Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sylvain likes to be helpful.

Somehow this had always been true. It wasn’t a shift in his personality to see it now, in the long days of work that followed the much different work of the war. It was more like his devotion rose to the surface when the strife receded.

In absence of constant terror he’d been allowed the quiet to assess, to become steady in himself, like clouds of silt kicked up in a river settling back down to bottom.

It wasn’t to say that an about face from self-appointed good-for-nothing was  without effort. But it coexisted; it was in his nature to be of service, and it laved some wounds, to find purpose that came so simply.

It helped to have something to focus on.

He and Felix had taken their relationship from the long years of war—falling into bed with each other amid grime and blood, not sure they weren’t dead already, kissing hard for proof otherwise—and chose it in the light of day, reaffirmed it in the new and tentative era of peace.

There had been hard days, more frequently early on. Their responsibilities were made more complex by a reconstruction founded on the needs of the people and not just those of nobility and crest-bearing ancestral lines. Dimitri insisted on this, labored over it with the ferocity he had once shown battle. It looked different, channeled now as repentance, and it was an affliction all the same, though it wore him down less directly and at half-speed.

Dimitri would not be left alone in this, king or no, coerced gently into balance and supported in ideals by a council of his friends-turned-generals and then back again. But new aspirations meant new roles invented to achieve them. Felix and Sylvain, raised under their bloodline’s expectations, found themselves in some ways unprepared for the demands of work without precedent, different in many ways from what their fathers represented.

It meant long, long days that bled into nights or consumed whole weeks. It wasn’t a peace handed down by paperwork. Sylvain and Felix and even Dimitri, when permitted, were out among the people they served. Assessing what was needed for those vulnerable and displaced by the war. Meeting with farmers and orphans and local lords.

Contact with what they had wrought unintentionally with their fighting was heartbreaking as it was crucial. It was perhaps hardest for Dimitri, who felt keenly the years he was unfit to help. Like every injustice, he took possession of the suffering, or he couldn’t begin to see where he was separate from responsibility over it. If the ways he agonized as a man were the same as what made him a king dedicated unfailingly to his people, then the ones who loved the man would have him set aside his crown when necessary.

But those who attended to him attended to each other, differently, just as ardently. For Sylvain and Felix, what this would come to mean evolved in a fluency of touch.

**

Sylvain was older than all his childhood friends. But he would always be younger than his brother, alive or dead. From one vantage point, he was constantly running out ahead, determined to have his firsts behind him fast. To Miklan, no move Sylvain made was new or worth noting, unless to raise a hand against it.

For a long time, being older and too young ruined Sylvain. Among other things. And now when he found he was beginning something, he always knew it for what it was. A potential danger. An unmarked road. Something he could shape and have equal responsibility as a partner in, if not, as the terror would tell him, sole liability for.

The start of anything he made for himself these days was founded on want. It was strange, to even assess his feelings with that degree of fidelity. To not simply act as a reaction to what he couldn’t control. Maybe the word want itself didn’t occur to him. When did it, to anyone? Want was a push, or a latch. He would catch on something, an idea, a sight, and something in him responded with the abstract and curious sense of possibility. New light through an old window. A shade of him he didn’t know yet, and therefore, could not hate.

Sometimes, it was what he wanted for other people. And for the space they configured between them.

He was nervous the first time he touched Felix’s hair. Really touched it, with purpose. But he had wanted, and faster than he could forbid himself, he asked. Did not seem nervous, probably. The appearance of casual self-assuredness had been his safety net for years.

It was after a feast and the semblance of a ball, the very first under the new king that included nobility of the other territories of Fódlan. A celebration at the end of weeks of talks about the cooperation they hoped to forge.

Statecraft of this nature required formality of dress and bearing that Felix would rather forgo, and did whenever possible. But the importance of appearances as the new king’s right hand was impressed upon him. And when it was presented as a challenge, he could call upon determination that bore a grace which Felix would bludgeon anyone for commenting on directly.

Felix was stunning that night. He had agreed to a manner of dress befitting his status and it made him seem as uncannily sharp and imposing as he absolutely was.

The lines of his outfit were sleek and cut to his form in ways which, while considering himself very well studied on the matter of Felix’s appearance, still struck Sylvain like a revelation. He found it hard that night not to watch Felix, and not to see others watching Felix. After all this time, he was not immune to the yoke of Felix’s presence, even more powerful for Felix’s clear self-indifference. So he could almost forgive the others their looking. Almost.

That night, in the duke’s chambers, undressing Felix was an activity that took on new purpose. Bearing his skin or whatever might follow wasn’t the point; it was the act itself.

Felix would want out of his finery immediately, for comfort. This is not why Sylvain doesn’t stop to kiss him the moment they are behind closed doors. The notion of propriety strikes him, suddenly. Not for the first time, but the first time in private.

He raises his hands to unfasten Felix’s cloak. For something so simple, the movement has weight.

It wouldn’t be his place, he thinks, to kiss Felix. Not in the capacity of his attendant.

Felix, face colored lightly from wine and likely exhausted from passing as sociable, sees what Sylvain is reaching for and allows it wordlessly, his eyes on the workings of Sylvain’s hands.

