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The only thing Gautier had going for it was its stables. Sylvain had this thought every time he trudged back from whatever battle they won by the skin of their teeth and put his own horse to stable, taking off the stallion’s armor before his own.
He was an impressive horse in any regard, but more importantly, a good warhorse. As he loosened each piece of metal armor, the chanfron from his head, letting his braided mane loose from the plated crinet that fell down the back of his neck, Sylvain felt a familiar guilt. He had given the horse the name Hazard, after the dice game; he was born shortly after Sylvain’s first horse, the mare that carried him on rides through the frozen hills of Gautier and through his first battles, through half a war, finally ran out of the luck a warhorse needs to stay alive. There were a dozen winters where Sylvain would sit in the stables with her for company every day. He had insisted that his soldiers bury her when she fell. He had drank.
Hazard was finely bred. The stablemaster insisted this, his voice quiet and caring, when Sylvain stood in the Gautier stables and looked sadly on the young horse who was to be Pip’s replacement. Bred to be fast, strong enough to carry armor, well-tempered enough to deal with the chaos of battle. And to honor the stablemaster’s careful work, the way he had labored for decades to cultivate the finest bloodlines to make his animals beautiful and companionable, Sylvain would lead this horse to die as well.
It was a fate they shared, he and the horse. All their fine breeding left to the chance of whether or not they would survive each fight. So: Hazard. The stablemaster hadn’t been amused; Sylvain hadn’t been in a mood to be amusing.
They liked each other fine. He was nothing like Pip, who would always lay in some frozen field to the west of Gideon instead of any other decent place. Maybe that was for the best. Maybe this was one more area of his life where he should settle for respect instead of expecting love.
There was no stablemaster at Garreg Mach anymore. The hired hands did their work as best they were able to without instruction, and the few of the soldiers who knew the horses best came down in unspoken shifts to make sure the they were groomed, fed and watered. And to that end, Marianne was here too, as she often was. The two of them never spoke much, but after a year at school where she barely met his eye, her returning nod to him was meaningful.
The somber calm of the stables was lost the minute Felix stomped his way into them. “Sylvain,” he said in a steady voice, a resting glare on his face, and Sylvain could feel Marianne startle from across the stable.
“Yes?” He called back. He looked back to Hazard, kept carefully loosing the layers of armor he was raised to wear. His coat was looking rough underneath. Sylvain would come back tonight after he ate and washed to brush and curry the horse properly, at least. He let Felix storm over to him, tried not to let his amusement show on his face.
Felix pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You’re injured.”
Sylvain turned to him, raised his eyebrows. “We’re all injured.” There was a pink scar, superficially healed over with white magic, visible above the ripped collar of his black shirt, too dark to show the blood.
“Your ribs,” Felix said, barely acknowledging the fact that Sylvain spoke at all. “I saw you take that fall, I saw you grab your side.”
Across the stable, Marianne was quietly leaving. Felix was tactless. “Alright,” Sylvain said. “Yes. My ribs. What about them?”
Felix’s eyes narrowed, his glare getting louder. He always had such a loud face. Sylvain could hear it across whole halls sometimes. “It’s the side that healed back crooked. From…” He trailed off.
“Miklan,” Sylvain supplied.
Felix ignored him again. “I know at least one of them is broken. Stop bullshitting.”
Sylvain paused. He turned to Felix, took in his square shoulders and furrowed eyebrows, the posture that always made him seem bigger than he was. He was angry, about more than Sylvain’s ribs, he was sure. But this must have been the problem Felix decided he could actually fix, so here he was, the full force of his energy turned onto Sylvain.
Still. Sylvain was good at arguing. “Dimitri took an arrow to the shoulder,” he pointed out.
A look like a thundercloud rolled across Felix’s face. “There’s nothing I can do about that. Let Dedue and Mercedes hold him down like a rabid dog to heal him, and let him curse at both of them the whole time. He’s no better than a feral beast, biting every hand that tries to feed him.” Sylvain wondered if Felix knew how bitter he sounded.
