Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s a simple reconnaissance mission. Easy. So of course, things go hideously wrong.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Felix, Ingrid and Sylvain were sent out to intercept and investigate some sketchy merchants that Byleth suspected were supplying weapons (or something similarly sinister) to the empire. Their only objective was to get information, they weren’t even meant to engage—unless Byleth was right, which she was, because Byleth is generally right about almost everything.

Hidden underneath a layer of well-placed crates of fruit, the merchants’ cart was packed with potions. And not vulneraries or other innocuous healing concoctions; no, this was the dangerous, maim-and-or-kill-you kind. Felix is no expert on magic and he knows even less about potions, but even he could tell this was serious shit.

So anyway, they engaged. The first merchant went down easy but the second grabbed a sack full of their dubious cargo and took off running.

Now: back to the present.

Several things happen very quickly.

Ingrid runs to mount her pegasus while Felix and Sylvain take off after the guy on foot. The merchant is desperate, or spiteful, or stupid, so he starts grabbing potions from the bag and throwing them back towards Felix and Sylvain as he runs, in some kind of attempt to slow them down.

A vial of something sickly green wooshes past Felix’s head, and when it shatters on the ground, the patch of grass it’s landed on goes up in flames. Sylvain narrowly dodges a bottle full of blue liquid that forms a thick sheet of ice where it shattered.

He catches Felix’s eye and winks, mouthing, “Close one.”

Sylvain doesn’t dodge the next one. It’s a perfect hit, right in the center of his chest, shattering on his armor and dousing him in a shocking pink liquid.

There’s a moment of perfect silence. Then Sylvain says, “Oh, shit,” and drops like a stone.

Felix is faintly aware of Ingrid zooming past overhead, skewering the escaping merchant with what he assumes must be a sickening, wet noise. He isn’t sure—he can’t hear much of anything over the rushing in his ears and his own yelling.

“Sylvain!” he shouts, voice already choked and wild at the edges. Can they have one fucking mission where this bastard doesn’t nearly give Felix a heart attack? Is that really too much to ask? “Sylvain!”

Felix is at his side in an instant. There’s a faint pink glow surrounding Sylvain’s body, but his skin hasn’t melted off and he hasn’t burst into flame, so Felix takes this as a good sign.

After a moment, the glow fades. Sylvain opens his eyes, blinking blearily upward, conscious but just barely. Felix kneels beside him and cups his face in his hands, deeply torn between feeling helpless and just wanting to fucking shake him. Belatedly, Felix realizes that touching Sylvain might be a bad idea—who knows if the magic is still active? But he looks and feels totally dry, as if the potion has been completely absorbed into his skin.

Felix takes that as a bad sign.

“Look at me, you idiot,” he says, smothering his worry behind gritted teeth. He turns Sylvain’s face towards his own. “How do you feel?”

Sylvain squints like he’s straining to get a look at him, and then his expression—shifts.

All the tension bleeds out of his face, leaving him loose and relaxed and not at all like a man who’s just been doused with some potentially deadly magic juice. The corners of his mouth pull slowly upward in an impossibly soft smile, the kind he almost never shows anyone because it’s one of his realest. He reaches up weakly and tucks a loose strand of hair behind Felix’s ear.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Sylvain says, which doesn’t answer Felix’s question at all.

Then he passes out again.

__________

Ingrid flies Sylvain back to Garreg Mach in record time, knuckles white and shaking around Lyra’s reigns.

It takes Felix longer to get back to the monastery—you know, what with the fact that he doesn’t have a fucking flying horse—but he manages. As soon as he’s returned, he heads straight to the infirmary, panic and speed increasing with every step until he’s reached a frantic sprint. He almost collides with Mercedes and Linhardt, who are looking troublingly pensive in the hallway right outside the infirmary.

“Felix, there you are,” Mercedes says, sounding remarkably calm considering Felix just nearly knocked her over. “I was about to come looking for you.”

The door to the infirmary is closed behind the two healers but Felix still keeps looking over their shoulders at it, restless and uneasy.

Biting back the urge to shove past them and rush inside, Felix asks, “How is he?”

“Sylvain is fine.” Mercedes sets a comforting hand on his arm, feather-light but surprisingly grounding. Felix hopes the sigh of relief that rushes out of him isn’t as loud as it feels. “He’s also very lucky. The potion he came in contact with was completely non-lethal—it hasn’t harmed him at all.”

There’s a but there. Felix can tell from the worried set of her mouth, lips pressed into a tight smile that feels less reassuring and more like she’s trying to stop herself from saying something else.

Dread creeps back in, catching in Felix’s throat like a curl of thick smoke. “Then what did it do?”

“Well, that’s where you come in,” Linhardt says, entirely too blasé for Felix’s liking. “It was a love potion.”

Oh, it was a—

What.

Felix blinks. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Neither Mercedes nor Linhardt speak. They are not, it seems, fucking kidding him.

“A love potion?” Felix starts, almost too baffled to be angry. (Almost.) “I didn’t even think those were real. Why would anyone need a love potion?”

Linhardt perks up at that, as much as he ever perks up at anything. “Lots of different reasons. This particular potion’s actually pretty interesting, it—”

“Wait.” Felix’s world starts to shift on its axis as he remembers Linhardt’s words from before. That’s where you come in. “What does this have to do with me?”

There is a terrible pause. As each quiet second ticks on, the answer to that question grows devastatingly obvious—a shitty punchline to the world’s stupidest joke.

“Felix,” Mercedes starts carefully, very carefully, “you’re the one he’s in love with.”

He’d guessed that by now, but hearing it out loud still hits Felix like a kick in the chest.

“Why?” he manages, helpless. It’s as much a rhetorical ‘why, goddess’ as it is a genuine question.

Linhardt suddenly looks very smug. “Funny thing, actually. This spell—”

“It’s a Love at First Sight spell,” Mercedes cuts in. That’s… odd. Felix doesn’t think he’s ever heard her talk over someone like that before. Linhardt shoots her a curious look but says nothing, so she continues. “It causes you to fall in love with the first person you see after coming in contact with it.”

