Chapter Text
Felix Fraldarius felt fragile in her arms. He looked fragile. Annette would give anything to make this moment last forever.
It began the way most of the more miserable days of Felix’s life usually went: someone talking about his brother, Glenn.
Except it wasn’t just anyone talking about his brother; it had to be the mad prince himself.
It had to be Dimitri.
Dimitri. Standing alone alongside the fallen walls of the dias, staring into the remaining shards of light splintering through from the outside world. Dimitri, looking as if he had always looked this way to Felix; nothing more than a stolen vessel in the shape of a human. Hardly there, hardly speaking. Most never approached Dimitri when he was in a bad way. And he was in a bad way, and everyone knew it, even if Felix was the one who had taken it upon himself to collect Dimitri and deposit him back into his quarters to do something, anything else, rather than stand there a minute more, talking to himself. And sweet Saint Cethleann help him, if one more person said Dimitri was praying, Felix was going to scream himself hoarse. Praying? Praying? Were the devout here ignorant or just stupid? No, Dimitri couldn’t be praying, no matter how the nuns whispered or the monks gossiped that Dimitri stood, often for hours within the belly of the church, as if he had found salvation.
No. Felix knew exactly what Dimitri had found.
It was what he always found near the end of the day.
Ghosts.
He looked like a ghost himself, honestly. Felix stood just a little ways away, contemplating when he would make his move. He had noticed Dimitri’s smell more than anything lately—and not for the better. The ‘dead’ prince of Faerghus was still clad in his battle armor, unwashed and too tight over his shoulders, breastplate, and calves. His greatcoat was dirty and frayed. His hair clinging to his sunken cheeks. His throat and face, now dusted in wheat-thin facial stubble, unbecoming to how Dimitri had once cared for himself. Or, to be more precise, how Dedue had once cared for him, the great knight’s missing presence as obvious as an open wound if Dimitri’s rapid descent into an unwashed, uncared for, unsleeping miscreant had to do with it all. And it wasn’t as if no one else didn’t try, per say, as much as it was just...unspoken...that most anyone, particularly the women, not be alone with Dimitri.
Medeces, for example, always met with Dimitri here in the dias. She actually reached out to touch him, often. A stroke down his arm, a brief holding of his fingers inside of her own hands, a squeeze, and then, gone. She had offered only once to perhaps help wash Dimitri’s hair, but she wanted it on Dimitri’s terms. Medeces was a sweet girl but an overly hopeful one. Dimitri rarely used words anymore, let alone to tell someone that he wished to have his hair washed. It was just endless, endless grime, punctured only by wayward tears that Felix reluctantly wiped from his face, when Dimitri was too lost inside of himself to react at all.
Slowly, under his breath, Felix sighed. Dedue. Was he truly dead? Just another ghost for Dimitri to converse with, huh?
Why did this become his job lately?
He slowly gazed about the pew but he met no one else’s eyes willingly. To the south wall, a nun collected Felix’s attention and gave a single nod. The flock was leaving for the evening, and she wanted Dimitri to be out of her way for cleaning. That was fine by Felix’s standard. He had spent the majority of the day purging the field of the remaining thieves and, sadly, he had little energy for another large task, like being asked to help clean.
He hadn’t noticed until now, as he took his first steps towards Dimitri, but his own body ached. Slow and building. He rolled his right shoulder, then attempted his left only to drop the motion instantly. The muscles slithered tightly, a little ball nestled deep into his back. No matter how he pawed at his own back, he couldn’t reach the knot, and it only seemed like each attempt made it worse.
Again, Felix sighed.
He didn’t want to fight Dimitri again. Not tonight.
Because it wasn’t to say that Dimitri didn’t react. It was all just a matter of mood and day. And today, Felix had a certain feeling that there would be more pain to follow.
“Dimitri.” Felix said coolly. It was more showing the prince he was unarmed as much as it was a greeting. “It’s getting late.”
Dimitri’s head snapped in Felix’s direction and, for a strange moment, Dimitri turned paler. His mouth dropped open. His tongue now exposed in a stricken, terrible way. It, too, was an unhealthy white. A gloved hand grabbed at his own chest as if his heart had skipped a painful beat.
“Glenn? I don’t…”
Ah, this again. Felix resisted rolling his eyes as he had in his childhood. He wasn’t terribly good at shaking his childish rudeness, such as making a horrible bitter show whenever his father accidently called Felix by his dead brother’s name. Felix was a grown man now, a man at war, and a man that knew his bluntness was both a sword and shield. It never helped to not be straightforward with Dimitri now. It was the closest effort to gentleness Felix could give.
“No, I'm still just Felix. He’s been dead a long time, Dimitri. You’ve always been stuck with me.”
Another awkward moment for Dimitri to collect himself. “Felix...I see. Sorry.”
“You’re not.” Felix tried not to shrug indifferently. That would hurt too much to express. “Come on.”
“Where...are we going?” Dimitri, for once, was actually trailing along after him. With his cape drooping along the flooring Felix couldn’t help but imagine something weaker, something usually hunted and dowey and chick-like instinctively following from behind. “I…” Dimitri trailed off. Felix didn’t care what he had to say. Dimitri rarely finished one thought before the other, particularly once this exhausted.
“Your bed chambers. To sleep.” Felix added, glancing back to make sure his words didn’t scare Dimitri off.
Dimitri blinked back at him heavily, as if considering his other options. Again, it was pathetic and Felix felt his heart twist, just a bit, to think this was honestly what had become of the prince. When he had said years before...about cages and death and hunting the boar prince down…Felix turned away.
He never thought before he spoke and, in doing so, he never quite knew the full extent of what he meant.
The walk to Dimitri’s room felt longer than usual. Felix opened the door with a quick movement, too well practiced, and then waited for Dimitri to enter before him. Once again, miracle after miracle, Dimitri did.
Now came the real test. If Felix could actually get Dimitri to lie down. A new war all itself. Being practical and direct here never really helped, either. It didn’t matter to Dimitri that he would be a burden on the battlefield if he was too muddle minded to think clearly. He wanted to die. He didn’t care that he had friends that worried and a kingdom that was waiting for him. The dead needed him more. Or so he murmured to himself in the low dark with Felix usually the only one around to hear the full extent of the insane detail to Dimitri’s plan.
And it was insane.
And it was incomprehensible, words running together and losing a touch of reality.
And it was...sad.
It was really sad.
Once here, Felix hardly did much else. Sometimes he’d change the sheets over but lately he had given up even on that. What was the point of giving someone so dirty a clean place to sleep? If Dimitri didn’t care, neither did Felix.
He pulled the quilt down, a dense, woolly thing, and pushed two pillows back into place. His shoulder twinged again, almost as if warning. Felix ignored it. He turned back to Dimitri to begin the first losing round. He wasn’t a great negotiator. He cleared his throat.
“Alright. It’s over now. Lie down.” His voice felt thin. He knew he sounded impatient. But Dimitri wasn’t the only one fighting a war. “You gonna use this bed or not?”
Standing blankly on the rug of the room, Dimitri gave a single shake of his head.
Felix moved from the side of the bed to grab a chair. He scooted it shortly near Dimitri. “Then sit down. I don’t care how you sleep just so long as you do.”
Dimitri didn’t bother to look at him. Or thank him. Or be anything remotely human.
“It’s cold in here.” was all Dimitri finally whispered.
Dimitri’s good eye stared into the wall of his bedroom with a grave intensity.
“Yeah, well, I’m not making you a fire.” There would be no way. For all he knew, Dimitri would burn himself alive in it to keep warm, or worse, try to burn the church down, hurt someone he loved deep down. Plus, Felix wasn’t going to be swinging an axe for firewood today. He was pretty certain he couldn’t even if he tried. “Just sit down, alright? Don’t your legs hurt from standing all day?”
And then, without thinking, Felix did a very stupid thing.
He touched Dimitri.
He had reached a single hand to place on Dimtri’s padded shoulder, to him pushed down onto the chair and, all at once, Felix found himself doubled over in pain, his lower back and right hip bone digging excruciatingly into a hard surface without give. In the darkness of the room, Dimitri had absolutely thrown Felix against a dresser, and forced him to endure it, crushing his ribs and back. There wasn’t even time for Felix to make a sound of pain or surprise.