Sylvain removes the cloak from Felix’s shoulders and puts it carefully away. Their pace and mood is languid. As Sylvain continues to remove the layers of Felix’s outfit, a certain charge builds between them. Felix watches Sylvain but makes no comment and has no questions. His gaze is heavy-lidded in the low light of the hearth, but he tracks every movement, attentive and interested like he is trying to work out what’s at play here.

Sylvain is dutiful, careful and deliberate in his ministrations. He undoes the row of buttons that runs from the back of Felix’s high collar and all down his spine. Listens to Felix breathing as he does so. It is a very quiet room and the feeling in Sylvain blooms into it tentatively, like he cannot quite believe what this life has afforded him.

It was one thing, the privilege of stripping a lover with haste and abandon. It was probably what the headier glances from roving nobility in the ballroom imagined, to look at Felix. Tearing through his lace, snapping the thread of buttons in their impatience to see him bare. Or possibly, they imagined him doing such to them.

But who would be permitted the time and closeness to undo the laces of Felix’s boots, ankle to knee, to guide his leg out of them carefully—to do for Felix what he could do for himself, with more thought than anyone would show the task, Felix included?

And who else would Felix ever allow to do this? Loathe as he was to accept any kind of assistance?

Standing in just his undershirt, its hem brushing the tops of his thighs, Felix hasn’t yet denied Sylvain anything. Still, into the space of nearly unbearable intimacy at the nape of Felix’s neck, Sylvain ventures a question—

“Can I take down your hair?”

A pause follows. What Felix is weighing Sylvain can’t say for sure. Sylvain begs the moment they’ve been suspended in not to shatter. He asks something similar from himself.

Felix finally says, evenly, if a bit quiet, “You may.”

**

There was peace in service for Sylvain. Service chosen by him, to the truest thing he knows: Felix, steadfast and dangerous and beautiful.

It wasn’t constant, as their lives didn’t always afford the luxury of a slow dressing or undressing, but when the work wore on Sylvain—when he spent all day pretending at charm among the old guard, diverting their fatuous demands away from an overtaxed Dimitri, or when he hit a wall drafting new considerations for outreach to Sreng—removing Felix’s gloves finger by finger did something to center him, unstranding his braid was calming like little else.

Sometimes, it was something more. Moving from peaceful to tense with underlying intent. Felix for his part has accepted Sylvain’s repeated attendance of him without ever questioning it. Sylvain finds himself charmed and immensely grateful at the gesture. How he earned that trust, that place, he doesn’t have good enough measure of himself to say.

And he never expected from Felix this kind of... Well, he couldn’t say what it was. It wasn’t begrudging, and it far surpassed simple tolerance. It seemed that Felix took the occasions of Sylvain’s service to observe Sylvain, carefully, looking long and openly like he rarely ever did. He never asked after the motives of what Sylvain did, but the quiet consideration on his face said he was puzzling something out, learning something new about Sylvain or perhaps the both of them.

Maybe what made it so potent was that the attention was mutual. While Felix watched him at large, Sylvain demurred subtly, kept his gaze appropriate. Sometimes, maybe often, he was genuinely bashful. He wasn’t playing coy. The fact of Felix that close and real, in this new context of service, was often completely too much for Sylvain. He couldn’t have anticipated this of himself based on any other stage of his life.

But maybe it made sense, to go so far in one direction—where for so long, he learned new means of pleasuring others just to add to the ways he could hurt himself—that this kind of devotion overwhelmed him; it was chaste, and wholehearted, and he burned for the detailed work of it.

If this was ever a secret to Felix, it did not remain one for long.

Felix didn’t need to play at anything. His unsparing, forthright way of being had garnered him a reputation in the court. His war records and title alone would have made him intimidating. But Felix lacked all entitlement lesser men wore, desperate and arrogant. And he was the same being served; Felix didn’t become cruel or haughty when Sylvain gave him power and deference.

It wasn’t a persona, who he was when they were alone. Neither of them less than true, neither allowing otherwise.

Sylvain’s was a genuine need, and Felix’s an earnest rejoinder. They knew each other well and still there was room to become new to one another all over again.

And so it was only a surprise to Sylvain that he should be known so astutely. That Felix had watched him, thought of him, and arrived precisely at what Sylvain wanted, at the times that he wanted it.

Sylvain hadn’t even done anything for Felix, that day. Felix returned to their chambers earlier than Sylvain, and dressed down himself, loosed his hair and tended the fire in the hearth.

Sylvain was simple in his appreciation, eyes moving over Felix’s stomach, his shirt on but unbuttoned, then to the dip of his collar bone, the bow of his lips. Felix, sharp as ever, not missing any of the gesture. But Sylvain wasn’t asking anything by it. It was an almost unconscious kind of admiration, familiar and nourishing and near-automatic.

Minutes later, Felix presses himself against Sylvain’s back while Sylvain stands in front of their wardrobe. Sylvain had taken off his coat but not yet removed anything else.

Sylvain pauses, body lighting all at once with the thought of Oh?

Felix snakes one hand onto Sylvain’s stomach, the other palmed over his chest, and he draws his teeth in a slow, shallow scrape over the join between Sylvain’s neck and shoulder. The feeling thrills down Sylvain’s back and up again, makes him stand straighter reflexively and hold himself carefully still.

Against the uppermost knob of Sylvain’s spine, Felix says, quiet and level, “Do you want to be good for me?”