Felix’s mouth goes dry as he remembers running to Sylvain after he’d crumpled to the ground, kneeling beside him, holding his face in his hands. He should have known something was off from the way Sylvain had looked up at him, bleary-eyed but still so horribly fond. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“After he passed out,” Felix’s voice sounds far away even to his own ears, “I was the first person to get to him. When he came to—”

Mercedes nods. “That must have been it.”

Another tense silence falls over the three of them. Linhardt keeps looking at Mercedes with that faint spark of interest in his eyes, the one he gets whenever he finds something intriguing enough to make him want to stay awake. Mercedes firmly ignores him, staring straight ahead.

Something’s happened here. Felix has missed something vital, but he can’t be bothered to care.

Sylvain is in love with him. Sylvain is in love with him. Everything Felix has ever wanted—since they were kids and Sylvain pet his hair while he cried, since they arrived at the officer’s academy and Sylvain’s smile hit him like an arrow through the heart, since they reunited in the ruined monastery and Felix felt at home for the first time in five years—it’s all right in front of him, within his grasp.

But it’s wrong. It’s fake. This is fate pressing its fingers into Felix’s tenderest open wounds. See how foolish you are, the universe mocks. Only a ridiculous spell could make him want you back.

Felix has never been much of a believer in the goddess, but on the off chance that she’s real, she’s a cruel bitch for this one.

“It’s not permanent,” Mercedes says gently, as though that makes things any better. “The spell should wear off in a week or so—”

“A week? He’s going to be—” Felix chokes on the word, can’t bring himself to say it. “With me? For a week?”

There’s some clattering around from inside the infirmary, thumping like unsteady footsteps. Oh no.

“Felix?” Sylvain’s voice comes muffled from behind the door, “S’that you?”

Shit. Fuck. Felix isn’t ready to deal with this. Frankly, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be ready to deal with this, but especially not now, when he’s just found out. He’s willing to give up on his dignity and make a hasty retreat when suddenly the door swings open with Sylvain leaning heavily against it.

He’s only in his half-unbuttoned undershirt and pants—Mercedes must have gotten him out of his armor when she examined him. That’s… distracting, to put it mildly, but not as distracting as the look of pure adoration written all over his face. That expression alone kills any thoughts of running away, rooting Felix in place like he’s some kind of stupid lovesick tree.  

“Oh dear,” says Mercedes, which feels like an understatement.

Sylvain doesn’t even seem to have heard her. He hasn’t taken his eyes off Felix since he opened the door.

“Felix,” he says, and that’s when Felix notices he’s slurring his words. “You came to see me.”

He takes a step forward, arms outstretched like he’s going in for a hug, then promptly trips over his own feet and collapses into Felix instead. It’s a good thing Felix’s reflexes are so sharp—he catches Sylvain easily, scrambling to get his arms around him and hoist him back upright. None of this fazes Sylvain, of course. He just sighs contentedly, clinging to Felix like he’s everything safe and warm in the world.

“What’s wrong with him?” Felix doesn’t shout. His voice is very level. He’s completely unaffected by Sylvain humming something happy and nonsensical so close to his ear.

Mercedes sighs. “The spell seems to have an intoxicating effect immediately after exposure. It shouldn’t last long, just a few hours. It would be best for him to try and sleep it off.”

If he didn’t have to drop Sylvain to do it, Felix would put his head in his hands. “So he’s—drunk?”

“Love-drunk,” Linhardt supplies, though Felix really wishes he didn’t.

Having this conversation at all is humiliating enough, but having it while Sylvain is draped over him like this is a special kind of torture. With a groan, Felix shifts Sylvain around, steadying him on his feet and hooking one of Sylvain’s arms over his shoulders.

“Come on, you oaf, let’s get you back to bed,” he grumbles, and starts easing Sylvain back into the room.

That, predictably, makes Sylvain smirk. “Felix, at least buy me dinner first!” he says, and immediately falls into a fit of giggles at his own joke.

It’s an eye-roll worthy innuendo but Felix’s face heats traitorously anyway. Though, in his defense, this has less to do with the comment and more to do with hearing Sylvain’s genuine laugh, in all its goofy glory.  

“I’m kidding. You don’t have to buy me dinner,” Sylvain adds, then blinks so purposefully it must have been intended as a wink.

Felix scoffs and drops him into the infirmary bed.

Sylvain wriggles around a bit, getting comfortable, and then he starts doing that thing again, that thing where he looks at Felix. It’s awful.

“What,” Felix says, even though he’s pretty sure he knows what.

“I missed you.”

“It’s been two hours.”

“I know. I just like being around you.” Sylvain yawns, offers Felix a sleepy smile. “I love you.”

And there it is. The moment Felix has been waiting for.

Nothing in the world could have prepared him for how it feels.

For a short, horrific moment, Felix’s vision swims and his eyes prick hot. He slams them shut and takes a deep breath, the way his father always used to tell him to as a kid—count to three as you inhale, count to three as you exhale, focus on the numbers, focus on your breathing.

The moment passes. He turns his back on Sylvain.

“Go to sleep,” Felix says, too soft, and walks out of the infirmary with Mercedes and Linhardt trailing behind him.

Once the door is shut, it’s just the three of them standing in an awkward silence. Again. Usually Felix doesn’t mind silences, awkward or otherwise, but this is unbearable.

“He’s going to be like that all week?” Felix asks, finally, because somebody has to say something.

Mercedes shares a look with Linhardt, who gives a little shrug. “Not exactly. The symptoms of inebriation should go away very soon.”

“But not the love,” Felix says, tired. Resigned.

“No.” Mercedes shakes her head, sad and all too knowing. “Not the love.”

__________

Though Mercedes and Linhardt promised their discretion, somehow literally everyone knows by breakfast the next morning. Typical. No one in this army has ever heard of minding their own damn business. A bunch of unbearable gossips, the whole lot of them.

At least the healers were right about the drunk-like symptoms wearing off—things would be far worse if Sylvain was stumbling around with even less of a filter than he usually has. But just as Mercedes said, the false love is still there in full strength. It’s abundantly clear in the way Sylvain lights up when he spots Felix in the dining hall, the way he greets him with an arm slung around Felix’s shoulder that he quickly shakes off, the way he lets their hands brush while waiting in line for food.

