped he could keep repaying her for the rest of his life.
The next time he ducked under the triage tent flap, he raised his hands in surrender before another Nosferatu could graze him and actually apologized with a promise to stay out of the way whenever it would be asked of him. And for some reason, Linhardt took him at his word that time. Annette and Ingrid would probably tell him it was the apology.
Just like with Dimitri. Felix was just too tired of his own emotional cowardice to keep up the angry front anymore, and it genuinely shocked him how much easier it made things when he let it drop.
It was only fair, then, that the first person to be on the receiving end of that revelation was the one person who probably deserved to hear it the most.
Felix woke when the pillow beneath his head shifted of its own accord. That was when he remembered that it wasn’t his pillow at all - it was a bulky, sheet-draped cavalry thigh. He wasn’t in his own tent, but the officer’s triage. Patchwork sheets too worn to be used as bedding had been strung between each of the cots to allow their occupants two walls, at the very least, of meager battlefield privacy. By the sliver of black sky visible out the smoke gap pitched at the apex of the ceiling, it was still the dead of night.
And the thigh beneath his head had moved. Felix startled bolt upright and met a pair of groggy brown eyes beneath a flop of red hair.
The faintest hint of a smile pulled at Sylvain’s mouth. “Were you sleepin’ on me?” he mumbled, voice rough from disuse.
Fuck off, Felix almost said. He would have meant it in his usual endearing way, of course, but he chose to omit the expletive that time. He’d had enough trouble with his oldest friend misinterpreting the meaning behind his knee-jerk retorts. “How are you feeling?” Felix asked instead.
“Fuzzy. Did Mercedes put me to sleep?”
“Linhardt. You’ve been out for a whole day.”
Red brows raised. “That bad?”
Felix scooted his stool a little closer to his head. Immediately, his ass barked in pain from falling asleep sitting up. “Vasha, what do you remember about what happened?”
Sylvain winced. “Some cavalier… with a Horseslayer.” His eyes suddenly flew open. “My horse-?”
Felix shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
Sylvain’s exhale left him weightily, sagging into his pillow as he stared up at the canvas. “Serves me right, not taking the Gautier highlander,” he muttered. “Poor boy didn’t deserve that.”
“Neither of you deserved that.”
He didn’t respond to that one. “I remember you,” he said, tilting his head to look Felix in the eye. “Your Crest went off. Twice.”
Trying to stop the enemy from finishing you off. Before you could do the job yourself by pulling the damn thing out of your own ribs, that is. “Mine was the first one. The second was Linhardt’s. That’s the only reason you survived long enough to make it off the front lines.”
“You carried me.”
Felix glanced to his lap. “Surprised you remember that part.”
“I remember,” he said, brows furrowing. “You… didn’t even take off my armor.”
“Battlefield’s not exactly the best place for a strip tease.”
“I must have weighed a ton. How did you…?” He shook his head. “You could have really hurt yourself doing something like that.”
“I did hurt myself. I think Mercedes counted about… half a dozen torn muscles?”
“I… Saints, aren’t you in pain now?”
Excruciatingly so. He’d picked up a Heal or two here and there, but his sleeping position of choice didn’t help. But that wasn’t the point. “Sylvain,” said Felix, “do you remember why you ran into that cavalier?”
Sylvain shifted again. “Byleth put me on the strike team taking the palace. I was following His Highness.”
“No, you weren’t. I talked to your battalion. You charged ahead.”
“I saw an opening.”
“You were reckless,” said Felix.
“What else is new?”
“Nothing. That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. I know you,” he said. “I know how you get when someone… someone reminds you that you’re only good for one thing.” Felix swallowed. “Or when you remind yourself.”
Sylvain’s gaze was wooden, emotionless, locked onto his. That mask that had gone up the last time they’d laid together was still there, firmly planted as ever. “You think I was trying to kill myself,” he said flatly.
“I think you were taking bigger risks than normal because you were feeling more apathetic towards that possible outcome, and wanted to take advantage of that in case it might serve the campaign to die.”
“We’re in the middle of a war, Felix. I know better than to deprive Faerghus of a skilled lance at a time like this.”
“You are more than just a lance. You’re a commander, a general. A friend.”
Sylvain almost laughed, but this smile held no mirth. “Still on that, are you?” he muttered.
Felix ground his jaw, trying not to let his fear swell. “You think we aren’t?”
“You tell me, Your Grace. Something new on your mind? Need another distraction?”