Sylvain forgoes breathing for a moment, not enough presence of mind left to gauge if the question is rhetorical.

Felix pulls back, turns Sylvain around by his waist. When he draws close again, he pushes a thigh between Sylvain’s legs.

Felix rests a hand on the small of Sylvain’s back and the other toys with the very ends of Sylvain’s hair at the nape of his neck. He looks up sideways at Sylvain, gaze roving over his face.

He’s so fucking powerful, Sylvain thinks, a little deliriously.

Felix’s face isn’t an affectation of lust. He’s too candid for that. It fucking melts Sylvain, the straightforwardness of Felix’s appraisal, as it does now.

“You like being good for me,” Felix says, voiced like a observation he’s long had, not a fully a statement or a question—spoken lightly, almost curious.

It’s the first they’ve acknowledged what Sylvain does for Felix, unasked and often. Sylvain swallows. Fights not to grind down helplessly on Felix’s thigh.

“I do,” he answers simply. He feels very warm and very vulnerable.

Sylvain, still fully dressed and somehow bare; Felix exposed and unwavering. Felix, he thinks, has seen through to him yet again. He thinks he will never get used to someone caring enough to look.

Felix smiles, not wide, but his eyes are lidded and pleased like a cat.

Later, Felix will say it again, while Sylvain is beneath him and shaking apart on his fingers.

He pushes Sylvain’s sweat-damp hair off his face with his free hand, tucks it behind his ear. “You’re so good,” he says, pulled back to watch Sylvain. “You’re so good for me, and you’re just. Good.” He ducks his head to kiss open-mouthed at Sylvain’s jawline. “You work so hard. You’re beautiful.”

It would sound like babble, coming from another mouth. Something said unthinkingly in the throes. But Felix, his Felix, lacking all pretense, and knowing him closer than any other—Sylvain cries out something low and strangled and then, as Felix undoes him, he sobs.

**

And so sometimes, when Sylvain communicates his intent—usually a matter of eye contact, such as when he brushes Felix’s hair in front of their mirror, and finds Felix’s gaze in it—and Felix looks back, quiet and amused, as though saying, Yes, what is it?—and Sylvain knows he knows the answer, so he will look away, back to his task and determinedly not elsewhere—

it is these times that the acts of care and attendance slide into other acts, of a similar but distinctly different nature.

Sylvain, doing up Felix’s unreasonable boots, knelt on the ground in front of where Felix sits on the bed. Felix, as Sylvain knots the laces, slides the toe of his boot to the V made by Sylvain’s thighs.

In credit to his self-control, Sylvain doesn’t fluster too badly. Simply hangs his head lower, if anything. He moves to tying off the laces of his other boot. Felix, light and deliberate, traces the line of Sylvain through his pants. Then he simply rests the flat of his foot there with no force, poised for action and not yet taking it.

Sylvain has no work left to busy his hands with. He presses his forehead to Felix’s knee, hiding his face. He exhales Felix’s name and spoken aloud it sounds like: please and yes, exactly and you’re not stopping, are you?

“Thank you for your help this morning,” Felix says, low and sincere, and Sylvain bites his lip to keep down a groan, face still tucked away.

When Felix slowly presses down with his boot, Sylvain grabs at Felix’s thigh just above his knee, to have something to hold on to while he forces himself to keep still.

Felix bends forward to lay a hand over the back of Sylvain’s neck. His ponytail hangs down, framing Sylvain’s jaw, and he speaks in a whisper into his hair.

“I don’t have to see you,” Felix says, “to know that you are going to take this beautifully.”

Sylvain clenches against the pleased shiver his body gives at that. He nods a promise. His open mouth against Felix’s leg, tasting leather.

“Good boy,” Felix says quietly. Then he gives a low, contemplative hum, so close to Sylvain’s ear that it threatens to collapse him. If not that, then this: “Maybe you should just use my boot?” He proposes. “To take what you want?”

Sylvain keens like he’s been hurt. And hasn’t he? And this is that process in reverse, diverging from what could just as easily wound him, turning it around and healing him by it.

Trust, esteem, and an invitation to fall apart. Sylvain loves this man.

**

There is always something new to know about Felix. He’s a latticework of oppositions, each serving their  purpose, like he is held in place by the tension of it all.

But Sylvain has always wanted ease for Felix. He does everything he can, within Felix’s boundaries, to allow him to act freely.

Sylvain doesn’t laugh at him, even over simple things, though he loves to find what they might laugh at together. Doesn’t chastise Felix. Meets him over and again with acceptance, hoping for the air to lighten around Felix enough that he might move for a while without his ire or his adamant self-discipline. When it was just the two of them alone, at least, if no place else.

What cracked through in the moments Felix was at ease was radiant and unheard of. Every freely given part of Felix fortifies Sylvain, sustains him. And he is always newly stunned when he finds Felix gifting him his vulnerability yet again.

Sylvain was tired from the road. More stiff than usual, for how he‘d sat in his saddle with a straight-backed posture he had to constantly school himself into. He felt a certain pressure, traveling with a retinue meant to consult on diplomacy with Sreng. His long-theoretical endeavor was coming to tangible steps at last and it had him nervous, possibly over-correcting in his desire to appear calm and capable.