It’s a lot to take in. Felix is generally pretty cognizant of Sylvain and all of the things that he is—it’s an unfortunate side effect of growing up with him and being his best friend. But now he’s hyper-aware of everything Sylvain does, because now Sylvain is doing it because he loves him. He’s smiling at Felix because he loves him. When they find a table, Sylvain sits close enough that their legs are almost touching—because he loves him. What the fuck.

Felix is so focused on Sylvain that he nearly forgets about the fact that practically everyone’s eyes are on them.

Or at least he would, if Ingrid and Annette weren’t sitting across from them, being so damn obvious about it.

“This is so weird,” Ingrid says. It’s the fourth time she’s said it. She seems incapable of saying anything else.

Annette nods. “So weird.”

“Do we really need to have an audience?”

Felix’s complaint is directed not just to Annette and Ingrid but also to Ashe and Dedue, who’ve been sitting on the other end of the table, admirably pretending not to be eavesdropping. They’re too polite to openly stare, but too nosy not to want to know what’s going on. Felix can’t decide whether this is more or less irritating than Annette and Ingrid’s shameless gawking.

 “Uh, yeah,” Annette says, like it’s obvious. “It’s not every day you get to see how Sylvain would act if he was actually in love with somebody.”

Felix watches Sylvain, waiting for him to contest that point with his usual bullshit argument, the laughably false ‘I fall in love every day’ line. But he doesn’t.  

Ingrid looks just as surprised as Felix feels. “Sylvain? What happened to your whole ‘I fall madly in love with everyone I date’ shtick?’”

Sylvain laughs, nudging Felix’s knee with his own like they’re sharing an inside joke. “Come on, you know Felix is different.” Then he sobers, looking away and going the slightest bit pink. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.”

Ingrid sighs, Annette ‘aww’s, and Felix… Felix wonders how the hell he’s supposed to get through this week if Sylvain keeps saying things like that. 

He should have been prepared for this. Mercedes tracked Felix down later last night to give him more information on what to expect from Sylvain’s love potion symptoms, which was as kind as it was mortifying. All things considered, they were lucky, Mercedes told him. There are some spells that breed the worst, ugliest feelings that can be twisted out of love. Some that make you violently possessive, some that fill you with self-destructive despair at your unrequited feelings. She’d even read about one that worked almost as a love potion in reverse, making you act vicious to the person you care for most.

The potion Sylvain had been doused in was nothing like that, she assured him. It was more like rose-tinted glasses, coloring everything soft and bright through the lens of love. Under the influence of the spell, Sylvain would be doting and perhaps a bit clingy, but mostly he’d be like himself.

Lucky. Felix doesn’t think so. A part of him wishes that the false love would come out warped and cruel—at least that way he wouldn’t want so badly for it to be real.

But whatever. It’s fine. Felix will live through a week of torturous, fucked up wish-fulfillment and then somehow figure out how to look Sylvain in the eye once it’s all over. That’s a thing he can do, probably. Maybe.

“This is too weird,” Ingrid repeats, shaking her head. “Watching you be this sincere is almost creepy.”

Sylvain clasps a hand over his heart. “Ingrid, you wound me. Don’t you have any sympathy for a man in love?”

“None.”

Annette looks lost in thought for a moment before she suddenly lights up, as though two stubborn puzzle pieces in her brain have finally fallen into place.  

“You know what the weirdest part is?” she starts, and Felix really doesn’t want to know but he figures she’ll tell him anyway. “I thought he’d be more over the top than this, you know? But the more I think about it, he’s not really acting that diff—”

Annette doesn’t get to finish her sentence, because it’s at that moment that Felix realizes Sylvain has been covertly sneaking some of his little breakfast sausages onto Felix’s plate. Felix loves the little breakfast sausages. That does not make him any less furious about this turn of events.

“What are you—stop giving me your food, you fool!”

Sylvain frowns, like Felix is the one being unreasonable. “But these are your favorite.”

“No they’re not.”

“Yes they are,” Ingrid confirms. Whose fucking side is she on, anyway?

Felix starts stabbing at the extra little sausages, skewering them all on his fork to give back to Sylvain whether he wants them or not.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s my favorite, it’s your food.” Stab. “We’re in the middle of a war, remember? Or have you forgotten about that?” Stab. “I won’t have you passing out on the battlefield because you’re not eating enough.” More stabs. “Now take your stupid breakfast back,” Felix snarls, brandishing his fork at Sylvain.

The smile he gets in response is entirely unthreatened and absolutely infuriating. “You’re so cute.”

From the other end of the table, Felix hears more than sees Ashe slap a hand over his mouth in an attempt to stifle a surprised laugh. Beside him, Dedue lets out a quietly amused “Hm,” which from him is basically a guffaw.

Looks like Sylvain and Felix are making good on their promise today, because Felix is going to murder him and then die of embarrassment immediately afterwards.

“That’s—you—” Come on, make a sentence. “Were you even listening to me?”

Sylvain clears his throat and says, like he’s reading off a checklist: “You said it’s my food, we’re in the middle of a war, and I should eat because you don’t want me to pass out during a fight. See? I can listen to you and still think you’re cute.” Then he winks, because of course he does. “I do that all the time.”

“Aw,” Annette coos, resting her hand on her cheek. “You guys are so gross.”

That’s it. Felix stands abruptly, forgoing the rest of his breakfast. He doesn’t even want to think about how red his face must be right now.

“I have to go train,” he says gruffly, and then proceeds to flee the table as fast as he can without literally running.

Felix isn’t cute. He’s going to spend the next few hours chopping things in half, to remind himself of that fact.

He’s almost angry-sprinted his way to the training grounds when a voice rings out behind him, exactly the person he’d been hoping wouldn’t follow him. Nothing can ever be easy, can it?

“Felix! Wait up for a second!”

For the sake of his own sanity, Felix shouldn’t stop, but he does. “I’m training alone, Sylvain.”

“I know, I know,” Sylvain says, still catching his breath. Felix must have been angry-sprinting even faster than he thought. “But if you’re not gonna finish your breakfast, you should take this.”

