Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dimitri is sucking on a meat lollipop, and Felix is doing his best to ignore him, when Sylvain starts nattering on about--of all things--the astonishing aftereffects of self-imposed chastity on a fighter’s stance, poise, and wielding strength.

Not that he would know anything about keeping a tight lid on his libido, revolting pervert that he is.

Dimitri is not listening, which is becoming increasingly common. Felix curses himself for noticing it--for paying attention. He justifies it to himself: if he were not to keep an eye on the boar, who would? Certainly not Dedue, who lavishes compassion on a ruthless monster. Certainly not Ingrid, or Sylvain, or Annette, or, god forbid, Mercedes, who these days is attempting to teach Dimitri to sew. As though a boar’s hooves were fitted to meticulous work. As though this beast could mind anything so careful without wrecking its tools…

When Dimitri is like this, his eyes become distant and glossed over with a deep melancholy. He is eating for the sake of eating, without taste or care. His seat is perfect, his back straight, his manners immaculate. It is just enough to fool the world. 

But not Felix. Never Felix.

When Felix looks up from his own mostly-untouched plate some minutes later, Dimitri’s eyes are fixed upon him. 

It is a distant, careful look, as though he is attempting to puzzle him out. As though Felix is wearing the disguise, the mask, the lie.

“--mitri? You listening?”

Dimitri’s gaze slides away from Felix’s face with the slowness of syrup. “Hm?” And Felix sees the realization that Dimitri is now the center of attention come upon him: sees his compatriots glancing up from their own meals and focusing, as they should, on their prince. He sees the flicker in Dimitri’s eyes; the fake smile he affixes on his lips. “Ah, forgive me; my mind was elsewhere.”

Felix snorts, gripping his fork too tightly. “Where else is it lately.” He catches only the infinite blue of Dimitri’s eyes, as the boar flicks him a chastising glance before returning his attention to Sylvain. 

Sylvain--being Sylvain, and Felix’s worst friend--just grins, and spreads his arms. “Don’t worry about it, your Highness,” he drawls, disgustingly cheerful. “Anyone could tell you’re exhausted. Although--you know what might help with that exhaustion?”

Dimitri is still catching up. “Mm?”

“Sylvain,” Felix bites out.

Sylvain looks delighted. “Oh, come on, Felix, you can’t tell me that His Highness has never rubbed one--”

Something clicks in Felix’s throat. He repeats, “ Sylvain. ”

Sylvain just grins. Dimitri blinks at them, his slick lips parted. “Apologies--what have I or haven’t I… er, rubbed?”

Oh, Sothis.  

Sylvain’s voice climbs an octave in sheer glee. “You know, your--”

“Sylvain was just saying,” Felix snarls, wishing he had enough Reason to pulverize the miscreant where he stands, “that there’s some stupid rumor out there that if he could just stop being a whore, he’d be better in battle.”

Dimitri looks painfully earnest. “Oh yes, I heard that part. I’m sure it’s worth attempting, Sylvain. I certainly wouldn’t object to a break of having to constantly chide you for bringing your, er… lady friends to your dormitory.”

It is a sad fact that Sylvain’s industrious and nightly love-making routinely wakes up half the dorms. Dimitri, whose room is nearest his, has numerous times attempted to get him to stop inviting his conquests to his bed. So far, his quest has borne no fruit whatsoever. 

“Hey, now, this isn’t about me!” Sylvain interjects, sounding offended. “The same goes for you, too!”

Dimitri looks so puzzled that Felix finds himself cutting in. “The difference between you and me,” he says, then pauses, then resumes, “the difference between you and us is that neither of us are manwhores. This is a moot point for us.”

Dimitri blinks, then looks directly at him--and Felix feels his throat tighten. He can’t read that look. He can’t think correctly when all of Dimitri’s ridiculous focus is on him. 

Sylvain continues digging his own grave, because of course he fucking does. “Except it’s not just about that. You can’t tell me that you’ve never… you know…” To Felix’s horror, and the awed fascination of half the dining table, he proceeds to demonstrate exactly what he means.

“Pardon?” Dimitri’s mouth is half-open, his eyes brilliantly blue, and Felix grits his teeth. 

“You know,” Sylvain insists, bouncing his half-clenched fist in the air with disturbing gusto. 

Felix snaps. “If you jerk yourself off like that, I’m concerned for your dick.” 

“Oh,” says Dimitri, very softly. And then, right there at the dining-table, right there in front of Felix’s meat plate, his cheeks darken to an obscene flush. Strangled, he repeats: “Oh.”

Treacherously, Felix’s dick plumps up at the throaty resonance of his voice. 

Dimitri blinks twice, very fast, then diverts his gaze right back down to his plate. “Er, that.”

Sylvain, who has never been able to read a cue that didn’t involve getting his dick wet, prattles on. “Right, so you can’t tell me His Highness has never--”

“Sylvain,” Dimitri says, his voice growing rigid, “I do believe this conversation is highly inappropriate, to say nothing of its nature in the dining-hall of our school.” A deep silence follows his words. Sylvain himself falls quiet, and stares. “You cannot tell me that you really think this appropriate dinner conversation material.”

Quiet.

“Sothis’ tits,” Sylvain breathes at last, “you really don’t.” And then--because he’s the worst--he turns to Felix with a smirk that eats up half his face. “See, Felix? You could be just as strong as Dimitri if you just stopped jerking off all the time.”

Outrage rises in Felix’s chest so fast he barely registers the scrape of his chair and the clatter of his cutlery on his plate as he plants his hands on the table and looms over Sylvain. The temptation to grip his throat and squeeze until Sylvain bursts like a ripe tomato must be well-writ on his face, because Sylvain offers up his hands in laughing surrender, and even Dimitri looks downright alarmed. 

“I’m just saying!” Sylvain hiccups through his laughter.

“I’ll believe it when literally anyone else confirms this absurdity,” Felix bites off, and then storms away, abandoning his plate, and ignoring the guilt that threads through him at the sound of his name in Dimitri’s helpless voice.

He walks sightlessly through the corridors of Garreg Mach for five furious minutes before slumping against a low stone wall. His dick has gone from curious to excited to dampened in record time, and he has to resist the urge to grab his crotch just to shake some sense into the godsdamned thing. But that thought leads to another--and then another--and then he can’t help but imagine Dimitri there, Dimitri running after him and finding him with his hands on his cock, and…

Dimitri, who apparently doesn’t touch himself. 

Fuck .

Sothis, but he is doomed.

.

Ashe is rummaging through a mountainous pile of books when Felix stomps into the library. He only looks up when Felix’s sword clashes with a chair, his cheerful expression melting into puzzled alarm. 

“Felix!” His voice climbs with nervous concern. “What, ah--what’s wrong? You look--”

Felix shoots him a glare, and Ashe gulps. 

“--t-thunderous.”

“Fucking Sylvain,” Felix grouses, dropping into the chair opposite Ashe’s and crossing his arms over his chest. What he really means, of course, is Fucking Dimitri, fucking boar, fucking perfect fake prince, with his stupid fake smile and his false concern and the face of my dead best friend--

A spike of disgusted pain goes through his chest, and he grunts. Ashe reaches over across the table and soothingly pats his hand. “It’s okay, Felix. Sylvain can be very annoying.”

Felix sneers. “He may fool the boar into following his shitty-ass advice, but fuck if it’s going to work on me.”

Ashe looks curious. “Sylvain has been giving His Highness advice?” His words are underlaid with deep suspicion and not a little anxiety. 

With a scoff, Felix waves that away. “Stupid fighting advice.”

“Sylvain ?”

“He’s convinced the boar that chastity--” Felix bites down on the word as he would on a phantom pepper, “--will make him a better fighter.”

“Uh.”

“Yeah.”

Ashe looks disturbingly like he's considering it. “You know--”

“Not you, too,” Felix sighs. Is he surrounded with idiots today? Did the heat finally kill the collective Blue Lions brain cell? 

“It’s just--” Ashe rummages in his book pile, scowling fiercely. “Something I read--aha , there , look--”

Reluctantly, Felix leans over to look at the cover. “A Cumpendium of Knighthood Tales-- what.”

“No, but really,” Ashe says, apparently in absolute earnest. “It’s scientifically proven that--”

“That’s a porn book, not a biology manual--”

“But look,” Ashe insists, flipping the book open to its centerpiece--a splendid engraving of, at a guess, Loog and Kyphon striking magnificent poses with their swords. And their, ah, swords .

“Why are they naked,” Felix says, flat.

“That’s the thing!” Ashe’s eyes are fervent with chivalrous admiration. “According to this book, Loog and Kyphon would refrain from engaging in any, um, strenuous intimate activities for weeks prior to an important battle, as the pent-up lust and repressed energy would lead to a surge in their stamina and vigor--”

Felix stares at him.

“It was a known habit in olden times!” Ashe enthuses. “All the more prevalent for Crest-bearers, of course, because of their incredible strength. Look!” He flips the page, revealing a second engraving, wherein Loog and Kyphon are shown fighting unknown enemy hordes, back to back, and somehow still entirely nude but for their unsheathed weapons.

“... ah,” says Felix, weakly.