Felix wouldn’t have to try, he’d thought more than once, to seem collected. And if he sometimes called on the image of Felix to channel that steely composure, that was for him alone to know.

But half or more of diplomacy was charisma, and regardless of the amount that that itself was projection, Sylvain was practiced in it at least. It was being someone well-regarded and competent that felt foreign still.

The distance between the castle gate to his rooms at Fhiridad blurred with exhaustion, felt longer than it had any right to be. He leans heavily against the door the moment it closed behind him. He finds he has closed his eyes only when he has cause to open them again—

“You’re back,” and of course, Felix is there. Sitting at Sylvain’s desk, paperwork laid out in front of him.

But as they exchange hellos, Felix seems strange. Off, somehow. There’s a flash of anxiety in Sylvain, that in the time they’ve been apart, a month now, something had eroded, backsliding into a place of inhibition between them.

“A long trip,” Felix observes dryly.

Sylvain sighs, sinking heavily onto the edge of his bed. “It was,” he acknowledges. “It was only to the border, but it’s hard to gauge what people are open to when there’s no trust there at all.” He runs a hand through his already disheveled hair. “It took... a long time, getting anywhere in talks.”

There’s a beat of silence. Sylvain presses his fingers into his forehead, kneading like it will do anything to help the headache that’s settling in.

“But you made progress, didn’t you?”

“Sure. I mean, I’d like to think so. I don’t think I could have left there if I didn’t think we’d done anything,” Sylvain says. “But there isn’t much to show for it yet... I guess that’s faith for you,” he finishes, sardonic.

More silence, longer this time. Sylvain looks over at where Felix sits not looking at Sylvain. He grips his pen tightly though it is no longer poised for writing.

“Felix?” Sylvain asks. Withholds is everything okay? until he’s sure it’s the right question to ask.

Felix’s shoulders stiffen further, somehow, and Sylvain hears his long exhale. Sylvain is just about to move to him, then Felix beats him to it.

He rises, suddenly, and comes to stand in front of Sylvain. Without looking him in the eye, he kneels, and takes Sylvain’s ankle in hand, angling his leg to get better access to his gaiters.

“Uh,” Sylvain slips up—doesn’t mean to question it, question him, he’s just. Taken aback.

Felix scowls lightly, casts his eyes away. “Can I just do this?” He sounds only a little impatient, and it is a genuine question.

“Sure,” Sylvain says. Amends: “I mean— Of course.”

There’s quiet, filled by the sound of Felix at work, during which Sylvain can actually collect himself. The whole scenario makes him feel like he’s stuttering when he’s not even speaking.

Felix removes his gaiter and his boot and sets his leg down with delicacy reserved for little else in his life. He does the same to the other side, places the boots and legware aside, then stops. Slips his hands around both Sylvain’s ankles but just holds them there, like he’s rooting Sylvain to the floor. His head is bowed, but not deeply.

“Thank you,” Sylvain says softly.

Felix doesn’t answer. After a minute, he seems to relent, giving up to something in himself.

“You were away a long time,” he says.

They’d both made longer trips alone. Sylvain knows it isn’t the time to say as much.

“I was,” he agrees.

He watches another moment of silent, private struggle play over Felix’s face. Then: “I missed you.”

It sounds almost defiant, like he is expecting Sylvain to challenge it, or take advantage somehow.

“I missed you, Fe,” Sylvain says, trying to press as much as he can into the word you, because what else could he say— sometimes I pretend to be you, it makes me strong. I only manage doing all this by knowing you believe I can.

What he comes out with is, “I’m worse, without you.”

Felix scoffs, almost a laugh. But it’s true; Sylvain doesn’t sleep as well, doesn’t eat as well. Tires more easily from speech-making and shies from carousing. It isn’t self-neglect because there’s no one to be accountable to: it’s that, compared against the easy joy of doing any of these with Felix, they all suddenly become harder to do alone.

Felix sits back against the low frame of the bed beside Sylvain’s legs. He hooks one arm under Sylvain’s knee, curling his hand up and over the top of it, then leans his head against it.

“They loved you,” Felix says firmly, after a moment. “Even if they don’t know it yet, they will. They’ll trust you. You’re good, and you want peace.”

Then Felix sighs but it isn’t conflicted as before. It sounds almost satisfied, like things have been put in their right places. “You’re going to do what your father never would, and he’ll hate it from his grave, which is just one way you’ll know it’s right.”

Sylvain feels as he always does when this happens, but stranger. The fight in him, that turns praise into a blow, rises to defend against it by reverting him to a nothing. A nothing can’t disappoint, a nothing ducks hurt like a fist swinging through empty air. But a nothing can’t have anything good, either, and Felix, warm and solid against him, is the best thing there is.

Sylvain forces the No in him to yield. If it can’t be a Yes, then for now, it’s maybe. He believes it wedges open a space for possibility. Felix doesn’t lie, Felix has no need of flattery.

Sylvain hasn’t managed a response yet, his mouth opening then closing again without result. Felix doesn’t seem to be waiting for an answer.

“Can I. Stay here, for a bit,” Felix forces out the question, and Sylvain knows he isn’t the only one struggling against himself.

“As long as you want,” Sylvain says. He’s not at his freshest, dead-tired and with reports to start, and all that can wait, can be later, if this is the now he’s offered.