He hands Felix a roll he must have snagged on his way out of the dining hall, wrapped in a napkin. It’s a savory one, just how Felix likes them. Still warm, too. Felix stares at it, more than a little dumbfounded. He really chased after him for this?

“How many times has the professor gotten on your case about training on an empty stomach?” Sylvain goes on, playfully chiding. “We can’t have you passing out either, you big hypocrite.”

“I don’t need a lecture about training etiquette from you, of all people,” Felix huffs, but there’s not much heat in it.

“Yeah, yeah—I’m a good-for-nothing, what else is new?” Sylvain shrugs. “You could try taking a day off every once and a while. I promise it won’t kill you.”

“It might,” Felix says flatly.

He looks back down at the roll in his hands, turning it over and feeling it’s airy weight. Sylvain wrapped it up so neatly, even though he was obviously in a rush. That’s a tiny detail to notice, but it still makes Felix’s chest go tight.

“Um. Thank you,” he says, avoiding Sylvain’s eyes. “For this. You didn’t have to.”

“I wanted to,” Sylvain says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I love you, Felix.”

Right.

For a moment, this conversation almost felt normal. The reminder that Sylvain isn’t himself, that he’s only doing this because he’s under the thrall of some idiotic spell—it aches, more than Felix thought it would. He shouldn’t have let his guard down.

Without another word, Felix turns and stomps off towards the training grounds, and this time Sylvain lets him go. 

__________

Felix isn’t avoiding Sylvain.

He’s not. Why would he? Felix isn’t a coward. No, he’s just hanging around in the cathedral because it’s peaceful—now that Dimitri doesn’t spend every waking hour brooding in it. Felix likes the cathedral, actually, big pile of rubble and all. The pile of rubble is an improvement, if you ask him.

The fact that Sylvain almost never goes near the place has nothing to do with why Felix is there. Absolutely nothing.

Alright, fine, maybe he’s avoiding Sylvain a little. So what? He just needs a break from all that open affection. Can’t let himself get used to it, after all.

He spends about an hour basking in the quiet of the half-ruined church (and glaring menacingly at anyone who has the misfortune of getting too close to him) until he hears footsteps heading right his way, accompanied by a familiar melodious hum.

Dorothea.

Felix stiffens—maybe if he stays very still, she’ll go away.

It’s not that he has a problem with her, not anymore. Against the odds and his own stubborn efforts, Felix has actually come to be quite fond of Dorothea. Still, he’s not fool enough to think she won’t be completely insufferable about this whole thing. The musical click-clack of her heels is mocking him already.

“Well,” she starts, insufferably, “if it isn’t the man who finally tamed Sylvain Gautier’s heart. Let me just say, on behalf of all women,” Dorothea gives Felix a little salute, “thank you for your service.”

He turns on his heel and starts walking. “Go away.”

“Oh, get back here you big baby, I’m not here to tease you.” Felix stops just to shoot her an unimpressed look. Dorothea grins. “Okay—I am, but I’m not only here to tease you.”

Felix sighs deeply. Everything that’s happened over the past couple days has been sigh worthy. By the end of the week, Felix is going to sigh too deeply and all the air will leave his lungs at once and he will die, so stupidly. He’s sure of it.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“Sylvain was looking for you earlier. Told me to tell you if I saw you. Are you avoiding him?”

“I’m not avoiding him.”

“Ah, so you are.” Dorothea nods to herself, even as Felix’s mouth falls open in protest. “Might I ask why?”

Felix resists the urge to tear his own hair out. “Why do you think?”

Dorothea gives him a long, assessing look and Felix tries not to squirm under it. He can’t believe there was ever a time he thought she was vapid—Dorothea has always been sharp, almost unnervingly so.

Finally, she asks, “Does it really bother you that much?” She sounds surprised.

“Of course it does. He’s acting like an entirely different person.”

Dorothea snorts. She actually snorts. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to make fun, it’s just that—he’s really not.”

Something ugly and territorial rises like bile in the back of Felix’s throat. Who is she to tell Felix how Sylvain is acting? If anyone here is an authority on who Sylvain is, it’s him.

“Yes, he is,” Felix snaps. “He insists on sharing his food with me, he keeps following me around everywhere I go, and he won’t stop—touching me. It’s annoying.”

“Felix. Sylvain already did all that before.”

That’s… not true. That can’t be true. Felix would have noticed that.

Well.

Now that he thinks about it, Sylvain does sometimes slip Felix a couple bites of his dinner—but only if it’s something he knows Felix really likes. Maybe they do spend a lot of time together—but they’re friends, that’s normal. And yes, okay, Sylvain does touch Felix pretty regularly—but that’s just how he is. Sylvain is a physically affectionate person, he touches everyone.

This isn’t the same thing.

“Before,” Felix grinds out, “he didn’t tell me he loved me every time he opened his mouth.”

There’s that look again. A lesser man would shrivel under Dorothea’s calculating gaze, but Felix is pretty tough, so he only shrinks a little bit.

“There are lots of different ways to say ‘I love you,’” Dorothea says, slow and quietly forceful like she’s trying to make him understand something profound, which is funny because that statement is completely irrelevant.

Felix tells her as much. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

Dorothea throws up her hands. “Oh, you are hopeless! The both of you! You think my Ingrid’s a meddler—well, if you ask me, she doesn’t meddle enough.”

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Felix is about to ask her when he hears a familiar clanking coming from the entrance to the cathedral and suddenly he needs to hide, immediately.

“Shit—Sylvain is coming,” Felix says, voice dropping down into a furious whisper.

Dorothea, for her part, starts whispering too. “How do you know?”

“I can tell by the sound of his armor—”

“You can tell by the sound of his armor—”

Felix doesn’t have time for this. He runs and ducks behind the pile of rubble, hopefully out of sight, while Dorothea watches in bemusement.

“Don’t tell him I’m here,” Felix hisses. And then, because he’s well and truly desperate, “Please.”

It looks like she wants to argue but quickly decides against it, shaking her head. “You’re lucky I’m a professional.”

She offers him one last withering glance before straightening up and smoothing out her expression, as though she’s just been admiring the cathedral this whole time, not talking to anyone at all. It’s kind of impressive, really. And right on time, too.