“Of course, this book is more concerned with what happens after the battle,” Ashe continues, flipping some more. “After Loog and Kyphon triumph over their foes, they celebrate mightily and unleash their bound-up potency in a special ritual--just the two of them! Look, Kyphon would go to his knees to service his Lord--”

Felix stares down at the pages and wishes for death; failing that, a cold bath.

.

Felix knows the moment when Dimitri enters the training yard. 

He’s facing away from the doors, resolutely ignoring the gaggle of students and guards who gather there in the late afternoon sun. Hacking away at a training dummy, he practices his forms, and as he shifts from one stance to the next with a certain smoothness, he feels the tension that has gathered in his body--his shoulders, his thighs, his hips--ebb away. He’s his best self when he is fighting. His brain goes blissfully quiet but for the instinctive perfection of killing a man with a single blow. 

But something in the sun shifts when Dimitri enters. Some of its brightness shadows itself, as though he had stolen it away. 

Felix focuses on landing smooth, strong-armed blows on the dummy, and does his best not to hear Dimitri’s smile in Dimitri’s voice, as he echoes greetings back to their fellow students. He focuses on the strain in his arms, the rush of blood in his ears, the rapid patter of his long-neglected heartbeat. 

He feels Dimitri approach. The boar inches closer and closer, and Felix does not know if, should he turn to meet him, he would see in those blue eyes the fake smile of a long-dead prince or the bloodied glee of the monster who hides in his skin. 

Dimitri clears his throat. 

Felix grits his teeth, and falls still. He throws him a glance over his shoulder, and finds that the boar is affecting hesitance. His stance is almost submissive, which makes Felix want to throw things at his head. 

“If I might have a word, Felix?”

He’s so godsdamned good at sounding regal. Felix’s breath comes out in short pants as he grips the pommel of his sword. “Speak, boar.”

“Ah.” A brief, pained wince. Felix detests guilt. Felix feels no guilt. “I was wondering--” Dimitri’s eyes meet his with deadly earnestness “--if you might be willing to spar with me.”

Felix tilts his head at him and lies through his teeth. “I promised Ingrid a sparring session, and I intend to keep my word.” Pointedly, he looks over at Ingrid, who is occupied--as she often is--with scolding Sylvain for his misdeeds, her fists firmly planted on her hips. “Hey! Stop wasting your time on Sylvain and get over here.”

“Oh,” Ingrid says, quirking a brow. Her smile is eloquent as she grabs her training lance and moves into position opposite him. 

Dimitri skulks away, as well he might. Felix points his sword at Ingrid. She looks deeply, deeply unimpressed. 

“You know,” she observes, after the first few passes leave them circling each other, neither of them with a distinct advantage, “if you wanted to spar, you could just have said.”

“Shut up,” Felix says through his teeth, lunging forward in a slashing blow that Ingrid only just evades. 

She smiles sweetly at him. “And if you don’t want to spar with His Highness, you might want to tell him that.”

Felix just rolls his eyes, which means he doesn’t see the next feint coming, and takes a heavy shove to his shoulder that forces him back a few steps. This puts him in a position to see Dimitri and Sylvain facing off some paces away, and he scowls. At least getting soundly beaten will dampen Sylvain’s ardor--he hopes. 

He determinedly ignores Dimitri, though several of the students around them cheer every single time their golden prince lands a point. Instead, he circles Ingrid and lands a few of his own. Ingrid is best on horseback, and she has not yet mastered the footwork that is so precious in infantry combat. Most times Felix beats her. Sometimes, she gets lucky. 

Time stretches, becomes elastic. Felix loses sight of it. Sweat clings to his armpits and his back, slicking his shirt to his skin, his hair coming loose. 

Sylvain’s wheedling voice cracks through his focus as he and Ingrid break off sparring for a moment, gulping down water from a nearby pitcher. 

“--no reason to give yourself heat stroke.”

“Right you are, Sylvain,” Dimitri says cheerfully, and then he starts taking off his shirt. 

Felix forgets how to drink water. 

He wipes his mouth absently as Dimitri’s fingers dance down the buttons of his white uniform shirt, exposing the hollow divot of his collarbones, and then, as the fabric slips from his shoulders, the smooth muscle of his pectorals. His back ripples; he twists to toss the offending shirt aside. Then he grabs his lance and lunges for Sylvain, and the sun shifts across his skin. Muscle and tendon and bone. 

He looks more inhuman than he ever has. 

Felix is staring. He realizes this. He still can’t look away as Dimitri dances around Sylvain, handily laying down the law. 

His pulse throbs uncomfortably, down in his pants, and he clenches his jaw and wishes for fortitude. 

Beside him, Ingrid sprawls on a low wall and smirks at him. “We’re done, then?” 

“Shut up,” Felix grits out, fighting the need to adjust himself. 

Sylvain begs for mercy a few minutes later, laughing as he grabs a towel and rubs it over his own shoulders. He then throws a sweaty arm around Ingrid, who pushes him off with a grimace. They depart together in search of food, and most of their audience trails off behind them, leaving Felix alone with his prince. 

Dimitri is smiling as he picks up his own towel and makes a half-hearted attempt at cleaning himself. His biceps bulge; his throat works as he drinks some water. Felix achieves self-control long enough to scoff and turn away, heading for the doors. 

“Felix, wait--” 

Dimitri’s hand wraps warmly around his arm, and Felix’s blood thrums in his veins. He looks down at the offending appendage then back up again, slowly. Dimitri’s grip loosens, then falls away. 

The miniscule part of Felix that controls his blood flow to his dick mourns the loss of contact. The rest of him just wants to die. 

“I… I was hoping you might grace me with one sparring session, if not more.”

There is no grace in the boar-prince. No mercy. No forgiveness. 

“No.”

“I’m sure that Ingrid must have left you winded, but--”

Felix’s back snaps to a horrible straightness. He snarls: “Get back in the fucking ring, boar.” 

He strides back into the fighting-ring, all too aware of Dimitri’s warmth behind him. 

Felix gives him no time to adjust or ready his stance. He throws himself into combat the way he would on the field, and Dimitri echoes him blow for blow. The mask that he wears so constantly fades as the seconds pass, and Felix glories in this: in this moment, at least, Dimitri is no longer pretending he is not a body of flesh and blood. Dimitri is no longer hiding his bestial nature. He fights like a monster. 

He fights like a king. 

Anger has nourished Felix for so long that to find it reciprocated is, in itself, a blessing. Dimitri--his Dimitri, the Dimitri who died--would never have hurt him. He would not have tried. He would have walked across burning embers to ensure Felix was happy, and Felix--Felix would have done the same, would have done worse, just to see him smile. 

In this, at least, there is honesty. 

There is a sick and twisted compassion. 

Grace, perhaps.

They meet in the center of the fighting ring, Dimitri’s lance straining against Felix’s sword. He’s so close that Felix can feel his breath on his face; he’s so close that his eyelashes brush Felix’s temple. Dimitri growls, the sound so low Felix barely hears it, and that alone makes his cock ache in the shadow of their weapons. 

In a show of strength, he cannot best Dimitri. 

Dimitri pushes too far, too hard, and his lance cracks, split right down the middle as though lightning had struck it. 

Felix loses his footing, falls backwards, and then he is flat on his back in the sand, looking at the sky. Against the gold-tipped lavender of the evening clouds, Dimitri is a dark form, and his laughter comes clear and soft. 

He stretches out one hand. The smile on his lips is fake as it has ever been. “Thank you for this, Felix.”

Felix’s heart jolts painfully in his chest. He’s panting, his throat so tight that he can barely breathe. Dimitri’s outstretched hand feels like an invitation to dance. 

He pushes himself up to his feet, dragging up a corner of his shirt to wipe his face. Dimitri’s hand falls away, and in his face comes a pained resignation. 

“Thank yourself, boar,” Felix says, and leaves his prince alone in the dying sun. 

.

Swordfighting affords freedom from thought. 

And feeling.

All those pesky emotions Felix would prefer to put in a box and stuff under his mattress--to torment him at night, only at night. 

His heartrate is up; his breath comes short. His hands ache as they curl and tighten around the pommel of his sword. If he closes his eyes, he might believe that the weapon is only a continuation of his own limbs, that metal has fused with bone. He trains with unknown, unseen enemies, alone in the training yard as the afternoon draws to a syrupy end, alone with ghosts he refuses to hear. 

Glenn is here, adjusting his stance and his grip, laughing in his ear, trying to break his focus with jokes and jeers. Glenn is his adversary, eternally locked in amber-time, laughing and dancing out of reach. He’s the shadow of Felix’s body, the weight of his sword in his hands. He’s every time Felix’s rhythm fails, every time his feet stumble, every feint that goes wide and every blow that doesn’t land. 

He’s every time Felix staggers to his knees, grits his teeth, grips his weapon, gets up again. 

Sweat drips into his eyes, and he wipes them in irritation, breaking off from his latest series of sword passes to grab a nearby pitcher and gulp thirstily from its gullet. Some of the water drips and slicks down his neck, his throat, sticking his half-open shirt to his chest. Felix licks droplets from his lips, tilts his head into the sun, and sees the boar watching him.

His body stills. He’s still breathing hard. Dimitri is watching him at the entrance of the training yard, silhouetted in the open doorway. For a moment Felix and his dead prince stare at each other, before Felix flinches and turns his back on him. 