Then, without warning, Dimitri stopped. He pulled away to stand as far as he could from Felix, much like the wild animal Felix thought him to be, scared and panicked and dangerous. This was exactly why Felix didn’t want anyone alone with Dimitri, particularly the girls, good intentioned as they were. It just wasn’t safe. Even the weaker of the men, like Ashe or Ignatz, made Felix feel anxious. A riptide of heady adrenaline flooded Felix’s system. It left him dizzy, like a watery shock, soon dulled by pain and at how his mistake had earned him a brand new bruise.
There was a very thin line between what Dimitri often subconsciously did and what Dimitri did with intention. With the pain in his hip radiating into a spiral that caused Felix to sag against the oak of the dresser, he thought it very, very intentional.
“Sleep, you fool.” Felix hissed at Dimitri’s towering form. Felix kept his hands stupidly behind himself, clenched tight to the handle of the dresser, squeezing tighter and tighter and tighter, pretending it to be Dimitri’s neck. His mind flashed to think of a way to defend himself, a way beyond fists, but his shoulder twinged and he swallowed against the sound of pain that crawled up his neck. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”
Dimitri stared at Felix for a long, long time. Felix refused to back down, his dark eyes fixed tightly back to Dimtri’s face. It took time but in the shadows Felix carefully noticed the pale sweat along the prince’s brow, the dirty tendrils of his blond hair twisted both into knots at his face as well as tangled in the eyepatch. Dimitri was a walking, horrible mess, and there was very little Felix could do to change that. A single blue eye stared back at Felix. It appeared dull, red, and if forced to blink, could barely open again.
“The bed. It’s behind you.” Felix continued. “Go to sleep.”
Talking to Dimitri was useless. He hardly ever responded to talk besides war plans. Giving orders to Dimitri was even more so. On the battlefield he only reluctantly minded the professor, and still, it was with a heavy, resentful glare. Here, in the prince’s bedroom? It sounded out right pathetic, commanding his mad prince to go to sleep like some wayway hound and not with the careful language of someone more comforting, more human. Someone that could never be Felix. And Felix did not want to be that person. He was honestly giving a lot more than he could ever let on: to be a watchful eye for a mad, bleating boar was not easy on his own heart. It was far easier, as it always was, to pretend to care less than he did. That way it did not hurt when Dimitri mistook him for his dead brother, often like his father did when not minding Felix, or when he overheard Dimitri’s quiet, desperate pleas for death beside those spirits that haunted him.
It seemed that Dimitri learned too late to harden his heart against the remaining world. Dimitri had long been a slumbering monster, thirsty for blood and bone, but here, gently swaying on his feet, drunk from exhaustion and time and hate, Felix found it hard to pick up the spear of his words to call him a beast now.
For now, Dimitri was just a sick man haunted by ghosts. Ghosts and nightmares.
Felix moved from his place at the dresser towards the door. He glanced back at Dimitri, expecting the man to be still struggling there, squinting into the dark, but he was surprised to see that Dimitri had finally moved. He had more or less fallen back onto the bed. His boots still laced tightly up to his calves, his bulky armor pinching tight over bruises and aching muscles, his ridiculous overcoat used for a blanket. His face was completely obscured by his hair. It would poor sleep, and perhaps only last an hour at most, but Felix did not care. His work was done.
Felix turned away at once. He closed his eyes as he stole his away out of Dimitri’s chambers. He had to. He couldn’t look. He couldn’t dare to see. Ghosts and nightmares and promises to dead men.
He refused to see his brother tonight. Just...not tonight, as tired as he felt.
His wounded hip was already blooming purple as a lily. The ache in his shoulder muscle was now hardened until he could hardly move it. He had carried this means of containing stress since he was a small boy, and when the stress took him, it always meant a poor night of sleep, if any at that, for him as well. He reached up to touch the pulse of hot, swollen skin along his left shoulder blade. Too late. He resisted an angry groan at what he had done to himself, getting himself so wound up over Dimitri that he’d ruined his own evening.
But still. Not tonight. Tonight could still be salvageable. Because he did not see Glenn.
As with other more miserable nights, when Felix looked back into Dimitri’s dark room...that is exactly whom he saw.
The body on the bed was no longer alive. The body on the bed was no longer his prince’s. It was Glenn’s crumpled body, littered with great spears that stuck out from every inch of him like the thorny branches of a tree, hardly able to breathe with the blood filling his mouth, the wet, labored breathing and squelching of organs, shredded and leaking. It was said it took fifteen men to end his brother’s life. That Glenn had fought so hard and for so long, the knight’s body was drained of blood, and then he still moved; he was nothing more than a vengeful spector that slew men with an inhuman will. It was said that when Glenn Fraldarius finally died, he did so whispering his soul to return to haunt the dreams of his murderers. Little did he ever know how he had returned for his little brother as well. With Glenn’s hand, slithering out and long, too long, long bone-like fingers, whispering for Felix, whispering for the pain to end, Felix, Felix, Felix, why didn’t you save me, Felix!
No. He had refused to look back and see Glenn.
With that knowledge, he could at least try to sleep. He rubbed again at his shoulder and then closed the door behind him with a soft thud.
“Oh, Felix.” A soft-spoken voice was speaking to him quickly, floating somewhere just above his head. “I thought I’d find you here.”
Felix lifted his head to spy Ashe.
The world gave Felix a blurry multicolored little spin, like when he had watched Ingantz secretly mixing his paint chips, as he searched for his friend’s face. Per usual, an unending habit of his commitment to knighthood, Ashe was standing before Felix with a thick tome in his hand. The evening sun was now crawling towards the treeline, and soon, it would be fully dark. Felix wasn’t sure when that had happened. He had sat on the steps just outside of Dimitri’s chambers to wait it out. He was certain Dimitri would fly out of the door at any moment, perhaps angry enough to hurt someone else, and Felix couldn’t bring himself to leave that to chance.
Better awake, Felix felt his head throb. He reached up to touch the back of his head. His hair had come undone just a bit in his sleep but the rest of his lifted hair still stayed in place. Only now he realized that the hairs along his scalp felt tender to his fingertips. Great. He’d given himself a headache, too. Felix sighed again, this time clearly for Ashe to see. Only now he was certain Ashe had taken it the wrong way.
“Oh no,” Ashe’s voice took on that girlish, breathy tone when he felt like he’d screwed up. “Did I wake you? I’m so sorry, Felix. I didn’t know.”
“You’re fine, Ashe.” Felix ran a hand down his face. He felt his own breath warming his cold fingers. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Oh. So you weren’t sleeping outside of Dimitri’s room?”
“Ashe.” Felix fixed his tone to be colder. He pulled himself up in a weak attempt to seem like he hadn’t dozed off into his knees. The way he had stretched out his muscles in his nap at least made his shoulders feel a bit better. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, ah, yes.” Ashe began happily. “I was thinking if I might see Dimitri. I found this excellent book in the library, and, well, I was thinking, if Dimitri doesn’t feel like talking to us, perhaps I could read it to him.” Felix wasn’t sure if he was still groggy, but the kid’s freckles seemed to move with his energy. Well, “kid”. Ashe wasn’t but a year younger than Felix himself, but there was a way by which he carried himself that just felt...more...innocent. And he was always full of energy.
“You...want to read Dimitri a book?” The look over Felix’s face must have been a sight for the kid.
A spidery nervousness clouded Ashe’s good natured grin. “I know you think it’s stupid.”
Felix debated a clear answer. “What in the world makes you think that’ll help anything?”
Felix resisted the urge to chide the younger boy. He’d send him away from the sleeping quarters and off to do something more important, like staying the hell away from Dimitri, and, by proxy, himself, but all Felix could do was stare in perplexity. Perhaps Dimitri was not the only one worn down into rash, unsure articulation. He did not mean for his consternation of Ashe to seem, if ironically sexist, but practical.
Ashe was, indeed, a man now, if those five years growing had anything to say about it. Ashe was a bit taller, a bit bigger in his shoulders, and his legs longer, but he was also, as that blathering idiot Lorenz would put it, “tender-hearted”. There were facts to this that lead Felix to undermine Ashe’s time alone with Dimitri, nearly the same way he minded the women. Ashe was undoubtly the weakest of the men in the Professor’s rag-tag army, besides perhaps Linhardt, but even then, that one seemed to always know more than he ever let on, and his brilliant magical talent reassured Felix that if Dimitri became unhinged, Linhardt would be able to take care of himself.