Sylvain takes Felix’s hair down to run his fingers through it with the only purpose being the feel of it under his hands. They sit for a few minutes of the best quiet Sylvain’s had all moon.

“I missed you,” Felix says again, even more quietly, and in the repetition, it sounds like he’s only just allowed himself to feel it, here, in the safety of it being finally over.

**

Later, after they clear their engagements for the afternoon to nap together, waking only after the moon has crept in—

“Who has thighs like this?” Felix says, a little like he’s mad, a little like he’s in disbelief, while he runs his hands over Sylvain’s muscle.

“Oh?” Sylvain says, curious and a little breathless.

“They’re—“ Felix chokes out a gasp, then powers through it. “They’re... great. They’re—they’re big.” He flushes a little, but it could be explained away by something other than his vocabulary falling short.

Sylvain, newly grateful for all his time spent on horseback, tucks his hands behind his back, using just the power of his great and big thighs to ride Felix within an inch of his life.

“Show-off,” Felix says, strangled, and seems to try to press his whole body into the mattress, Sylvain grinning fondly above him.

**

Felix takes on more of his own acts of attendance. Charged in their own way, different from Sylvain’s ease of service. Perhaps because it is tender and open in a way Felix has struggled with for the larger part of his life, ever since he saw great cause to disallow such things, lest they ruin him further.

Having a task does seem to settle him into it somewhat, and once over the hurdle of initiating it, Sylvain has some sense that Felix finds himself relaxing in it, and observes the new space from an angle before unknown to him. Maybe it’s strange but Sylvain feels very proud of him. He feels a great many things in addition.

Felix, seated atop the basin, leant very near to Sylvain’s face, pulling a shaving razor carefully over his skin. Concern is decidedly absent from Sylvain’s internal litany. Felix with a blade of any kind—his hands are ever-steady. And his grip?

The one settled over Sylvain’s throat, holding the edges of his jaw, titling his face just so?

It was a feeling of control met with submission and it completed a current, thrumming with power. Trust brought to an edge, just to prove it can balance there. Intimacy that gave him a sort of head-rush to consider. The word chosen rings through him sometimes, without sense.

But wasn’t there a logic to it? Sylvain, and the legacy he had laid upon him unasked, who had used his choices to thrash against the powerlessness, and only made himself worse for his flailing.

Felix, who allowed himself so little, who felt he only had one skill to offer. The two of them affirming and reaffirming that what they wanted was each other, separate from and maybe flying in the face of all that was appointed to them.

Sylvain could lay unmoving for hours, days, dizzy with the bare and formidable facts of it, were he to think too hard about it.

Felix provided many opportunities for feeling over thinking, however.

He’d taken to, on occasion, massaging oil into Sylvain’s hair for him. Running his fingers against his scalp, he would sometimes push Sylvain’s hair off of his face entirely. Fighting his blush with a scowl, he would pull back to look at Sylvain, and when he leaned in again, it would be to press a kiss to Sylvain’s temple.

What Felix saw when he looked, Sylvain couldn’t guess. Chosen came to the surface again. Felix, with his dislike of eye contact, and putting himself unavoidably in front of it anyway.

Sylvain, already hoarding the moment in his memory, leans into the hands combing steadily through his hair. He is only that sensation, for as long as it lasts.

**

They change toward each other, and they stay the same. The changing happens together, or one of them makes some turn and it incites something new in the other.

It is never dull, it couldn’t be, not when even simple domesticity was sometimes made complex. Just one more place for devotion and innovation between them.

Another time, Sylvain at Felix’s feet. He’s removed Felix’s boots, head pleasantly clear of all else but his task. When he finishes, before he can move on to anything else, Felix lays his hand on the side of his face and stills him.

“Thank you,” Felix says quietly. He is diligent in his thank-yous, and Sylvain had to wonder if Felix knows how the sincerity of it stutters Sylvain’s heart without fail, then sets it beating again but stronger.

And there’s even more cause for that still—Felix takes Sylvain by the chin, tipping his head back just so. Sylvain swallows. Felix’s stare is acute and heated and considering. Sylvain finds himself thinking have you been looking at me like that this whole time? His face heats under the possibility.

Had he ever blushed so much, as when Felix forced Sylvain’s gaze, was unabashed in how he watched Sylvain?

Felix drags his thumb over Sylvain’s bottom lip, denting it in the middle with pressure. Sylvain opens his mouth without hesitation. Felix, eyes on his own hand, presses his thumb down on Sylvain’s tongue. Sylvain sticks his tongue out just a bit further. Wondering with a pleasant little shock in his stomach if Felix will keep him like this until he drools.

Felix runs his thumbnail vertically down the center of Sylvain’s tongue, coming to rest again at his lip.

“Huh,” he says slowly, like he’s just realized something.

“Huh,” Sylvain echoes, thinking that, somehow, he may know what it is.

**

Piercings were a surprisingly simple endeavor. The most difficult parts were choosing who to ask about how to do it safely, and convincing Felix he wasn’t forcing Sylvain into it.

For the former, they decide on Linhardt. Mercedes was endlessly understanding, and that was the very problem. Sylvain knows her, and if the conclusion she arrived at wasn’t spot-on, it would probably be the right idea but worse.