He’s excruciatingly aware of Dimitri’s watchful presence as he picks up his sword again and shifts back into position. The weight of that stare prickles up his spine, leaves him breathless. Even as Felix moves through form after form, feint after feint, pass after pass, Dimitri’s fascination does not lessen. It’s everything he’s seen a thousand times before, since the years of their childhood as Felix learned to hold a weapon’s weight in his small arms, but he does not look away, and Felix can’t bring himself to hate it as wholly as he should. 

There is something to be said about absolute focus. It feels like devotion. It feels like religion ought to feel. 

He’s angrier by the moment, and anger sustains him, keeps him going. If Dimitri--the boar, fuck, fuck , call him for what he is--if the boar watches him, it’s surely to learn his weaknesses; it’s surely so that one day he will be able to defeat him in battle. No one else will be able to kill Felix. Felix will make damn sure that is so.

His pulse thrums through every part of his body. To his horror, his dick too throbs with a plea for much-needed contact. The fabric of his pants rasps against the inside of his thighs. 

He could, if he wanted, storm over to the boar and run him through. Would Dimitri let him? Would his best friend smile at him as Felix’s blade pierced through his ribcage? Or would he finally break, would he finally snap, would the beast Felix knows him to be at last rage up to the surface and destroy him? 

It would be a fitting end. 

Felix trains to fight, and fights to kill. There is no space for compassion on the battlefield, only the split second between your blade and someone’s heart. If you don’t kill, you die. The boar himself knows this. 

Felix has no intention of dying anytime soon.

A poetic death is still a final death.

But he knows that their story, when it ends, will end with Dimitri’s hands around his throat. 

.

Felix’s hair is in his face. With a tsk, he rescues the bedraggled hair tie and drags his fingers through his sweat-soaked locks at the back of his head, twisting them into a messy bun as he makes his way towards the staircase to the dormitories. He was training so long he missed dinner. 

“Felix?”

“What?” he barks, out of habit, before realizing Mercedes is smiling at him. Chagrined, he stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Hi.”

“Hello,” she says, smiling at him in that absurdly kind way of hers. Anyone else would be faking it. Mercedes is alarmingly genuine. “I noticed you weren’t at dinner.”

Felix shrugs. “Lost track of time.” It’s late enough that the long shadows of evening are stretching out across the golden stone of Garreg Mach. 

Mercedes laughs. “That’s so like you, Felix! Here.”

He blinks down at the cloth-wrapped tray she offers him. “You--didn’t have to--”

“That’s all right, Felix,” she chirps. “I’m afraid it’s mostly cold cuts, because I didn’t know when you’d stop training! There’s a half of ham and beer pie, as well. And that really smelly cheese you pretend you don’t like.”

Felix’s fingers close around the tray, and he gives her a rueful smile. “Thanks.”

“Of course!” She falls into step beside him, slipping her arm through his. “Good thing, too! I wanted to talk to you.”

“I did take the herbs you gave me last time I was wounded--”

“Not about that, silly.” She giggles. “Although I’m very glad to know you’ve been following my advice.” She nudges his shoulder with hers. “We need to talk about Dimitri.”

Felix scowls. Stares down at the tray. “I don’t--”

“He’s very unhappy, you know,” she says serenely. 

Something in Felix’s chest twists, like a painful pin struck through his vital organs. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Come now, Felix. You must have seen it. You’re always looking at His Highness.”

He grits his teeth. There is, unfortunately, not very much he can say to refute that. “I don’t trust anything the boar claims to feel. Always smiling that perfect smile. Always pretending that he’s Dimitri .”

Mercedes hums. “I know it’s very rough on you, Felix, but you need to realize that your distress can hurt others, too. Dimitri is so sensitive. He’s very sad.”

“I don’t care.”

Mercedes stops at the foot of the stairs, a charming little frown bisecting her brow. “You don’t really mean that.”

“I do.” But Felix can’t quite look at her. 

“You think he’s different from how he used to be--”

“He’s dead.” Rage surfaces in Felix’s throat, but Mercedes doesn’t flinch. “Dimitri’s fucking dead. He’s not coming back. The boar can pretend to be him all he wants; I know the truth. I--” His voice catches. “I miss him.”

“He misses you too.”

“ Right .” His bitterness is so thick he could bite on it. “He just wants me to be as blind as the rest of you--wants me barking at his heel like a dog , willing to give my life for him--”

“But aren’t you?” Mercedes says softly.

Felix stares at her. 

“You were so angry at him,” she says, smiling, “when he was wounded in that bandit attack two months ago. You were with him while he was unconscious and killed anyone who would approach. If you hadn’t been there, it’s quite likely we wouldn’t have a prince of Faerghus any longer. I was the one who reached you first, Felix. I healed him while you kept us all safe. You were covered in blood, and some of it was his.”

Felix’s breath shudders out of him. He remembers that dreadful, endless hour of his life as though it had been branded into his flesh. Dimitri’s pale, lifeless face, the dirt and grime and blood of battle, his dislocated arm and the gnarly claws’ bite in his left flank, bleeding dark plumes of crimson into the mud of the trench. Felix had touched him with trembling fingers before staggering back to his feet and gripping his sword. 

He had fought off attacker after attacker, slaying the boar’s enemies with a berserker’s rage. Men had fallen around them, and not one of them had come close enough to finish the job.

Two days later, Dimitri had cornered him in the doorway to their classroom, almost-healed and shining with beauty. The sun had crowned his golden hair as he smiled his fake smile and looked straight into Felix’s eyes and said: “I owe you my thanks, Felix. Whatever you wish from me, consider it yours.”

Felix had shoved him away and left him standing there. For the first time since Glenn’s death, he had wanted to cry until his heart ran dry. 

He looks away now, unable to face Mercedes’ smiling condemnation. “We need him alive.”

“We do,” she says, patting his hand consolingly. “He is our prince. Our future king! We need him to give us hope for the future and light in the darkness. But it’s different for you, Felix. You care so deeply for one another, and neither of you can truly see it. It would certainly be a shame if you were to hurt him irreparably, don’t you think?”

She leans in and kisses him softly on the cheek before adding: “Enjoy the cheese!”

Felix watches her go.

.

The scream of a wounded boar is enough to scare a grown man to death.

Felix is covered in burning blood. 

He looks up from the soldier he’s just killed and swipes at his eyes, trying to orient himself. Every one of his senses are telling him to run in the direction the scream has come from, but he takes a second to wipe his blade clean and regain his footing, before he clambers up a short rock cliff to his left and looks for Dimitri’s blue cape in the dark rain. From all the battlefield below come shouts and bursts of lightning, the rattle of metal on metal and screams of demonic beasts, and he can barely discern Ingrid swooping down on her pegasus before she yells at him over the thunder:

“His Highness is hit! Head north, Felix!”

Felix gives her a short nod and struggles out of his half-torn waistcoat before he runs. 

He finds the boar still standing, and soaked to the skin. His eyes are hot with fury, and his mouth is locked in an animal snarl as he runs a man through the ribcage with his lance. His golden hair is streaked with blood and mud, his gauntlets curled into claws. The enemy falls to his knees with a gurgle of pain. Dimitri jerks his lance out of his heart, then easily backhands him to the drenched ground. In the rain, he looks desperate and wild. 

“Boar!” Felix yells, and Dimitri’s eyes snap up to his. He smiles.

“Ah, Felix,” he says, as pleasantly as though they were at tea, despite the bleeding gash in his side where a javelin clearly scraped past him. He wavers.

“Shit--come on!” Felix barks, grabbing his fool of a prince by the arm and dragging him under the shelter of a willow tree. Dimitri’s chuckle is a dark, wet sound.

Felix backs him against the trunk of the tree and roughly turns him to inspect the wound. The bleeding is sluggish, the skin very cold, but the graze is not so deep. Still, Felix’s fingers run red in seconds. He curses under his breath.

Dimitri leans his head back against the rough bark and laughs, his eyes falling closed. “Really, Felix, there is no need.”

“Fool beast,” Felix mutters, fingers dancing on Dimitri’s exposed skin. Dimitri shivers. “You need to protect your left side, boar.”

Dimitri’s lashes flutter, silver droplets caught in them. “Why should I, when you’re there?”

Felix could commit regicide in this moment. “I won’t always be there.”

Another somber chuckle. “I know.”

Despite his bravado, Dimitri’s face is tight with pain. He hisses as Felix prods as him, before his face goes bright with wonder.

“Felix,” he breathes, looking down at Felix’s glowing fingers. “Are you--you know healing magic?”

“Shut up,” Felix says through his teeth. “Gotta--shit-- concentrate.”

The torn flesh repairs itself with difficulty, but the bleeding ebbs to a stop, and Dimitri breathes out a gasp of relief. “That--feels good. When did you learn this?”

“None of your business,” says Felix, who has been training with Mercedes for months and struggles to heal even the smallest papercut. But he shifts his palm across Dimitri’s ravaged skin and the wound knits itself back together. It’s slow, it looks like it hurts, but it heals.

Dimitri’s eyes are soft. Gone is the wild despair and brutality; but he is not winsomely smiling a candlewax smile, either. He looks almost tender.

It makes Felix fucking furious.

“Fucking idiot,” he hisses, taking his hand away with a nasty jerk. “Where’s your backup? Where’s the Professor? Huh? Why in Sothis’ name were you alone out there?”

