Archive of Our Own ^beta

The song kicks in, and Felix realizes it isn’t the right one.

He hates everything about this idea, has hated everything about this idea since its very inception, and the song isn’t even the right one.

He tries telling himself it’s not his fault; everything before that had gone exactly according to plan — well, exactly according to Annette’s plan, because Felix Hugo Fraldarius would never be caught dead proposing during a flashmob in the middle of an overcrowded plaza on a sunny Valentine’s Day if he had not been coerced by the tiny, warm, relentless hand of his too-excitable best friend. It’s so romantic, she had argued. No, he had answered. All the rage online, she had claimed. No, he had answered. You’ll be able to hire Dorothea’s dancing company, and if you cannot make her living with you and your future husband’s bottomless fortunes, you’re a class traitor, she had threatened. Okay, he had answered — and there they were.

At least, his and Sylvain’s far-left political views would not be compromised, he guesses.

“Ooh, let’s stay and watch!” Sylvain grins down at him like he’s trying to contend for a Closest-Match-to-the-Sun yearbook title, bouncing on the balls of his feet, swaying their joined hands to the rhythm of the music as Dorothea starts dancing in the middle of a group of people, who quickly make way and form a circle around her to watch. Felix finds solace in his annoyance when he realizes that it’s at the very least the right movie, and Dorothea mouths the words to the lyrics as other people join in and dance in the exact same way — we were seventeen, but he was sweet and it was true —, Sylvain singing along in that soft baritone he uses when he cooks and showers and sings Felix to sleep.

It’s one of Sylvain’s favorite movies, which means Felix hates it to his very core, and once again, the song isn’t the right one, it was supposed to be the song that makes him think about him and them and all these years they tiptoed around each other like the dumb not-adults they were at the time and Annette bursts out from behind a lamppost and fucking winks at him while she dances and he swears he’s going to destroy her next time they all have game night and the song changes and—

The song changes.

“What the fuck,” Felix says, and hears Sylvain say at the exact same time.

Felix chances a glance to him, red hair falling across his frown and hiding away the lines carving above his nose, the way they tend to carve when Sylvain is thinking particularly deeply about something, braincells working behind the mask of silliness and shallowness he shows like a shield and wields like a weapon. He seems… taken aback, somehow, like everything had been orchestrated according to his expectations and this is a wrench in his carefully-made plan. Felix doesn’t dwell on it; it’s the right song, now.

Dorothea is stepping around and along one of her dancers, long hair swaying in the movement as they perfectly reproduce the choreography of the movie; it wasn’t the important part, to Felix, that moment the ensemble soars with the rinforzando of the brass instruments as the piano fades, although it’s most certainly the most fun to listen to and watch — no, what mattered to Felix was the first part, the lyrics and the way Sylvain had crooned them in his ear in the dark of nighttide and the haze of the computer light, the shivers that had crawled right along every part of Felix as he died a little more inside with the simple wish to shush him with a kiss.

Sylvain is holding his hand, tight, as Felix looks at him with the weight of the four years between them, of the sixteen hours and five months and seven years since Felix has been found, just a boy going on eighteen meeting a nineteen-year-old asshole who would turn out to be the love of his life. It has never felt like fate, mostly because it is one of these things Felix does not believe in, like God or snake people or — jokingly — the existence of Australia; still, when he sees Sylvain’s chest rising and falling like moontide beneath the covers, or when he hears Sylvain’s voice singing silly love songs with the kind of seriousness only given to poetry, or when he feels Sylvain’s hand tighten even more over his as they look at the dancers swirling around the cobbled plaza, Felix cannot help but wonder if someone, somewhere, has made them for each other, has meant for their realities to collide and their essences to blend until they solely belong to the other.

The song has changed again, but Felix does not find the energy to care; Sylvain is hugging him by the waist as they see Dorothea fall into someone’s arms, her skirt whirling prettily in the wind as she spins, and Felix can feel the shape of the words Sylvain whispers in a breeze against his ear, comforting like coffee vapor and the ocean wind — city of stars, are you shining just for me, and Sylvain’s eyes have never seemed so bright when Felix looks back at him.

Felix wants to kiss him now, too, to keep this moment to themselves, stolen intimacies in the middle of a too-loud crowd as they clap for the company along the fading notes of the song, but the moment passes like car lights on pavement. Felix knows what is going to happen now, and takes a deep breath, because Dorothea is coming towards them, and she’ll take his hand and he’ll turn around and he’ll finally, finally ask.

But it’s Sylvain’s hand that Dorothea takes to guide them to the middle of the circle, the one that’s not fiddling with something in his coat, restless with the nervous energy of overthought; but it’s Sylvain who turns to Felix, lips parting on a heavy exhale like shedding the weight of a thousand cautions into the careless wind, eyes winter-sunlit with so much love and faith; but it’s Sylvain who gets down on one knee, fingers opening velvet over a gleam of silver, voice whispering his name like a presage, like a promise.

Oh, Felix thinks. Oh, Felix speaks.

Of course Sylvain would propose on Valentine’s Day.

“Hey, Fe,” Sylvain says, and Felix turns around and puts his face in his hands, and he’s pretty sure the breath he inhales echoes across the whole plaza when people start cheering.

He does not even wait for the rest of the sentence to find its way out of Sylvain’s mouth. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Sylvain’s laughter prisms honey and caramel and all things gold when Felix drags the heels of his palms across his eyelids. “Just say you do.”

Five deep breaths, a lightning quick ten-count, the sum of fifty thousand feelings in two single words which he leaves unsaid as he pulls his own ring out of his pocket, turns back around to see the expression on Sylvain’s face.

The thing he sees in Sylvain’s gaze and smile he cannot describe as anything else but pure, unadulterated love, and when Sylvain rises and hugs him and kisses him Felix forgets everything about their surroundings and loses himself in him.

(Dorothea tells them all the ad revenue from their proposal video will entirely go towards their wedding gift. She ends up single-handedly buying both their plane tickets for their honeymoon — one-way, Economy class. Felix wouldn’t have it any other way.)

***

In retrospect, Ashe realized Sylvain and Felix were made for each other the very first day they met.

Well, it was night, actually. Most precisely, it was Sylvain’s night, the night of his housewarming party, that ever-so-small flat where all his big and rich furniture took up too much space; it was very Sylvain, in a way, taking over the room and commanding attention and attracting notice no matter the circumstances. In that very room, that September night, that huge furniture was much more noticeable. Ashe had never seen a working desk so obviously expensive before.

Anyway. He’d made friends with Sylvain very early in the school year; he was two years older, and hid much better than Ashe the fact that he was as lost as him during the registration procedures, so Ashe had ended up asking him questions Sylvain did not have the answers to but pretended that he did, and they’d signed up to only two classes together because Sylvain could not be bothered picking classes earlier than 10am and Ashe was all about that early-bird-gets-the-lack-of-sleep-and-eye-circles back then. Still, these were the best classes of his semester, and Ashe quickly made a fast friend out of Sylvain, although he never came to the core curriculum classes and relied on Ashe to give him Google Docs he could watch being updated in real time; the other, best classes were the classes he shared with Felix, his prickly high school friend who’d decided to follow Ashe through his English major for no other reason than to spite his father, which was probably the reason why Felix did not have any friends besides Ashe and the small Earth-fallen star named Annette — the girl was as bright in disposition as she was in spirit, two years younger and way above them, dancing through life along quiet songs hummed to her own pace.

Which was how Felix ended up at Sylvain’s party that night; Sylvain had invited Ashe and Annette, telling them to bring their friends, and Felix had utterly refused to socialize until Ashe said he’d drag him along in exchange for doing his literature essay, something Ashe could see he completely regretted when Sylvain opened his front door and the lines on Felix’s face wrote the unwritten equivalent of Fuck.

The night was… a bit of a blur, if Ashe was being honest; it was his first, true college party, with a dozen people he did not care to truly know walking all over each other in a tiny apartment, and he thought he’d puked on the floor at one point — he cleaned it, of course, though he also thought his friendship with Sylvain was going to end as soon as it had started. He remembered Annette looking at Sylvain’s best friend? girlfriend? Ashe was not truly sure — looking at Sylvain’s probable-girlfriend like she was the eighth wonder of the world, with her long, fluffy hair and her kind eyes and her callipygian figure, but it would be strange for her to be his girlfriend, because Ashe could clearly see she was too good for the type of person Sylvain was, for only a gigantic asshole would completely ignore his divine girlfriend? best friend? for a random friend-of-a-friend with suitcases under his eyes and an ineptitude for conversation and an itch for fighting and-slash-or fucking that desperately needed to be scratched.

Ashe remembered laughter, booming and unrefined, spilling from Sylvain’s lips like liquor over sticky floorboards as he took Felix’s hand to try and teach him how to dance; he remembered Felix, flushed, flustered, furious, working through the motions of salsa dancing with an angry scowl on his face and a drunken glint in his eyes; he remembered Sylvain locking himself in his bathroom for thirty minutes when his apparently real girlfriend called him because he’d stood her up, dismissive and uncaring and the dark side of a swirling sun, until he’d come out to Felix leaving before everyone else and had chased after him under Ashe’s ever-watchful judgement.

Do you believe in soulmates? Sylvain asked him when he came back, a little bit more drunk, a little bit more real. Because we are, he and I, we’re soulmates, I’m sure of it, and perhaps, just perhaps, Sylvain José Gautier might have been right for the first time since Ashe met him.

Ashe hoped he was. If he wasn’t, well — Ashe knew many people in pretty low places who couldn’t wait to put him in a world of pain the day he chose to make Felix suffer.

***

The scent of butter and herbs sings a gentle sizzle in the pan, and Ingrid is crying. There are fat tears running along her cheeks and down her nose, dripping against her lips; she’s never looked prettier, not even all these years ago, knees skimmed red and dust-smeared face and autumn leaves in her hair as she’d fallen from that tree, trying to save a random stray cat. He’d seen her again at his new middle school, back then, playing football with the rest of the boys in the middle of the courtyard, racing toward the invisible goal circumscribed by crumpled sweaters and abandoned schoolbags and the very scared expression of the opposite would-be goalie, dodging every pair of feet aimed at her shins and every hand grasping at her braided hair, shooting and scoring dead center with a braced-up smile and an unbound soul.

“You have a very pretty smile,” he’d told her, truthful in a way he hadn’t been in years, not with girls, not with anyone, though half-meaning it anyway.

