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The more you know someone, the easier it is to fall into habits with them. Annette gets so wound up when she’s stressed about something, but Felix just needs to sit and listen to the whole story and at the end, offer a practical, one-sentence solution. In this case all he has to do is walk alongside her, and sometimes pay for ice cream.
“...and I don’t know how to pretend that I don’t know about the wedding! And I don’t even know when she was planning on telling me—”
Felix takes a deep breath in. “You should just tell her you know, and then you won’t have to worry about it. It’s not your fault, anyway.”
Annette stops in her tracks. “Oh. That makes so much sense! Thanks Felix, I can always count on you.”
“It’s no problem.”
“I wish I hadn't taken up so much of your time with this!” She sighs. “But it’s okay, I guess. Thankfully you care enough about me to put up with my many inadequacies.”
“Well, you’re really smart with everything else,” he says quietly, turning red faster than the leaves in autumn.
“I think that’s the cutest thing about you,” she tells him, “that you fall all over your tongue whenever you try to say something nice to me. It’s like you don’t know how to express your feelings at all.”
“Your hands,” he says in lieu of a proper response. She gasps.
Ice cream drips down her palm, and Annette stuffs the rest of the cone into her mouth just to get rid of it. “Oh, how is it even possible for ice cream to melt this fast in winter?” she wails after she can speak again. “Now it’s all sticky.”
Felix reaches forward. “Want me to get tissues for you?”
“Hey, you can’t touch a girl’s bag!” Annette says, swatting his hand away like it’s a fly evading her reach. “Have some respect, ya know?”
“Oh. Yeah. I wasn’t trying to be chivalrous or anything,” he says, tongue curling up in disgust.
“I know.” When Annette smiles it kinda looks like the human manifestation of the smiley face emoji. “You just wanted to help me.”
“I have a lifeguard shift soon,” he says, as they reach the quad where the main path branches off into the athletic and technology complexes respectively.
“Take your time,” she says with care— “If you’re late just tell them your... friend held you up. You know the team likes me much better than they like you.” Annette grins. “I think my mother taught me that line.”
“That’s really nice,” he says, and thinks of saying something else, but doesn’t. “I’ll see you eight hours from now, or later.”
“Felix, do you ever rest?” Annette asks.
He smiles a little. “I could say the same thing to you.”
1:46PM
ashe: by the way how did annette even meet him?
mercedes: They met at the karaoke bar ^^ she was super drunk and you know how you can hear through the walls because they’re so thin, right?
mercedes: Felix was with his friends in the hallway and she stumbled out to use the restroom, and fresh faced and red cheeked she ran up to Felix and asked him what he thought of her singing
mercedes: Apparently it was adorable!
ashe: that sounds just like something she’d do ^^’
Mercedes had to drag her back into their room— “Oh Annie, please stop,” she pleaded, and began apologizing profusely to the customers in front of them. It would not be a good look if it got out that the part-timers antagonize patrons when they’re not on the clock, drunk nonetheless.
“It was nice,” Felix said, stammering.
Ingrid and Sylvain looked at each other slowly, and then back at him. Annette had his hands clasped between hers.
“Hey,” Ingrid said from behind Felix. “Look at this.”
Felix had no idea why she stopped him in the middle of a crowd during passing time to show him a flyer and was going to insist on her insanity until he saw the redhead from karaoke on the cover.
“She’s a musical actress,” Ingrid supplied helpfully, dodging some skateboarding freshman with an obvious death wish. “That’s why she was so good at belting? Except she still sounded like trash last night, and you still told her she sounded amazing.”
“I didn’t say that,” Felix told her.
“You know what you said,” Ingrid contended. “The best part is that Sylvain saw her in the north side atrium selling tickets for her show.”
Felix was quiet. “And he told you and not me?”
“There was a lower chance of murder occurring.”
“Did he buy tickets.”
“Wouldn’t you like the honors?”
Felix scoffed. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. We are not going to an extracurricular school event unless I get dragged there by the president herself.”
They did go to the play, even without Edelgard's interference. Felix cried during Act II.
According to the program, neatly designed by an artist Ingrid recognized as Ignatz from high school, the lead actress was a senior literature student, about the exact opposite of Felix’s field of interest. “She’s in our year,” Sylvain hissed in the dark before the show started. “You have to grab her before she graduates.” The yelp he let out after Felix stepped on his foot was loud enough to elicit complaints from everyone sitting around them.