“I’ve also been known to bite,” Sylvain said, aiming for a joke, but he wasn’t sure if it came out right. It was painful to breathe, and painful to talk.
“Don’t compare yourself to him,” Felix said, voice hard. “And take your damn armor off.”
“Here?” Sylvain asked. Something in him didn’t want to come easy. Unlike Hazard, he wasn’t well-trained. He was altogether far less manageable.
“Wherever you’ll listen to sense.” Felix’s face hadn’t lost its anger, and there was a determined tilt to his voice. Nearly a quarter of his own personal troops fell to one particularly powerful spell today, and Sylvain could imagine that he still smelled the fire. He was so goddamn tired of that smell.
Sylvain sighed; it hurt. With a wince, he started taking his own armor off, piece by piece. Hazard gave a snort, then turned to his oats. Even the horses were laughing at Sylvain these days.
“Sit down,” Felix instructed him. Already his temper was lowering to a simmer, but Sylvain wasn’t sure if he was glad of it or not. Part of him still wanted to fight, to buck. But reaching around himself to unfasten his armor and loosen his gambeson was exhausting enough that he followed orders just then and sat on a nearby bench.
“How do you know so much about my ribs?” Sylvain asked petulantly.
Felix raised an eyebrow. “I pay attention.” He sat down at Sylvain’s side, the small bench not quite big enough for the two of them. Sylvain reached then, to unfasten his greaves, and before long he found himself sitting in the cold stables in only his linen and wool.
He was knocked off his horse by the sort of magic they faced too often these days, something past reason, something truly dark. Part of Sylvain missed the war as it had been, icy battles between neighbors and cousins in Faerghus. It was terrible, but at least he understood it. In front of them now, with Byleth and Dimitri at the helm, was all alien. The black force that killed their soldiers was a puzzle. Sylvain was lucky to get off with only a broken rib. He heard the crack as he fell, and didn’t have time in the heat of battle to wish that he was less familiar with how it felt for his bones to break. Felix had been right — when he was twelve, at least three of the ribs on this side had been broken and bruised by his brother, using him for target practice with a pike. His aim had been decent, as it turned out.
“You study my form so well,” Sylvain said. “People could get the wrong idea.”
“Be quiet for once in your life,” Felix said. “Take your shirt off, would you?”
“Felix,” Sylvain intoned, putting on a scandalized voice.
“I’m not in the mood,” Felix said forcefully. There was the heat on his face again. It felt comfortable, aimed at him.
“Maybe I’m not either,” Sylvain replied.
Felix clenched his jaw. He closed his eyes briefly, let out an audible exhale. “Just let me do this.”
It was as close to please as Felix ever got. “Fine,” Sylvain allowed quietly. “Fine.” With another wince of pain, Sylvain reached down to pull his linen shirt free, and let himself sit bare-chested in the cold. Felix didn’t bother making a face at Sylvain’s bruises. He’d seen worse, probably today.
Felix had never been particularly talented at white magic. It required faith he did not have. Sylvain didn’t have it either, in the Goddess or in much else, but he had always been better at lying to himself. Still, Felix pressed a cold hand to Sylvain’s tender ribcage and closed his eyes, and a familiar faint warmth sprung from his effort. It wasn’t without its own pain — magic made healing fast, not painless — but it was minor. Mercedes’ hands burned like a hearth, but her soft voice made you forget. This was a matchstick flame in comparison, but Felix had no bedside manner to speak of. He just had his set jaw, his tired face as he avoided Sylvain’s gaze.
“You should wrap it with a poultice,” he said.
“You aren’t going to dress my wounds?” Sylvain asked.
“I’m going to throttle you soon,” Felix replied coolly.
“Wouldn’t help much with the healing process.”
Felix looked up at him sharply. “Why do you insist on being difficult?”
Sylvain had it in him to give a mocking smile. “The finest minds in Faerghus have been asking me that for as long as I can remember.”