“Well. When we were younger, Dimitri always reminded me of those knights—you know, the true blood ones. The ones that were born to be heroes.” He paused, clearly a tad embarrassed, and he rushed through the rest. “And I...I haven’t had the nerve to talk to Dimitri lately...I just thought...I mean, who doesn’t love a good book, you know?”
Felix gave Ashe a very pointed stare.
“Besides you,” Ashe conceded with a short rise and fall of his shoulders, nonplussed.
“Ashe.” Felix fought to gather, without offense, what he meant when he said: “Dimitri...he doesn’t want to see you.”
“I know.” Ashe bounded back, a true volley in his voice, rearing for a fight. “But what if I want to see him?”
Felix gave a slow shake of his head. He never thought he’d have to spell this out to the kid.
“He’s sick, Ashe. Really sick. You’ve seen him, haven’t you? A book isn’t going to change that.” Felix rocked himself onto his heels, now standing a near half a head-length taller than Ashe. “I mean, it’s—cute or whatever—but this isn’t like one of your books, Ashe. And he’s. Argh.” Felix caught his face inside his hand again. “He’s impossible to understand.”
“Has anyone else come to see him as of late? Besides you? So you get to see him and I can’t?”
Felix sighed silently through the space of his fingers. “I don’t really see him, Ashe. I just try to get him to sleep or else he’s just in the way of the nuns.”
Here, Ashe fell silent for a long moment. “Oh. So he isn't sleeping?”
“Not for long, anyway.”
Another moment. “Well..maybe that’s what I could do. I could help him sleep.”
“What?”
“With the book,” Ashe held it up hopefully. “Lord Lonato read to me when I was ill, and it always made me feel better. And I’ve been told I'm’a pretty good narrator.” He grinned again, all freckles and earnestness. It made Felix’s heart twist again, a strange feeling, like an empty hollow space, slowly becoming full. “My own siblings have told me so.”
Could the mad boar prince comprehend words anymore? Felix wondered faintly.
“...Alright.” Felix found himself saying.
Ashe’s eyes lit up, large and fragile. “Really?”
“As long as I’m in there with you, sure. I really don’t care.”
“Oh! Oh, wonderful.” Ashe chirped again. “I’ve wanted to share this book with you, as well.”
“Wait.” Felix carefully studied Ashe, and waited for him to calm before he continued on. “Ashe. I want you to be aware of something. It’s important.”
“...Yes?” Ashe intoned, his voice somehow softer.
Felix waited. The words seemed to slip out of his grasp, like a candle’s smoke. What he had wanted to do was be intimidating and blunt, but he just felt worn. He probably looked it, too. His hip pulsed with a dull, deep pain. He wanted to sit down again, very badly, but instead he said: “Dimitri might say something, or worse, do something, like try to hurt you, but I promise I won’t let that happen, okay? Just don’t make too big of movements, and don’t touch him.”
A huge blink. Clearly, the idea of Ashe being in danger from reading his prince a book was a thought that had never crossed his mind before. “Oh.”
“And...listen, whatever he says, if he even says anything.” Felix fixed his eyes to the ground, unwilling to look into Ashe’s eyes as he said: “...Don’t take it to heart. He doesn’t mean it.”
Ashe said nothing to this. And Felix was too much of a coward to see whatever pass through the kid’s eyes come and then go. He was sure it was something like heart-break. Something forlorn, like when Felix had to bury his older brother deep into the cold wet ground. Dimitri, Ashe’s imagined hero from a nursery-book, dead and gone.
At the door, Ashe stopped short. “Oh, say, Felix?”
“Mm?”
“Do you remember what Dimitri’s favourite chapter is? I know this book is his favourite but I’d like to read him the parts he’d like best.”
A cold, sharp pain entered through Felix’s chest, rung like a bell for a moment, and then fell silent. He couldn’t remember. “I don’t know.”
Ashe looked crestfallen. “Ah, that’s okay. Maybe I can ask him myself.”
Felix resisted shaking his head. He was too tired to tell the hope-filled when a lost cause was a lost cause.
The room felt cold and dark. Ashe and Felix said little to one another as they adjusted a candle, the light from the window, and, finally, a chair for Ashe to sit it. It was the very one Felix had pulled out earlier, pulled just a hair closer to the edge of the bed.
With no other chairs in the room, Felix pushed himself against the far wall. He had wanted to stand closer to Ashe, just in case, but he also really wanted to sit down, just for a moment.
When Ashe didn’t object to Felix sitting on the floor, Felix felt himself lean a little more comfortably against the wall. There would be no way he could nod off now. The protesting of his bruised hip and shoulder made quite the work of that. Besides, his dark eyes were very open now, constantly scanning the shadowed corner where Dimitri laid.
And, incredibly, Dimitri was still lying down. His pale blue eye was open, however. The small hope that he had rested from the time that Felix had left him earlier was snuffed out as soon as they had entered the room. But Dimitri also made no noise, not even to greet the two men, and not even when Ashe sat down in the chair, book perched on his knees.
“Huh-hi, Dimitri.” Ashe began, his gentle voice distinctly softer, even as he stumbled over the first word. Even Felix had to strain to hear the first bit of Ashe’s greeting. “I’m really happy to see you.”
Again, Felix felt his heart jabbed again with a tiny unexplainable thorn. He said nothing, curious to how Ashe would continue his banter when Dimitri wouldn’t reply.
“Felix is here, too, right, Felix?” Ashe turned slowly, just as Felix had cautioned, and gestured to Felix’s darkened form to the back of the room.
“Yup. Sure. Here.”
“Uh.” A short swallow popped in the quiet. “I heard you weren’t feeling well, and, ah, well, I thought that I might do something for you that made me feel better when I was sick.” There was a rustling of pages, fingers smoothing over paper, the sound crisp and light. “Um. If I recall correctly The Knight and The Moon Maiden was one of your favourite books in the library, right, Dimitri?”
A short pause. For a second, Felix wondered if Dimitri actually might respond, but clearly the boar prince was mentally lost again, far and away to somewhere else.
Equally surprisingly, this didn’t seem to bother Ashe as much as it had originally bothered Felix.
“It’s one of my favourites, too, you know?” Ashe ventured on. More pages shifted as Ashe’s fingers searched through the tome, the pattering sound smoothing together like the quick pouring of water. Felix adjusted his legs over the floor, trying not to let them go numb. “I was thinking I might read do you for a while, if, um, that’s all right with you...sir.”
Felix swallowed a rude snicker. That little ‘sir’ tacked on the end of Ashe’s question was just...so like Ashe.
Another pause. And then. Then.
Dimitri stirred. He barely moved from his place on the bed, but his voice, rough from disuse, was unmistakable. “...Ashe?”
“Yes?” Ashe’s voice fluttered nervously. “I—I don’t mean to be a bother to you, sir.”
“You’re...here?”
“Yes. With The Knight and The Moon Maiden. Um. I asked Felix if it was okay if I read it to you. He said you were sick.”
From the floor, muscles tensing like a stalking predator, nerves and stomach acid rising in a discreet fear that any moment from now, Dimitri’s large hand would be wrapped around Ashe’s thin throat. Felix resisted correcting Ashe. He needn’t bring him into this stunt. Besides, Ashe was getting further in minutes than Felix had in days, in months.
“Oh.” came Dimitri’s exhale. “I...I don’t understand…”
“It’d be my pleasure to read to you. I know I love it. Sometimes Ingrid and I read passages to each other.” Ashe began, his voice taking on an overly gentle, slow measured tone, as if talking to a frightened child. Perhaps he was better prepared for this moment than Felix had originally thought.
“In..grid.” Dimitri tasted the word inside of his dry mouth. “Is...she?”
Ashe faltered. “Is she, what, sir?”
Dimitri said nothing more, the thought already entangled in so many others.
“Just read to him, Ashe.” Felix prompted from the floor. If Ashe wanted to play guessing games with Dimitri’s shattered psyche, they’d be here all night.
“Ah, right. Okay.” Ashe corrected quickly. “Do you have a favourite chapter, Dimitri? For me to start from?”
Again, Dimitri said nothing more. But Ashe pressed on.
“That’s fine,” he added softly. “I like the beginning just fine. Sometimes it’s better to start there anyway.”