“Stop,” Felix snapped. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. You dehumanize yourself. You seek out a distraction. Usually, it’s mindless sex. Then, when you can’t stomach being used for your body or your Crest or both any longer, you cut all ties and start throwing yourself into fights you know you can’t win - angry brothers, pissed-off exes, I don’t know, Horseslayers - so everyone else thinks those physical beatings are the only thing hurting you.”
“Clearly not everyone,” Sylvain said bitterly.
“No, it’s not everyone. Because Inka and Mitya and I have watched this cycle of yours enough times to anticipate your reckless bullshit and shut it down before it gets you killed.”
“I never asked you to do that. If I’ve actually gone through this cycle of dehumanization as many times as you say I have, don’t you think I’m experienced enough to handle it on my own by now?”
“No. Because being alone is exactly what you want. You want us to turn our backs on you.”
Sylvain shrugged angrily. “Seems to me like the best option for everyone involved. I get you and Inka off my back, you get to focus on more important things.”
“You are an important thing,” Felix snapped, rising to his feet so he could look him straight in the eye. His arms trembled on the cot mattress, but he refused to give in to the familiar instinct to bolt under pressure. “You’re the most important thing to me,” he said, softer but no less deadly serious.
Sylvain’s lips were parted, clearly another retort already primed, but under the intensity of Felix’s stare he didn’t voice it. The longer Felix stood there, the wider his brown eyes got, the more his mouth twitched around words that never came.
“That’s…” Sylvain swallowed as Felix slowly lowered himself back onto the edge of his stool. “You… you don’t mean that,” he said quietly.
“What the fuck makes you think I don’t mean it.”
“Because it’s not true. You… what about Fraldarius territory?” he supplied, grasping. “You’re telling me your homeland, your charge as its duke, is less important than-”
“Yes,” said Felix.
“Dimitri. Mitya. Your king. He isn’t-”
“Yes,” said Felix.
Sylvain shook his head, scooting up against the headboard of his cot until he was halfway to sitting. “Don’t. Don’t say things like that,” he said. “Someone’s going to hear you.”
“Fuck ‘em.”
“No, not fuck ‘em. You’re the Duke Fraldarius, you can’t go around talking about how you won’t put your sworn responsibilities over personal feelings, people are going to think you sound like-”
“Like you?” said Felix, folding his arms. “And so what if I do?”
“I sat in on those meetings with Julianne,” he insisted. “Your position is in no kind of state to weather people questioning your commitment right now. They don’t need another me out there. So don’t sit there and lie to me with that look on your face, or people are going to start believing you.”
“Lying,” he repeated. “That’s what you think I’m doing when I say how much you mean to me. You think I’m just flat-out lying.”
“I think that nobody cares about me nearly as much as you think they do,” he said. “So, yeah. I think you’re lying to make me feel better, just so I don’t go throwing myself on the next Horseslayer I come across. Don’t forget I know you, too, Felix,” he added with another humorless grin. “You’re not slick. You think you’re the only thing standing between me and death, but all you’re doing is changing your approach so you might finally shock me into changing my ways or some other useless bullshit. You can’t fool me.”
“You’re right,” said Felix.
“You…” Sylvain’s words evaporated once more, and he blinked. “What?”
“I said you’re right. I can’t fool you.”
Sylvain curled his mute lips around another question, but Felix acted before he could get the words out. He laid one pale, sword-scarred palm over the paladin’s golden freckled hand, limp on white bedsheets. Sylvain’s breath actually hitched as Felix drew the callused pad of his thumb gently over the big joint at the base of his, savoring the way the soft scrape of their bare skin made his heart melt in his chest.
“We know each other too well for our own good,” said Felix. Down and up and down again. So slowly, so much more gently than their soldiers’ hands deserved. “I can lie to anyone else in the world, Vasha. Anyone else would believe me if I told them exactly what you’ve convinced yourself I feel about you. If I told them I don’t love you.” He let his gaze lift to Sylvain’s wide eyed face. Let every ounce of truth in his body channel into the faintest smile of his own. “I can lie to anyone else. Just not you.”
Sylvain stared at him. As if in a dream, he tried to inch his hand out of Felix’s grip, but Felix just cupped it in his other hand, lifting it to interlace their fingers and squeeze. “Tell me you believe that, at the very least,” he whispered.
“You…” Sylvain’s throat bobbed harshly with his swallow. His voice came out even rougher on the other side. “Love me?”
“Yes,” said Felix.
Sylvain shook his head - slowly, then more determined. “Don’t,” he said. “Please… don’t. You’re better than this.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You are. You don’t want this. You don’t want to love me.”