Felix staunchly refused to stick around for what Sylvain called the “cast meet-and-greet” in favor of going back to their shared apartment and staring at the ceiling. It wasn’t the first, and certainly would not be the last time that he’d end up doing that after an accidental encounter. When their Craigslist printer finally broke Felix went to the library to collect assignments before class and saw her studying at a desk; even in the cafeteria she had a book under her nose.
“It just feels creepy,” Felix mutters over fries and a Reuben.
“It wouldn’t be creepy if you made friends with her,” Ingrid said, patiently and with reason, as always.
“That’s even creepier.”
“Better yet, you could tell her you’re a fan.”
Felix was wading deep in quiet admiration of her focus when Sylvain finally saw fit to make comment. “She never notices ‘cause she’s always staring at those books.”
“Felix would do well to try that sometime,” Ingrid said, bracing herself for impact.
“Let’s just forget this ever happened,” Felix stated, rising from his chair and taking his tray with him. “I don’t know an Annette.”
“That is a perfectly good sandwich,” Sylvain said, swiping the half-eaten Reuben and taking a bite, handing the rest to Ingrid.
“You say that, Felix,” Ingrid started, sandwich in hand. “But.”
“Yes?” He turned around and gave her an icy glare.
She shook her head. “I’m not going to finish that sentence.”
“How humiliating!” Annette had told Mercedes when the latter started telling stories about what happened that one night to the other workers. “You had to have made this up.”
“Oh, Annie. I wish I was lying.” Mercedes might have embellished the details a little, but that wasn’t important.
She groaned, leaning against the reception counter. “I really thought that was a dream.”
“Huh!” Mercedes looked at her in wonder. “Do you actually remember what happened?”
“Ummm... sort of?” Annette grinned miserably. “I can kinda see the face of the guy I went up to. I hope I scared those guys away and they never come back! I never want to see his face again.”
Of course she does, running out of the student center bathroom, almost late for class.
“Ah.”
“Oh.”
“You sing well,” he said suddenly. Annette turned white.
“You remember me from the karaoke bar.” She could have fainted right here on the spot if it wouldn’t have made things even worse.
“I was talking about the musical,” he clarified.
“I’ll just die,” she said.
He looked even more horrified. “I remember you from the karaoke bar too.”
“This is the worst day of my life,” Annette said, beginning to cry, utterly unarticulate.
Felix bought her a hot coffee in an attempt at an extremely awkward apology.
“I had a free skip,” she said when he asked if she had class. “I can just watch the lecture later,” she added, and he decided not to comment on that.
“I’m really sorry for saying... anything.”
“Please promise you won’t bring it up again,'' she said warmly, grinning and face red. “It’s egregiously contemptible.”
“It was perfectly good singing,'' Felix said, “so why should I forget about it. And what does “egregious” mean?”
She smiled brighter. “I knew you wouldn’t know.”
11:46AM
dimitri: FELIX TALKING TO SOMEONE OF HIS OWN VOLITION? WHO IS THAT GIRL.
sylvain: oh the amount of ammo you’re going to have on him after i tell you the answer to this... ;)
(It turns out she’s seen him through the gymnasium windows during fencing practice, although she didn’t know it was him.
And months later: “You’ve got to teach me how to fence. Why? I just want to know!”)
Ingrid finally worked up the courage to ask Annette if she doesn’t get annoyed having to put up with Felix all the time. He’s got a horrible personality, after all.
“It’s fun to banter with him,” she said with a smile, popping chips into her mouth. Ingrid looked at her like she was crazy.
“It is kind of amazing,” Sylvain said. “Our dear Felix has been prickly all through his youth and is the worst to his childhood friends, meanwhile this girl he’s just met is calling him fun.”
“Well, I think he’s nice,” Annette declared. “Although when we first met I was definitely convinced he was evil.”
“Please don’t turn her against me too,” Felix complained. “You guys want me to have friends, right?”
Ingrid put a hand on his shoulder. “Felix, as you will come to know, is terrified of admitting anything about himself to other people. So please be understanding of how altogether shocked I’ll be every time you tell me a story about him. Even if I’ve heard it before.”
Felix grimaced. “You don’t have to read me like that, Ingrid.”