“We’re lacking in defense,” is what she’d answered as she had pointed to an empty space behind her, and Sylvain had known he’d just made his first true friend.

She’s not smiling, now, at least not where Sylvain can see her; her face is buried in the palm of her hands because she’d rather die than cry in Sylvain’s arms, now and ever, and she wipes them with the energy only anger and embarrassment and heartfelt desperation can infuse into one’s movements.

Sylvain laughs against his will. “What did you say again all these years ago? Don’t come to me when you end up crying?”

“Oh, shut up, Sylvain.”

“Which one do you prefer? Best man? Maid of honor?”

Ingrid huffs; her bobcut puffs along like the fur of a very angry pomeranian. She knows words don’t matter to him, not in the way they matter to her; they’re all wind and air and the shapeless wraiths of chemicals inside his lungs, spoken too numerous and too clamorous, taking space that would be better off breathed and exhaled by anyone else. She also knows Sylvain speaks what he means and means what he speaks, though not always to the degree other people think he means it; his truths are sotto voce and chiaroscuro, betrayed by the silence in commonplaceness and view-less rooms like this one, the way he’s just told her I love you, be my witness.

She distracts herself by basting the steaks Sylvain’s cooking in butter and sage; Felix is at Glenn’s, probably in the exact same situation asking the exact same question, though with the way Sylvain knows they are, the talk is probably much less emotional. “So you’re asking me what term I prefer, but you won’t call Felix your fiancé?”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow. Ingrid knows so many things, including his opinion on the word — not enough, never enough, in the way six simple letters and three syllables will never encompass the depth of his feelings towards the probable love of his life, in the way husband won’t do either a year down the line, but will still be a little closer. Felix asked him, anyway, not to call him that, asked him not to change Sylvain’s words of love and affection for him just because of that, asked him to keep calling him all the silly pet names and all the words full of heart Felix will deny he loves until he’s buried six feet under.

“Is that a yes?” He asks Ingrid instead, flicking her on the nose.

“You’re insufferable.” Her tears have dried a little, iodine dregs on her pale skin like the ocean’s lowering tide, her simple makeup mimicking sea tangles on an otherwise pristine shore. “You know what — no.”

Sylvain frowns in almost-offense. It’s unexpected, which means Sylvain, ever so calculating, hates it. “What— why?”

“Promise me to call Felix your fiancé at least once and I’ll do it.” She’s smirking, something she’d learnt from Sylvain himself all these years ago; honestly, Sylvain would be proud if it wasn’t at his expense.

“Fine,” he sighs. “So? Be my best man?”

“Your maid of honor.”

It only makes sense. Ingrid has always been all about honor, after all. When he bends to kiss her on the forehead, tears threatening to fall over his cheeks as well, she punches him in the arm, screaming about how he’s now a man spoken for, that he shouldn’t be so liberal with his affections anymore. He probably deserves it, he thinks, so he laughs and laughs and laughs and buries his head in the crook of her shoulder.

***

If she had to pick an exact moment among the numerous times she saw the both of them together, Ingrid realized Sylvain and Felix were made for each other the day Felix most got on her nerves.

You know, the main problem was — it was supposed to be a fun day, for everyone involved, which is what Sylvain had said to convince her to come in the first place. Ingrid had never been particularly interested in music, though she had an immense amount of respect for the artists, and the dedication and hours of hard work they all put in their craft; it just had never been the kind of thing she would lose herself into for fun or relaxation, not in the way Sylvain did ever since they’d been young — she much preferred to pore over books and novels and tales, picturing herself gallant knight in one story and daring heroine the next, dreaming of faraway lands like one would dream along guitar chords and tablatures. There probably was something too realistic, in music, too close to the world she knew; that kind of escapism had never worked for her, not the way it worked for Sylvain, blasting songs at every hour of the day — in his headphones on their way to and back from school, on speakers when he reluctantly did his homework locked-up in his room, through the small radio on his desk each night he went to sleep, everything to drown out the persistent voices around him and his own ineradicable thoughts, both seeping venom of a different kind into his bloodstream.

Perhaps this was why she’d been a little happy when Sylvain had asked her; he rarely let her into his own world, and surely if his ever-thinking mind were to take the shape of real-life scenery, what better analogy would it be than a music festival, filled with as many meaningless voices as deafening sounds of instruments, a place of intimate solitude surrounded by a jungle of people?

She definitely had not thought, when she’d agreed to come with him, that she would end up having to basically watch Sylvain pine over his not-boyfriend for hours.

She got along surprisingly well with most of Sylvain’s college friends, considering they did not go to the same university and did not see each other outside of the random parties Sylvain sometimes decided to throw; Sylvain had always been the type to gather more greedy acquaintances and interested companionship rather than genuine friendships, and seeing him finally starting to open up and surrounding himself with good people warmed up Ingrid’s heart like her favorite meal. Ashe was refreshingly optimistic, understanding in a way that did not let Sylvain get off with half-assed excuses for his more problematic behaviors, Dorothea, for all her constant flirting with everyone including Ingrid herself, seemed kind and authentic in a way not a lot of people had ever been with Sylvain, and Annette, oh, Annette was just joy made woman, rising sunlight on cold winter mornings.

Frankly, Felix was the only issue here.

To be perfectly fair, she had not been the nicest to him when they’d all met up earlier in the afternoon, on the edge of the big park where the music festival had been set up; he had not been particularly approachable either, and they’d settled on merely nodding at each other in acknowledgement from far away, nothing like the greeting he had given Annette as she’d rushed in his arms to hug him around the waist, a pat on the head and the fondest gaze. She’d risen on her tiptoes to kiss him on both cheeks, and Ingrid had looked at Sylvain, wondering whether she’d see jealousy in the lines of his face or sorrow in the curve of his shoulders; she’d seen simple cheer instead, in the hues of early summer that freckled light over his skin, in the infinitesimal way the corners of his lips rose to crease the lines around his eyes — honesty had never been his best look, but it was still the one Ingrid preferred on him.

It was unfathomable to her; Ingrid never was one to give much importance to emotions, never did put emphasis on crushes or romance, but surely someone like Sylvain, much better-versed in the ways of the heart and human relationships, would understand that his crush had already been spoken for?

Most unfathomable to her was the way Felix, who seemed to be more or less aware of Sylvain’s obnoxious flirting and obvious feelings for him — because if Ingrid could see it, it would be a wonder if anyone was blind enough not to notice — both continued letting Annette get away with each little attention she had for him the whole afternoon as well as entertaining Sylvain’s every whim. For each caramelized gaze he threw at Annette, he let Sylvain prop his arm over his shoulders; for each half-reluctant word of attention he had for her, he bought Sylvain one of the delicious, organic sorbet-lollies he and Ingrid had immediately honed in upon seeing the stand; for each giggle he stifled when he heard Annette sing along the songs, he gave Sylvain the passive-aggressive roll of eyes Ingrid started to recognize each time Sylvain danced alongside him and tried to pull him along.

Ingrid truly thought she’d relish the day when Sylvain would get a taste of his own bittersweet medicine, when he wouldn’t be the player but the played, when the game would slip away from his control and his recklessly calculated strategy would turn on him; yet it was almost pitiful, watching Sylvain trying so hard only not to get his way, which ended up in him trying harder and hardest and still not getting his way, on and on and on like the spinning records on the DJ’s mixing table. As it stood, it chipped at her heart, the way Felix was obviously playing with and stringing her best friend along while his almost-girlfriend laughed as though she knew the punchline yet did not get the joke.

The worst part, Ingrid thought, had definitely been when she’d been all but left behind in the middle of the audience as another concert ended and the people started moving to other stages, only to spot Felix pulling Sylvain along by the hand and spitting inaudible sentences dipped in stinging poison, Sylvain looking like he’d just died and ascended right to a place in heaven overflowing with ambrosia and overcrowded with virgins. Even when they’d extricated from the rest of the show-goers, Felix had not let go of Sylvain’s hand, and Ingrid had raised her eyes to the sky in both prayer and disgust, and when she’d looked again they were nowhere to be seen.

She found them a whole fifteen minutes later, which was a miracle in the only outdoor place where there did not seem to be any phone service, waiting in queue to get beers, Ashe, Annette and Dorothea sitting on their jackets not far away and eating some overpriced veggie burgers with the dignity only dusty sunny days and dirty fingers wrapped in hand towels allowed. Annette, the absolute angel no one — and especially not Felix — deserved, offered her a burger and some incredibly crispy sweet potato fries, and everything would have been right with the world again if Felix had not told her to “find herself a boyfriend” to buy her all this stuff instead of bleeding Annette’s meager salary dry, and had she not liked food that much she’d have thrown the rest of the burger in his face.

They were making their way to one of the last concerts of the day when Sylvain finally unglued himself from Felix’s overall lack of attention, as though he’d finally found the dictionary definition of free will, and jogged backwards to her as she discussed with Ashe the latest episode of the heroic fantasy show they were both following almost religiously.

“Hey,” Sylvain said, soft, once Ashe was back to talking to Dorothea. “...Are you okay?”

His gaze was a timestamped mirror of her own, worried and a little bit annoyed, golden sand trickling in an hourglass of recollections; you’re the one I should ask that to, she thought, for she knew better than anyone the hundreds of theories shapeshifting inside his mind at all times, for she knew them better than he did, most probably. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she answered instead.

Sylvain frowned in the way he rarely frowned, strangely serious, like he used to do when his ever-pacific self decided to finally lay his fear of conflict aside and confront the people who needed a wake-up call. “You do know you haven’t smiled all day, right?”

Ingrid froze in her steps.

She hadn’t realized; her smiles were of a different ilk than Sylvain’s, small affirmations and rare tokens of approval, and not teethy, never teethy, not with that gap between her front incisors that she used to hide with her tongue when she was eight, not with these braces that she had to wear from ten to seventeen and had given her another excuse to lose herself into work and studies, all to forget the voices of others. Sylvain had been the only one to compliment her smile, when he’d arrived in her middle school, possibly ever, probably interestedly; it’d had no effect on her, and when Sylvain had realized it’d had no effect on her she’d just made a new best friend.

“... I just don’t know how you manage to stand it,” she admitted; Sylvain would have seen right through her anyway.

Instead, the words seemed to make him more confused than anything else. “What?”

She dragged her hand across her face, smearing dust all over the skin, something Hilda would very probably kill her for one day. Ingrid had always thought the truth hurt less than lies; it did not mean it was easy to say either. “I mean, Annette is all over him, too, don’t you realize?”