“Dorothea!” Sylvain calls. “Fancy meeting you here.”

Felix can practically hear her eye roll, the usual fond annoyance she regards Sylvain with bleeding into her voice. “Always a pleasure. But I’m not who you were hoping to see, am I?”

Sylvain laughs. “You caught me. Any sign of Felix? Yea high, grumpy, the love of my life?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Aw, that’s okay.” Sylvain laughs again, but it’s his embarrassed one. “I wanted to ask him if he’d have dinner with me. Well, I mean—I know we all have dinner together anyway, but I was hoping he’d sit next to me.”

“He already does that most nights, doesn’t he?” Dorothea says, just a hair too loud and pointed not to be a direct jab at Felix. He takes back what he thought earlier about being fond of her. Dorothea is the worst, actually.

“Yeah, he does,” Sylvain sighs, and Felix doesn’t need to see him to know what kind of goofy grin he’s got on his face.

“Well, tonight you’ll just have to settle for little old me.”

Felix peeks out from behind the rubble just in time to see Dorothea taking Sylvain by the arm and leading him out of the cathedral, falling into easy conversation about goddess knows what. Against all logic, his stomach twists as he watches, tying into knots born of pure, empty-headed jealousy. He knows he doesn’t have a right to feel this way, especially when he’s the one who was avoiding Sylvain, but when have his emotions ever made sense? When have they ever been anything less than a burden?

With a sharp sigh, Felix stands and dusts himself off, and pointedly does not think about Dorothea’s words.

He knows the way Sylvain is with him—and he knows it isn’t love. Not the kind of love he’s stupid enough to want.

__________

It’s pathetic, really, how quickly Felix gives up on avoiding Sylvain.

Generally, he’s very good at ignoring people, and Sylvain is no exception. Or at least he didn’t used to be. It was easier to give Sylvain the silent treatment while they were teenagers back at the academy, when Felix’s feelings for him were new and confusing and frequently made him want to punch holes in his wall.

Then again, even back in those days, he could never manage to do it for too long. Felix has always had a poorly hidden soft spot for Sylvain, one that’s only grown more tender with age. The fact that the forlorn puppy-dog eyes Sylvain’s been giving him for the past couple days are actually working is proof enough of that.

So, Felix decides to just go about his business, like he would any other week. He trains, eats, brushes up on magic with Annette, goes to strategy meetings, and probably doesn’t sleep enough. Everything is normal, except now Sylvain is in love with him, in the background of it all.

Actually, it’s more like the foreground. Dorothea was right about one thing at least, Felix and Sylvain do spend a lot of time together.

Or maybe she was right about a lot of things. Because now that some of the shock has worn off, Felix realizes that Sylvain really isn’t acting so different.

Perhaps the spell wasn’t that strong after all.

Then again, every time Felix starts to feel like things are almost distressingly normal, Sylvain will do something to remind him of just how much they aren’t.

There’s the ‘I love you’s, of course—said frequently and without any expectation for Felix to say it back. There’s the gentle touches, the way he keeps trying to tuck Felix’s hair behind his ear when his bangs fall in his face. There’s the pet names that Sylvain occasionally tries to drop into conversation, as though Felix wouldn’t notice. (Sweetheart, mostly, though he tries baby once. All are universally vetoed, under penalty of death.)

Mostly, though, there’s the looking.

No matter what they’re doing, Sylvain is always looking at him, like—well. Like he’s in love with him. Even when Felix is doing something as mundane as sharpening his blades, he’ll catch Sylvain staring, absolutely enraptured. The worst part is that he doesn’t even get embarrassed when Felix notices him doing it! He just smiles, soft and fond, and it takes all of Felix’s strength not to lay down on the floor and scream.

There are moments, in certain lights, when a tiny, foolish part of Felix’s mind tries to convince him that the look in Sylvain’s eyes feels kind of familiar. As though he’s seen it before, if only in glimpses. But Felix knows better than to languish in false hope.

No one’s ever looked at him like this before, especially not Sylvain. Felix would have noticed that.

__________

It looks like the week is going to pass by without any major disasters (though Felix would argue that this whole situation is a major disaster in and of itself) until Saturday’s strategy meeting rolls around. As usual, there’s a mission on Sunday—nothing serious, just more damned reconnaissance. Byleth informs Felix he’ll be one of the soldiers sent out. That’s not a problem.

The problem is that they’re sending Sylvain too.

Now, logically, Felix knows this shouldn’t be a dangerous mission. If anything, they might run into some disorganized bandits who probably wouldn’t give them much of a fight at all.

Logically, there isn’t anything to worry about, but Felix isn’t thinking logically. He’s thinking of Sylvain, who’s been looking at him all week like he hung the moon. That idiot is already a glutton for self-sacrifice on a normal day; what would he be like under the influence of the spell? The mere thought is too much to bear, Felix can barely breathe under the weight of it.

In a tremendous show of self-restraint, Felix manages to wait until the meeting is officially adjourned and everyone else has cleared the room before marching up to Byleth and Dimitri, fists clenched tight with barely suppressed fury.

“Sylvain needs to sit this mission out.”

Dimitri looks up from the map he and Byleth have been pouring over, brows furrowing in confusion. “Why?”

“You know why,” Felix nearly shouts, and then immediately feels guilty about it. He’s been trying not to blow up at Dimitri anymore—or at least not to do it so often. He takes a deep breath and directs his next comment at Byleth, “He can’t be out on the battlefield when he’s—in his condition.”

Byleth shoots him a flat look. As a general rule, most of her looks are flat, but this one is definitely flatter than usual. “In his condition? Felix, we’ve talked about this extensively with Mercedes and Linhardt. Sylvain is perfectly capable of fighting right now. He’s not incapacitated, he’s just in love with you.”

Dimitri cringes at her bluntness, Felix goes more rigid than he even thought possible, and Byleth, of course, is as straight-faced as ever.

“He’s distracted,” Felix says, desperation bleeding into his voice without his permission. “What if he gets himself killed jumping in front of a blade that was meant for me?”

Byleth frowns slightly, eyes swimming with something like pity. “He already does that.”

“I know,” Felix seethes. This is starting to feel too much like his conversation with Dorothea, and he can’t go down that road again. “But it’ll be worse now. Now that he’s—like this.”