There was no way Sylvain was instigating any scenario where he might have to say the words “I am not piercing my genitals” to his kindest, most church-going friend. She ran an orphanage, for fuck’s sake.

Linhardt might know or guess Sylvain’s intent but he certainly would not care. It wasn’t an interesting enough mystery for him.

That left Felix.

“You’re not doing this for me,” Felix says, warningly, insinuating there would be consequences if that was, in fact, what Sylvain was doing.

“Correct, I am not piercing my tongue just because you would find it very hot,” Sylvain says, anticipating the murderous look Felix flashes at him. Then he says, with sincerity, “I want to, I would have years ago, and I’m glad I waited.”

Felix’s arches an eyebrow inquiringly.

“It would have been wasted on anyone else,” Sylvain answers. Felix rolls his eyes but Sylvain means more than he says. The idea of modifying himself to better give pleasure he didn’t mean, making even more literal the idea of himself as a tool for others’ use—it turns his stomach even now, even though he’d avoided that particular self-debasement.

But doing it now, not for Felix but with him, is a thrill. He imagines it like a little gift to himself, something grounding and constant. Retaining something definitively himself no matter what guise he has to slip on in the name of diplomacy. That included the title Margave Gautier.

The fact that he could also pull the jewelry between his teeth and think of himself secretly as Felix’s, marked by Felix—well, that was a considerable bonus.

There was undeniable kind of devotion inherent to the act that had everything to do with the fact that it was Felix piercing him. Sylvain wouldn’t feel this way about just any person sliding a needle through his tongue. It is a natural extension of trust that it’s Felix doing it, and the vulnerability of it is something he has to shiver through either before or after the fact because he sure as fuck isn’t going to move during.

The benefit to Felix’s undivided focus on the task is that Sylvain gets to watch his face the entire time. Felix is gorgeous always, but intimidatingly so when his attention is sharpened to a point like this. He meets Sylvain’s eye only as he is about to put the needle through. Sylvain blinks slowly at him once, sending his assurance and trust this way in lieu of being able to speak.

Felix’s mouth curls up on one side before his attention snaps back where it’s needed, like he won’t allow himself to be distracted by the time it takes to fully smile.

It doesn’t really hurt, though Sylvain’s eyes water reflexively. Felix hands him the concoction Linhardt devised for rinsing the site clean. It feels a bit tender, nothing unmanageable, and when he turns back around from spitting into the sink, Felix steps forward, his eyes still serious with concentration.

Sylvain holds his mouth open carefully while Felix puts a hand to Sylvain’s jaw, urging white magic up through his palm. Whatever sting there was soothes immediately. Sylvain pulls his tongue in and clicks the metal gingerly against his teeth, testing.

“All good, I think,” he declares, and immediately seeks out a kiss in celebration.

Felix halts him, inches from his face, with two fingers against his chin. Then he kisses the corner of Sylvain’s mouth chastely.

“Seriously?” Sylvain says. “You’ve seen a heal spell close up a gaping stomach wound, but you don’t trust it to do its job on my tongue?”

Felix grumbles, looking away. “I’m not that good at faith.”

But aren’t you? Sylvain thinks and pulls Felix back in.

**

“My ears,” Felix says one day, a week and a half after the initial piercing. Sylvain knows exactly how long it has been, because it coincides with a ban Felix put on certain activities. An excess of caution, in Sylvain’s opinion.

“They’re great. Perfect, even,” Sylvain says automatically.

“Idiot,” Felix says, and Sylvain laughs because yeah, fair.

They’re curled up together in bed, sated and recovering because the ban is over. (Felix did admit that there was an added sensation which he describes initially as “novel” and when pressed, blushes and amends it to “it felt really good, okay”.)

Sylvain is tracing idle lines over Felix’s bare arm, very much at peace for the moment. Felix spooned, though he won’t call it that, against Sylvain’s chest and he toys gently with Sylvain’s other hand, folding and unfolding his fingers, skimming lightly over his callouses.

“So, your ears?” Sylvain says, when Felix hasn’t continued after a moment.

“You should pierce them,” Felix says, and Sylvain stops.

“For real?”

Felix turns over to face him. “Yes,” he says simply.

“That would be—“ he interrupts himself. “That would look very good on you.”

Felix fixes him with a knowing look, lips  pursed lightly. “You can say it,” he deadpans.

“Babe, that would be really hot,” Sylvain says. “And look very good on you,” he repeats for emphasis.

Felix snorts a little and shakes his head, but he’s smiling.

**

And that is the simple beginning of Felix’s very unintentional and highly unexpected influence over fashion in Fhiridad, and to a lesser extent, the rest of Faerghus (though the second strongest showing is in Fraldarius).

One piercing each in both ears wasn’t in itself much of a statement, nor altogether unheard of in men. But Felix has those done, and then every few weeks after will get a look in his eye while standing in front of the mirror, tying up his hair or brushing his teeth. Sylvain comes to understand this look well, partly for how it was the start of him seeking out informal training with local artisans, all much more experienced at piercing than himself.

Sylvain proposes just the once, after they’d moved from the relative safety of the ear’s fleshy lobe, that perhaps Felix see a professional.

“No,” Felix says simply, and Sylvain nods, already planning what he needs to do in order to feel confident in carrying out whatever Felix’s next request would be.