And then, something incredible: Sylvain’s eyes went comically round, the way they’d been when they were younger and more naïve, chocolate truffles glazed all over, before they closed over a raucous, unfettered laugh, the kind that made people turn around and stare in wonder and laugh along without reason. Sylvain’s laughter had always been infectious, had grown on her over the years like fungus, the sound a burning sun would make if it knew how to produce noise. She wondered, distantly, if Felix was watching, too; if he, too, was spellbound by the siren song of Sylvain’s snicker, so enamored in the melody he’d follow along with a laugh of his own.

“Ingrid.” Sylvain started again once he caught his breath, wiping dramatic, unshed tears at the corner of his eyes. “Babe. Annie’s a lesbian.”

Ingrid stared at him. “She’s what.”

“You know,” Sylvain said with a vague motion of his hand, a derisive flick of his wrist paced along the flutter of his eyelashes as he blinked. “Doesn’t eat sausage? Loves grapefruit? A full-on vegan—”

“Oh my god, shut up.”

Another snicker, this one closer to a graceless snort, closer to the reality of Sylvain’s being. “Listen, love. Just trust me, okay?” He laid a hand on her shoulder, curled his fingers in and pushed with his palm in the most gentle pressure, and she had the distinct sensation of being reassured out of her childish nightmares, her brothers allowing her to cry herself to sleep next to them as they watched a movie on the couch past her bedtime.

She shrugged his hand off, mostly because she knew it would not offend him. “When has this ever been a good idea?”

“I don’t know, really.” He stretched his arms behind his head, like he used to do when he tried to pretend he had not thought hard about a question, his hands linking in a cat’s cradle as he laid his head in their crux. “But… I have a good feeling about this.” His laughter was softer, this time, a breath of wind in the late-spring evening, sighed like the wistful expression of a silly remembrance. “Something like fate...?”

It was Ingrid’s turn to frown again. Her face took back on the familiar lines of it like a well-worn mask. “You don’t believe in fate.”

“Maybe it’s time I start.”

Insufferable had always been her favorite adjective for Sylvain’s everything; his smile at that moment was not an exception. She passed him when she started to make her way to the others again, all waiting, Felix’s gaze insistent and curious as it flitted from Sylvain to her, a wary cat across a street wondering if the neighbor is coming to pet it. “... Just don’t come to me when you end up crying, alright?”

“Come on, Ingrid,” Sylvain laughed in place of a proper answer, that infuriating grin and that teasing glint in his irises shining in a way that could rival Polaris, tugging her along by the arm as people ran around them to get to the next stage, “learn to have a little fun, would you? For me?”

Ingrid could not see what could be fun about getting pushed around by sweaty people dancing and screaming off-key — which was the worst part of it all, truly; Ingrid had always been of the belief that if you wished to sing, you could at least try and make it sound good — but when they reached another stage, soaring above a small clearing framed by trees, spring leaves braided up with fairy lights and flower garlands, sunset nitescent through the gaps in foliage in a dozen shades of red she never had the words for — when she saw Sylvain leave room for Annette to get on his shoulders should she wish to, and Felix sliding next to him and drinking a sip from Sylvain’s glass, and Ashe helping Dorothea fix back the flower crown on Annette’s brow with pins and elaborate tangles of red hair — when the lights dimmed as the band made its way onto the stage floor, instruments glittering as they picked them up with deft fingers and foreign cries all chanting in unison in celebration of their arrival, the first notes resounding in rousing ripples over the screams and clapping, hundreds of voices singing the first words with the exact same energy — when she realized, halfway through the concert, that she’d started dancing without caring who’d see or who’d judge, her hair flowing freely since Dorothea had helped her undo her brain, and Annette climbed down from Sylvain’s shoulders to dance with Ashe, and Sylvain shouted the words to the song though the truest grin she’d ever seen him wear, hands beating the air in time with the drums and red hair swaying wildly as he danced, looking beautiful and jubilant and real — when the piano notes along the parting song rang through her bones, when she saw the way Felix looked at him through disheveled hair and eyes half-concealed by long lashes and Sylvain’s fingers dimming the lights, when she saw the blush flare on his face as Sylvain bent forward and whispered the lyrics in his ear, but you’re still the one pool where I’d happily drown, when she saw that sea of people around them all looking forward and Felix only looking at him —

Then, she finally allowed herself to smile.

***

Dimitri’s sister looks at Felix, dead in the eye. “If Hubert’s not invited, I’m not coming.”

“Who even said—” you were invited, Felix fails to finish when both Sylvain and Dimitri put their hands over his mouth; he truly has herculean force of will, he thinks to himself when he refrains from biting their fingers bloody.

“Sorry, Edie.” Sylvain winks at Edelgard, who only regards him with the cool, expressionless gaze Felix has been so used to seeing since high school; the years had been eventful and change-laden for both Felix and Dimitri, but Edelgard remains her own fifteen-year-old equal, even now, as a successful politician, as Dimitri’s dearest sister and bitterest rival. “Felix here has apparently been raised by wolves or something.”

“Such great parents-in-law they’ll make,” she deadpans.

“Dimitri, I love your sister so much,” Sylvain says, and Felix hits him in the arm when Sylvain releases him.

Dimitri looks as lost and overwhelmed as ever, Felix thinks as he looks at him; the hair that’s not pulled into a half-ponytail is falling into his eyes, blue as peace as they glance from one person to the other like a camera refocusing. It’s so different from the moods Felix has seen him in across the years that it’s almost frightening in itself, it almost brings him back a decade earlier when the only things he could feel when he looked at Dimitri was anger, and terror, and ice and ice and ice. It remains fresh in his mind, the image of Glenn’s skin bubbling and burning in awful, charred pieces as he got Dimitri out of the fire, of Dimitri carelessly kicking him away to go back inside, to reach for the people Felix knew were dead by now, of Glenn’s arm bending at a sickly angle as Felix tried his best to wipe the tears off his face. Today, Dimitri had been crying instead, contrasting himself and the biased, ugly picture Felix had gotten used to painting of him as though repeating aquarelle strokes over an ever-darkening canvas; he’d been the most disgusting and endearing thing Felix has ever seen, when Sylvain and Felix had walked into his office to ask him to personally marry them, and for all the sass and annoyance Edelgard had for her step-brother, her gaze had frozen over when she’d seen Dimitri crying. Speak or you’re losing your heads, she’d told Sylvain and Felix, physically, and they’d had no choice but to tell her about the wedding.

“In any case.” Edelgard’s eyes are sharp and her voice is sharper as she stares at them. “Dorothea didn’t tell me you two were engaged.”

“They did not want to make a big deal out of it,” Dimitri defends them, for some reason.

“We’re partners, not fucking star-crossed lovers, or something,” Felix says, and it sounds like a lie against his own tongue, somehow, as he tastes all the times he’s wished he would have done something, anything, to show Sylvain how he felt about him — back during their first festival, back during their years and years of mutual classes and mutual parties, back during the night Felix had wanted to kiss him most; do you wanna stay, Sylvain had asked back then, his fingers barely holding onto Felix’s as he was about to cross the doorway; and Felix had almost said yes, had almost said nothing at all and let the shape of his lips and the taste of his tongue do the talking, but then there had been the distant sound of Dimitri puking and Sylvain’s wince of worry and Felix, hidden, hopeless romantic that he had always been, truly did not imagine the start of his happiness unravelling to the background noise of Dimitri’s sickness, so he’d left with nothing but a squeeze of fingers and a simple thank you whispered like a kiss.

Edelgard gasps like they committed an offense against the whole mayoral office. For some reason, people keep entering all states of insanity each time Felix and Sylvain refer to each other as anything else but fiancés; it seems she’s no exception.

“You’re not partners. You’re fiancés.”

Felix groans at the same time Sylvain coughs uncomfortably. Dimitri’s fists clench lightly, the only sign of disagreement he shows in public against his big sister, nowadays, the sole remnant of years of fostered and festered rivalry engineered by Edelgard’s own father.

“I’m serious,” Edelgard keeps on before Felix has the time to tune her out. “It feels… wrong, somehow. Like you’re diminishing each other and the importance of marriage. You two should be aware of that, especially as a gay couple.”

Sylvain’s arm curls across Felix’s waist. “So what? Just because we’re together means everything we do should be a political statement?”

“I agree,” Dimitri says, and Felix is about to whirl into him and scream at him, until he sees these icy, cruel eyes of his, that made him despise his best and only friend for years and years, staring stalactites into Edelgard. “Perhaps you like seeing yourself as the physical expression of your own beliefs, El, but not everybody does.”

Sylvain and Dimitri look at Felix as though they’re expecting him to speak, as though he’s not tired, too, of always fighting for the right to exist as himself.

Felix looks at Dimitri’s sister, dead in the eye. “You’re uninvited.”

***

Simply put, Dimitri realized Sylvain and Felix were made for each other the night he got very, very drunk — absolutely plastered was the exact expression Claude used to employ when retelling the tale — on Ingrid’s twentieth birthday party.

It truly was one of the most... adventurous moments of his life, but it was also the definite moment when Felix and him began to mend their previous, wrecked friendship, so he could not exactly complain. Felix was his dear friend, after all, although he clearly did not see Dimitri that way at that moment in time; Dimitri could not blame him, not after what had happened to Felix’s mother and Dimitri’s parents all these years ago, not after Rodrigue had started putting Dimitri’s grief and guilt and growth before that of his own son, not after Dimitri had taken it in stride and failed to notice how badly Felix was hurting.

But this was no moment to revisit the ghosts of times past, no occasion to linger on what could no longer be unbroken.

For once, the voices inside his head had quieted to a rustling murmur, a companionable white noise, background to the pleasant buzz coursing through his veins as Dimitri drank his fifth 30cl cocktail. Dimitri had never been a lightweight; he couldn’t be, with his size and strength and the Eastern European and Welsh origins his friends often remarked on in these kinds of situations, and his usual nights out in their company ended up with him carrying almost all of them to safety while they lost themselves and others in drunken antics, ranging from the simple too-loud songs intoned in the middle of the subway to the almost-falls into the river when they walked along the quays. He was often helped by Mercedes, Sylvain’s friend from law school and a decisive menace — the woman could drink, and drink, and drink, and remain fresh as morning dew and sweet as tequila sunrise, ever present to chide their mutual friends when they were out of line. In another world, he probably would have been very, very scared of her, he mused.