Dimitri shakes his head, rueful. “I was caught off-guard.”

“That shouldn’t happen,” Felix snaps, voice rising in rage. “Witness the boar-king, all too eager to get himself killed!” Dimitri winces. “I’m right, aren’t I?” Felix adds, bitterness dripping from every word. “You’ll die a tragic and beautiful death, and leave us all to pick up the pieces after you’re gone.”

“No--”

“Don’t fucking try it. I know you .”

“You do,” Dimitri says softly. He removes one of his deadly gauntlets and cups Felix’s wet cheek. His palm is warm. His fingers splay on Felix’s jaw like a caress. 

“Felix,” he whispers, almost as gentle and almost as kind as the boy Felix lost. 

Felix’s breath comes short. He can feel the warmth of Dimitri’s mouth, so close to his now; Dimitri’s eyes are half-shut, but in them is a surprising hesitation. His fingertips brush through the fine damp strands that have escaped Felix’s hair tie, but then he wraps his hand around the back of Felix’s neck, and the contact and the strength and the threat of that touch makes Felix’s pulse throb in near-imagined pain--

“Fuck,” he gasps, and tilts his head away. 

Dimitri breathes raggedly against his temple. 

“Saints,” Felix snaps, and then takes one, two--as many steps as possible away from the wild boar, devouring the endless space between them. Dimitri, drenched to the skin, his uniform jacket slicked to his chest,  watches him with darkened eyes, as though a beast had chosen that moment to stare at Felix through the void. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, in a low, raspy voice. “I’m sorry.”

Felix is shaking, he realizes. A fine, deep, bone-rattling tremor he can feel in his lungs . “You’re a wild beast. Pick up your weapon.”

Dimitri tilts his head. The corner of his lips tilts upwards. “You know you keep me sane, Felix. Don't you?”

“Fuck you,” Felix growls. 

They return to Garreg Mach on horseback long after the battle is over, long after their friends have deserted the battlefield. Dimitri leans against Felix’s back, his hands on Felix’s hips. Felix feels the solid strength of him, the bone and the muscle. Dimitri’s smile in his voice:

“You’ll strangle that poor beast, Felix. Let me.”

His arms come around Felix more fully, and his hands curl around Felix’s fingers, around the reins. The horse neighs. Felix stills. 

“Like so,” murmurs Dimitri, gentling his grip. “It’s quite tame. You need only be kind.”

Night falls. Garreg Mach looms ahead, and light spills over them like gold. 

.

“Felix,” says Dimitri, and when Felix opens his eyes in the dimness of night he finds his prince seated on the side of his bed, happy and whole and alive , brushing his fingers to Felix’s cheek. 

Felix, caught between wakefulness and dream, sighs and turns his head into that gentle touch. “ Dimitri .”

“I’m here,” says Dimitri, with absolute earnestness. He’s grinning, turning his knuckles over to caress Felix’s jaw. “I missed you.”

“Where did you go, you asshole,” Felix mutters, his eyes sharp with pricking tears. “I haven’t seen you in--” years .

“I know,” says Dimitri, sounding rueful, leaning down to kiss his cheek. Against Felix’s ear, he murmurs: “I was dead. But now I’m back.”

“What--? I--” But that train of thought is already slipping away. Felix turns his head to meet Dimitri’s mouth, and Dimitri moans , then smiles around his name. 

“Felix--Felix--”

“Saints, take this off--”

“Yes. Yes.”

Felix’s body is pulsing with light. He breathes sharp against Dimitri’s open mouth, and as Dimitri’s fingers slip down his body, every square inch of his skin grows heated and bright. Then Dimitri is on his knees, and the sight of his bent head could make him sob--

Shriek.

Felix wakes up alone. 

It takes him ten seconds of disoriented confusion before he realizes that his bedsheets are tangled about his legs, and that his dick is peeking above the waistband of his smallclothes, shamelessly happy that he is now capable of directing his attention to it. 

A second horrible screech echoes through the silence of the dorms, and Felix jerks to a seated position. It is closely followed by sounds of grunting exertion and more overloud scraping noises, so loud they could rattle Garreg Mach to timber and stone. So loud, it takes Felix another two minutes of irritable bewilderment to realize they’re coming from Dimitri’s dorm room. 

He stares at the wooden panel that separates their rooms, baffled. It is so late at night, the moon out the window is bright and high and round as a rabbit’s belly. Either Dimitri is indulging in a spot of interior redecoration, or he has finally lost his last marbles. 

Felix blinks, scowls, and then falls back onto the mattress and sighs loudly at the ceiling. 

The racket goes on for an alarmingly long time, punctuated by Dimitri’s soft, strained sounds of effort: a grunt, a low growl, a murmured curse. Felix briefly considers smothering himself with a pillow, then thinks better of it and considers smothering Dimitri with said pillow. Maybe Sylvain can help. Such ruckus must be hell on him too. 

Right as he is about to get up, grab his sword, and commit an act of treason, a very final (and sonorous) scrape of wood against stone echoes through the wall, and the noise blissfully stops. 

Felix turns his head and stares at the wooden panel, wishing he could see through it. What would he see then? A devastated room, splinters of chair and desk littered on the floor? Is the boar pacing in torn clothing, having destroyed his furniture in a fit of madness? Is he even clothed?

Felix closes his mouth with a snap and rethinks his life choices heretofore. 

But there is nothing but silence now, blessed silence. He turns, braces his shoulders against the wall, jerks his blanket over his waist, and--

A long, shuddery sigh echoes from Dimitri’s room. Close. Very close. 

Felix sinks his teeth into his pillow. That sigh didn’t sound mad. It didn’t sound like the final exhausted breath of a beast drifting into sleep. It sounded--sad--it sounded, too, like desire, so deep and so thick it thrums through Felix’s veins even now.

He sits up against the wall and scowls down at his lap. 

His cock, whom all the clamor had managed to slap down for a while, is extremely cheerful now. It fills up his smallclothes, throbbing gently. 

Another sigh. 

Sothis, is the boar right there? On the other side of the wall--

Felix’s breath comes short. He glares at his erection balefully, but the damn thing doesn’t take the fucking hint. His hand rests on his thigh, inches away from it, and the more he strains to hear Dimitri, the easier it becomes to believe he could just… touch himself. Right there. Right now. With his boarish prince so close that Felix could touch him, yet so distant he might as well be half a moon away. 

A pounding beat throbs through his veins. He could easily wrap his fingers around his aching cock, give it one, two, three tight pumps of his fist, and come all over his thighs in shuddering stupor. The sheer relief of it, after so many days of denying himself any kind of pleasure, would surely dislodge the bitterness from his heart. 

From Dimitri’s side of the wall comes a rustle, the creak of the mattress. He really is right there. And if Felix came, he could--he would, doubtless, hear any and all noises he made through their shared wall--

Felix bites down on his lower lip to smother a helpless whimper. 

He forces his hand away. Grips the bedsheets. Stares at the moon. 

Silence reigns. Perhaps the boar has fallen to a fast drowse, exhausted by his madness. 

Felix tilts his head back against the wall and does not sleep again. 

.

Annette is chattering a mile a minute as she drags Felix towards the cathedral, her little hand clasped around his. Felix grumbles for argument’s sake, muttering about his training schedule, but she only looks stern.

“You promised , Felix! Mercie would be so devastated if you didn’t come!”

It is clear that Annette would consider this a cardinal sin on his part. Felix sighs, and lets himself be taken hostage. Around them, students and professors stream towards the cathedral’s grand open doors, chatting about strategy lessons and assignment deadlines and the upcoming monthly exams. The summer sun illuminates the walls of the monastery and turns its cream stone to gold. The sky is cornflower blue, endless and terrifying. 

The cathedral is filled with resonant song. Voices are hushed here; each footfall echoes. The congregation gathers among the pews as priests and monks scurry around, preparing for Mass. 

Felix hasn’t attended a service in weeks. Months? It’s all unclear; time passes strangely in Garreg Mach. Annette sits him down at the far end of a pew halfway down the nave, underneath a stained glass window that makes shards of light dance in his eyes, adjoins him to stay there, then skips away, promising to be back with Mercedes. Felix waves her off.

It takes some minutes before the crowd hushes, and then Rhea--looking majestic and kindly in that way of hers that Felix is trying to trust for the sake of Faerghus--steps up to face them.

And the bells start to ring. 

The deep quality of the bells streams down the nave, shaking the heavy walls, climbing up to the heavens. That sound goes down into the lung, into the bone, into the soul. It seems to herald a changing world. When it stops, a deep stillness follows.

“Oh, Felix--” Mercedes says hurriedly, coming up to him with Dimitri on her heels. “Could you squeeze Dimitri in next to you? The pews have filled up so fast! So many people came to see the Goddess today, it’s amazing!”

“Uh,” says Felix, reverting to his usual habit of glaring at the boar. Dimitri looks abashed. “Annette was looking for you.”

“Oh, Annie’s over there. Look!” 

Felix turns, and catches Annette, seated three pews behind his own, in the process of hiding her face in her songbook. He grits his teeth. 

“This is a trap,” he says flatly. 

Mercedes pats his shoulder kindly. “Nonsense. I’m sure you misunderstood what she said! Scooch, scooch.”