There’s something she wants to say to that, Felix can tell, but Dimitri steps in before she gets the chance.

“We wouldn’t send Sylvain out if we weren’t absolutely sure he could handle it. He’ll be alright,” Dimitri says, placating and reasonable, almost like when they were kids. He takes a risk and rests his hand on Felix’s shoulder, and Felix is too surprised to shake it off. “Trust me, Felix.”

That’s a bold request, coming from Dimitri. Felix hasn’t trusted him in years. He wants to. He’s still trying to figure out how to do it. Then again, maybe wanting to is the first step.

“If he’s hurt,” Felix says, finally shrugging off Dimitri’s gentle touch, “I’m holding you both responsible.”

Dimitri nods, the ghost of a smile flickering on his lips. “I’d expect nothing less.”

__________

As promised, the mission goes off without a hitch.

Felix makes sure it does. From the second they leave the safety of the monastery, he never takes his eyes off Sylvain. When there’s a brief skirmish with some bandits, he makes sure to keep him covered at all times. Sylvain seems vaguely baffled that Felix has spent the whole mission glued to his side like a livid, murderous second shadow, but he doesn’t raise any complaints. Honestly, this kind of protectiveness isn’t exactly new for Felix—he’s just never been this obvious about it before.

They’re almost back to the monastery when their group insists on stopping for a short rest, which Felix thinks is completely unnecessary. Ingrid assures him that it’ll only be fifteen minutes, but that’s fifteen minutes too long for his taste. She also tells Felix to, and he quotes, “fucking calm down, for goddess’ sake”—which doesn’t work, by the way.

While everyone else has a quick drink of water or dismounts their horses to stretch their legs, Felix keeps an eye on the perimeter. They’re nearly home, but they still can’t let their guard down.

When someone walks up behind him to stand by his side, Felix knows who it is without even having to look.

“Somebody’s tense today,” Sylvain says, lightly bumping Felix’s shoulder with his own.

That’s such an understatement that it almost makes Felix laugh.

“I’m always tense,” he huffs, bumping Sylvain back.

This keeps going until they fall into a lazy rhythm, gently colliding into one another like a pendulum made of idiots. They used to do this a lot when they were kids—keep bumping into each other until they inevitably lost their balance and wound up in a heap on the floor, a mess of laugher and tangled limbs. The action is so easy and familiar that it loosens the knot of anxiety that’s been coiled tightly in Felix’s stomach, even if it’s just a little bit.  

“Somehow, resting all of your weight on me feels like cheating,” Sylvain says, snapping Felix out of his thoughts.

Huh? He’s not—oh. Felix is shocked to find that he is, in fact, leaning heavily against Sylvain’s side. When did he start doing that? Felix didn’t mean to do that.

Sylvain snakes an arm around his shoulders and adds, grinning, “Not that I mind.”

They’re too close. Felix really should shove him off.

He doesn’t want to, though.

All day, he’s been imagining Sylvain dying for him in a hundred different ways—Sylvain jumping in front of a barrage of arrows, Sylvain running into the path of a falling axe, Sylvain bleeding out in his arms. After all that, Felix figures he can allow himself a brief moment of weakness to enjoy the solid wall of Sylvain’s body, warm and steady as he’s always been.

Just a moment. He’ll count to ten. And then he’ll be fine.

Felix rest his head on Sylvain’s shoulder, another allowance, and takes a long, deep breath.

“Easy, sweetheart,” Sylvain says, and Felix allows the pet name too, even though he fucking hates it. “We’re almost home.”

__________

It’s nightfall by the time they finally get back to the monastery.

Frankly, Felix would like nothing more than to go to the training grounds and fight any remaining nervous energy right out of his body, but Sylvain insists on dragging him to the dining hall for something to eat. It’s only after he’s gotten some food in his stomach that the exhaustion sets in and kills any desire to train—which was probably Sylvain’s plan all along, the bastard.

On their way back to the dorms, they make a brief detour to the dock on the edge of the pond—again, at Sylvain’s insistence. The water looks pretty at night, he says. Bullshit, it looks like water. Also, Sylvain isn’t even looking at it. He’s looking at Felix, with something heavy and inquisitive in his eyes.

Though he told himself he wouldn’t get used to it, Felix has grown accustomed to the weight of Sylvain’s unabashed gaze, the feeling of being looked at as someone loveable, someone loved. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when those eyes aren’t on him anymore, when Sylvain goes back to seeing him only as a friend.

“What are you looking at?” Felix asks, with a sigh.

“You.”

“Why?”

Sylvain laughs. “I’m always looking at you, Felix. You’re nice to look at.”

After almost a week of this nonsense, Felix really should be immune to little comments like that, but his face still flushes hot at the compliment.

“Shut up. I mean, it’s obvious you have something on your mind. If you have something to say, then say it. Don’t just stand there thinking at me.”

Sylvain’s expression goes pensive for a moment, but then he shakes his head, letting out an amused snort. “I can’t hide anything from you, can I?”

Felix rolls his eyes. “I’ve known you too long. Now, what do you want?”

Sylvain falters. “I—it’s embarrassing.”

“You’ve finally developed a sense of shame? Congratulations. Ingrid’s going to be so proud.”

“Feeeeeelix,” Sylvain drawls, something between a laugh and a whine. “It’s—um. Okay, this is dumb and lame so y’know, big loser alert, but uh—can I hold your hand?”

Felix isn’t sure what he expected Sylvain to ask for, but it certainly wasn’t that.

The request is so innocent that it almost feels absurd. Hand holding. In all his years of dating (read: whoring) around, did Felix ever once catch Sylvain holding anyone’s hand? He doesn’t think so. Sure, he remembers Sylvain with his arm wrapped around a girl’s waist or thrown over her shoulders, but never walking hand in hand with any of his flings. That feels… significant, in a way that makes Felix’s stomach lurch.

While Felix is busy overanalyzing the hell out of that, Sylvain must take his stunned silence for a rejection because he immediately starts to backpedal.