This was part of Dimitri’s issue that night; Mercedes had not been able to make it to the party because of the amount of work she had to pore over before finals week, and he clearly had drunk too much to be the voice of reason, let alone any voice at all. Apparently, the only thing he was lucid enough to do was giggle at Ingrid’s increasingly-exasperated face and Sylvain’s stupid jokes to Claude’s exchange-year friend, who’d come to visit him for the winter holidays. Dimitri had overheard a bit of conversation, at the beginning of the night, back when he had only been on his first-and-a-half drink, of Lorenz telling Claude how he bet he could charm and spend the night with Sylvain even though he was not particularly interested, just to prove he could, could be the one to make Sylvain snap out of his promise to stop sleeping around with anyone and anything. Dimitri had been angry on Sylvain’s behalf and angrier on Felix’s, angriest, who had also heard some pieces of the discussion and had therefore spent his entire night mulling over a half-finished beer bottle while glaring daggers at anyone who dared move in his close proximity instead of, you know, being an adult and warning Sylvain and perhaps kissing him himself. Lord knew both of them needed that.

Dimitri had been about to go tell Lorenz off himself, in fact, and tell Sylvain, but then there had been Green River in his glass and green in Claude’s eyes when he smiled at him and green lights shining off the walls as Claude dragged him outside to keep him company for a smoke and Dimitri had forgotten everything else.

Which led him to his current predicament, consisting in a strange ache in his stomach and throat that he drunkenly identified as nausea, though whether it was because of the number of drinks swirling inside him or Lorenz’s tongue swirling inside Sylvain’s mouth he could not be too sure. Probably the former. The world spun a little, on the edge of his vision, daze-blurred in shimmers of contentment and joyful peace, and Dimitri did not want to lose the feeling, got up from the table, ricocheted down the bar stairs with a tilt in his smile and footing. The high, brick ceiling above his head seemed to arch away as he opened the bathroom door and knelt in front of the toilet seat.

Dimitri had done that before, had done that a lot — for drinks; for other things, too, back when guilt was eating him from the inside on all-too-many dark nights and darker days, the gesture made so easy, too easy, by his nonexistent sense of taste — but here, all he wanted was to be able to savor happiness and friendship and warmth a little longer, and so he replaced the sweet flavor of the cocktail by the bland flavor of his own fingers as he bent down to his task.

Five minutes and the uncomfortable, unsavory, un-inhabitual sounds reverberating against the tiled floor later, there was the distant drumbeat of feet against wooden stairs, of a voice he knew well and liked more, bright with something like worry.

“Dimitri? You there, buddy?”

Dimitri kicked the door open and turned to Sylvain, standing in the middle of the hallway. He could not quite look Sylvain in the eye, but the lopsided smile he wore faded down into compassion and pity.

“You okay?” Sylvain carded long fingers into Dimitri’s hair, pushing the bangs falling in his face back over to him, soothing circles of warmth into Dimitri’s back as he exhaled labored, stale-stained breaths.

“I’m good! I’ll be back in two!” Dimitri answered still, bright, because he truly did feel like enjoying the night more; just a little more, and the alcohol would be out of his system, and he would be able to come back up and party with all of them.

“Baby,” Sylvain sighed in half-drunk affection, “you’ve been down here for thirty minutes.”

That gave Dimitri pause. He could have sworn he’d been there for merely five, just enough time to properly wash away the toxins in the hazy whirlpool of the toilet flush.

“What? No, I wasn’t.”

Sylvain merely raised an eyebrow, the gesture strangely reminiscent of Felix’s, something Sylvain had probably picked up in the two and a half years they’d all known each other — and in that very moment, Dimitri realized his childhood best friend was loved, truly.

Though perhaps it was just the dizziness and nausea, he thought as Sylvain dragged him back up.

I’ll get you home, love, Sylvain kept whispering in his ear on the way up as each step made Dimitri lurch forward and struggle to keep everything inside him, and he could see why Felix had fallen for him, too; when they reached the top of the stairs, Felix’s gaze snapped up to them, annoyance effervescing into worried surprise like aspirin in a glass, glancing from Sylvain to Dimitri to Sylvain again.

“He’s been puking,” Sylvain said when Felix stepped up to them, half-full beer bottle forgotten on a nearby table.

“No shit,” Felix answered, acerbic like the taste of iron in Dimitri’s mouth, and Dimitri stuck a hand to his mouth and kept it there, because he would not give Felix another reason to hate him even more.

Dimitri barely registered the words people exchanged around him, the concerned lilt in Claude’s voice, the distressed glint in Ingrid’s eyes, the guilt crawling up his oesophagus like a dozen spiders; he focused on Felix’s gaze instead, sharp copper when it glared into a sheepish Lorenz, rich coffee when it stared at Dimitri himself, soft sunstone when it watched Sylvain’s face and smile and expressions.

The rest of the night blurred midnight-colored; there was the barest remembrance of Sylvain’s soft voice, I’ll bring you to my place, okay, you’ll sleep over, it’ll be nice, the sharp angles of Felix’s arms into his body when Felix helped Sylvain support his sick self along the streets and metro lines as he stopped every few metres to empty his stomach into the gutter, the shared, secret glances and half-laughs he could perceive between his two friends as they quietly walked Dimitri to Sylvain’s building.

Dimitri unceremoniously dropped on the floor of Sylvain’s bathroom as soon as he arrived, under Sylvain’s amused gaze and Felix’s disgusted snarl.

“Do you wanna stay?” he thought he heard Sylvain ask, distant like the song of ocean wind, and the sickness overtook him before he could hear Felix’s answer.

Felix replied to Dimitri’s interrogation himself a few minutes later, when Dimitri felt something buzz in the pocket of his trousers as he was brushing his teeth and clearing up his throat.

Hey, the text began, and Dimitri thought it strange in a nice way, that the word was not followed by boar of whatever derogatory word-of-the-day Felix could come up with. I know you feel like you’ve ruined Ingrid’s night, probably. Well, at least you saved mine. I couldn’t stand seeing Sylvain and that purple-haired pompous asshole making out in front of me, and I’m pretty sure I would have snapped if we didn’t have to go. If you’ve done it on purpose because you saw I was mad, don’t do that ever again. I can take care of myself.

Dimitri remembered thinking they were both so incredibly stupid there was no way on Earth Felix and Sylvain were not made for each other, and laughed so hard he started vomiting again.

We’ll laugh about it in a few years, Dimitri said, and Dimitri smiled, and Dimitri spent the worst night in his life, sick and stale and certain he would not be proven wrong.

***

See, the main reason why Sylvain dislikes calling Felix his fiancé resides in other people. He remembers studying the concept in his high school philosophy class — homo homini lupus est, and l’enfer c’est les autres, and whatever Kant said about nature and discordance; all the things he pretended not to know and not to care about, all the concepts that kept him up at night when he wondered whether love and hate were two sides of the same coppery coin, all the times he tried to tell himself any attention was good attention, no matter the very deplorable reasons he tried to get it. Even now, he often speculates on the inherent benevolence of people, often dissects the evils he knows and the goods he doesn’t, threads red along the pictures on the pinboard that’s his mind to try and find the best to blame for the events he’s lived through; it’s always easier, somehow, to condemn the whole of mankind’s nature for a particular someone’s nurtured deeds, to wave it off as humanity’s essence, to hurt and be hurt by others, just as it is easier to try and focus on the faded corners of a mirror rather than on the blaring imperfections spotting the face in the middle like an outward expression of all the guilt he swears he does not feel. Sylvain likes to think he was born a good person, and that as people stripped it away from him like they stripped him out of his clothes and skin and self, Felix later came and covered his bare shoulders with the tatters that had been torn from Sylvain and by Sylvain, had the courage to spot the threads of decency in his rag doll heart, and sewed them back up in the flawed, warm gossamer of what it once was. Sylvain still hopes that someday, somehow, he’ll be able to be good enough for Felix, to repay him ten times over for everything he’s been for Sylvain; but when he hears Ingrid complaining about how he has not called Felix his fiancé proper yet, when his tongue slips and he says the word to a random acquaintance and they launch on a thirty-minute, PowerPoint-less presentation about unwanted wedding advice on cakes and flowers and rented inns in the countryside, when he sees his father sneer the syllables along his disgusting teeth and thin little mouth until it takes on the sound of not good enough, never enough — a burial-deep, spite-darkened part of him finds the guts to spill the most vindictive euphemisms for the apostrophe, from “companion in lovemaking” to “most esteemed fuck buddy” to “legal benefitter”.

In short, Sylvain decides, wedding preparations should have their own circle in Hell.

“You know, you have to have orchids,” Hilda’s soprano sings through his phone, the videochat lighting up his face better than any light seeping through the windows of the flower shop. “Caspar and Linhardt had orchids at their wedding, and it changed the whole tone of their photos!”

“I’m… pretty sure Fe’s allergic to those,” Sylvain answers when he sees more than he hears Felix’s sneeze across the shop as he sniffs in the flowers’ general direction. Annette hands him a tissue with a fond, disgusted look, saying something about snot and dripping, from what he can read upon her lips; Felix’s sneeze face has always been the cutest to Sylvain anyway, even when he’d been horribly flu-ridden and confined to his bed for days and getting fluids on every square centimeter of his sheets — Sylvain had taken two days off of work to take care of him, and when he’d come back to Felix’s flat on the third day with homemade soup from one of his coworkers Felix had asked him to live with him.

“A pity,” Hilda says in a way that can only mean and why should I care. She’s been on the phone for more than ten minutes now, always rambling about which flowers her girlfriend Marianne has told her were best in colors and significances for a marriage ceremony, which petals would best compliment his and Felix’s eyes when they’d wear them in the pockets of their suits — Sylvain’s cousin Ferdinand had come for the suit tailoring, because his boyfriend, despite his hair and his face and his everything, really, works in a custom-suit shop, and it had been an awful moment for everyone involved, mostly because they’d all realized at the exact same moment Ferdinand was Felix’s first boyfriend from high-school and no one had bothered to say anything about that before the very same instant they met again.

“Hey, Syl, look what I finished!” Claude’s voice rings distant and crescendo until he comes into view behind Hilda, waving a couple of cardboard paper cards in his hands. They’re a pale, powdery peach, the hue of Felix’s blush and Sylvain’s favorite roses, golden ink glinting in the light as Claude moves them around for Sylvain to appreciate, calligraphed F and S blending in one of the corners and distracting from the message Sylvain decided on in the middle. “Your STDs.”