Dimitri, looking mortified, sits down, squeezing himself into the space between Felix and the end of the pew. On Felix’s other side, a group of Golden Deer students are roughhousing irreligiously. This means that--to avoid getting elbowed in the ribs every few seconds--Felix is forced to press his thigh and flank against the boar’s. 

Dimitri is warm. 

And he is staring straight ahead, a flush of red gracing his cheekbones. “Apologies,” he murmurs once Mercedes has departed with a cheerful wave. “I didn’t realize you would be--here.”

“Right,” Felix mutters, under his breath. “Annette’s fault.”

“Ah. They sought to trap us, then,” Dimitri says, wryly. “These two are deadlier than any soldier of Faerghus.”

“Why the fuck were you rearranging your furniture at fuck o’clock last night?” Felix asks abruptly, surprising even himself. Dimitri goes wide-eyed, his cheeks darkening tellingly. 

“You--oh, Felix, I didn’t think--did I wake you?”

“You probably woke up the dead down in the Holy Tomb,” Felix snaps, too loud; the student sitting in the pew directly in front of him throws him a dirty look. 

Dimitri looks contrite. “My most sincere apologies, Felix. I did not realize. You might have said something--in fact, it is quite unlike you not to have said anything.”

Felix recalls his pathetic stand-offs with his own dick, and snaps his mouth shut, glaring. Dimitri seems on the brink of saying more--perhaps to apologize again, in which case Felix will throw him off the pew--but, thankfully , Rhea claps her hands once, and the entire cathedral falls silent.

Later, Felix will remember little of the service. The words Rhea speaks run over him like a river, and all that remains is the physical experience of sitting next to the boar for an hour. They have not been so close in so long; it is not the closeness of their classroom seats, where a good foot separates their shoulders; nor is it the intimacy of the willow tree, when his touch was enough to heal Dimitri’s torn flesh, and Dimitri’s face was inches from his own. Now, there is the soft rhythm of Dimitri’s breath, the ever-present contact of his arm pressed against Felix’s, the warmth of his strong thigh. 

A lesser man would want to feel more of that warmth, that touch, that solidity. There are days when Felix wants to press his fingers to Dimitri’s lips just to be certain that he breathes. There is still a boyishness in Dimitri, this Dimitri, the Dimitri that came out of the Western Rebellion with blood on his hands and a crazed smile twisting his mouth; somewhere inside him the friend of Felix’s childhood still sometimes shows through the mask. But it is undeniable that he is almost a man. His shoulders broad, his legs long and strong. His hand rests on his knee; he has taken off the gauntlets in deference to the service; and Felix does his best not to stare at the bony twist of his wrist, the power of those long, elegant fingers. 

He clenches his jaw and looks instead to the altar, where--some monk is reading from a holy book, or some shit. 

The sun moves through the sky and spears the stained glass windows. Its light falls across the nave in a wash of gold. Tangles in Felix’s eyelashes. 

He becomes aware that Dimitri is looking at him. 

Felix flicks him a warning glance, but the boar seems lost in contemplation. Felix can’t even be certain he’s looking at him. Dimitri’s eyes are blue, blue like a saint’s heart. The expression on his face is absurdly close to reverence. To worship . 

To heartbreak. 

“Boar,” Felix hisses. Dimitri just blinks slowly, his gaze slipping down to Felix’s mouth.

Felix grips his thigh and squeezes hard.

A strangled sound escapes Dimitri’s throat, soft and trembling, and he blinks again, a distant awareness returning to his eyes. “Ah…”

His hand strays over to Felix’s, over his thigh. Felix feels--hears, almost--the blood thrumming through him, keeping him alive.

Their blood. 

“Come back,” he says, with sudden dread, and this time Dimitri snaps back to himself, or as much of himself as there remains in his carcass, and he ducks his head, blushing furiously. Felix refuses to believe that blush is genuine. 

“Ah--I was lost in thought,” Dimitri says, with a weak smile. “Forgive--”

“Stop apologizing,” Felix snaps. The student in front of him says “ Shhh ” in the most affronted way imaginable. 

“Right,” Dimitri says softly. “Right.” 

His fingers tighten over Felix’s. 

When the service ends, Felix still hasn’t taken his hand away. He doesn’t explain why even to himself. 

As the congregation erupts in animated whispers and laughs to signal the end of the service, he stands with a jerk, desperate to leave this holy place and all the anxious, absurd emotions that lance through him. Dimitri rises with him, gallantly making room for him to exit the pew. Felix glares.

“Felix?”

“Nevermind,” he mutters. “I need to train.”

Dimitri chuckles. “I expect no less from you.”

“Look for me in the training yard,” Felix adds, “if you dare,” and the laughter slips from Dimitri’s slips. 

Shouldering his way through the crowd, Felix doesn’t look back from the opened doorway. He would have seen Dimitri standing alone in the streaming sunlight, if he had. 

.

The boar is hot on his heels. 

He feels big, big as a mountain, as he enters the training yard, timid and unsure, looking to Felix as though Felix might tell him to fuck off all over again. Felix chokes down the tension that ricochets through him and picks up a training sword, weighing it in his hands before slashing at the air, taking a few practice hits. 

At the outer edge of his vision, Dimitri slips his bare hands into his gauntlets, flexing the metal fingers a few times, before he soberly picks up one of the wooden lances set out for training students. He looks absorbed in his perusal of the weapon, as though his strength were not so great that he could split it in two with a single snap of his wrist. He wields it with such absent-minded elegance--it should strike fear in the heart of any self-aware enemy. 

Too bad most of the bandits and rogue soldiers they encounter in forest skirmishes are unequivocally dumber than a sack of bricks. 

Anyone with a given knowledge of combat would know to recognize Dimitri’s talent with the lance--not inherent talent, as the strength he was born with, but a power he has honed over years and years of learning. Dimitri started his journey to kingship young. So did Felix follow, on his journey to protecting the boy he adored. 

It is a testament of his faith--likewise of his love for those bygone golden days--that he is still here at Dimitri’s side, despite everything. Despite the loss and the fear and the grief.

Felix swallows down absurd feelings, and returns his gaze to his own weapon. He tests its give, its balance. He breathes shallow and soft. He nods to himself, once.

Dimitri is looking at him, furtive but too indiscreet, and Felix knows that if he looked back he would see in that blue gaze an otherworldly tenderness. 

That used to terrify him. A few months ago…

Now he--doesn’t know. Anymore. 

He has gone mad with Dimitri’s touch. With Dimitri’s intense focus, his incredible eyes, the impossible gentleness no monster ever should feel. 

If it knows such softness, is it still a monster?

Felix grips his sword, firm. “Well, boar? Are you coming?”

Dimitri’s smile is knowing as he steps forward, his boots breaching the red sand of the training grounds. “I was hoping you hadn’t changed your mind.”

Felix glares at him, unamused. It figures that the boy he’s known his entire life would read him so effortlessly. “I literally just told you to meet me here, didn’t I?” he asks, flat, the better to hide his trepidation. “Why would I change my mind?”

Dimitri’s smile only brightens, and for once Felix does not look for tusks. “Thank you, Felix.”

“What are you thanking me for, you--” Felix snaps, before falling back two hard steps as Dimitri rushes him. He manages to block the hit at the last second, takes a harsh breath, pushes him back with a downward swipe that Dimitri evades easily.

They strike at each other without remorse, and as their wooden blades echo hollowly against each other Felix finds that he is grateful for one more thing:

Dimitri no longer treats him as though he were made of glass.

As a child, Dimitri’s shyness around his strength made him elephantine with caution. Once, as they sparred with the buoyancy of boys, he had landed a rough hit directly against Felix’s left shoulder. Felix, to his present disgust, had burst into fat tears. The situation had gotten worse with Dimitri’s horror; Felix had run away, then run back and gripped Dimitri’s hand with ferocity, but still he had flinched, once or twice, if Dimitri moved too suddenly.

After that, Dimitri had taken extreme care when they trained together. Felix had grown to resent it--to resent himself, too, for this was his own fault; never Dimitri’s, never Dimitri’s fault, but his own for being such a rotten crybaby!

Now, ten years later, Dimitri fights him without compunction and without fear. He does not curb his strength, but knows to control it, to make it run down his weapon like a cresting wave. He is so much stronger that the challenge of facing Dimitri in combat makes Felix delirious. Felix’s reflexes, his speed, his instincts ingrained from years of fighting demons real and imagined--every part of him must be calculated to the millisecond, or he will fail.

And if he fails now, he will fail again.

That is unacceptable. 

Felix has built himself the reputation of a lone wolf, untouched by companionship or affection. He should not feel a physical pull towards another’s body, he should not wish for this eternal push-and-pull. This flesh and bone. This vivid existence.

One of his blows glances off Dimitri’s thigh, and though he is already preparing for the riposte, he finds that Dimitri’s eyes flare in… anticipation? A feverish shine. 

Felix blinks, notes the shift in Dimitri’s body, and drops his gaze. 

His thoughts go white with shock for a split-second before Dimitri lands a jarring blow on his arm, and he drops his stance with a noise of irritation. 

“Sothis,” he grouses, before striding over to the bench and grabbing a random towel to wipe his face. Even his hair is sweaty, sticking to his face and neck where it’s escaped the tie. He’s trying to put it to rights when Dimitri picks up a nearby pitcher and lifts it to his mouth, taking a small sip that easily turns into enormous, thirsty gulps. 