And so, Ashe began reading. While at first he seemed uncertain, soon, like water shifting thinly over pebbles, he found his pacing, and the words ran over his lips with little pause. And...Dimitri seemed to honestly react to it. Not in a big way, not in a physical way...but slowly, ever so slowly, Felix spied Dimitri’s eyelid drifting, and, soon, it stayed closed…
Minutes at first staggered by, but then they turned into a finger-length of time, became a fist full, became...time-less. Uninterested in the story, Felix struggled to keep himself occupied. He had started by leaning against the wall, but slowly, his back begging him to take the weight of his body away, he found himself unconsciously, steadily, pooling to the floor, one arm curled to support his chin as he lay on his stomach. He wouldn’t sleep. He promised himself he wouldn’t, and he had to make sure Ashe was fine…
A little glimmer of light caught his eye, lazily staring at his own wrist in the moonlight. His brow furrowed gently, unsure. He reached out to tap at the light. The pad of his finger touched something small and metal. Confused, he brought his wrist forward, and realized what it was. A charm bracelet. How long had he carried it around? He was grateful to didn’t feel like berating himself. It had originally been Annette’s, but she had placed it on his wrist as some type of nonsensical prank, and he had just...forgotten, it seemed. It was light and hardly impeded much of the use of his wrist, so what did matter to him? And...was that a scent attached to it? He brought it closer to his face to check, and then found he didn’t have the strength to pull it away. It was a scent, specifically Annette’s, like rose-petals, like that miserable tea she enjoyed drinking...it was so stupid...he’d have to bring it back to her at some point...
...He caught his eyes sliding down. He wanted to slap hard at his face, anything to keep him awake, but it was so impossibly hard. He felt heavy and sore and the world was slow and quiet, with the steady rhythm of Ashe’s soft voice covering the busy night-time noise of the monastery, and Annette’s scent...
“Ashe,” Felix whispered. His voice was low and smooth. “Wake up.”
Ashe’s eyes fluttered open. He slowly raised his head backwards to find Felix frowning at him, the image upside down. The room was pitch black now. The candle had burned out hours ago, and the moon hid itself behind a lone cloud. His knee rattled the chair faintly and the book tilted out of his lap. “A’huh..?”
Felix caught the bulk of the tome before it hit the floor as Ashe weakly pushed himself up in the chair. “What..happened?”
Poor kid. He looked miserable to have fallen asleep in that chair. His pleasant voice now sounded raw and delicate, like he really had to work to get his words out. “‘Lix? I didn’t mean to…”
“Easy.” Felix glanced at Dimitri’s sleeping form, at once ready to pull Ashe away, weary of lions and their lack of sleep, but he never moved. His chest pushed itself up slowly, and then down steadily, the deepest sleep Felix had seen Dimitri in...in years, it felt like. His thick blond hair had moved from his face in his sleep, and resting there, Felix swore Dimitri was loosely smiling..a real look of peace over his entire face, every part relaxed, every part resting. “Looks like your plan worked.”
“It did?” Ashe’s once large eyes looked small and sleepy. The word ‘did’ didn’t actually make its way to a clear volume. His voice merely cracked, dry and raspy, and Felix picked up the rest of the question for himself.
“Yeah. You did really well, Ashe.” Felix was grateful he had stirred awake when he did. Firstly because he would want to get Ashe away from Dimitri and to bed before morning—how long had the kid actually been reading? From the sound of him, he’d worn his voice out for...hours...which made Felix nervous, unsure of the time or how Ashe was feeling. Secondly, because his shoulder was shrieking at him, hateful and breathlessly throbbing at him for daring to sleep on a hard surface. Goddess, why.
“M’ glad,” Ashe said, his voice a tiny, thin whisper. His cloudy eyes slid closed again. Felix gave him another gentle shake.
“Come on, kid.”
“M’,” Ashe returned, but it was more an uncomfortable whimper from a too-tired child.
At once, Felix felt done. Far too done. He’d fix it himself, just like Dimitri, and any other terrible problem anyone else wanted to place on his shoulders tonight, fine, who cares. And so, lifting carefully, he found himself gathering Ashe’s light body in his arms to carry him back to his room. Now, Felix was exhausted. His arms and shoulder and back now wished death on him. But, for once in his life, the pain felt worth it, if not for Ashe’s sake, but maybe, just maybe, for Dimitri’s.
“Felix?” Annette had stolen in front of him, so quickly, Felix nearly jumped straight out of his skin, and he tightened his grip over Ashe.
In response, Ashe barely stirred, his head resting dimly against Felix’s chest. Annette crossed her arms over her chest, indignant, her long, dress-like nightgown glowing white and gold in the moonlight peeking through the monastery halls. The sleeves were a little over long, perhaps borrowed Mercedes, and it made Annette look all more tiny before him. Felix smiled at her, unsure of what to say, or even begin with what he was doing.
“Shh.” Felix told her.
“‘Shh’, yourself, Felix!” Annette didn’t so much bristle in a womanly way, like Hilda or Dorothea would have, but she did raise her shoulders in order to puff herself up like an angry kitten, and had it been any other moment, he would have mocked her for it. Her expression then quickly changed from annoyed to genuinely worried. “...Is Ashe okay?”
“He’s fine. He’s asleep. You’re gonna wake him up.”
“Why is he asleep and in your arms?” She honestly sounded offended.
“Jealous?” Felix purred, both at once terrified at the joke, and, at once, affronted by the pink that had risen up to colour her cheeks. Her auburn hair brought out the best tones of her pale skin—blood was so easy to bring to the surface of her skin. A little trick he enjoyed all for himself. When her eyes flashed, clearly unsure and shocked, just like Felix was himself, Felix threw his back head to laugh, muffling the sound through closed lips.
He blamed it on being tired.
“Wh-where are you going with him, anyway?” Smooth as ever, Annette avoided a direct response.
“Back to his room. I’m going to drop him on his bed and leave. Stop following me, you’re making it weird.”
“You wish. I’m coming, too, because I don’t buy why Ashe was with you in the first place.”
“Ugh.” Felix thinly protested her. His headache was tapping against his skull again. He just couldn’t shake it.
They arrived at Ashe’s meager room and Felix quickly did as he said. However, unlike Dimitri, he found himself staring over Ashe’s sleeping form, for just a moment, and he waited. He wasn’t sure why, not even when Annette poked her head around the frame of the door, staring at him staring at Ashe, and Felix felt a flush to his face. It was just... hadn’t he been here before? Not….not him carrying Ashe but...oh…
It rushed to Felix, a memory that overtook him, much like standing up too fast after a training session. Felix was the one being carried and...it was Glenn. Glenn, who had once read to him, and picked his too tired, too weak body from the ground. Glenn, who had carried him and tucked him into a warm bed, limp and sick and needy. As if by reflex, Felix brought his own hand down to gently push back the bits of hair stuck to Ashe’s cheek. Of lukewarm soup and too hot sheets, the faint scent of illness, his brother’s dark eyes peering down at him, somehow radiating both smugness and concern.
“...Lonato?” came Ashe’s muddled reply, thickened by sleep.
Caught, Felix ripped his hand away.
He wasn’t sure what had come over him. He usually hated touching others, and certainly he had learned his lesson from Dimitri, but it didn’t seem to matter. Felix watched as Ashe’s thin eyelashes fluttered, once, then they rested again, clearly asleep.
He had thought of many a terrible thing about Ashe in their time at school together, but this, Felix could not take from the kid. He had endless amounts of integrity. Ashe had stayed awake long enough to out due Felix’s own ability to force himself awake. Not only that, but so far Ashe’s soft-spoken, warm voice seemed to be the only thing that took the boar prince down. He had never seen Dimitri sleep for more than an hour, maybe two. By all accounts, it had been nearly four since Ashe sat down on that uncomfortable wooden chair.
A light tug on his sleeve dropped Felix from his revery. He glanced down to find Annette, her small hand hovering over his wrist. She jerked her head towards the door and moved towards it, her grip on his sleeve coaxing him away from Gl...away from Ashe.
They were outside of Felix’s sleeping quarters now. Annette didn’t seem much to mind. When Felix unlocked the door to his bedroom, she slipped in gently behind him.
He glanced at her. She was pouting now, her mouth taking on that full-lipped look. He chuckled again. He took a look around his room. It really hadn’t changed much since he saw it those five years ago. Maybe the rug had been in better shape, the door hadn’t been busted in, the lock rusted with time and rain. At least his old bed was still just as comfortable as ever—oh.
Annette was still here, awaiting an answer.