“Please don’t call them that,” Sylvain sighs as Claude bursts out laughing, Hilda snickering as she reads the wedding invitation aloud — Come celebrate the legal binding of White Boy 1 to White Boy 2, 18 party, fuck off at 3am. It had been both his and Felix’s idea, another numerous middle finger at everyone who tried to force their way into the preparations, and Claude had been more than happy to use the numerous contacts he somehow had in edition and print to get them customized save-the-dates on amazingly pricey paper. “Are Felix’s done yet?”

“Nope, still working on them. They’ll be even more amazing, don’t worry.” Claude’s wink is a blur on the screen, but Sylvain knows it so well he can picture it in his head anyway; it’s been the same since high school, since he was held back in second year and his new classmate Hilda introduced him to her genius, first-year best friend. They’d been Ingrid’s own chaotic whirlwind since then, the four of them spending days half-studying and nights full-on playing, when Sylvain was not out at another girl’s place to escape his newly Miklan-less home, was not busy fleeing from himself through evenings fucking women he did not care about and who cared too much about his name, his looks, his money, about all the things he’d never deserved and had been handed on a silver platter and had kept being half-killed for from years four to sixteen, punishing the girls as much as he punished himself through false love and fleeting touches.

“They better be,” Sylvain teases with a small smile. “When’s the last time anyone received a non-invitation? They better be the best they can be.”

Contrary to the real invitations, this had been purely Felix’s idea — to write people they did not want there a fake save-the-date card. It was, strangely, more traditional and sentimental than what Sylvain had written for the true invitations, another knife twist in the wounds they’d dig into the hearts of the ones who tried and tell them how to live their own ceremony, with a dash of Felix’s hidden romantic side: Together with our friends, Felix and Sylvain would like to invite you to suck it and bask in our happiness, your bitterness, and our mutual irritation at each other’s existence, as we completely ignore yours and celebrate our marriage without you. There will be a lovely ceremony, followed by cake, food, and general merriment. And you’re not invited to any of it. Go fuck yourself. A handwritten copy still sits on the desk in their study, neatly addressed to Sylvain’s father. Sylvain still does not know if he’ll truly send it, but the sentiment and Felix’s lips on his forehead after he’d finished writing it in Sylvain’s stead had been enough to abate a little of his fear.

“Claude,” Mercedes’ sweet, angelic voice drifts from Sylvain’s side as she comes into view of his phone, “I would love to chat about Sylvain’s STDs later, but I must remind you we have to go to cake tasting in an hour, and the flowers have not been picked yet.”

“Can everyone just please stop calling them STDs,” Sylvain whines as Mercedes and Claude giggle their goodbyes and the screen turns back to Sylvain’s wallpaper, a simple selfie of him kissing Felix’s cheek; the florist glances at them with a very concerned look in her eye when she hears the word being repeated again, before she shuffles to the back of the shop when Sylvain tries and tell her it’s not what it sounds like.

“Let’s take a little break?” Mercedes says as she stares holes into his whole façade, like she’s done ever since he’s met her, back on that first day of law school his father forced him to attend when he graduated high school; he was late to his first class, the amphitheater full of people except on the front rows, and he’d slid next to her and her long, fluffy blonde hair smelling like spring and good fortune. She’d offered him a homemade cookie when she’d heard his stomach growl, and the notes from the beginning of the class, and it would have been love at first sight, really, if he’d been able to bring himself to love anyone yet. As it stood, it had merely been one of the most auspicious meetings of his life, and if it wouldn’t have created a downright diplomatic incident, he would probably have asked her to be his maid of honor instead of Ingrid. Mercedes had been here through it all, both before and after Felix, a compass and a map as Sylvain navigated the dark, unknown depths of a true relationship; she’d been here for their first anniversary, for their first moving-in, for their first fight, too. It had been about Felix not washing the dishes until they built a disgusting, ungodly simulacrum of the Tower of Pisa in the sink, and what should have been a small, firm conversation about cleanliness had escalated into an hour-long fight that had ended up with Sylvain slamming the front door and sleeping at Mercedes’ for the night. Mercedes is as understanding as she’s forthright, and that night, she’d let Sylvain cry in her arms for hours as she rubbed soothing circles between his shoulderblades and chided him for the things he’d said and the way he’d fled both conflict and a healthy resolution, as was so often habit for him. Sylvain had broken down even more — he distantly remembers having told her she wasn’t his therapist and it was unfair of him to do this to her while she could be enjoying the night with her girlfriend instead, the ugly shadow of his self-loathing clouding and curling into his core like cold, comforting covers; no, I’m not, she’d said, I’m your friend, and friends don’t mind doing this for each other, and he’d come home at seven in the morning with a warm bag of pastries and a hundred apologies and a thousand words of love left unsaid in the wake of Felix’s mouth on his.

Even now, Sylvain is mildly afraid of how much she sees through him, and he settles on an upturned bucket to sit and rub his face in his hands. “I’m okay,” he whispers, reassuring and a little fake. “It’s just. A little overwhelming. Am I— Am I doing this all wrong? Are we supposed to keep antagonizing everyone just to prove a stupid point?”

She strokes his hair a little, like a sister, always like a sister, and Sylvain wonders if he’d turned out differently, had he received that kind of love throughout the years. Her voice is soft as cotton when she speaks. “Does it hurt? That you keep calling him things like that?”

“If it’d hurt Felix, trust me, I’d know it by now.”

“That’s not what I mean, Sylvain. Does it hurt you?”

It doesn’t, not really, Sylvain thinks, but he’s numbed himself to the sting of words and the burn of stares so much in his life that it barely crosses his mind that it isn’t normal; Mercedes had noticed it, once, as she did all things, the way Sylvain would sometimes say the most disturbing things about himself with a flat voice and a surprising lack of any emotion — because it is nothing but simple fact for him, the deepest truth he’s ever known, that he’s just another mediocre existence in the grand scheme of things, insignificant and undeserving. He says them with a shrug, and a smile, and a dismissive wave of hand, and the few times people agree with him fill up his lungs with nothing but cold indifference.

Sylvain doesn’t answer, and Mercedes gently slaps his cheek. “For what it’s worth, I can see how much you love him. Everyone blessed with eyesight can see it. And isn’t that enough, in the end?”

Sylvain looks at her, a little lost. “But I want to cherish him. I want everyone to know how much I cherish him.”

“Then do it,” Mercedes says, as though it’s the simplest thing in the world, and perhaps, perhaps it is.

Sylvain rises and makes his way through the shop, curls his arms around Felix, buries his nose in the crook of his neck under Annette’s cheeky gaze.

“Fe,” he asks, and he’s never been more unsure, not even in all the pretense of self-assurance he’s made himself live through, “you do know I love you for real, right?”

Felix huffs in irritation even as he threads his fingers in the gaps between Sylvain’s own. “No,” he says, and Sylvain freezes. “In fact,” and Sylvain feels him shift until Felix faces him, takes Sylvain’s face in his hands, one of the most gentle touches Felix has ever had for him, “I thought until right this moment that it was all an elaborate scheme to spite your father and that we were only fake dating like in these trashy novels of yours for four years.” Felix rolls his eyes and presses against his cheeks harder, the way he does when Sylvain infuriates him enough that he’ll kiss Sylvain silly if only to keep him from talking more. “All the dates, the kissing, the sex—”

“I don’t wanna hear it,” Annette says as she runs back into Mercedes’s arms.

“—even the wedding. Just two guys playing a prank on their entire group of friends and families. God, for someone so smart, you can be such an idiot, sometimes.”

Sylvain tries to smile through Felix’s fingers pressing his lips into something that probably resembles a fish’s mouth, albeit very pretty, considering it’s Sylvain. It’s one of the only things he’s ever had for him, after all, the only thing he’ll ever consistently have for him. That, and Felix, if Felix allows it. “You can still change your mind.”

“I like to finish what I start, Gautier.”

Sylvain hugs him tighter when Felix releases him. His nose is red from the sneezing and blowing. Sylvain has always loved when Felix wore his colors. “God, I can’t wait to have you as my husband.”

Felix smiles. “Don’t you mean your ex-boyfriend?”

I’m so fucking in love with you, is what thunders out of Sylvain’s laughter when it fills the room before Felix stifles it with a kiss.

***

Mercedes realized Sylvain and Felix were made for each other — well, it was not that she realized, more that she knew, had always known, or at least for quite a while — in any case, Mercedes realized Sylvain and Felix were made for each other on the phone.

“I fucked up,” was how Sylvain started the conversation, in that particular way he so often did, laughing the words along the static with the levity of a wasp buzzing against the trap of a downturned glass.

Mercedes did not bother answering; she knew Sylvain would soon launch into one of the monologues her mere, humble presence seemed to pull out of him, even when they could not see each other. She hummed along his clauses instead, intently listening to the way his voice wavered in the March evening weather, to the particular manner he rambled on and on about his dinner with his father. I told him there was a guy I was serious about, Sylvain said, shivering, though probably more from anger than the cold, and he just laughed, Mercie, he said literally nothing and just laughed to my face, called me a pussy, and I, and I—

Sylvain’s ardent bisexuality had first awakened as another, countless attempt to spite his father, back when Mercedes had met Sylvain in law school, back when he still sought false love in the arms of countless people he did not care about and a reflection of his pain on the faces of the ones whose hearts he broke like the cheap, single-use coffee stirrers that dropped into their cups from the vending machines. Sylvain liked pretending he could not feel anything, at the time, liked joking about Mercedes being the only one in his thoughts as he was twirling a lock of a prettier someone’s hair; she never believed him, not once, which probably was why they were still friends today — Mercedes was always good at discovering the truths hidden in half-lies, and she had soon discovered she was much more important to him than that. She had often wondered where love was to be found, in the ever-sprawling jungle of his heart, until they’d dropped out without even passing their exams and she’d followed Sylvain through his English major like a guardian angel of judgement. Maybe English would suit her where medical and law school failed her before, she’d thought at the time; it did, in the end, though for different reasons.

“And you what?” Mercedes prompted, encouraging.

The nervous and mirthless sound of an exhale of unlaughter. “I stood up, poured myself a glass of wine, chugged it, and left the restaurant.”

“You should have poured it over his head.”

Sylvain’s laugh was realer, this time. Over the years, she had become a pro at discerning Sylvain’s moods through his glances and whispers, the way she’d been taught to do during her two years as a doctor-in-training, until ten measly places on a ranking board severed her from her life path and closed the doors to one of her possible, most wished-for futures. Perhaps it had been why she got along so well with Sylvain; they were alike, he and she, intimate lovers to disappointment and strangers to sufficiency and freedom’s sworn enemies, hopelessly chasing not even happiness, but a mere feeling of completion, like chasing impossibly blue skies at the end of an endless, rain-showered street.