His throat works as he swallows, and some of the water drips from his lips, running down his jaw towards the shell of his ear, running down the pale stretch of his neck into his collar. His eyes are closed, his cheeks a little flushed with the exertion of their fight. For once, his body is relaxed, loose, happy, as though he fully trusted that nothing and no one could ever touch him; not here. 

He lowers the pitcher and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His red tongue follows, licking a stray droplet from his lower lip. Then he glances at Felix, and his face eases. “Oh, forgive me, Felix. How thoughtless of me. Would you like some of the water?”

Felix grunts and takes the pitcher from him, hesitating for a second before swallowing a few mouthfuls. Dimitri is looking at the sky, hesitance crossing over his fine face. 

Shadows stretch across the training yard, eating away at the last of their light.

“Did you hear that, Felix?” Dimitri is frowning up at the clouds as though trying to infer divine meaning. 

“Mm?”

Dimitri looks earnestly concerned. “Thunder. It seems rather close by the sound of it.”

Felix heard no such thing. He snorts, bending over to pick up his training sword. “You’re not getting out of training that easily,” he starts to say, more teasingly than he intended, immediately before the heavens decide to prove him very wrong. 

Thunder booms like a cannon set loose, and the clouds break into stinging rain. 

The downpour is immediate, violent to the point of pain. Felix curses, blinking water out of his eyes. Then he and Dimitri are rushing to find cover, grabbing at each other’s wrists. But as they crowd each other underneath a tiny awning, the damage has been done--Dimitri’s trousers stick to his thighs, and the black fabric of his uniform jacket delineates his shoulders in a way Felix can only call obscene.

Speaking of obscene, that hard angle in his pants doesn’t appear to have softened one bit. 

“It might stop again soon,” Dimitri hazards, glancing at him before hurriedly returning his gaze to the sky. “Perhaps we can wait it out?”

“Mm,” says Felix, non-committal. Dimitri very promptly sneezes, and he sighs. “Ugh. Nevermind waiting it out to train. We’re going to the sauna lest I have to nurse you back to health.”

“I--” Dimitri sounds breathless as Felix drags him away from the training yard, ducking into a corridor safely out of the rain. They drip down on the cobblestones and, thank the Saints, meet no one on the way. Dimitri says, in a low voice: “I wouldn’t mind,” and Felix does his best to maintain a steady expression. 

He’s pretty positive he manages it. Still, he snaps: “What’s wrong with you? You get sleep-deprived and just say anything?”

Never mind that he still doesn’t know why Dimitri thought it right to move all his furniture around in the middle of the night. 

The sight of the sauna doors is a relief. Felix shoves Dimitri into the changing-rooms and gestures in the overall direction of his broad chest. “Strip.”

Dimitri blinks, his eyes enormous. “Um. Felix…” Felix stands with his hands on his hips, staring him down. “Were you not planning on… doing the same?”

Felix says, indignantly: “Of course I was,” and demonstrates by turning his back on him. He struggles with the buttons on his waistcoat, jerkily shrugging it off and determinedly ignoring the soft sounds of Dimitri removing his clothes behind him. 

It takes an awkwardly long time for him to remove all his clothes, all of which are drenched and slippery. Ugh. Wet socks. Felix stomps out of his smallclothes, reaches for a fluffy towel and wraps it without any more ado around his waist. 

When he turns around--surely that was plenty long enough for Dimitri to strip and get himself a towel of his very own?--he instead finds Dimitri, stark naked, with his hands on his hips, staring down at his crotch. Granted, the angle makes it so Felix can only see the long stretch of his muscled back and the taut curve of his ass, but--

“Just use a damn towel, boar,” he says grouchily, throwing one at him. Dimitri, damn his stupid reflexes, catches it before it can fall to the flagstones, and wraps it meticulously around his stupidly small waist. He turns to Felix sheepishly. 

“Well?" Felix asks. “Are we going in or not?”

He walks into the steam room without waiting for an answer, secretly pleased when Dimitri follows without a word. 

The benches are wide enough for the two of them to sit comfortably, and yet they somehow wind up only a few feet from each other, sitting in absolute--deadly--silence. The heat is high, and Felix’s skin warms up fast, but his hair is still wet, and so is Dimitri’s; dark with rain, it sticks to the vulnerable back of his neck. Fool. Leaving such a soft part of himself exposed. 

A moment later, Dimitri shivers briefly, humanity showing behind the princely façade, and Felix acts on instinct, getting up to pour some more water over the hot stones. When he comes to sit back down, Dimitri’s eyes catch his. He looks a little abashed. 

“Felix…” He hesitates a moment longer, then blurts out: “About last night--”

Felix lifts an eyebrow and crosses his arms. An explanation, at last. “The racket.”

“Er, yes. That.” Dimitri is staring at a spot right over Felix’s shoulder. “Ah, Sylvain was… that is to say, it was my fault for not… considering how it might affect you, but…”

A dreadful realization blooms. Felix ignores that mental image. “You can’t fight fire with fucking fire, boar, not when it’s Sylvain. Not when he’s--” Oh, Goddess. Nope. “You should have just--” His face is hot. All that steam. 

Dimitri, for some incomprehensible reason, takes this as encouragement. “He was having relations,” he explains. Felix is losing his goddamn mind. “Er--on his desk, pounding against the wall--”

Nevermind Sylvain and his nightly proclivities, that is evoking an entirely new picture with different… actors in the mix. Felix swallows thickly. “I--I know that, why are we talking about it?”

“Oh.” Dimitri looks surprised. “Ah. It’s just--that it went on for over an hour, and I just wished to sleep--”

Why does this reasoning make sense. Felix diverts his glare towards the floorboards. “I don’t… hate you for waking me up.” That is the closest he can come to I don’t hate you at all.

I hate myself for falling for you again.

“You clearly weren’t thinking straight.” If he ever was.

Dimitri steals a glance at him, and Felix’s body heats up even more. He feels tight, wound-up. He still can’t get it out of his mind--the image of Dimitri hauling him up over his desk, lifting his legs over his shoulders, and--

Slam. Slam. Slam.

“Felix,” Dimitri says, softly.

“Mm.”

“If you need to… ah, leave the sauna…” Felix pins him with a glare. “If the heat becomes too much, that is--”

“It’s fine,” Felix says, with dignity, and proves it by streaming some more water onto the hot stones. 

“Ah--” Dimitri says, almost in protest, and then: “Mm,” as the small room fills up with so much steam Felix can only just see his way back to his seat. This, for some reason, brings him a few inches closer to Dimitri. 

“If you need to leave, by all means,” he jeers, and Dimitri seems to see this as the challenge it very much is. He doesn’t budge an inch. 

The heat heightens some more. Before long, Felix is sweating hard. Dimitri’s skin is slick and shiny, golden all over. He’s set his back against the back of the bench, and his shoulders--

Well. 

Felix is not going to think about his shoulders. 

Or his elegant, well turned-out forearms.

Or the tight, rosy disks of his nipples. 

There will be no thinking in this room.

“I didn’t even know that one could go for that long,” Dimitri says suddenly, and Felix’s brain screeches. His gaze snags onto Dimitri’s mouth, which is… absurdly erotic, really. 

Felix subtly inches his thighs together. “Like I’d know better,” he croaks. “I’m not some whore like Sylvain.” Nevermind that he could climb the boar like a tree. He has his dignity. 

He does. Surely. 

“I always just thought--” 

“We’re not talking about this,” Felix says hastily. He realizes he’s staring at Dimitri’s throat, and stops. Or tries to. 

Dimitri nods and then promptly keeps talking. “So you’ve never…”

“Boar,” Felix says, pained. 

“I mean, I haven’t, I--” 

Felix knew this, abstractedly. If anyone had slipped in Dimitri’s bed, he would have known. He would have known. But there were two years when--and he looks the way he looks. 

“Not because of what Sylvain said,” Dimitri carries on. “I--I certainly don’t think you’re weaker than I am because of--I don’t even know if that’s something you engage in--”

Felix chokes. “Stop fucking talking.”

Dimitri gives a jerky nod. “Right.”

It takes two minutes of the heat and the tension and Dimitri’s ridiculous body mere inches away, all warm and soft and golden skin, for all of Felix’s oh-so-well-erected defenses to start crumbling. He clears his throat. 

“Not that it’s any of your business,” he warns, uselessly. “But no, I haven’t slept with anyone.” Dimitri twitches. Felix ignores him. “And yes, of course I’ve jerked off. What’s wrong with you that you haven’t?”

It sounds harsh; it is harsh. But Felix will dig himself deep into this hole of his own making and refuse to climb out. Talking about masturbation… about sex --with Dimitri? The boy he had his first and latest wet dream about? The boy whose first growth spurt left claw marks on Felix’s libido? He really must have gone completely insane. What will Dimitri say? What will Dimitri do ? 

How will he destroy Felix this time?

Dimitri waits for a long time before answering. “I… I just never did it. It felt… wrong.”

Two hours ago, they were in church, staring at god. Now Felix is staring at his dick, which is experiencing complex emotions upon learning that Dimitri has never jerked off. 

“Wrong,” he repeats. His voice wobbles; a bit. 