“We don’t have to! If you don’t want to.” He rubs the back of his neck with his hand, suddenly nervous. “I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. Actually, never mind, I shouldn’t have—”

“Stop talking, goddess, would you let me get a word in edgewise?” Felix sighs, then adds, “You’re not making me uncomfortable,” because it’s true and also because he thinks Sylvain needs to hear it.

Even before this whole debacle, Sylvain could get suddenly skittish about stepping on Felix’s boundaries—as if he’d accidentally go too far somehow and Felix would push him away with both hands, turn his back on him forever. As if that’s something Felix could ever do.

“I’m just surprised. Holding hands, that’s all you want to do with me?” Felix bites back a grin. “You really are all talk.”

That startles a laugh out of Sylvain, soft but genuine.

“Felix,” he croons, and it should be a capital offense, honestly, the way he says Felix’s name. “I wanna do everything with you.”

That’s a line. That’s such a fucking line, but the cliché gets muddled by the sincerity in Sylvain’s voice and the look in his eyes, dark and adoring and full of promise. Felix has wanted everything from Sylvain for a very long time. He knows this isn’t real, knows it’s just the spell talking, but he wants so badly it feels like it’s eating him alive.

How dare Sylvain make him this ludicrously horny with a single sentence? Felix has half a mind to shove him in the pond.

“So do you want to?”

Yes. Whatever ‘everything’ entails, Felix wants that. Right now. Immediately.

“Do what?” Felix asks. It’s a miracle his voice comes out even.

Sylvain holds up a hand and wiggles his fingers. “Hold hands?”

Ah, right. That.

Switching gears from vividly imagining fucking Sylvain right there on the dock to hand holding is no small feat, but Felix is nothing if not adaptable. With a sharp huff of breath, he reaches out and stiffly grabs Sylvain’s hand.

“There. Happy?”

Sylvain shifts his hand, loosening Felix’s death grip and lacing their fingers together.

“Very.”

To say that Felix never understood the appeal of hand-holding would be patently untrue, because when he was a kid, Felix loved holding hands. For so much of his childhood, any moment that his fingers weren’t wrapped around a sword, they were laced with Dimitri’s or Sylvain’s—or Glenn’s, if he wasn’t too busy working on his “cool, aloof older brother” act. Ingrid didn’t really like holding hands unless they were trying to stick together while navigating the crowded ballroom at some event their parents dragged them to, but Felix was fine with that too.

It was comforting, simply holding onto someone and being held in return.

But so what if he liked it back then? He was a kid! Everyone likes holding hands when they’re a kid.

At twenty-three, he can’t even remember the last time he let someone hold his hand, never mind the last time he reached out to hold someone else’s. He shouldn’t like it. Sylvain’s hands are so warm, he should find it suffocating. Hand holding is too stationary, he should feel stir-crazy after just a few seconds of it. The touch is too gentle, it should make him want to crawl out of his skin.

He shouldn’t like it, but unfortunately, he does. It’s just as soothing as it was back then, the touch of skin on skin, with Sylvain running careful circles over Felix’s thumb with his own.

Felix is used to people treating him carefully. That is to say—careful in the way you’d deal with a poisonous snake or a horse with a penchant for biting. He is not used to this kind of careful, the careful reserved for handling precious things.

Sylvain gives Felix’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Did I worry you today?”

What a jackass. He knows he did.

Felix scoffs. “I wouldn’t have to worry if you took your training seriously.”

It’s an old line. They’ve come a long way from the Sylvain of their academy days, who avoided his responsibilities at every turn and still managed to scrape by through sheer luck and infuriating talent. Now Sylvain works hard, spends hours sparring with Felix nearly every day.

This isn’t about training—it never has been, really. There’s just nothing that will prevent Felix from worrying about him.

“I’ll train with you tomorrow,” Sylvain offers. “No breaks, no slacking, you can kick my ass all day. Would that make you happy?”

Yes. “Do what you want.”

Sylvain smiles. “It’s a date.”

________

It isn’t a date.

The next morning, Sylvain wakes up and the potion has finally worn off, all feelings of false love flushed completely out of his system.

Or so Felix has been told. Sylvain hasn’t spoken to him since he came back to his senses. Hasn’t even looked at him, actually. Every time they’re so much as in the same room, Sylvain ducks his head and flees the vicinity like he’s got a demonic beast on his heels.

This isn’t how Sylvain was supposed to react.

Sylvain was supposed to turn this whole thing into a big joke and laugh it off. After all, Sylvain laughs everything off—even the things he really shouldn’t. As painful and humiliating as it would have been, Felix was prepared for Sylvain to treat this strange week as nothing more than a funny story to bring up at parties when he’d had too much to drink. It would have hurt, but he could have handled that.

Felix cannot handle Sylvain’s silence. He can’t handle losing him.

At first, Felix thinks it might only be temporary. Just a couple of days to shake off the awkwardness. But after a week passes and it becomes increasingly clear that Sylvain has no intention of acknowledging Felix’s existence, his patience wears thin.

Felix needs to talk to Sylvain. They need to get past this. After everything they’ve been through together, surely a love potion can’t be what tears them apart.

It’s hard to get a hold of Sylvain, until Felix finally manages to run into him one night in the dorms, alone in the second floor hallway.  

Sylvain’s hand is on the doorknob to his room when Felix snaps, “You can’t ignore me forever.”

For a moment, Felix really thinks Sylvain’s going to go inside and slam the door in his face without so much as a word. From the way his hand lingers on the doorknob, it looks like he’s considering it. He doesn’t, though. Seconds tick by excruciatingly slow, until Sylvain sucks in a sharp breath and turns towards him, a half-hearted fake smile plastered on his face.

“Felix!” Sylvain lets out a jittery little laugh, eyes downcast. “I—I wasn’t ignoring you.”

Felix scoffs, stepping closer. “Oh, right, you were avoiding me. Big difference.”

For some reason, that knocks the wind out of Sylvain, makes him deflate even further. He’s been taller than Felix for their entire lives, but somehow he’s never looked smaller. After a long moment, he opens the door to his room and wordlessly gestures for Felix to come inside.

The whole time, Sylvain never looks at him once—just keeps his eyes trained on the floor. Shame is an unfamiliar expression on Sylvain’s face, and Felix quickly decides he hates it. To think, that loving Felix would mortify him so much.