“Uh. Sorry, you had to see that.” Felix said stiffly. He had moved further into his bedroom and sat down, far too grateful, on the side of his mattress. He placed a hand over his boots, tugged mournfully at the laces, before giving up. He didn’t so much as lean gracefully back into the mattress as much as slump. His shoulders burned in pain.
“Well,” Annette returned quietly. “You did a really kind thing, Felix. So, don’t apologize for it.”
Felix looked up at the ceiling. “I really didn’t but fine.”
Annette stepped a little closer into the room. Her large blue eyes seemed almost...nervous. Felix darted his eyes to her and then back to the ceiling. She was an odd, odd girl.
“It’s just my room, Annette. Got a problem with it?”
“No,” Annette huffed at once. “It’s just…what do you mean you didn’t do a kind thing?” Felix felt himself involuntarily grin at her pouty, endearing pick at the word ‘kind’.
“Hey, here’s a good question,” Felix shot back at her. “What are you doing up so late, hm?”
“I—I definitely wasn’t following you! I was—I heard walking and so I just. I followed it.”
At this, Felix pushed himself up, palms loose against the mattress, shoulders protesting, just to look at her. He flexed a dark brow at her.
“That could be dangerous.” He frowned.
“Around the monastery?” Now, she turned to grin widely at him. “I can take care of myself.”
A flicker from the pain of his aching head caused Felix to tighten his frown. “No, no, that’s not what I meant.”
Annette peered at him. She was padding ever closer now. She had taken off her slippers, too, and even her toes looked small and delicate, plush into the rough rug of his bedroom. Huh. What a strange day for it to end with Annette of all people standing in his bedroom, clad in her nightgown. He almost imagined what it might be like to not live alone. A life after the war. A life after pain and death and if the boar prince redeemed himself back into humanity, where here, Felix Fraldarius wouldn’t be genuinely afraid if Annette walked around at any time she wanted, safe from Dimitri in his monstrous state.
“What did you mean, then?” Annette prodded him again.
Of course she would. His shoulders throbbed again, high and tight, his whole upper back on fire, and he laid back over his bed again. He was tired. It was so late. He just wanted for this day to be over.
“Nothing.” Felix snapped. “I didn’t mean anything by it, Annette. Never mind. If you’re done, just leave. Door’s there.”
Annette refused to move. She sighed quietly.
“...I think I know what you meant.” She was an arm’s length away, then a hand, until, the bed dipped softly, and she was sitting beside him. “No one wants to say it, but this is about Dimitri, right? About him walking around all night.” She swallowed, the sound tight in her throat. Her blue eyes narrowed. “I want you to know that me and the rest of the women here, we aren’t idiots, okay? We know what might happen. You don’t have to go out of your way to be some...” she stopped.
She couldn’t say it. Not to Felix. He was the last one in line to be anything like a knight in shining armor. Not that Annette even wanted that from him.
“So, what were you doing with Ashe? And what does it have to do with Dimitri?”
Felix couldn’t help it. He reached up and rubbed faintly at his temple. He didn’t want to make it obvious that he was in pain, but he couldn’t stand it for much longer. A small nervous part of him nibbled at the back of his brain; the strange, wishful part, that worried she’d take it the wrong way and leave.
“I don’t know. I try to keep him out of the nuns’ way during the night. I take him back to his bedroom, he stares at me, he says nothing, and then I leave.” He turned his head back to look at her, side-ways. “Ashe just caught me at the tail end of it, and…” Felix gave a sigh. His fingers hit a tender point and the flash of relief ruined his train of thought.
“And?” Annette prompted curiously.
“Um. He wanted to read Dimitri a book.” Felix mumbled.
Annette blinked. Had she heard Felix correctly? “...A book?”
“Yeah. I don’t know. He fell asleep, Dimitri fell asleep,” he skipped over telling Annette that, he, too, had stupidly passed out, “so I picked Ashe up and…” he gave a weak fan of his fingers at her. “Here we are.”
Annette went suspiciously quiet. Then, a small giggle escaped her. “That’s so like Ashe. Wow.”
“Yeah.” Felix said flatly. “So, now you know. Don’t make it weird, okay?”
Annette gave a small smirk. “Weird in what way? Accidentally letting it slip that you care about people?”
“See, you're making it worse.” Felix said tiredly. “I already told you I didn’t care.”
A pause met them both. Annette swung her legs gently. From where she sat along his bed, Annette’s legs didn’t reach the floor. Felix rolled his head away from her, unsure of how his face might look.
"You know, for someone who pretends not to care, you just put two grown men to bed.”
At this, Felix felt himself give a reflexive laugh. He didn’t remember the last time he had laughed this much; he again blamed his tiredness.
Felix closed his eyes. It didn’t matter much now, with the darkness of night, if he kept them open. Only if he strained could he really make out Annette in the short distance between them.
For whatever reason, Annette’s quick breathing felt...closer?
Felix cracked open an eye. He found Annette truly was closer, her long hair trailing close to his neck as she peered over him. Her face was damasked, but she was just so...Annette...that he could immediately tell she was worried, her lips a little pouty, her eyes open wide to study him.
“...What is it?” Felix squinted his dark eyes right back at her.
“Are you in pain?” Her voice somehow sounded softer. Like whispering somehow helped him.
Another loose chuckle from Felix. “...Nah. Tired.”
“Oh.” She deflated. “Sorry. I just thought I could help.”
That eyebrow again. That was the second time he had used it against her. She hated it, how he looked, his long body draped across his bed, low-voiced and muted, but there was something about his eyes now. They looked tired, sure, but mostly in pain. Why would he pretend to not be in pain? Was this his Felix way of politely denying her help? At once, Annette’s heart felt a little tighter. Her heart, a door with a thick lock and several keys that kept her safe from people that tried to come in...and leave her too soon.
When Felix didn’t ask for more information, Annette found herself nervously filling the silence.
“It’s my magic. I know I’m studying to be a warlock but I know a little white magic.” That pretty pink blush returned to her cheeks. She looked silver in the low light. Felix found himself steadily staring at her, unable to look away. “Mercie’s been teaching me some tricks here and there.” She stared down at her hands, uncomfortable under his dark gaze.
“Um. It’s not a big deal.” He allowed his eyes to close again, this time moving the palm of his hand to cover the pulsing under his left eye. “It’s just a headache.”
“I could help, is all.” Annette repeated quietly. “I understand if not, though. I know I...kind of tend to screw things up.”
Oh. Felix felt that nibble at his growing anxiety give a harsh tug, that empty place inside of his heart, suddenly twisted. “That’s...that’s not what I mean.”
Sweet Sothis, arguing with Annette was honestly maddening right now. His shoulders ached almost in time to his every blink, like the pain was trickling down his entire body, hot and sweaty and desperate to not act like a complete asshole.
“Annette.” Felix slowly pulled himself up to meet her eye level. “Do you really feel like that?”
Her soft blue eyes looked down at his hands. “When you were carrying Ashe. You limped.”
Ah. That’d be because of his hip. In resignation, Felix leaned back on his palms. The mattress dipped with the change in weight. He looked up at the ceiling. His face looked tight and pale.
Fine. He’d bite.
“What would you suggest would help, then?”
“If it’s a tension headache, you should let down your hair.”
“Alright, but.” He glanced at her shyly. “I can’t...lift my arms anymore.”
Annette at once panicked. She moved over to Felix, hands fluttering over the air about him, as if unsure where to begin first. Her cute, unsure dance of what to do, what to say, where to go was all at once perfect and, unsurprisingly, painful, as her weight pushed around his body. “What—what do you mean? How? Should I take you to the infirmary? Felix?!”
Felix sighed into her sudden, predictable, wonderful rush of being upset, of...caring for him...he felt frozen, unsure of where to go from here. Felix pushed in a breath, then let it out.
Annette. This was just Annette and...and he was too tired...in too much pain...to hide this anymore. And he didn’t want to hide it from her. That careful, timid, sweet look in her eye. He wanted to die under that gaze, honestly. He didn’t understand her at all. How could someone as good-natured as her, look at someone like him with such...kindness?
“Annette.” Felix said simply.
She calmed. Her skin flushed pink and her hair had gone wild at her shoulders. She had placed her palms gently over the tops of his shoulders now, standing in front of him. “...What?”
“I thought of how you can help.” Carefully, he lifted his hands and, firstly, placed his right hand over her left hip, his fingers bunched over the soft fabric of her nightgown.