“You have no idea what I want,” said Felix, but Sylvain managed to yank his hand free and cup it against his chest. Over his heart.
“You don’t want this,” he said. “Saints, Lushka, pick a fucking reason, I’ll spell it out for you. I’m a habitual scumbag. I love giving my best friends reasons to hate me. I’m unpredictable on and off the battlefield to a degree that puts everyone around me in danger. And that’s not even getting into the fact that I break every heart I touch,” he almost laughed, cutting Felix off again. “You’re too good for someone like me, don’t you get it? You deserve to love someone who can love you back with that same wild, beautiful, honorable devotion you give them. Me? Saints, just look at me!”
He gestured down at himself, moisture in his eyes and that same old smile on his face. “I’m the communal horse of the army of Faerghus. There probably isn’t a single person in this fucking camp that can’t tell you exactly what it’s like to be loved by me, and they’ll all tell you the same thing - I’m a lying piece of shit, an insatiable cheater, can’t keep my hands to myself, a disgrace to my Crest, a pathetic excuse for an heir to one of the greatest bloodlines in the Kingdom!”
A lesser son of greater sires.
Felix blinked, Lord Mattocks’ old insult dredging up from his memory. So, too, did the bitter lord’s words against Sylvain himself: Any child who cannot grasp the gravity of his own bloodline’s sanctity cannot be trusted with political matters of import.
And then, of course, the all-too-familiar solution from his uncle’s lips, ever present. Ever circling. Its shadow, cast over all of Faerghus.
I fear there may be nothing that can turn the people’s opinion around now, save for… devoting his commitment to the cause. All of it.
“Don’t look at me and tell me that I’m wrong,” said Sylvain, his voice breaking. “I’m a great fuck, Lushka, but a dogshit lover. It’s all I know how to do. And one of these days, some nobleman’s daughter will forget her contraceptive tonic and push out a Crest of Gautier, and then not even you will be able to tell me I haven’t earned the right to take all the risks I want in the name of this Kingdom because the last good thing I had going for me was finally used up. And you don’t deserve that.” He leaned his head back against the headboard. Sagging and limp with defeat. “You deserve better than used goods,” he finished at a whisper. “That’s all I have to offer.”
Felix let that hang. Let Sylvain sit in his own words for a moment, forcing him to really listen to it. Then: “Do I deserve Fraldarius, Sylvain?”
“Wh… are you kidding? Of course you do. Saints, you’re the best thing that’s happened to it in years.”
“Because my father had his way with the place,” he said. “Before it was mine, it was his. And before him, my grandfather’s, and my great-grandfather’s, all the way back to Kyphon. That castle, those lands, have passed through the hands of dozens of Fraldarius Crest bearers, dozens of Shields of Faerghus. You want to talk about used goods, talk about the territories we’re all set to inherit once this war is won. It’s a miracle there’s anything left of them for our generation at all.”
Sylvain almost tried to shake his head again, brow furrowing, but that mask was finally - finally - cracking. Revealing uncertainty. Revealing fear. “That’s… not the same thing-”
“I love you,” said Felix, leaning in until there was nowhere left for Sylvain to go to escape it. “You’re not a weapon that dulls with use. You’re not a quiver that’s run out of arrows to give. You’re Sylvain Jose Gautier. You’re my best and oldest friend. And I couldn’t give less of a shit how many people have used you for their own gains in the past because right now is when all of that ends. For good.”
“Felix…”
He cupped his face in his hands, and his heart soared high enough to bring him to tears when he felt Sylvain sink into the touch. “I took you to bed in Fraldarius because I have been in love with you for longer than I’ve had the words to describe it,” he whispered. “You and I could never fuck again for as long as we live, and I’d still be in love with you. You could do nothing but piss me off for the rest of my life, and I would go to our shared grave as the happiest man in Fodlan. As long as I know that you’re mine.”
Sylvain’s breath left him in a haggard rush - a scoff, a sob, a laugh. “Lushka…”
“Vasha,” he breathed against his mouth. “Just tell me that you’re mine.”
“You know I am. Don’t you know that by now?”
“Then say it.”
“I’m yours,” said Sylvain. “Fuck, Lushka. I don’t know how to be anything else.”
Felix kissed him. Tears slipped between the fingers cupping Sylvian’s face - they could have been either of theirs. It didn’t matter. They were one and the same. Felix-Sylvain. Sylvain-Felix. Two soldiers, two lovers, one grave.