“It’s not reading if it’s all over your face, Felix.”
3:24PM
sylvain: you hate studying and “theory” but you said yes when she asked you to an overnight cram session at the library.
sylvain: i’m just saying
felix: I’m trying to get better at writing papers
felix: because the faster I’m done the faster I can get back to training it’s not that deep.
felix: she just happens to be good at giving lit tips it’s her specialty
felix: leave me alone
sylvain: you’re like, in love with her bro
7:36PM
felix: I really don’t think that’s the case.
sylvain: wait til ingrid gets a hold of this bs
Felix could only lie to himself for so long.
A year and a half after they met and in the middle of poring over her notes suddenly Annette looks up and says, “You know we have to stop this.” It’s past dinner time and Felix is eating leftover chicken and potatoes across the table. (“I have lots,” she said, and Felix knew it meant she needed someone to chip away at another mediocre homecooked meal that she made too much of. It’s why she should really only cook when someone else is around to help— and Felix would offer to come over more if he wasn’t deathly afraid of the implications.)
He looks over at her with as much composure as he can muster. She finds it hard to start talking when you aren’t making eye contact. “Why?”
“You know why!”
“I don’t,” he says. “What’s wrong with this?” (Felix knows. Annette has only been trying to bring this up for the past two months.)
“It’s not a secret that you think marriage is the worst idea society’s ever come up with.”
“It’s not the worst,” he mumbles. “That might be writing term papers.”
“This is not a joke,” Annette says, frowning. “But you know what I want. And every time I talk about romantic ideals and like, anything that has to do with Mercie’s wedding, which at the rate she’s been working won’t even be for another three years, you shut all the way down. Like you want nothing to do with it.”
Felix has been chewing slowly on a piece of lean chicken for the past twenty seconds. He swallows, and his throat goes dry.
“I try to be supportive.”
“I know. And I love you for it—” he winces— “but that’s the thing, you know? You’re just trying to smooth things along. This isn’t something that you really want. And I’m not going to be the girl to force you to change for me.”
“It’s just so complicated,” he says, and stops. When Felix thinks about relationships he thinks about the mother he’s never seen and the inevitability of navigating in-laws and yes, all of those disgusting ideals, rules and fantasies that he won’t be able to live up to. It’s just easier to not go there.
Annette looks down at her notebook, ink all over the place where her wrist smudged into the pages. Serves her right for using gel pen. “You don’t want to commit to anything,” she says, too soft to be accusatory.
“Do I have to, now?” he asks wearily. “Is it not enough to stay as we are?”
“No,” Annette says, and he can’t tell which question she’s answering. “It just really, really sucks that I can’t even imagine the future. I miss dreaming about it. And I wonder now— if it’s something that will never happen.”
“I’m afraid,” Felix tells her, paradoxically looking at the door.
“What are you so afraid of?”
It’s a difference in what each of them is willing to risk, he thinks. It’s just so easy to imagine it falling apart.
“Please,” she whispers. “I can’t... keep feeling like this for you.”
Every Saturday Annette hauls herself out of bed early to go on a morning run.
To pass the time and get pumped, she starts by thinking of all the things she’d like to do that day. Study, and talk to her graduate advisor. Then make dinner?
Oh! She should learn to cook something from Dedue’s recipe column in the school newspaper. Last week she tried the whitefish sauté he recommended and absolutely loved it, even though it was a little burnt, because well, she’s not exactly the best at watching her food. Maybe he’ll have a skewer dish in this week’s issue? Then she can unwind with a video game! Mario Kart?
Annette hisses as she feels a sharp pain near her foot. Her ankle’s felt sort of weak this morning, although she can’t pinpoint why. Her forehead is abnormally warm too, even though it’s freezing outside.
Then she remembers she can’t ask Felix to come over and do any of it with her. She shakes her head resolutely. It was her decision, and he didn’t even pretend to get upset at it. If anything, this is preferable in all ways. Felix always refused to eat her desserts anyway, so this just frees up her options. Even though he’s really good at chopping vegetables.
Annette stops in front of the intersection to catch her breath. Leans against the lamppost for support. Loses consciousness.
Mercedes calls Felix first, who packs up his equipment and hightails it out of the gym before really taking in what she said was happening. Her voice was quiet, like it was hard to speak without crying, maybe. Felix didn’t ask her to speak up.