Her eyes widened. “Um?”
“Ah.” He then dropped his hand. “Sorry. It’s hard to think right now.” His dark eyes closed, even his black eyelashes shadowed over his pale skin. “What I’m trying to say is that, I need you to take down my hair.” His lids tightened, unwilling to look at her. “It’s not just my head that hurts. M...my whole body does. And I can’t lift my arms because of that. So...if you want, you can...um…” his voice became very, very quiet. “Sit in my lap, and you can reach better, if you wanted.”
Annette, so close in the dark, realize that he was being honest. He was... embarrassed. Her heart picked up, just for a moment. Felix was...asking her to touch him? Asking her for help? Genuinely? And...she blushed. It was awfully intimate. Her dressing gown and where his hand had once been, hot and tight over her hip. However, she pushed the idea aside.
She could see it clear in his eyes. He was in pain and he meant this. He wasn’t trying to slease his way under her dress like Sylvain. And Felix, well, he was nothing like those shirtless knights in those dirty books Professor Manuela was always accidentally leaving around the girls’ privy. Not that Annette ever peeked into those books...often.
Okay. Annette steeled herself. Carefully, using the bed for leverage, Annette found herself seated in Felix’s lap. Her thighs straddling Felix’s, Annette tried to appear somewhat casual, a friend helping a friend, with her face staring straight into Felix’s own. She watched how he had swallowed as she had climbed into his lap, unexpectedly nervous. It was so strange. Felix always seemed so...cool.
Well. It was nice to know she wasn’t the only one.
“Does, um.” She tried to keep her voice as normal as possible. “Am I hurting you?”
Through the twinge of pain resting in his eyes, Felix smirked, just a little, at her. “You weigh about 100 pounds soaking wet.”
She glared at him at about the same time that she had wrapped her arms around his neck, giving a soft tug. When Felix flinched, she instantly pulled away. “Sorry! I was trying to be funny. That wasn’t funny. I’m so sorry, Felix.” She began to squirm off of his lap. “I should have known I’d already ruin this…”
“Stop.” Felix said. “Relax.” His own hands moved, carefully, to touch at her side. He took a small pinch of her nightgown between his fingers and rubbed it between each digit. At this, the frown on his face lessened. “It’s alright.” Then, slowly, carefully, he ducked his head down towards her. “Just do it.”
Annette felt her throat become very dry. “Do you ever take your hair down, like maybe before you go to sleep?”
“Sometimes. I forget about it a lot.”
She gingerly pulled her hands from around his neck, trailing up to touch at the tight bands that held his hair up. When she first touched at Felix’s hair, she had nearly pulled back in surprise. It always looked about as cool and tough as Felix himself. But touching it now, it felt softer, feather-fine. She worked a single finger under the braid, band, and bobby-pin, easing it out as carefully as she could. By all accounts, perhaps his sweat that made the hairs coarse and brittle or her position, it was harder than expected.
“Not to hurry you, Annette,” Felix interrupted after a minute. “But I’d rather it just be down already. I don’t care if it hurts; it usually does.”
At this, Annette quirked her own brow at him. “It usually hurts?”
“Yeah,” Felix continued. His voice sounded terse, as if confessing a secret just for her. “Don’t ask why. It just does.”
“It sounds like you have a sensitive scalp.” Annette pulled, guilty as it had to hurt, at the back centered crown of his head.
She tried to off-set her dulling pulling with occasionally lingering the tips of her nails against the natural flow of his part. She had loved when her mother played with her hair as a child. She could only hope it was a decent distraction from the mess she was silently working through. In a way, knot by knot, spooling out from the braid, and eventually the coil from the messy pony’s tail, Annette felt oddly relieved that Felix had asked for her help. She couldn’t help but to feel protective at the idea of Felix, pain against pain, trying to take his hair down himself.
She couldn’t understand the resistance she had seen for so long. He had never been particularly mean to her in that barbed tongued way he could be with the others, but he was never quite certain of her, either.
“Women.” Felix allotted, his voice tight inside of his throat, in pain, until, finally, he had moved his chest even closer towards Annette, unconsciously leaning towards the movement of her fingers. He cleared his throat softly, although his voice had become husky in relief. “The secrets you have against men.”
Annette blushed. The way his voice sounded...now that reminded her of those naughty knight books. But still, she swallowed dryly, and the heat rushed to her face again. She always enjoyed Felix’s voice but now, everything felt different. And she shouldn’t push it to be something it wasn’t.
It wasn’t that way...was it? It was hard to tell. So much had changed in the last five years. The church. The war. Mercie and Hilda and Lorenz and Ingantz and Ashe. Dimitri, for certain. Everything except the stoic professor, perhaps. But so had Felix, and, in turn, so had her feelings.
Oh, who was she kidding? She’d always crushed hard on Felix. She just knew her place. She knew what she looked like, particularly back then, when her tiny, almost child-like body never seemed to match Mercie’s beautiful, busty-stance or Dorothea’s long-legged grace. Even in her warlock uniform, she had always felt...lesser. And with so many other women, powerful and smart and not screw ups, why would Felix ever look at her in…that...way?
...He was looking at her.
“Felix, I’m done now. Does it feel any better?” Annette murmured. Her hands felt shaky with nothing else to do. “Do you want me to get off of you now?”
“Um,” Felix articulated. He blinked at her, slowly, very slowly, as if he wanted to close his eyes.
She carefully reached up to place a curl behind his ear, and, as if desperate for warmth, for skin, Felix pressed his temple against the back of her hand. For a moment, Felix nearly pulled back, unsure of this, of her reaction, if it was okay, but then the back of her hand felt so cool against this throbbing temple. He decided he didn’t care. He was selfish. He worried, just a little, that she felt used. But then the coolness faded, absorbed by his hot skin, and he skated his face further along the back of her hand, wanting more skin, more relief.
His dark eyes had closed, giving up his fight with his heavy lids. “What did you say? Before? Sorry.”
Stunned, Annette’s heart leapt high in her throat. “I...I asked if you wanted me to get off of you.”
Again, curled against her hand, Felix slowly lifted his head away. His pale eyelids twitched, unwilling to open, but then those dark eyes appeared again. Oh wow. Annette flushed. His eyes looked unapologetically drowsy. The tightness she had seen in his face minutes earlier had lifted. But Felix...he never looked like this...open and...unshielded...with her.
She really was making him feel better, somehow. And again, everything felt different. Softer. Like his hair, now loosely curling down. It was really quite long once the braiding had come undone. It reached just at his shoulders, dark, shiny, and smooth in the moonlight. Seated over his lap, Annette felt like she was almost too close to him, too warm, too much, and it worried her if she could somehow make him feel worse. But each time she slightly tested this idea, inched away, Felix’s body seemed to follow her, consciously or unconsciously, and eventually she stopped fighting it.
She would stay. And she could do more.
She would do more. And, if Felix wanted more, especially with his hair, she was more than happy to oblige.
Felix Fraldarius felt fragile in her arms. He looked fragile. Annette would give anything to make this moment last forever.
The tight door around Annette’s heart felt cracked open, just an inch. She had always imagined this: Felix’s fine, dark hair caught around her fingers. But that was always where the dream had stayed: in her imagination. It felt so strange to see this part of him; Felix’s whole demeanor was sharp and tight and that never loosened. It made sense to Annette, if not in the practical sense of Felix’s hair getting in the way of his fighting. It was his choice to never wear his hair down around the others. Annette couldn’t help but wonder about his comment, about the ache of his head, be they muscle or scalp, and if he wore it down at all, and if that ever created any extra tension around the fixed bands in his hair. Certainly, Annette reasoned, he knew better. He was just teasing about not knowing about hypertension and wearing one’s hair up in a tight knot. Most of the girls in Garreg Mach she ever spoke with knew the simple rule that pony’s tails caused headaches if worn up for far too long.
And, here Felix was. His face, pale and worn, resting against her hand. She moved her hand away, and, once Felix decided not to follow the movement, she rested both of her arms back along his shoulders. She planned her next moves with a careful eye. A headache wouldn’t last long now under her fingers. And, gosh, he was just so...sweet. And soft. And she really, really wanted to tell him how nice he looked, when his teeth weren’t bared and his mouth wasn’t frowning. This sleepy, awaiting Felix felt so special to her. He was...beautiful.