Felix was the one to part them. His thumb slid over Sylvain’s cheekbone to dry the tear track there. Sylvain just gazed at him with brimming eyes, trembling in his hands, mask in pieces on the floor. He was raw, he was exposed. This was Sylvain, stripped naked of his own lies.
And this Sylvain was still his. Just as Felix was Sylvain’s in return.
“I missed you,” Sylvain finally managed to whisper.
“I shouldn’t have let you go,” he said. “Not without making sure you knew. I’m sorry.”
“I knew. I think I knew it already. I didn’t want to, but… I did.”
“Well, that’s tough. Because I’m not letting you go a second time.”
“You promise?”
You promise?
Another Sylvain had said the same words once. Long, long ago. And another Felix had interlaced their pinky fingers and squeezed them tight, just as he did now.
I promise.
“I promise,” Felix told him.
His lips parted in the most fragile of smiles. “Then… yeah. Alright. I’ll believe you,” he said.
“I’ll prove it if I have to.”
“You don’t, but I’m sure you’ll do it regardless of what I say.”
“I will. As many times as it takes to get it through your thick head and keep it there,” he said.
Sylvain hummed and rubbed the tip of his nose against Felix’s in a way that sent butterflies down to his toes. “Now that fucking is off the table, I’m curious to see how creative you’ll get. My head is pretty thick.”
But Felix’s brows sprang high. “Who said fucking is off the table?”
“Didn’t you-”
“I said if,” murmured Felix. “If we never fucked again, I’d die happy at your side. That doesn’t mean I’d say no if you asked, it means I love you regardless of your skill with your dick, you fuck.”
That smile was growing. Curling into the beginnings of a smirk. “But you still think I have a skillful dick, huh?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Sounds like you’d rather fuck me yourself, coward-”
A loud thump from the curtain wall beside them startled them both so soundly they almost cracked their foreheads together. Felix whirled - he hadn’t realized how much he had been leaning overtop of the injured paladin - to see the curtain yank itself back and reveal the heavy eyebags of one exhausted and very awake triage healer.
“No strenuous physical activity for two weeks,” grunted Linhardt, nodding pointedly at Sylvain on the cot. “That includes coitus. His guts have been rearranged enough.”
“None of your fucking business, Hevring!” Felix exclaimed, morbidly hot.
Sylvain, the asshole, just beamed at their intruder. “Oh, hey, Linhardt. What if he just sucks me off?”
“VASHA.”
“Please lower your volume. People are trying to sleep,” said Linhardt. “And no, Sylvain, he can’t blow you, either.”
“Why the fuck are you listening, anyway?” Felix hissed.
Linhardt rolled his eyes. “Oh, believe me, if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be. You two can keep that repressed Faerghan bullshit to yourselves. No, unfortunately these walls are made of paper and someone needs to check Caspar’s vitals every thirty minutes to make sure he doesn’t bleed out into his abdominal cavity in his sleep.”
The brawler in question was indeed passed out on the cot on the other side of the curtain. “Fuck off,” was all Felix had to say to that.
“Gladly. Don’t give me a reason to come back in there. I can still cast Warp from this side of the curtain.”
The sheet fell back into place, and Felix rounded his burning scowl on Sylvain’s easygoing, lopsided smile. “I’m going to fucking kill you, Sylvain.”
“Goddess. Did I tell you how much I missed you yet? I missed you so much, Fe. I’m so glad you’re back.”
He stood with a scoff. His entire ass screamed in agony in the exact shape of that infernal stool. “If you’re not dying on me anymore, I’m gonna go find a real bed and get some actual fucking sleep. Good riddance.”
“Make sure to think of me when you do,” Sylvain winked. “I sure know what I’ll be thinking of-”
The curtain thumped again with the impact of Linhardt’s slap, and Sylvain added, “The merciful arms of the Goddess Sothis ushering me into a chaste and peaceful slumber, amen.”
“I’ve been up for over forty-eight hours and I have one last casting of Instant Coma with your name on it, Gautier. Don’t test me.”
“You better not come to my tent if you get yourself kicked out of here,” warned Felix.
Sylvain just shot him a wink. “Secret midnight rendezvous in the forest it is.”
He rolled his eyes, making for the tent flap before casting one last look over his shoulder. “Get that stab wound healed up, Vashenka,” he said, and oh, how he loved the way Sylvain’s face softened with affection when he made his voice sound as genuine as he felt. “ Then we’ll see if you have any secret rendezvouses in your future.”