“I think I’m in love with him,” Sylvain said, simply, and the echoes of sobs drew ripples on the phone line and the dark pavement under Sylvain’s footsteps.

“Good. You deserve it.”

“No I don’t,” Sylvain immediately replied, and the spat-out words tore Mercedes’ heart.

“Sylvain,” she said, ever so gentle in that chiding way of hers, “I can see how much you’ve changed. How much you’ve tried to change, and all for his sake. I can see it because I’ve been there, remember?” Because she, too, had been this trapped little bee, singing songs of independence from under the greenhoused heat of a searching magnifying glass; because she, too, had had dozens of hungry eyes tearing into her body and hundreds of minds whispering not enough. “I can see it because you’re the farthest thing from the person your father wanted you to become,” she said, and it seemed as though she was speaking to herself.

“Mercie—”

“Sylvain,” she finally said, full of too much feeling, “I’m glad for you.”

There was no sound but Sylvain’s footsteps and their breathing in canon across the telephone line for a little while, no ambience but the faded echoes of rushing car lights and the wind.

“So how can I become the person Fe wants me to be?”

“That’s easy enough,” Mercedes laughed. “You just have to become you.”

***

Felix wonders if dinner would be less awkward for the Gautiers had Glenn not been right across them, ostentatiously massaging his boyfriend’s thigh under the table; the thought is brief, out of his mind as soon as he figures he does not give a single fuck, and he stabs another bit of his steak like he’s killing a sworn enemy on a battlefield.

Holst truly is delightful company, all things — like his status as Hilda’s older brother, for one — considered, and most probably the only reason the night has yet to devolve into an outbreak of passive-aggressive remarks and angry fork-dropping. He’s the only one to try and initiate conversation with Sylvain’s parents, makes Geneviève Gautier laugh realer than she does at her husband’s jokes, showing Felix for the first time who Sylvain got his gorgeous looks from. Felix has never truly liked Sylvain’s father, who wields raucous laughter and fake niceties like the sharpened edge of an axe ready for decapitation; he’s absolutely despised him ever since Sylvain told him about his childhood, about his brother’s violence and his father’s indifference and his mother’s absence, especially when Gautier Sr. keeps looking at him like a prized sheep he’s readying for slaughter. Glenn’s boyfriend is, therefore, a nice distraction, with his short, undercut, bubblegum-pink hair that his sister probably cut and dyed for him, with his easy smiles and easier winks, with his height and size that speak volumes upon volumes of brute strength and a well-kept but ever-present temper not to be tested. Glenn drapes himself over him like he’s a lounge chair on a private beach, brushes his bangs out of his forehead and files sharp nails on the back of his broad shoulders, sighs when Holst kisses his cheek completely unbothered, to the point where Felix doesn’t know whether this is a show they’re putting on specifically to divert attention from Sylvain and him or simple force of habit.

In any case, distant-until-he’s-discovered-his-children-fucked father Rodrigue Fraldarius looks extremely uncomfortable, and reformed-since-his-golden-son-is-dating-a-guy homophobe Gilles Gautier seems seconds away from snapping his soup spoon in two perfect pieces, so Felix squeezes Sylvain’s hand under the table in smug satisfaction.

“Did you know, Dad,” Sylvain asks as he plays with a piece of vegetarian meatball — another pretense he puts out of spite in the face of his family, Felix guesses, because Sylvain is completely okay with Pepperoni Pizza Sundays — “that Ferdie used to know Felix?”

“Is that so?” His father replies as though he’s never heard anything less interesting in his life.

“Yes! We went for suit fitting a few weeks ago, and Felix came by a little later and — the more you know: cousin Ferdie was in high school with Felix!”

The un-mention of Felix and Ferdinand’s ex-status reads in very bold subtitles. He doesn’t know whether it’s because Gilles Gautier is, well, Gilles Gautier, or if it’s because Sylvain is a little jealous, but Felix has always secretly liked making Sylvain a little jealous — it’s good payback for that time he had to witness Purple Whatshisname kiss Sylvain right under his nose. You know Felix? Ferdinand had asked that day, incredulous, at the same time Felix had complained about always seeing his exes at the worst moments, and Sylvain’s sharp ears must have caught on the word, because he’d curled an arm around Felix’s waist and kissed him on the temple; I do know him, Sylvain had said, his smile all teeth and tapered tongue, he’s my fiancé, and it’d been the only time he’d truly called Felix that way.

“Oh, I think I remember Ferdinand,” Felix’s father says through a cut of his beef filled with politeness and etiquette. “A good friend of yours, wasn’t he, Felix? Always very polite.”

“Uh huh.” Felix drinks a sip of wine as he remembers Ferdinand telling him the most filthy things as he clumsily pulled his hair in his childhood bedroom.

“You know, I always wondered why you stopped hanging out.”

Glenn snickers knowingly. Sylvain squeezes his hand a little tighter.

“In any case.” Sylvain’s smile is pulled tight at the edges. “I gave him an invitation, too.”

“Is he coming with his goth boyfriend?”

Sylvain sighs. “He asked if the buffet was vegan and if we could make options for, and I quote, his sun and stars.”

Felix swallows a noise of disgust, both at the nickname and at the last-minute catering nightmare they’ve now found themselves dealing with. He can eat all the vegetables he wants right from Ferdie’s ass, Sylvain had complained when he’d seen the additional prices; says the one who fakes being a vegetarian just to annoy his dad, Felix had answered, and Sylvain had kissed him until he’d stopped his slander. “Anyway — Ferdinand didn’t know Sylvain was my partner, apparently.”

Geneviève Gautier huffs in annoyance at the same moment Gilles Gautier and Rodrigue let out the same irritated groan.

“What.” Felix states more than he asks, mostly because Sylvain still does not dare raise his voice or objections against his parents; after the wedding, Sylvain always tells him, I promise, Fe, you know I keep my promises, but Felix sometimes wishes he would tell them to go to hell before they start waging a war in the reception hall.

“I respect your choices,” Rodrigue says as he drops his cutlery on the table without a single sound, “but Son. Sylvain is Not. Your. Partner.”

“Sorry, Father, I misspoke,” Felix concedes. “My long-time friends with benefits.”

Geneviève Gautier’s gasp is so loud Felix thinks she’d been free-diving for several minutes, Gilles Gautier stabs his meat like he’s wishing it was Felix’s body instead, and his father just puts a hand over his mouth in complete shock. Glenn and Holst, however, are downright howling with laughter, Holst’s broad hand slapping the table so hard Felix fears he’s going to break it in half.

Felix looks right into his father’s eyes. “What? You thought we were, what, saving ourselves for marriage for four-and-a-half years?”

Glenn falls from his chair and right on his ass under the force of his guffaw.

“We have guests, Felix!”

“You’d think a couple who fathered two children would know what sex is—”

“That’s enough!” Gilles Gautier rises from his chair, and the stare he shoots into his wife is enough to make her stand as well. Felix somehow understands why Sylvain never dares contradict his father. “You two are always trying to hurt us with your nasty jokes. It’s high time you decided to act like the adults you’re supposed to be. Sylvain,” and the name is so full of venom that Felix sees Sylvain flinch, “do try to remember who’s paying for this wedding. Good night.”

They’ve left before Rodrigue has even had the time to rise from his chair, too; Glenn is at their side in less than a minute, reassuring hands squeezing each of their shoulders. His right hand, the unscarred one, grips Sylvain tighter, his thumb rubbing through Sylvain’s shirt in half a rainbow, a promise of safety.

“If it’s about the money,” his brother says, his voice softer than Felix has heard in decades, “don’t worry. We’ll cover the expenses.”

“Dad doesn’t have a lot more—”

“I’m not talking about Dad.” Glenn’s voice is iron under silk, determined and decisive, the voice he used when he taught Felix mathematics and spoke his speech at their mother’s funeral. “Your Olympic-coach of a brother is dating another pro-coach. We make way more than we need. Trust me a little, okay?”

Felix can decipher the shadow of his father standing in the doorway; when he glances up, he looks irritated and sad and immensely proud. Felix cannot remember a time when his father has looked at him this way. Such a pity that he would today, of all days, at this very moment. The wedding portrait of his mother and him is watching Felix with kind, loving eyes from the opposite wall.

“Thank you,” is the only thing Sylvain says, and he sounds as small as Felix did on the nights of his worst nightmares.

Glenn huffs in fond irritation. “Of course. The things I do for my dear baby brother and my favorite brother-in-law,” and Felix knows it’s teasing, because they’re the only ones he’ll ever have, because perhaps it’s more than enough.

***

Glenn realized Sylvain and Felix were made for each other at the same time he realized his baby brother had finally truly, deeply fallen in love and at the same time he realized he wanted to tear Sylvain’s lungs out with his own hands.

The late October wind whistled through falling leaves and his hair when he opened the door on that Sunday morning, as Felix ran down the stairs of their childhood home like he was seven again, only to be faced with a man way too tall and way too ginger and way too handsome to be anyone else than Sylvain, a guy Felix apparently had a gigantic crush on and either rambled about for two hours during their family’s weekly McDonald's takeout night or never mentioned at all, both of these being telltale signs of his baby brother’s despairingly awful heartbreak and therefore instantly putting Sylvain in Glenn’s worst graces. Whatever, Glenn thought. Crushes were fleeting. Crushes went away. He would know. Tall, Ginger and Handsome at least had the decency to look sheepish as Glenn greeted him, one of his hands reaching up to ruffle his own hair — what the hell even was that haircut? What kind of indecorous activities could someone do on a daily basis to have such messy bangs? Glenn was not sure he wanted to know — and introducing himself with a too-smooth voice as Sylvain, as though Glenn was not aware already. Glenn saw him glance at the scar on the side of his face. He hoped he was scared enough.

“Glenn,” Glenn said. “Felix’s older brother.” He added, for good measure.

“Yes, sir,” Sylvain answered, and Felix pushed past Glenn to drag Sylvain in before Glenn could close the door on him.