Getting such a rare sight spurred a million reactions in Annette. Her fingers softly pressed along the back of his head, until she used her thumbs to form two points of firm pressure just over the connecting muscle between the top of his neck and low-point of his skull, and, instantly, she felt Felix’s entire body give a shudder beneath her.
“I—I’m so sorry.” She began at once, panic slipping into her voice. Of course, this would happen, and she’d always, always mess things up somehow, push things just one step too far, and she’d hurt him, like the idiot she was. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No,” was his terse reply.
He slowly moved his head, second by second, down as if it had become suddenly too heavy to hold up by himself. Warm breath moved against the delicate skin along the right side of Annette’s neck. In the pooling shadows of Felix’s room, Annette did not have to try hard to picture in her mind’s eye just how they looked: she in Felix’s lap, him sitting upon the edge of his bed, her hands in his hair, his head resting along her neck and shoulder. She flushed harder.
She wasn’t sure if Felix had moved his head away from her hands to provide guidance towards what he wanted or if it was just him getting more comfortable, but she followed through to her next step. His shoulders and back were next.
It was as if she knew exactly where the pain was the most unbearable. Felix’s mouth tightened, lips closing to swallow back a moan building within him. When she placed her hands, first gently over the swell of his shoulders, he had to focus on not pulling her off of him, the pain burning, burning, burning under the pressure of her palms. Then, she pushed down, rolling the swollen skin and muscle beneath in one slow, forceful knead of her knuckles.
“Too much?” Annette tested. She moved again, that exact motion and pressure, this time using only the strength of her thumbs.
“Ngh.” Came his dull answer. There was the old Felix Annette knew. She’d have laughed at him normally. He nearly sounded annoyed. “How d’you know where to…” he stopped. She had now cooled her fingers in a short chanting spell and was gingerly molding her fingertips straight into the knot. He did not mean to, he truly tried, but his entire body betrayed him at once with a full-body shiver. The force of it rattled Annette herself. A shocked, weak inhale of air against her neck told Annette everything Felix couldn’t.
“Did that feel good?” Annette asked quietly, trying vainly to hide the thrill in her voice. She now shifted the magic’s pull and briefly warmed her fingers until they felt almost too hot beneath her own nails—then, she placed her entire hand over the swelling of his left shoulder, attempting to cover as much of his muscle as she could. She cursed her tiny hands.
Felix, however, didn’t seem to mind their smallness, nor care. It was as if some incredible, unseen prayer had granted him a single moment without the stifling throb to his shoulder. The heat was indescribable. It flooded into his skin and seemed to settle over his muscles, through blood and bone, and somehow continued on into his chest. It felt good just to breathe.
“Huh,” Felix’s languid muffled reply told her.
It was nothing like what she had expected. Was there supposed to be an ‘Uh’ to that ‘huh’? Affirmative? Or was she just making it worse? Annette frowned.
And Annette was talking to him, the sound sweet and gentle. Felix took another breath, somehow better than the last, and sighed. He meant to attach words to the end of it, but instead, the sound came out pure and unfiltered, a hot breath to the side of her neck. Words weren’t enough. A thank-you wasn’t enough. Felix had spent so many nights, years, attempting to just black out from his stupid body’s response to stress, and, Annette, without asking him, was slowly draining it away. It was beyond language, and talking was already becoming difficult—jabs and wit and calculating Annette’s full-neck blushes a distant world away. Words were becoming harder to form, to whittle down into something tangible and dense. But he wanted to tell her, he wanted her to know... he was so warm, and Annette...and Annette...Annette…
It was as if she was fading from him, too. He felt so boneless by her touch...he could sleep here. He really, truly could. He wanted to. He wanted to lay down and...
Annette made a small sound of surprise.
At once, Felix’s eyes opened.
Annette could tell, the sudden flickering of dark lashes tickled her neck, and Felix shifted them back up. Somewhere in that lost moment, she had felt Felix’s body fall back and she had nearly gone with him. Through the blurring of pain in his back, Felix felt her shiver, her small body perhaps the one thing holding him upright for a moment. Felix stumbled back through the warmth and the bonelessness to not simply crush the poor girl. He straightened his back and fixed his arms, loose, around her waist.
“Sorry,” Felix’s voice felt his again, raspy and slow, but his own. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry,” Annette began in a puff. “I just thought that was what you wanted. You mentioned your shoulder gets tight sometimes—and when I saw you carrying Ashe, you were favouring it.”
“...I was?” Here, Felix sounded distantly confused. Annette tried to picture the cute pout on his face.
“Mhm,” she hummed confidently. “Remember? It was at the feast during the Horsebow Moon, back when we were in school together? That was when you told me.”
Ohh. Had Felix found the strength, he wanted to fix his palm over his face and die. Of course she’d remember.
He hadn’t. He couldn’t because he had already had four glasses of Enbarr wine, because von Riegan had prodded and smirked and gotten under his skin about never joining in any of the fun, and, uncharacteristically, he had fallen for it, like a stupid fish in the monastery’s back pond Lindthart was always fishing for. He remembered that the wine was thick and far too sweet. It burned his mouth and throat over the first cup—but then another was in his hand, and then his royal beastliness was able to laugh with the rest at the table, and soon his throat and taste buds were too numb to care that he actually hate this kind of thing, the fraternizing, the indulgent drinking.
Eventually, his body felt numb, too, and he sat down, uncertain if he could walk without running into another long table, or chair, or person...and he had grown bored with the others, nursing the metallic taste around the rim of his goblet...until...Damn, that’s right, Annette had arrived to the party, unfashionably late, probably due to over studying or ‘doing her best’ or some stupid...She had seen him, dumbly sitting alone, and she had turned to walk over to him, and suddenly Felix found he had swallowed the rest of his wine a little too quickly, grinning broadly at her like she was the most beautiful girl in the entire room, and, of course, she already was but now….
He didn’t remember too much from that night. Just that when Annette appeared, her fair skin looked like it was glowing, an inward light that she projected all her own, moon-like, creamy and fresh, and he wanted to sink his teeth into the exposed shoulder of her dress. She had sat across the table from him, and he also remembered, vaguely, a sharp sad pang that she had chosen not to sit closer to him. Perhaps it was then he had rambled about something stupid, like his fucking messed up shoulder, and thankfully not that he wanted to lick and suck at her neck like it was one of those overly-sweet creams desserts she was always going on about, until the cream there had turned red as a strawberry...
“Sorry.” Felix said again, his voice guilty. Annette had no idea why.
“Honestly, Felix, I’m happy to help you. Er. To help. I mean, I’m happy to help all of my friends but, ah, um.” She traced her finger slowly, keeping the pressure light, up his neck and back down. Another soft vibration lifted from Felix, almost too imperceptible to feel, but Annette did. “Preference? Hot, cold, firm, soft?”
She was up to her usual tricks, trying too hard and doing too much, but Felix just wanted to be here. Right here, with her, pain or no, but if he could choose to not be in pain…
Her neck felt overly hot. It was Felix’s face, still pressed to her skin. Was he...blushing?
“Uh. Hard to say.” He wavered for a moment, somewhere between concern for using her, and selfishly, overwhelmingly certain that if she did that magic again, he’d definitely pass out on her. “Maybe not too much magic, okay? Um.” Why was he saying no to the magic? He wanted the magic. He wanted it so bad. “I don’t care.”
His usual answer that hide everything he couldn’t dare to say. She was so...so...perfect, honestly trying to help him, and he was an ass, unable to let her in. Saint Cethleann, why was he like this?
“Um. Okay.” She dragged the back half of the word ‘okay’ in a cute, nervous tick. “I just hope it, uh, feels alright.” She strummed up some light white magic again, warm around her fingertips and palms, and kneaded over his shoulders, digging into dips and collar bone lines, around the blades, up his neck.
“Feels good,” Felix murmured after a while, the words damp against her skin. His voice sounded loose and gentle, and sometimes, Annette swore, his tongue occasionally lapped at her neck, like a cat, as if falling asleep caused Felix to lose control of his sharp tongue. “You’re s’good.”
Annette giggled.
“When your shoulder gets tight like this, what do you usually do? Does someone else help you?” Annette couldn’t help but to wonder aloud. She wasn’t sure if Felix would answer her fully. Most of the time he sounded more able to answer simple things, like yes or no questions, which Annette allowed herself to enjoy; it was so ridiculously heart-meltingly cute.