**

It is not just the piercings that do it, for jewelry plays a great part. Felix amasses an impressive number of piercings, though—six in one ear and four in the other, and he adorns them with rings and studs and, on one side, a row of tiny silver chains looping from the front of the piercing to the back.

There is no talk of it being a liability in battle, much like the way his long hair could be called the same. He wears his hair longer now than perhaps even their days at the academy, and in many more styles than just a haphazard bun. Sylvain thinks that in addition to self-expression, both are a mark of confidence and skill; or, taken differently, a taunt. Like saying: You could use this against me, sure—but you will never get close enough to try.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? The duality. Felix is still the most terrifying thing in the training yard. He can frequently be found there in minimal-holds-barred bouts with the very King of Fódlan, first of his name, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd—and a great hulking king he is. One of the only sparring partners the king will take, Felix is, for fear of the king’s own strength (and, Sylvain suspects, Dedue’s concerns about assassination attempts, reasonably founded).

But the very same man, His Grace the Duke of Fraldarius, has in the last several months, at the last several events befitting it, come into a style of dress distinctly his own and incredible to behold.

He wears dark colors, mostly. They set off the silver threaded through his ears in stunning contrast. Often, high collars, overlain with leather bodices bearing a complexity of ties—sometimes visible and aesthetic as they are purposeful. He favors still his asymmetrical hems, and his boots that rise over the knee and end in a heel. New is the mesh, worn in long gloves or cut in a diamond over his chest beneath his high neckline.

Buckles with and without clear purpose make various appearances, and Sylvain thinks of the mystery of the belt around the thigh of Felix’s academy uniform. It seems suddenly that maybe it is no great mystery after all. Felix has a style, and Felix looks great in it. Sylvain feels lucky to be beside Felix to see him come into it on his own terms.

Lucky and also unlucky are the nobles with the fortitude or ego to overcome Felix’s general air, now enhanced by his fashion, who approach him during such events. They are undoubtedly practiced at carrying themselves with entitled ease but Sylvain loves to mark their trembling by the way ripples form in their wine glasses.

Nearly equal to how incredible it was just to look at Felix was to lace or strap or cinch him into one of these outfits, or reverse the process. Sylvain has reason to believe, from the looks he will sometimes catch Felix giving him, usually during an undressing, that the intricacies of dress are at least partly to make more abundant and interesting work for Sylvain.

Felix as much as confirms this one night when he says to Sylvain, quietly, as Sylvain eases him out of what wasn’t a exactly corset but flirted with the definition of one—

“It does something to you, doesn’t it,” he says. “The wait.”

Sylvain has been watching Felix’s skin emerge in pieces, freed up by the efforts of his own hand.

“It does,” he says, though it isn’t the whole of the answer. He unfastens the buttons at the end of Felix’s sleeve. Then, he lays a kiss over the skin on the inside of his wrist.

Felix nods slowly, face creased thoughtfully, as he is still thinking. Then, he steps forward and begins, silently, to assist Sylvain in shedding his own clothes.

**

It had been a long day and they are finally freed from their responsibilities in it.

Felix, as much himself as he ever was, and now possibly more, asks Sylvain to the training yard with him.

Sylvain, in love with him as he ever was, and each day, impossibly more, goes willingly.

Best out of five, Sylvain insisted. I’m old, I can’t go all night.

Felix ignored the bait of innuendo. You’re 27, he said flatly, like it spoke for itself.

Sylvain is just a bit softer these days, a layer of peacetime fat over his muscles, but he’s not so far out of practice from the war. Not with Felix to insist when it’s time to practice, not when there’s a genuine thrill of challenge that sparks between them when they do.

As it stands, they are 2-1, with Felix circling his third win. Sylvain, his energy flagging a bit now, finds himself faced with the problem of Felix’s unrelenting speed. It is hard to find opportunity to land any strike at all when he is constantly forced to defend.

He thinks he has his chance, but it’s a feint he should have noticed, knowing Felix like he does. And he does notice, but a second too late, when Felix is smirking because Sylvain’s lance is wrenched from his grip, flipping end over end and bound for the dirt.

Before it lands, Sylvain is resolved and maybe a little vengeful, and when he charges at Felix, Felix is surprised just long enough for Sylvain to topple them both.

“Really?” Felix yells, indignant, reaching for where his sword has fallen beside him.

Sylvain is seated over Felix’s waist but Felix fends off him with one arm, holding Sylvain back against efforts to pin Felix’s wrists. Sylvain knows his is a futile endeavor, Felix has just about got his hand over the grip of his sword, and Sylvain for all his mass is helpless to stop him.

So while Felix is swinging his sword to Sylvain’s neck to force him to yield, Sylvain, possessed by something he can’t name, leans down and kisses Felix on the nose.

It—works?

Or it freezes Felix’s sword arm, and Sylvain hovers a few inches above him to watch Felix’s face work through what has happened. It spans only a second or two, starting at: incredulous shock with a bit of confusion, then, clear anger while retaining some disbelief, then annoyance and something like accusation— are you fucking kidding me? —before it settles into a pointed look and a mouth that’s trying to be unamused.

It doesn’t last long, because Sylvain grins, sunny and feigning a lack of guile, and Felix breaks in a second. He turns his face away and smiles, snorting a quiet laugh near to the dirt.