Sylvain was surprisingly decent the whole day they helped Felix move into his first flat, a tiny shoebox of a place barely the size of their home’s first floor; Felix had come with his friend Ashe some time before to paint some of the walls a pretty teal blue, splatters of paint like solid rain still visible on the floorboards. Sylvain had went to the supermarket to grab stuff to eat and drink while Glenn stared shame-shaped holes into Felix’s frame for his less-than-ideal tastes in men, and Felix had looked bashful and embarrassed despite the three-and-a-half centimeters he had on Glenn, so Glenn took that as another win for their family’s elders — Sylvain had regrettably come back before Glenn could righteously question Felix, though knowing his brother Felix would certainly have told him to go fuck himself. The only thing Sylvain had for him, truly, was the size of his arms, and though the Fraldariuses were no pushovers, it was — he wouldn’t say nice, but surely it was valuable having someone do the heavy lifting Felix took like a challenge and Glenn would rather spare himself. He’d even carried Felix’s bastard cat’s cage and litter box without a single word, that awful pet showing the worst favoritism by curling its tail around Sylvain’s ankle as it hissed death and hairballs at Glenn whenever he walked next to it, clearly still not over that time two years ago when Glenn had pushed it off the dining table because the asshole was trying to eat off his plate. Glenn hated the fact that Sylvain was such good company — always watching out for Felix, speaking enough not to be boring but not too much to be annoying, telling anecdotes and fun facts about Ikea and Sweden and wood to make Felix hide his huffs of laughter even though the jokes were not that funny. Moreover, Glenn hated seeing his brother so obviously, absolutely smitten; it was not like Sylvain noticed, however, and that infuriated Glenn most of all, how Sylvain would stare with, dare Glenn say, such yearning in his gaze each time Felix would turn away to reach for another screw to put into the wood planks and yet would not catch Felix tearing his hand away each time they had to brush against Sylvain’s fingers.

Fucking teenagers, the two of them, even at twenty-something. Disgusting.

They’d finished Felix’s moving-in at the crux of nighttime, the time where neighbors would turn on the ceiling lights and lay food on the table and eat around laughter and the background noise of television, all the things they used to do then didn’t when their mother passed away; Felix must have thought about it, as well, must have spotted the glowing shadows gliding behind the neighbor curtains, must have heard the noise of distant chatter and the clatter of plates, because as Sylvain was about to leave he caught Sylvain by the edge of his ugly-rich, perfectly-fitted sweater — do you wanna stay, he said, and Glenn had seen Sylvain’s cheeks turn the shade of his hair and his smile light up like the streetlights and the other living room windows, the swoosh of his bangs as he nodded like the whisper of an unvoiced yes. They’d ordered pizza, their feet and Sylvain’s freakishly long legs crossed over the coffee table in front of the couch, Felix’s laptop propped on the spare, empty cardboard boxes they had not put in the trash yet, watching that dumb TV show Glenn hated but both Felix and Sylvain seemed to like somehow. Glenn had knowingly sat in the middle of the couch, between the two of them, but when he’d got up to use Felix’s still-empty bathroom he’d come back to Sylvain having taken his place and thrown a lazy arm over the back of the couch as a sad replacement for Felix’s shoulders, and he’d sworn Sylvain had glanced at him with satisfaction in his smirk and challenge in his eyes.

They ended up pulling an almost all-nighter, mostly because Sylvain loved musicals and absolutely insisted that Felix watch some with them; Glenn loved musicals too, though he’d admit it over his dead body and the torn-up remains of the dozen tickets for London's production of Wicked he’d kept through his early adult life. Glenn found another thing to hate about Sylvain, which was his apparently very good taste in movies, because no one was allowed to be more knowledgeable in cinema than a fucking cinema major, thank you very much. Sylvain kept leaning into Felix to whisper him some facts about the direction, the song composition, the photography; Glenn counteracted each of his sentences with commentaries of his own, which strangely did not rouse in Felix the same amount of fond eye rolls or interested hums he granted Sylvain, so Glenn decided to put a movie he knew Felix would hate so as to thwart Sylvain’s advance in Felix’s heart.

“La La Land!! I love this movie,” Sylvain exclaimed, and Glenn counted with unhealthy glee the seconds until Sylvain would crash and burn.

The result was almost as Glenn had expected; that is to say, Felix utterly hated the movie — but his hatred had apparently been eclipsed by the light in Felix’s blush and irises as Sylvain had leaned into him during the movie's most famous scene, had laughed the words into his ear, this could never be, you’re not the type for me and there’s not a spark in sight, as the look in his eyes had told Felix the exact opposite, as the flush of computer light had blared over Felix’s nose in admission of how much he wished to believe it, and Glenn had looked away and back to the movie scene.

Sylvain ended up sleeping with them, his overgrown body taking all the space in the middle of Felix’s convertible couch as Glenn uncomfortably scooted close to the edge of the bed and Felix pressed his cold feet into Sylvain’s calves — he knew, because he’d been the one Felix had pressed cold feet into when they’d been children, and as Glenn fell asleep he watched Sylvain’s face falling on the mattress as though turning to look at Felix and only Felix.

He woke up to Felix’s cat meowing for food and probably Glenn’s early demise; Glenn threw his legs off the mattress, dropped a can of cat tuna into its food bowl, and grabbed a random towel to take a long, hot shower. He’d been surprisingly cold, during the night, something he did not exactly remember the reason for until he came back in the only other room in the flat and saw Sylvain’s shape turned towards Felix. Something like curiosity and the strangest feeling of intruding made him hide in the corner of the hallway; perhaps he already knew, then, what would transpire, perhaps he’d had the feeling since the day before, perhaps he’d had the feeling since Sylvain greeted him with a hand in his hair and devotion in his smile.

Glenn watched as Felix trailed soft fingers along Sylvain’s arm, fingertips grazing the veins over his wrist before pushing against Sylvain’s own, filling up the spaces for a single second until they parted again, like trying to fit a puzzle piece into perfect place; Sylvain mimicked him, traced thunder alongside Felix’s arm with longing and love and his knuckles, reached Felix’s collarbones and the side of his throat, and Felix curled closer to him, caressed Sylvain’s messy morning bangs out of his eyes, Sylvain’s lips parting on an inaudible sigh that brought invisible shivers over Felix’s skin. Felix’s fingers touched the side of Sylvain’s jaw when Sylvain closed the remaining space between their bodies, inches away from the person Glenn could see he desired most, long eyelashes fanning as he glanced to Felix’s lips — but it was Felix who came forward first, a tentative centimeter closer, an invitation, a declaration.

When Sylvain closed his eyes and kissed Felix, Glenn went back to the bathroom. He could let the kids have their little fun. After all, if his gut was right — and it always was — he now had a lifetime to plan for his eventual murder of Sylvain.

***

Felix is the most beautiful, ethereal being Sylvain has ever seen.

His long hair is weaved with red and gold in a crown behind his head, his jacket threaded copper in intricate flowers running asymmetric on his arm and side in salvias and camellias, matching the ones climbing over Sylvain’s suit; it had been Dedue’s idea, for no one else would have thought of it, and Sylvain wouldn’t have it any other way. Sylvain feels like Felix is floating as he’s walking, as though the heavens broke apart and he dropped there, bedecked in Sylvain’s colors like he’s meant for him; Felix’s eyes are burnished, liquid amber encasing Sylvain’s everlasting love as Felix’s gaze drips all over him, his smile small and soft and spellbound in a way that certainly mirrors Sylvain’s own. They take their place of belonging — next to each other, face to face, never any other way. Sylvain sees Felix ignore the way Ingrid is sobbing next to him, though there’s the slight shadow of sensitivity in the pull of his lips and the quirk of his eyebrows, and Sylvain stifles a laugh as he takes Felix’s hands in his.

“Dear guests,” Dimitri intones from behind the mayor’s desk, voice warmer than Sylvain has ever heard it, “we are here today to celebrate the marriage between Felix Hugo Fraldarius, son of Rodrigue and Joanna Fraldarius, and Sylvain José Gautier, son of two people who did not deserve to be here today.”

Their friends — their family — laugh good-naturedly; Sylvain had ended up sending that non-invitation, finally, to Mr. and Mrs. Gautier, gleefully adding another line of his own that merely said My bloodline ends with me. It’s the last time anyone will call him Sylvain Gautier, after all.

You look beautiful, Sylvain whispers to Felix as Dimitri goes on and on and on about fate-defying true love, and Felix’s face flares autumn sunrise and late-night neon lights, and Sylvain sees his own gaze like a drunk-blurred reflection in smoked whiskey, gold with getting exactly what he’s always wished for in the quiet of his bedroom and his nocturnal reveries. This is where his life splits in half, he realizes, one part his and the other gladly given away for Felix to complete his own, where his time quarters like apples and a game of those sports Felix loves so much — one: his life before Felix, worthless, or at least worth less; two: after Felix, refulgent like a guiding star, showing the right way to him and for him; three: today, the first day of the rest of his life, not exactly providence but not quite an accident either; he doesn’t think about the last part, for once, not today, not with the happiness that rushes through him and all of the love around and inside, that part where Felix inevitably gets tired of him and goes on, hopelessly not before Sylvain can breathe his last words of love across his lips in a million years.

The whole room seems to catch its collective breath when Dimitri gestures for them to read their vows; Sylvain gets a small piece of paper out of his pocket, if only to pretend he has not learned them by heart under the shower lights, the wall tiles very poor imitations of Felix’s eyes yet still managing to make him cry until he didn’t, though he’ll forever say it was because he got shampoo in his eyes.

“So this is going to sound very strange,” Sylvain begins, and Felix looks right into his heart through his irises, it seems, because he’s already getting choked up, “but the first time I dreamt of you, I could swear it was before I’d ever met you.” He’s not lying; Sylvain has had this dream a few times, the setting always different — carmine sunset or rain-showered battlefield or up in the sky with the sky on fire — but the words ever the same. “I was… making a promise to you. I was promising that I’d die together with you.”

Felix’s eyes widen in glorious tourmaline, his lips parted in the exact same manner they’d done before Sylvain had kissed him for the first time, his fingers tightening over Sylvain’s own as he holds his hand. Sylvain knows, then, knows it’s because he knows, and he foregoes the blank paper completely, shoves it back into his suit pocket like it burns, like it should not have even had the right to take the place meant for Felix’s hand and body and everything. “Ever since I saw you, I’ve always known I loved you. I knew it like I knew the sky was blue and the grass was green and your eyes were gold. But… honestly, falling in love with you has been the scariest experience of my life. I just…” Sylvain swallows the knot of emotions taking shape along his vocal chords. “... never thought I could feel so much for a person… as you. And I don’t think I’ll ever deserve to spend the rest of my life at your side—” oh, he can see Felix’s anger flare through his eyes, now, like firelight flickering amongst all the other emotions, and Sylvain’s trying not to cry and probably failing, “but God am I going to try my hardest. First, because I seriously need you to take care of me, because I’m always a fucking mess.” The words have their intended effect, as they always do with Sylvain; the room laughs through what are obviously tears, and it’s a sight Sylvain prefers, no tears, how happy they may be, just his best friends’ smiles and laughter warming the room like a witch’s burning. “But also… Because a life not spent at your side has no meaning to me. A life not spent loving you, with my entire heart, has no meaning to me.” Felix’s hands tighten again, his face open to every and all feeling only Sylvain is ever privy to, soft smile and softer sobs and softest sighs. He truly is so beautiful, like this, where no one but Sylvain can fully see or hear.