“Nn’,” he breathed. He almost shook his head, too, until he realized he was already close to her neck, and he ended up burying his nose into her warm skin. “Don’t bother.”
She frowned. That made her feel so sad. “So, what, you just help everyone else but you can’t ask someone to help you?”
“Mm.” He seemed to consider this for a short moment. “Can’t.”
“You...don’t want people to know.” Annette completed what Felix struggled to say. Oh.
Oh. It made sense. Everything now, it suddenly made sense.
“And you just...suffer?”
“Not if I jus’ go t’sleep.” Felix responded. His tongue, again, lapped softly at the skin of her neck in an attempt to find the words.
“Oh.” Annette fluttered again, nervous, and Felix must have felt it, because he merely pushed himself against her in response.
“M’ glad it’s you.” Felix practically mouthed the words against her neck, he was so entangled. The next part felt more articulated. “Your scent drives me crazy.”
“My..scent?”
“Your st’pid bracelet?” He prompted wearily.
“No way, you’re still wearing it?” Annette dropped on hand, much to Felix’s sorry little whimper, and felt for it. Soon, she found it, cool against the warmth of his wrist. She also felt his heartbeat, gentle and slow, beating in a steady rhythm, heading towards sleep.
“Yeah.”
Annette smiled, unsure of how to take that answer. “You could have just taken it off, you know.”
“You smell like roses,” Felix elaborated, the ending of the word ‘roses’ dragged out just a bit too long. She had never heard Felix stumble over his words before, not even when he had been drinking.
“Um. I like roses.” She blushed, uncertain. There was more, like how her father, before he had abandoned her, had teased her red hair—but...that was a long, long time ago.
“Why?”
Darn it. Caught. He’d caught her, even half asleep. Annette fought for a better reason, to lie, to deflect but…
“It’s because of...my dad, honestly. He called me ‘Rosie’, when I was a little girl and...well, he’s gone now, but I guess it just…” it was just a simple childhood nickname that she’d never hear again...but she could smell it. Her voice became a tight whisper. “It makes me feel better. It’s dumb, really dumb, I know.”
It looked like the short conversation had ended for now. When Felix didn’t ask her further. She was fine with this. Really fine, honestly. Far too fine. She had even found herself humming a tuneless song as she moved her fingers over his back, wondering silently to herself, when Felix moved as if to speak again.
“No,” Felix said suddenly, greatly delayed. Annette had finished her thought a while ago, and it was if Felix had finally realized that.
No? Annette considered this fondly. No, to what? No to her feelings? No to where she had placed her hands?
And then, it dawned on her. She was so stupid sometimes. He was saying no to her feeling sad, thinking it was stupid. Was he...trying to reassure her it wasn’t too silly?
“Um.” Her cheeks burned. “Thanks.” She admitted in a small voice.
She rubbed again at the back of his neck, flexing her fingers to fill the spaces of muscle and skin, dragging down her nails in a single direct pattern. Each and every time she did so, she felt Felix shudder against her. He was particularly sensitive about his scalp. He really was susceptible there, and it made bad, very bad, not nice ideas race through Annette’s mind, ideas that made her toes curl into the quilt under them, her own heart beat, its own pulse at the base of her thumbs…
For now, she stuck to his shoulders and back, alone.
And, if it weren’t for her massaging him, occasionally speeding up her pattern, or slowing down to a trickle of her fingertips trailing over his flushed skin, Annette swore, she swore, this might be considered cuddling.
“Um.” Another warm, comfortable moment. Annette struggled to interpret the quiet, his breathing muted, steady and becoming a familiar pattern she could count. Felix would breathe in deep and then slowly exhale out again, steady and only getting slower by all accounts. And, with the way his slightly-open mouth kept bumping faintly against her neck, he clearly didn’t want to talk.
Finally, she couldn’t stand a second more. What was this? And was this what Felix wanted...at all? It didn’t seem fair to project all of her secret desires onto him at once, here and now, in the shadowed darkness of his bedroom, where his comfort was something he had once made for himself...not something she was giving to him. She spooled her fingertips back through the loose curls in one fluid motion, a move she was hopeful would get his lingering attention back on her, guilty as she felt to edge him back from the brink of sleep.
There, in the dark, just beneath her fingertips, Felix moaned.
It wasn’t just a sound. It was a movement. His mouth had parted further and he moved to take a warm taste of her into his mouth, his tongue warm and damp and lingering over soft skin. It only lasted a moment, perhaps less than three heart beats, until Felix’s mouth ebbed back, loosely pressed into the crook of her shoulder once more, as if he had never moved at all.
Her hand froze. She felt light-headed.
Felix didn’t just moan. That couldn’t have been what she had heard. Felix didn’t make—she wasn’t sure how to say it, really, normal people sounds. Felix was—he was Felix!
To her surprise, as it had worked at once, she wanted to try again, if not far stronger than before. She ran her nails over again, a light drizzle over the dark strands along the back of his head, and, again, Felix moaned against her. The sound seemed to float over the air and straight up her spine. Again, his mouth pressed against her neck, tongue dragging weakly, kitten-soft, as if an undeniable reaction of pleasure he couldn’t resist.
“Fuh-Felix?” She tried not to stutter, nerves and her heart high and fluttery, like one of Marianne’s birds. She had to stop. She had to control herself. She didn’t want to think it was something Felix meant to do to her. Perhaps it was sincerely involuntary, like a stretching in sleep, an unconscious pull that his mouth did on its own, because it was certainly true that Felix’s mouth did have a mind of its own. “Do you want me to go now? It’s—it’s been a while, and I know you—”
“Never.” Annette felt frozen in place. Her heart skipped a single beat. She could feel Felix’s mouth, warm and barely open against her skin as he struggled to keep his thought. “All ‘he times... I ever wanted you...t’ leave.” His voice was honey-slow, the thick gooey kind she often smeared on her toast during morning breakfast, the kind Felix pointedly told her he couldn’t stomach. “‘Never real’y wanted you...t’leave.” His words lilted in some defenseless way that felt impossible to be coming from Felix. He was never slow. He was never this soft.
Another moment whispered by, then another, but Annette didn’t care. It was only when she pushed her thumbs, this time with slightly more pressure, against the back of his scalp, and again, Felix’s breathing hitched, his exhale a low, desperate moan of relief. He somehow moved his head closer to her neck, the space already small and dark, perfectly designed for him.
She giggled. She couldn’t help it. Girlish as it was, she felt deserved to hear it.
She slowly evened her hands, the pattern rarely deviating from her first, soft, then harder, firmer presses into the middle, and, finally, his lower back. She even allowed her fingertips to dip just below the waist of his trousers, the pads of her fingers digging into the cute, circle-like grooves, two perfect dimples that rested at the lowest part of his lower back. He seemed to really like that part the most, his mouth, so close to her throat, allowing Annette to feel the throaty, whispering purr coaxed from his quiet, pleasurable sounds. Felix rarely moved now, the weight of his upper body now resting heavily back onto Annette. But, occasionally, he said words, mainly just little affirmatives, like “there”, or “yes”, the words slurred against Annette’s neck. Those small words, those tiny, breathless whispers; Annette could now die at war a happy woman.
Finally, once her own hands had started to ache, and her legs felt numb, did Annette realize that the dream had to come to an end. But she didn’t want it to. She really, really didn’t want it to.
“Hmm,” she placed her mouth gently against Felix’s ear, careful to keep her voice as quiet as possible. “Honey, do you want to lie down?” She hoped he wouldn’t mind the pet name.
It took a moment, and another mild shake of Felix’s shirt-collar, before his dark eyes drifted open, the darkness of his dilated pupils nearly overtaking the natural dark in his eye. “‘’ette?”
“Mhm. It’s just me.” She gave a small tug at his shirt collar to rouse him just a bit more. “You wanna lay down?”
“Huh,” Felix said again. This time, Annette had become aware of this cute little sound to mean a very tired, very happy, very bleary, ‘yes’.
Careful to gather her legs off of him without much fuss, Annette laid down beside Felix, helping to ease him back onto the mattress. She was pretty sure he was asleep before his head even hit the pillow. It was only when she went to get up that she realized one of Felix’s arms snaked around her hips, turning her into a make-shift teddy-bear, and well, she wasn’t one to deny Felix anything.
It had only taken five years to snuggle next to Felix, and she could only hope for many, many more to come.