Sylvain laughs too, and sits them both up. They pause, look at one another, and begin to laugh again. It quiets down after a moment, Felix shaking his head and wearing a small incredulous smile still.

“Idiot,” Felix says. “Clown.”

Sylvain smiles even wider, sits down cross legged and just watches. Felix is on both knees in front of him, not minding the dirt. He reaches over and with both hands, starts to smooth Sylvain’s hair back from his face. Sylvain’s heart goes from joyful to tender and joyful, and he moves under Felix’s hands to kiss his forehead.

It is then that someone clears their throat awkwardly, from the direction of the entrance.

Dimitri, accompanied by the king of Almyra, stand watching them. Dimitri is blushing; Khalid looks thoughtful and somehow... impressed?

They freeze at the interruption, but then Felix very deliberately turns back to Sylvain and kisses him once on the mouth, then faces again their visitors. A little show of spite or something else, Sylvain isn’t sure, but the gesture, from Felix, is a little enormous.

“Yes, your Majesties?” Felix calls out, a bit droll.

Dimitri splutters into explanation. “King Khalid just arrived—we were taking a tour of the grounds when we heard— That is, I thought...” he trails off, a little helplessly.

Khalid laughs lightly, patting Dimitri consolingly on the shoulder. His hand still laid there, he points one finger at them.

“Sylvain, you did the right thing,” he says. “You can’t underestimate the unorthodox.”

Sylvain blinks, then smiles and shakes his head a bit like: you would know.

“Felix,” he continues, then pauses. He seems to settle on: “It’s good to know you can be surprised.”

Felix glares at him but it’s lacking in heat. Dimitri, still awkward beside Khalid, says a bit weakly, “I don’t know that it’s advisable to kiss our enemies. As a tactic.”

“We’re not enemies,” Felix says, a little haughty, getting to his feet. He offers a hand to help Sylvain up.

“...Clearly,” Dimitri says.

Sylvain can’t tell exactly whether this is all news to Dimitri or if he’s just flustered actually seeing it, ostensibly for the first time.

It wasn’t like Sylvain and Felix had opted to pursue things in the traditional route, given their opinions on tradition, particularly to do with Faerghus. There was no official declaration of their courting; nor had they gifted the requisite poems or handicraft to one another. If they’d been coy and circuitous with one another, it was long after they’d fucked or long before.

Sylvain pulls his piercing between his teeth behind his closed mouth, a quickly formed habit. So maybe they’d given each other some gifts. And other less tangible ones besides: harder to name, worn just as close.

When Felix returns from the weapons rack he takes up Sylvain’s hand, easy as anything. Sylvain has a moment of surprise that melts quickly into something warm. It’s some kind of declaration from Felix, certainly.

There might be something to the idea of courting after all.

They approach the pair waiting at the gate, and Sylvain spots Khalid’s arm settled around Dimitri’s waist. Joy abounds, he thinks, and it is sincere.

Dimitri has something other than them to blush about now, and he fights through it admirably to look up at Felix and Sylvain.

Felix speaks up first. “You just got here,” he says to Khalid, direct, nearly the only way he knows how to be. “Did you eat?”

“Not yet,” Khalid answers, watching Felix like he’s expecting a gambit.

“You?” Felix asks, head turned toward Dimitri.

“No,” Dimitri says, also a little bewildered, though Sylvain thinks the exchange fairly obvious. Or it would be, were it anyone else.

“Okay, then,” Felix says, sounding impatient, surely because he knows he is defying expectation. “Let’s go eat.”

If Sylvain has grown half as much as Felix, and he suspects he may have, perhaps just by sheer proximity—then perhaps they are both already unrecognizable from the wounded things they’ve been before.

Khalid seems thrown for a bare second— good to know you can be surprised,  Sylvain thinks—then Khalid smiles, wide and genuine.

Dimitri however is still in the moment before he realizes he is staring, his mouth open just slightly as he watches Felix like he is someone altogether new.

Sylvain does him a favor. “You down, my liege?”

Dimitri snaps his attention to Sylvain; his mouth clicks closed. “Yes,” he says “Gladly. Please, lead the way.”

Felix snorts a quiet laugh, not unkindly, and shakes his head. They are all very old friends by now. And despite everything, knowing an old friend’s antics is a kind of fondness that need not be said out loud.

Khalid and Dimitri follow them out of the grounds, and when Sylvain thinks the other two preoccupied, he lifts the hand still wound with Felix’s, to press a kiss to Felix’s knuckles.

Felix looks to him, eyes as assessing and careful as they’ve always been, but, Sylvain likes to believe, notably less burdened. He has a smile for Sylvain, small and private.

Courting, Sylvain considers again, when Felix looks over his shoulder to speak to Dimitri.

A wedding. He’s struck by it. It seems warm and wondrous, a vast new possibility. Verdant as spring; fond as fall.

The outfits, he thinks suddenly, and at nearly same time: The undressing.

“Dummy.” Felix is addressing him. It’s clear he’s asked a question Sylvain didn’t hear. In the pause before he knows he’s gotten Sylvain’s attention, he follows up — “Darling,” he says, cocky, almost like a joke, but Sylvain watches him flush lightly as he realizes just what he’s said.

It would be a good life, Sylvain thinks, to live between those terms, in that voice. Forever, if they can swing it.