“We have final exams,” she said. “And Ashe can’t get off work. Please.”
He trips over his own feet in the cold air, and stumbles through the automatic doors of the hospital.
“I’m looking for Annette Fantine Dominic,” he says to the receptionist.
“Relation?” she asks.
“—Friend.”
In front of her room door he is accosted by one of the nurses.
“Are you her husband?”
“I’m not,” he says, startled.
She asks again, shoving a clipboard in his face. “Are you?”
Annette needs a family member to sign off in authorization so she can get an emergency procedure. The nurse emphasizes her life is in danger and he knows as far as that family goes she doesn’t have anyone else around. Echoes of the words ‘infection, lungs, fever, heart’ linger in Felix’s mind long after she leaves.
With no one to talk to all he can do is rub his temples and clear his head. There is no way to rationalize this lie to himself but really, now is not the time to think about all the things he did wrong.
“What does she have?” he asks the nurse, who’s come back to see him. He’s been sitting in the waiting room the whole time.
She hesitates. “The doctors have run all the obvious tests for her symptoms. We don’t know yet.”
On the phone with Sylvain:
(“Is she going to be okay, you think?”
“I don’t know at all. They’ve only ruled diagnoses out, not confirmed any.”
“Oh man, that’s rough.”
“I don’t know anything about saving lives,” he says, voice panicky. “I know how to do CPR and that’s about it. I can’t help. I can’t do anything.”
“No one expects you to, Felix. It’s not your job. Just stay calm.”
“Stop being so... nice,” Felix grouses. “It’s not right. Come here and fight me.”
Sylvain sighs. “Then you should have gone to Ingrid. Or better yet, your eternal rival Dimitri. At least you’d be able to verbally assault him without a conscience and let off some steam. Although I know you can’t stand being honest around him or like, vulnerable at all.”
There’s a long sigh in the background and then Ingrid’s voice comes through the line.
“I hope you found him helpful,” she says with charm and a sympathy in the resounding silence.
“I didn’t,” he replies. But he breathes much steadier now.)
Felix walks into the hospital room for the first time.
It feels like an eternity since he’s gone this long without hearing her voice. Felix has never liked thinking about love, and because of how busy school has kept her it was easy to keep up the illusion that Annette didn’t either. But almost for that reason he understands better than anyone why she holds on so tightly to what she has.
Back during senior year, when Ingrid and Sylvain would tease him relentlessly, it wasn’t that hard to brush off their comments as useless, unsolicited consultation. Sylvain set horrible examples of commitment, and Ingrid, hurt deeply by the loss of someone she thought was her only soulmate, was looking desperately to live vicariously through her friends, all of whom seemed doomed to disappoint her. Felix doesn’t blame either of them for it, but they certainly did not help him bear his feelings in any discernible way.
(“I want to hear your voice,” he said to her, only half awake and leaning against the library wall. Annette was typing away on her laptop next to the window, trying in vain to finish this paper that’s taken ages because of her neurotic perfectionism.
“I can’t talk to you, silly, it’s night hours and I have work to do. See, you made me spell ‘kriegspiel’ wrong.”
“I’m going to fall asleep,” he whispered.
“Go then,” she mouthed. Felix doesn’t see. “Go home, go to sleep and I’ll call you later, okay?”
“I’ll be asleep though.”
She smiled. “Call me when you wake up. You know you can do that any time, right?”
After that whenever Felix had a question for her he’d really call instead of texting it, even if it was as easily Googled as how many days were left in the semester. Annette lost a lot of study hours this way— Felix lost training hours— and yet neither of them really minded.)
“I really do love you,” he says to her unconscious form.
Annette is in surgery again when her father arrives. Felix doesn’t need to hear him speak to recognize the man in her family portraits.
He's the only one anywhere close to being in town, her voice in his head says, and in that same mind Felix berates him harshly about what Annette’s been through while he’s been gone. And her mother can't pay the medical bills at home and Annette is the one who’s been working serving jobs to earn extra cash, he thinks. And his anger reaches a breaking point, and he wants to say something—
Gilbert stares at him from across the room. He has no idea who Felix is. It wouldn’t be a good idea to yell, anyway. They’re in a hospital.
“Please tell her mother,” Felix asks, finally. “No one else can. Annette can’t be your messenger anymore.”