“I’m not looking for their answers,” Felix told him. His fingers were tracing the injury on Sylvain’s chest, his touch lighter than most people would believe possible from Felix. It was not romantic in the slightest, besides the fact that no one else would ever look at him this closely, and sometimes that felt just as good. “I’m looking for yours.”
“You wouldn’t like it,” Sylvain said.
Felix glanced up at his face. Then back down to his bruises. “No. I bet not.” He sighed, his frustration audible as he pulled his hand away, put his leather glove back on. “Were you planning on getting this healed at all?”
“Sure,” Sylvain lied.
Felix looked at him again, longer. There was something rotten in Sylvain’s chest. That wasn’t new, really, except that five years of war left it darker and heavier than ever.
“For once, you could be honest,” Felix said finally, his voice rougher than Sylvain was expecting.
“You want me quiet, you want me honest. I think you might have gone looking for the wrong man.” Sylvain didn’t smile this time, but something in him was relieved at the argument. That was worse, he thought.
“It seems I always do.” There was no hiding the bitterness of his voice now. The words stung. Sylvain wondered if he had gone to Dimitri first after all. Wouldn’t be new. “What was your plan, then? To stay here and drink with the horses, pity yourself for being a beast of burden? We all are, Sylvain.”
“You’ve never been any good at pitying yourself,” Sylvain said. Now that he’d been insulted, some of his urge to argue had been sated. A little sick when he laid it out like that, but what else was new.
“No,” Felix agreed. “It’s what sets me apart from you three, apparently.” He looked over at Sylvain, his glare not yet abated. “I don’t care if you hate yourself. You’ll take care of yourself anyway.”
“Why’s that?” Sylvain asked.
“If you die…” Felix started. But he trailed off, looked away.
“You’re the King’s man, Felix,” Sylvain said, not unkindly. It was foolish for either of them to believe anything different. It was foolish for Felix to pretend he was above that purpose, like it wasn’t something that Rodrigue had managed to put in his blood, whether he liked it or not.
If Sylvain wasn’t injured, Felix might have actually throttled him then. He stood up, turned away from Sylvain, but not before he saw the anger plain on his face, hot where before it had cooled.
“I am tired,” Felix started, paused. “Of you pushing me away.”
It punched Sylvain in the gut. It pressed into all his bruises. It made that rotten thing in his core sink into him deeper — shame. Self-loathing heavy like a cannonball, sitting within him, and shame radiating around it.
Before Sylvain could think to speak, Felix turned back toward him, a dangerous look on his face. “I have lost too much. I will not lose you.” It wasn’t romantic. It was an oath. But it felt close.
What could Sylvain say to that? They stood still for a moment, Felix facing the far end of the stable, Sylvain half-clothed on the bench. Finally, he found his voice, and it had less confidence than he had managed earlier. “Would you brush my horse?” He asked.
Felix turned to him, looking bewildered.
“It wouldn’t be any good for my rib,” Sylvain supplied.
“A stablehand could do it,” Felix said.
“They could,” Sylvain said. “But I wanted to see to it myself. One beast of burden to another.”
Felix snorted, but his emotions had calmed somewhat. “You’ll curry your horse but not tend to yourself.”
“I’m trying to do both,” Sylvain said quietly.
Felix stared at him again. “Put your shirt back on,” he said, his own voice softened, as he walked back over to Hazard’s stall. “You’ll catch a cold.”
“Off, then on,” Sylvain joked without any bluster. “So many demands.”
Another snort from Felix. He was finishing Sylvain’s job of hanging the horse’s armor, reaching for a brush.
Sylvain stood, pulled his tunic back over his head and was glad for the warmth. Then he walked to Felix and rested a hand on his shoulder. Felix turned to him, and even when his face was calm, his amber eyes were fierce.
“Thank you,” Sylvain said. It was an apology, an admission of fault, and he knew Felix could see that plainly.