“Not,” Dimitri hastens to add, before trailing off. More slowly, he explains: “I… it feels wrong to do that while thinking of someone who can’t consent to it.”

Felix’s brain must have melted in the heat. He stares as Dimitri gets up to pour more water on the stones. The towel slips, a little, exposing the hard jut of his hipbones.

So he’s… thought . He just hasn’t done anything about it.

“Who are you--” Felix swallows his horror back down. More harshly still, he bites out: “You really think that person is going to care whether you jerk off to them or have a wet dream? It’s all going to end the same way.”

Dimitri with his face all twisted up in pleasure, muscles strained, coming all over his chest with a name on his lips--

He’s going to be sick. This can’t get any worse, surely.

“Do you… um.” Dimitri is not looking at him. “Is there someone you… ah… think of, then?”

Nevermind.

Felix’s heartbeat thrums in his throat. He forces out: “No.”

Dimitri looks up at him. “Ah.”

That word contains multitudes. Felix stares at him, and Dimitri starts, stop, starts again--

“Listen, Felix--”

The sauna door opens, and Felix looks up at Dedue’s massive bulk silhouetted in the steam. He nods at Felix before turning his attention to Dimitri. “Your Highness. I have been looking for you.”

A terrible dread forms itself into knots in Felix’s stomach. 

Dedue. Of course. The man who cares for Dimitri, who has been at his side for the past two years, whose loyalty and attention could never be questioned. Of course Dimitri would want… that absolute devotion. Why would he prefer the person who’s treated him like a monster for months? Who tells him he has blood on his hands?

There is no doubt Dimitri’s affections would be returned, if he spoke out--but who would accept a royal consort from Duscur?

It makes sense. 

Felix stands without another word and leaves. Dedue lets him pass with the utmost politeness. 

His clothes are still wet, of course--outside the steam room, the changing cubicles are not hot enough to dry them. He changes back into his trousers nevertheless, trying to ignore Dimitri and Dedue’s hushed conversation. Whatever they’re talking about, he cares little for it. 

He needs to get the fuck out of here. 

He shoves his arms through the sleeves of his shirt, tucks it ineffectually into his waistband, and struggles with the buttons. The tightness in his chest does not lighten. It’s right there, solid and bitter, spreading through his veins with the certainty of ice. 

Then Dedue steps into the steam room and closes the door behind him. 

Well.

That’s that, then. 

.

Felix spends an embarrassingly long time dripping on the floor of his bedroom, staring unseeingly into nothing. His body echoes with the exertion of their sparring session, and though the steam from the sauna did help to relieve his muscles from cramping, he feels like he fell from a great height. Moments before Dedue intruded into their conversation, he thought--

It doesn’t fucking matter what he thought. 

He changes into clean clothes mechanically. The white linen shirt feels cool against his heated skin, and he doesn’t bother doing up the laces all the way. He jerks at his hair tie, scowls when it snaps in his hand. Dark hair falls over his shoulders, and he runs his fingers through it. It’s still a little wet. 

He needs to cut it. 

It’s a ridiculous affectation to wear it long. Nevermind that he so adored Dimitri’s longer hair when they were boys, nevermind that he sought so hard to grow his out, like Glenn’s and--ugh, Rodrigue’s. His childhood was spent looking up in awe to people who either died or disappointed him. 

He blindly grabs for a brush on his desk, and starts the lengthy process of disentangling the knots in his hair. 

He does not think about Dimitri, or Dedue, or whatever happened in the steam room after Felix left the sauna with such dreadful finality. 

He’s almost done when a hesitant knock comes at the door.

Probably Annette, he presumes, come to apologize for the Mass fiasco. Or Ashe, with yet another charming tale of chivalry meant to cheer him up. It’s too soft a knock to be Sylvain, who swans in unannounced anyway, or Ingrid, who pounds on doors without a care for anyone’s sleep schedule. 

He tosses the brush aside with a tsk of annoyance, and reaches out to open the door and send whoever it is back to kingdom come. 

“Look, leave me a--” he starts to say, summoning all his ire, and then looks up and up and stops, open-mouthed and scowling.

Dimitri gazes back. There is a slight strain to the corners of his eyes, and a flush on his cheeks. 

He’s wet. Not as wet as before, when the storm drenched them both to the bone, but nonetheless, he is… dripping.

“Did you go back outside?” Felix asks in horror, and then considers sewing his own mouth shut. 

Dimitri nods, his eyes tracking the fall of Felix’s hair over his shoulders. Felix feels, suddenly, horribly, underdressed--he’s barefoot, his shirt half-open over his chest, and surely he looks as devastated as he feels. 

“Why would you fucking do that?” he snaps, grabbing his wrist and dragging Dimitri in. “Are you actually an idiot, you dumb boar? I didn’t try to warm you up for you to--” He shuts up again. The door slams.

Dimitri looks around the bedroom with no little interest, but his attention inevitably returns to Felix. “Felix--”

Felix crosses his arms and grips his elbows, hard. He tilts his chin up. Why is Dimitri so fucking tall, anyway? “Didn’t your loyal champion tell you you’ll catch your death out there?”

Dimitri huffs out a soft laugh. “I assume you mean Dedue.”

“Whatever. Take that off; if you die of pneumonia, my father will never forgive me.”

Dimitri’s fingers drift to the buttons on his uniform jacket as if in a dream, and as he starts to shrug out of it Felix comes to the slow realization that he made a very stupid mistake. 

He can’t take the sight of Dimitri’s naked chest twice in one day without succumbing to the need to jerk himself raw--and there would be nothing more pathetic, surely, than panting in lust after the boar prince.

Felix tries to look away, scowling at his bed--bad idea--the desk-- worse idea--and then the window, idly wondering what would happen if he just climbed out of it and rappelled down the side of the monastery and went to live in the woods.

For the second time in one day, he listens to Dimitri taking off his wet clothes and forces his brain to heel. When he chances a look back, Dimitri has removed his boots and exposed bare, bony ankles and absurdly elegant feet, and is now meticulously folding his white shirt, setting it down on Felix’s desk next to a neat little pile of garments. His fingers stray to the buttons of his trousers, and he pauses, suddenly uncertain. 

“It…” His cheeks redden, and Felix narrows his eyes at him in suspicion. He has to focus, or his attention will start slipping… downward. “It may look… suspect,” Dimitri continues, looking brave, “if I were to leave here in the nude.”

Felix takes a tight breath and carefully does not say anything for a long minute. That life in the woods with the wolves is sounding more appealing by the second. Better than trying to puzzle out the fathoms of Dimitri’s mind-- suspect , he said, and he must have meant: If people think we are sexually involved, you might expect from me what I cannot give. 

“So?” Felix says abruptly, affecting nonchalance, cocking his hip. 

Dimitri looks puzzled. “Um. It wouldn’t… upset you? Being associated with…”

Felix winces. He deserves that censure, he supposes. He has spent months telling anyone who would listen--their friends, their future rivals, their Professor, the Garreg Mach knights, Seteth, Manuela, Shamir, Catherine, even that weird kid who runs around the monastery doing chores--that the boar was little more than a wild, blood-thirsty animal, deserving no mercy. No grace. 

Dimitri won’t meet his eyes. “If--if there’s someone else in your life, I wouldn’t…” 

Felix stares. Someone else? Who the fuck else would he give a shit about? But Dimitri takes in a shuddering breath. “I wouldn’t wish to unnecessarily upset either of you.”

Felix has lost the thread of this conversation--or else it was never about… what he thought it was. The past few hours have felt like a hazy, hot nightmare, by turns exhilarating and devastating. 

No. He’s wrong. This has a hidden meaning. This is Dimitri’s way of telling him don’t fuck this up for me . He’s finding a gentle excuse to let Felix down, and that kindness is worse than any cruelty would have been. “Don’t act as if this isn’t about you,” Felix says, a chill in his voice. “If you’re the one who would be upset, at least own up to it.”

He looks away at that point, swallowing back hot, furious tears. Fuck the boar, for that damned gallantry, for wanting someone else, for not being a monster. 

Fuck Felix, too, for being so much of a fool that he fell in love with the same person twice. 

But Dimitri looks oddly hurt at this. If he expects Felix to bow and scrape and give him his heart on a tray, he can wait until they’re both dead.

“I…” He trails off, gazing at Felix with a pained, awful look on his face. “If I was in another person’s room in… this state of undress, I must admit I would be most worried about… one other person. But as I am with you, that is… not a matter of concern.”

Felix hates him for that, a little. He makes a dismissive sound and turns away; the sight of Dimitri, still a little damp, half-naked, his magnificent chest on display, boundless emotion shining in his eyes, is too brilliant and too painful to bear. 

“Ah, but this is silly,” Dimitri says softly, at his shoulder. “There once was a time when I wouldn’t have hesitated to just…” Another pause, and Felix braces himself for whatever is coming next. It’ll hurt. But he is used to this hurt. This ache. 

“Look, Felix,” Dimitri adds, his voice firmer now. “Before we were interrupted earlier, there was something I wished to say. Very much. But I fear that you may forcibly remove me from your room--and rightfully so, mind you--once I finish saying it. In… which case I ask that I simply be allowed to take my clothes with me.”

Felix rolls his eyes. “Oh, for crying out loud,” he snarls. “Speak, boar .”