Gilbert nods. “I’ll pay the hospital bills,” he says, like he’s read Felix’s thoughts.
“But the forgiveness won’t come from that,” Felix adds sharply. It’s beyond Felix to care about what this man thinks of him. “I just want you to know that.”
“I understand,” Gilbert says.
“Good,” Felix answers, an uneasy relief dusting off his shoulders.
Felix leaves him alone in the room to speak with the doctors. When he gets back from the vending machine, Gilbert’s head is in his hands.
“I need somewhere to stay,” Gilbert says. It’s hard for Felix to be sympathetic towards him, but he tries to at least remain civil.
“I don't have the key to her place,” Felix tells him. “Mercedes does, maybe. But her university is on the other side of the city.”
“Wouldn’t it be in her purse?”
Felix looks at the leather bag strewn over the plastic chair in the corner of the room, jaw tensing. “Do you even know where she lives?”
“You do, don’t you?
I’ll kill you before I tell you, he thinks, pulling up her contact in his phone. Deep breaths. “Let me ask Mercedes first.”
(“I’ll welcome him with open arms if he decides to reach out to me,” Annette declared, right after Felix found the box of letter photocopies sitting on her bookshelf. (“I know I’ll probably never see them again after dropping them in the mail,” she had just told him, “and I want to have them to show him one day.”)
Eyebrows furrowed, he resisted the urge to yell that she shouldn’t have so much hope for someone who’s only ever disappointed her.
“But he’s hurt you so badly. He doesn’t deserve that.”
“I know,” Annette said.)
8:12PM
mercedes: I think you’re right, Felix. I think it’s what she would want.
felix: Okay.
“I’ll send you the address,” he tells Gilbert.
(“I just want him back.”)
Ashe invited him. He was in charge of the guest list, and when he checked with Mercedes she said it would probably be fine. But when Felix walks into the party Annette bursts into tears.
“Let me talk to him alone,” she says, dragging him out of the living room of her apartment and leaving a shower of teardrops in her wake.
He stands awkwardly in the center of her room before she motions for him to sit on her bed.
“I’m glad you’re better,” Felix starts.
Annette regained consciousness soon after Mercedes’ finals week ended, and out of respect Felix stepped away from the hospital to make room for those who were closest to her. It was strange to exit the building and feel a solace that was entirely his own.
“I should be so, so mad at you,” Annette says. “Still. Especially for you to make me walk all the way over here when my ankle is still weak.”
Felix’s heart drops, and drops again. “I really am so sorry, Annette.”
“It’s like... no amount of earnest apologies is really fair. Because all of this happened — you, suddenly, here, everything — when I was unconscious, and like— I haven’t had any time to process it.”
“I know,” he says, listening carefully.
“I’m thankful for what you’ve done— but I still can’t—” Annette swallows. “I just... I can’t believe my father would rather talk to you than me.”
Felix will not make excuses for him. “He is horrible.”
“As soon as my mother arrived he left. How can you do that to your daughter?”
“I’m really, really sorry, Annette.”
Felix takes the tissue box off her nightstand and hands it to her.
“What did I say about touching my things?” she admonishes, smiling a little for the first time since she saw him enter the apartment.
“I shouldn’t do it,” he agrees easily. “Please give me another chance.”
“Maybe,” Annette says, wiping her eyes again. “But you know what made me really happy?”
“What is it?”
“My mother really liked you.” She beams.
“I left before you woke up,” he says, looking back on it.
“She told me all about you.”
The relief in hearing the pride in her voice is something Felix never knew he needed. It’s a lot like the feeling he had when he first realized he couldn’t go a day without seeing her, or the moment he knew every day became much brighter once she was in it. It’s terrifying, too.
“You did the right thing,” she admits. “You were there when no one else could be, even though you were afraid.” Annette takes a moment to collect her thoughts, and she adds— “I believe in a kind of love where your feelings show through your actions more than they ever do through words.”
“You have always been braver than me,” he says quietly, and she tries to hit him with her braced leg.
“Felix.”
“Yes?” He looks her in the eye. She always finds it easiest to have the courage to speak when she knows someone is listening.
“Loving you is as easy as breathing,” Annette says. “And that’s been hard for the last two weeks, you know?”
“I can only imagine,” he responds, red again.
She laughs back, and takes his hand in hers. “But I’m getting better every day.”