As soon as the door is closed behind them, Felix blurts, “Was it so abhorrent to be in love with me for a week?” His voice is shaking and that wasn’t even a question he meant to ask, but now that he’s said it out loud, it hangs heavy in the air around them.

At least it gets Sylvain to look up. “What? No, Felix, that’s not—” He cuts himself off abruptly, face crumpling. “I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”

Now that Sylvain’s finally looking at him, Felix examines him closer, reassessing his expression and his body language. What he first thought was pure shame is more complicated than that, it’s—guilt. Sylvain looks like he’s preparing himself for a punch that he thinks he deserves.

“Why not?” Felix asks, eyes narrowing.

“Just thought you could use a break, y’know?” Sylvain makes a flimsy attempt at a grin. “I’m sure it must have been annoying, being stuck with me clinging to you all week long.”

I wouldn’t mind being stuck with you clinging to me for the rest of my life, Felix thinks but doesn’t say, because that’s fucking pathetic.

Instead, he sighs and says, “It’s fine. You were under a spell, you couldn’t control it. It’s just my bad luck that I was the first person you saw after getting lovestruck or whatever.”

A wave of confusion ripples across Sylvain’s face and then stops short, settling into something carefully blank. 

“So that’s what they told you?”

“Obviously,” Felix says, a little wary. “It was a typical Love at First Sight spell—you fell in love with the first person you saw. That person was me. Mercedes told me. Did no one explain this to you?”

Sylvain is quiet for a moment, taking that in. He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it, then opens it again.

Finally, he says, “You weren’t the first person I saw.”

Felix stares at him like he’s grown a second head. He might as well have. “What?”

“It was Ingrid. When I fell flat on my back, I saw Ingrid on her pegasus, flying overhead. She’s the first person I saw, not you.”

“So,” Felix starts, head spinning. There are too many emotions pulling him in all different directions, so he grabs onto anger, his safest refuge. “So you were in love with Ingrid the whole time, just pretending it was me? What on earth would possess you to—”

“Felix! I wasn’t pretending! It just… wasn’t a Love at First Sight spell.” 

“Then what was it?”

Sylvain looks at the floor again, scrubbing a nervous hand through his hair. “Mercedes called it a True Love spell.”

True Love. Huh?

Sylvain goes on, slowly shrinking into himself as he talks. “She said it was something like a truth spell, love spell combo. It takes feelings that are already there and brings them to the front of your mind so they’re basically all you can think about. And it makes you blurt them out uncontrollably, all the time, as you could probably tell. So, yeah,” he trails off, letting out a pained noise that Felix assumes was intended to be a laugh. “True Love spell. It’s a doozy.”

Feelings that are already there. Already there. Sylvain already—

“She didn’t tell me that,” Felix somehow manages to say, even though it feels like he’s been hit over the head with a rock.

“Yeah, Mercedes is sneakier than we give her credit for.” Sylvain’s lips quirk up in a moment of genuine fondness, before his features are once again swallowed by something sad and resigned. “I think she was trying to protect me. But hey, I told you anyway. Guess it was all for nothing.”

Felix attempts to process this information. He’s having a rough go of it. “So—so you really were—”

Sylvain nods, swallowing thickly. “Yeah. Still am.”

“And you meant it? The things you said?”

“Every word,” Sylvain says, and oh, Felix sees it now. The look in Sylvain’s eyes is the same as it was for the whole week of the spell—that look that Felix was too afraid to admit he knew was familiar. How could he have missed it, all this time?

“Felix, I’m so sor—”

Sylvain doesn’t get to deliver whatever idiotic apology was about to come out of his mouth, because Felix is kissing him.

Actually, ‘kissing’ is putting it eloquently. It would be more accurate to say that Felix crashes into Sylvain at full force, mouth first, and nearly knocks him off his damn feet. As kisses go, it’s not graceful or pretty or objectively good, probably, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that after a few seconds of shock and an eloquently mumbled “Mmph,” Sylvain wraps his arms around him and kisses Felix back just as hard, because he loves him. What the fuck.

Felix is faintly aware that the two of them need to talk about a lot, but now that he’s kissed Sylvain once, he can’t stop. He abandons Sylvain’s lips to trail fervent kisses down his neck, desperate to press his mouth to every piece of open skin he can reach.

“So, you—saints, Felix, you also—” Sylvain chuckles breathlessly as he tries to collect himself. “I’m guessing you feel the same?”

Oh, like he can’t fucking tell. Felix nips the underside of his jaw and growls, “You’re the worst.”

“I’m getting some mixed signals here.”

Felix finally pulls back, just enough to shoot Sylvain a glare that’s effectiveness is definitely undercut by how red his face must be.

“I think it’s obvious that I love you.”

It isn’t easy to say out loud, but it’s true. It always has been, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. Everyone could see it.

Everyone except Sylvain, apparently, judging by the joyful surprise written all over his face. Then again, Felix is sure that Sylvain would probably say his own feelings were obvious too. Maybe they’ve got twin blind-spots shaped like each other, keeping them both from seeing what’s right in front of them. Goddess, what a couple of fools they are.

“How long?” Sylvain asks, gently cupping Felix’s cheek.

What a question. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when he fell, when love became love. Felix started to realize the change back when they were students at the academy, but honestly, it probably happened earlier than that. There’s a good chance he’s been falling since the very beginning.

Felix shoves his face into the crook of Sylvain’s neck, so his voice is muffled when he answers, “As long as I can remember.”

Sylvain hugs him tighter, pressing a soft kiss to the top of his head. “I didn’t know that,” he says, quiet and reverent.

Felix huffs out a short laugh. “You don’t know anything.”

“Clearly.”

For a man who knows nothing, Sylvain sounds terribly pleased. With gentle hands, he coaxes Felix out of his hiding place and fixes him with a smile so bright it’s almost blinding.

“Question,” Sylvain starts, grinning wider, “are pet names still off the table?”

“I’ll say it again: you’re the worst.”

“That’s not a no.”

It isn’t. In lieu of admitting that, he pulls Sylvain in for another kiss and allows himself, for once, to be truly, transcendentally happy.