Felix looked up at him, so determined, and nodded slowly. He turned back to the horse, set on the task he was given.
Sylvain stood by uselessly, watching Felix brush and curry the horse with less skill or practice than Sylvain had, but well enough, anyway. At some point, Felix spoke again.
“Don’t ever tell me again whose man I am,” he said, voice serious. “He was not the one I made a promise to.”
It was a perfectly Felix thing to do, to send Sylvain into turmoil without even looking at him.
“I don’t believe you belong to anyone,” Sylvain said. “Besides yourself.”
“And you?” Felix asked him.
“I believe I belong to you,” Sylvain said simply. Felix turned to him. For once, Sylvain couldn’t read his face. “You asked me for honesty,” Sylvain pointed out.
“You belong to yourself as well,” Felix said after a pause, a beat of them staring each other down. “But I would take you into my care, when you’re too foolish to do so yourself.”
“I’d like to believe you can say the same of me,” Sylvain said.
Felix nodded. “I can. I have before.” And then he turned back to the stallion.
There had been an evening bathed in firelight, years ago now, in a disused room of the Fraldarius Keep. After a war meeting where their fathers had spoke of them like important chess pieces. An evening where the two of them could not quite admit they were afraid, but it had been made clear when they sought each other out to sit in silence at the fire. On that night, when Sylvain had been rattling around in his own skull so loudly, he felt the same urge he did tonight: to reach out to Felix and pull him close to his chest. To kiss him, like they were both still young and foolish. To make plain what they obfuscated with promises and tempers and half-spoken sentiments.
Felix’s hair was losing its shape, falling from where it was tied, and Sylvain kept his eyes on the pale nape of his neck where it fell. On the other side was a new scar. Something about this felt poetic to Sylvain, but then, a lot of things did when he was wallowing.
When Felix had finished his work, sloppier than Sylvain’s would have been but serviceable, he turned back to Sylvain and furrowed his eyebrows. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, his voice quiet. He had lost all of his fire, and it felt colder in the stables for it.
“Like what?” Sylvain asked, feigning a stupidity he had been acting at for most of his life.
Felix furrowed his eyebrows.
Sylvain, his mind unthinking, stood. He wasn’t sure why. Felix tracked his movement, studying him.
They used to touch, the easy way children do. Hands on shoulders and elbows and faces, hugs that felt urgent, because all emotions felt urgent once. But that was all before Sylvain knew to be ashamed of what his hands reached for. Would it be so strange to forget that for once? He stepped toward Felix, and Felix didn’t step back.
“I just…” Sylvain started, but the words died in his mouth. He didn’t know how to ask for this. He knew how to talk people into dark corners at inns, into his bed; he knew how to hold his shoulders at a war council, how to propose ideas people listened to; he knew how to bark orders and joke charmingly and whisper flirtations. That all left him unprepared for something that mattered.
He hoped Felix would forgive him for that. He walked forward silently, and let their bodies fall together gently. He let his hands rest on Felix’s shoulders, because it seemed there was nowhere else safe for them to go. Felix was stiff for a moment, but didn’t rebuke him. Sylvain was grateful for that. Then, beyond all expectation, Felix leaned forward and rested his forehead against Sylvain’s collarbone, and Sylvain felt a long breath leave him.
They stood there, quiet in the stables, the sound of the horses around them far away, and Sylvain let himself breathe painfully, in and out. He felt Felix do the same.
And then, unbidden, Sylvain muttered, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Felix said back in a quiet, steady voice. “Just keep yourself alive.”
It was as close to please as Felix ever got. “Okay,” Sylvain said in response. He could believe it was simple, for a moment.
Eventually they separated. Felix didn’t meet his eyes. That was fine; Sylvain didn’t know what he wanted to see in them. “Put a poultice on that rib, after you wash,” Felix said. “And eat something.” And then he turned to leave.
Sylvain saw him hesitate in the doorway. It made him ache in a way that had nothing to do with his rib.