“I promise to always take care of you as you take care of me,” Sylvain starts again. It’s important, to him, maybe the most important part. Sylvain keeps his promises. “I promise to always cherish you, through all of the good and all of the bad; I promise to always dance with you in the middle of the living room, even when we’re fifty and tired from taking care of our twelve dogs and twenty-three cats.” There’s laughter again, interspersed with sniffles. It comes from Felix, Sylvain realizes, belatedly, as though he’s listening to an illegally-downloaded movie with delayed audio. “And most importantly… I promise to be your best friend. Because you are my best friend. And since I’d rather die than break a promise I’ve made to you” — his aching, sword-stricken heart poured red like vermouth over a burning field; the deafening ring of a gun and Felix’s spiced-rum eyes in a dirty back-alley; the fall, the fall, the fall — “I promise to love you forever, and ever, and even a lot longer than that.”

Sylvain’s pretty sure Dimitri has to physically restrain Felix with a hand on his arm, because Felix looks seconds away from crashing into him, bodies colliding until they're meshed together in a mess of jagged, broken parts perfectly embedded and completing each other. Sylvain has never wished harder for anything.

Glenn coughs from behind Felix, and the parting of Felix’s hand from Sylvain as he’s reaching for his own piece of paper is painful in itself, searing, burning, yearning. Felix clears his throat before he starts; he’s never been much of a storyteller, Sylvain knows, a better listener than an orator, so Sylvain squeezes his hand encouragingly. Felix’s eyes blaze as they flit from the words scrawled on the card to Sylvain’s eyes.

“I went to my first wedding two years ago.” Sylvain remembers they’d gone together, Felix’s colleague and friend Bernadetta looking magnificent in her lilac dress, Sylvain only thinking about how Felix would look in that same context, hands twisting into the fabric as he’d wait for Sylvain to walk into the room. “And as I watched Bernadetta and Petra get married… I could only think about marrying you.” It’s so quiet Sylvain thinks no one has heard but him. It’s more than enough. It’s all he’s ever wished for. “I saw them reading their vows, and I could only think about reading my vows, to you. And since these words are just a poor attempt at convincing you that you’re the only thing I’ll ever need in this life, in all my lives,” Sylvain knows it’s an ad-lib with the way Felix focuses on him and only him, tracing the lines of his face with a sweep of his gaze framed by silk and the shadow of tears and the love they share, “I’m going to show it to you, instead.”

“I’m going to love you, wild, and fierce, and free; I’m going to kiss you with a passion that will bring entire worlds to their knees; I’m going to wage a dozen wars against your demons so you can sleep soundly next to me.” Felix is tear-stained and defiant as he holds Sylvain’s hand, and Sylvain knows he’s no better, because Felix’s features are softened and dazzling through his own sobs, because Sylvain’s voice is smothered by the hand he’s brought to his lips as he cries. “I’m going to remind you, each and every day, how indescribably gorgeous I find you to be,” and oh does the word hold so much more meaning when it’s Felix who says it, heart bared and soul freed like it’s Sylvain who saved him and not the other way around, “I’m going to tell you, over and over again, how your smile brings light to the darkest parts of my essence,” as though the stars could ever be anything else but a pale imitation of Felix’s entire existence. “And when we’re old, and we’ve lived a hundred lifetimes’ worth of memories, I vow that I’m going to trace every line on your stunning, irritating face” — laughter, drowned, again — “so I can relive each and every beautiful moment we’ve already shared and are about to share.”

Sylvain breaks down at the same time Felix wipes at his own tears like they’ve personally offended him, and his hand drops the piece of paper to the ground when he reaches to drag a thumb alongside Sylvain’s cheek, spreading the mess more than drying it; it’s perfect, Felix’s gaze on him, devoted and careful and, Sylvain’s newfound realization, in love. “I’ve never been the best at making good decisions. But today, I’m making the best decision in my life — by marrying the only person I could ever call home. I told you I like to finish the things I’ve started” — you did, you truly did, Sylvain says or laughs or sobs, he doesn’t know the difference, doesn’t care to know the difference — “and that also includes a whole lifetime with you.”

“Sylvain Gautier,” Dimitri says before Sylvain can kiss Felix silly; Dimitri has that smirk on his face that he’s learnt from Sylvain, the one that speaks of lawful trouble. “Do you take this cute acquaintance you’ve been kind of talking to recently to be your eternal husband?”

There’s a variety of ohmygods and booming chortles spasming from every corner of the room. “I do,” Sylvain replies, full of life and full of love.

“Felix Fraldarius, do you take this one-night-stand turned ongoing-booty-call to be bound to you forever in sinful matrimony?”

Felix kisses him instead, before Dimitri even has the time to ask them, probably because they both know the answer — people are laughing again and it’s not at him, for once in his life it’s not at him, it’s not even laughter more than it is a simple celebration of Felix and him — Sylvain, Felix takes a page from Sylvain’s book and pretends to be affronted but he’s laughing, too, through the way his teeth part from the pulp of his lips when he emphasizes the second syllable, not dissimilar to the way he murmurs it at night.

“Just say you do,” Sylvain asks against him, Felix’s mouth taking the shape of the words before he says them himself, I do, his face all red and his eyes all gold and his hands in Sylvain’s.

***

“It was no realization,” Dedue speaks, looking right into the camera lens. “There is nothing to realize, per se. One only needs to see how they look at each other to understand they are meant to be together.”

“Like how?” Annette asks offscreen.

Dedue’s smile is small, and so impossibly warm. “Like they’ve spent entire lifetimes looking for each other, and now have been found.” He laughs, a tiny exhale like a ghost of wind in the summer heat. “Like they’re each other’s entire universe.”

***

Felix is definitely not crying as the video ends, thank you very much.

It was Annette's idea, apparently, and a better wedding gift than anyone else could ever buy, that video of all their friends and family telling their tale in their place, of the moments they all knew Felix and Sylvain would end up this way, with Felix nestled in the alcove of Sylvain’s arms around him, his husband — his husband, his throat tightens and stubborn tears threaten to spill again, though he won’t let them — holding him close to his chest like he’s a long-lost treasure; everyone is clapping as they’re looking at them, even his father, from his place at the end of the grooms’ table, even Miklan, with eyes averted and solemn hands that have learned to heal instead of hurt, Capucine sat on his knees, clapping the loudest of all. Sylvain’s niece had spent the evening dragging Céleste everywhere under the tired eyes of both their fathers, Glenn letting a surprising diplomacy, uncommon in Fraldarius men, fill the untold spaces they’d left in one another’s lives, stories of times past left to simmer under the lid of peace and truce only weddings and funerals tend to put over feuding fires. Holst was holding Glenn’s and his daughter’s — their daughter’s — hand, Céleste’s curious eyes licking over the guests like waves upon a shore, trying to pull them into her mind for later remembrance.

The clapping soon evolves in people slapping their hands on the tables and hitting their heels on the floor, chanting for them to give a speech.

“Fuck all of you,” Felix says through his not-tears when the mic gets to him, and even his father laughs affectionately when Glenn insults him through half a dozen other bad words for saying fuck in front of Céleste. Sylvain is much more eloquent, eloquent enough for the both of them, his storyteller self counting tales of unity and found families; Felix loses himself in the way Sylvain speaks more than in his sentences, loses himself in the sweep of his gaze over the room and the width of the space between his arms that Felix will forever long to fill, loses himself in Sylvain taking his hand and showing him off to the room and declaring him his ex-fiancé until Ingrid throws a full piece of bread at his face.

He loses himself in the way Sylvain pulls him into the empty space, in the love tinted hazel in his eyes and colored bitten upon his lips, in the first notes of their song.

The sun is nearly gone, Sylvain’s voice floats baritone in Felix’s ear as he lays Felix’s hand on his shoulder, the lights are turning on, and the smirk that tugs at his lips makes Felix fall in love with him all over again, a silver shine stretches to the sea, Felix sings along in his head, though his voice will never be as nice as Sylvain’s; it had been one of the first things Felix had noticed about him, the words that sang out of his lips like mundane poetry, the oh-so-clever ideas and remarks that he spoke in their mutual classes, the carefully-hidden truthfulness shining through the compliments he laid upon Felix as though he let the sentences take the places he meant for his hands and mouth and heartbeat. Felix lets himself being led, for once; he’s agile, but not the best at dancing, not even with every course Dorothea made him suffer in preparation, not even with Sylvain teaching him how to dance salsa that night when they’d first met, their mutual drunkenness fading into almost-recognition and vulnerability and uncertainty. Sylvain smiles as he croons the lyrics, louder, for everyone to hear; people are cheering as he makes Felix twirl, and Felix smiles, smiles harder and bigger than he’s ever smiled, though it will be forever too tiny to truly show the happiness he feels with Sylvain’s warm hands on his — and he starts singing, too, and though you look so cute in your polyester suit, you’re right, Felix lies, I’d never fall for you at all.

They soon get into the routine Dorothea and Annette trained them for; they’re recreating a part of the movie’s choreography, the steps painstakingly learnt for him and gleefully easy for Sylvain, and their friends are too busy laughing and tapping their feet to notice when he messes up, and Sylvain pulls him in again when the song changes, close to his chest, the only place he’ll ever wish to be — a look in somebody’s eyes to light up the skies, the song goes, a voice that says I’ll be here and you’ll be alright, and Sylvain isn’t singing anymore, he’s looking into Felix’s eyes like he’ll drown and die if he doesn’t, feelings shining through remnants of sea.

“No takebacks,” Sylvain says, “you’re stuck with me, now.”

“We stick together, you mean.” Felix kisses the corner of his mouth, the lightest love confession he’s ever made. “We stick together until we die together.”

Sylvain laughs against his lips. “And someone said true love is dead.”