Dimitri’s eyes fall, then lift to his again. “Ever since we… ah, reached a certain age, I suppose…” His cheeks are so pink. “You were right. I… have had a number of rather… colorful dreams.”

Oh fucking Saints. Felix is not interested in playing anyone’s confessor. If Dimitri wants to unburden himself of his earthly desires, he can head right down to the cathedral and confide in the Goddess and the dead. 

“But I can’t remember a single one that didn’t somehow revolve around you,” Dimitri says.

Felix stops moving. And breathing. And, unfortunately, thinking. 

And in the face of his silence Dimitri closes his eyes, a rueful little smile playing on his lips. A huff of a laugh slips out of him. “Did you know that I can hardly sleep when you are no longer in bed with me? It used to be so easy--” His throat works as he swallows. “But then, you were always there.”

And then you left me, Felix wants to rage. He wants to cry, to yell, to slam Dimitri’s back against the wall, to pound on his chest with his fists. Glenn was dead and you were gone and I was alone. How fucking dare you? How fucking dare you do this to me now? 

Dimitri’s gaze lingers on his face for a moment longer, and presumably he sees Felix’s horror, because he straightens his shoulders and pastes on his worst smile yet. “It’s all right, Felix. I understand. You don’t have to do anything about it. I just--wanted to say it, I suppose?” Another weak laugh. “Of course you don’t feel the same way. You’ve been so angry with me, of late.”

He pads over to the desk and picks up the bundle of his clothes, tucking them under his arm. “I’ll go. I appreciate your hearing me out, Felix. I truly do.”

“Boar,” Felix hears himself say, his voice white. 

Dimitri reaches out to twist the doorknob, and something very tightly-wound and well-hidden in Felix cracks. 

He reaches Dimitri in two huge strides. 

“Fuck you,” he snarls, spinning him around to face him and slamming him bodily into the door. Dimitri drops the clothes in shock. He looks at Felix like he’s lost his mind. His eyes are huge, moon-wide. “ Fuck you ,” Felix seethes. “I can’t fucking believe you. I haven’t jerked off in weeks and you say this to me? Right now? Looking like that ?”

Dimitri looks down at his bare chest with such confusion that Felix hisses out a curse, yanks up his head by the hair, and pulls himself up on his toes to kiss his dumb, stupid mouth. 

“Oh,” Dimitri says into his mouth, sounding lightning-struck. He lays his hand on Felix’s jaw and tilts it lightly up, his lips soft against Felix’s. A whisper of a breath escapes between them before Dimitri pulls a fraction of an inch away, his hands coming up to cradle Felix’s face. Felix barely smothers the impatient whimper that threatens to fall from his tongue. 

“Felix.” The wonder in his voice is unbearable.

“Please,” Felix hisses, with increased urgency, “fucking kiss me.”

Dimitri makes a wounded sound in the back of his throat and almost bends him backwards with the force of his enthusiasm. He murmurs Felix’s name over and over between hot, searing kisses; that huge, gorgeous body of his is almost shaking in every place it presses against Felix’s. Felix’s hands span the breadth of his shoulders, of his chest, of his back, running all over that pale, soft skin before tangling in the hair at the back of Dimitri’s neck. He takes and takes and takes every single breath from Dimitri’s lungs, moaning in a way that Sylvain would describe as slutty and Ashe would describe as passionate . 

“Fuck,” he gasps, breaking away, his head falling back as Dimitri buries his face in his throat and starts laying hot, trembling kisses in the crook of Felix’s neck. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck--”

“I love your hair,” Dimitri gasps, grabbing whole handfuls of it, “I love--Felix, I can’t, I shouldn’t, I want--”

Felix drags his face back up to his and kisses him ferociously, mouths open, wet. Blindly, he pushes one hand down between their bodies and grabs Dimitri’s dick through his pants, which yields two immediate reactions:

One, Felix realizes his hand isn’t big enough to span the whole length of Dimitri’s cock.

Two: Dimitri gasps in a huge breath and forgets his own strength. 

Felix finds himself winded, disoriented, legs sprawled, lying on his back on his bed with Dimitri on top of him and his shirt torn open. 

“Felix,” Dimitri murmurs, covering him, seeking his mouth. He takes a deep, sloppy kiss from Felix’s tongue before sitting back on his heels, his golden hair sticking up, his face bright pink. “Sothis,” he breathes, and his gaze rakes down Felix’s exposed torso with such undeniable admiration that Felix goes hot all over. “Lovely,” he adds, briefly distracted. His thumbs brush Felix’s nipples and Felix’s back arches .

Fuck. He didn’t know that was a thing. 

“Boar,” he says, teeth clenched as Dimitri continues to stroke his nipples and flickers of heat spark right up his spine. Dimitri looks up at him with big eyes, and Felix relents, each syllable chiming clear: “... Dimitri.”

Dimitri’s smile is tremulous. “You haven’t called me that in--”

“Yes, I know,” Felix says tightly. “Are you going to fuck me sometime this age, or should I wait for you some more?”

The smile widens. Becomes sweetly wicked. Dimitri lays his palm over Felix’s cock, full and throbbing in his trousers, and squeezes. “I’m not going to… fuck you, Felix.” He pops a button. Then another. 

Felix whines, which he will deny until the ending of the world.

Tenderly, Dimitri pulls Felix’s pants down his hips, down his thighs. Felix’s cock slaps against his belly, shiny and red and already dripping. Dimitri looks absolutely fascinated.

“You better,” Felix hisses, kicking his pants all the way off before he wraps one leg around Dimitri’s hip. “You better fuck me, after all those stupid nights thinking about your stupid dick--”

“I’m not going to fuck you ,” Dimitri repeats, cupping his face and stroking his thumb underneath Felix’s left eye. He leans down; he presses a soft kiss to Felix’s lips. 

Then he kneels back and drops his hands to the fall of his trousers, tugging at the lacings. 

“I’m going to make love to you.”

Felix’s mortification reaches new heights. He tears his eyes away from the sheer sight of Dimitri, Dimitri all caught up in pure earnestness, in pure sincerity--yet somehow managing to tease so much shuddery desire from Felix’s lungs--

“Ugh,” he says, with more feeling than is perhaps warranted by such a sappy declaration. “You’re the worst.”

Dimitri looks not the least bit sorry. He leans down to press a soft kiss to Felix’s mouth, and it’s all Felix can do to wrap his legs tighter around the backs of Dimitri’s thighs. 

Well. Two can play at that game.

He snakes his hand down Dimitri’s incredible body and brushes his knuckles against the front of his smallclothes, the royal-fine fabric so incredibly thin he can touch the heat of him as though it were a palpable object… Dimitri’s hips jerk into his grip, and Felix feels and tastes the ragged gasp he breathes against his lips. Dimitri humps into his hand, his face all twisted up in helpless emotion, and his voice comes out soft and fragile with pent-up need: “ Please …”

Later, Felix will take some time to feel smug and self-satisfied about this. Rendering the boar-prince to shuddery moans as he pushes his hips inexpertly into Felix’s hands was one of his waking dreams. 

For now, he reciprocates Dimitri’s teasing. He tugs at the lacings of his smallclothes and slips his hand around his cock--his thick, enormous cock. The foreskin has pulled back a little from the head, exposing purplish-pink softness and the shine of the slit; different from Felix’s dick, certainly, these proportions… and the sheer width of him, the necessary span of Felix’s grasp on him as he strokes him down to the root. 

Dimitri babbles with need, and Felix’s name mingles with his pleas; still, though, he’s holding himself up above Felix’s body, supporting himself on his arms, the muscles of his biceps and forearms taut with tension. 

Felix likes this. Dimitri is so much stronger, so much larger than he is, but he has power over his pleasure. The pleasure Dimitri has always denied himself.

And now--since that uncomfortable conversation in the sauna, Felix knows. He knows that no one, not even Dimitri himself, has ever caressed that huge cock from the root to the tip until it twitched and throbbed and leaked an absurd amount of precome. “Beast,” Felix murmurs, with such fondness he barely recognizes his own voice. “I can barely even fit my hand around you.”

Dimitri’s eyes open and focus on him anew, something of shame lurking, a sea-monster in these blue depths. “If--if it’s too much--”

Felix grips him harder, eliciting a gasp and then a soft, sobbing breath. “It won’t be,” he says tightly, looking down at the huge shadow of Dimitri’s cock over his stomach. 

“Then can I--” Dimitri begins, and Felix swipes his thumb over his slick, dripping slit. Dimitri moans, hanging his head heavily. But he persists. “Can I worship you?” he says, bright and clear, so absolutely sincere that Felix feels his cheek heat with absurd shame. 

Does he deserve this? Maybe.

He’ll take whatever he can get of Dimitri’s love, and damn the consequences. 

“Sap,” he says tightly, and glances back up at Dimitri only to find him smiling helplessly. Dimitri’s happy. It’s devastating . 

Dimitri hums, kisses Felix’s lips once, twice, thrice, before drifting down to skate his lips down Felix’s jaw, into his neck, his throat. His tongue licks into the hollow of Felix’s collarbone, and Felix hurriedly lets go of his dick and throws his arm over his eyes. This much affection, this much lust, this much reality --he can’t face it, or he’ll go mad. 

Dimitri continues on his way, pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses down Felix’s torso, pausing briefly to nibble on one perky nipple before lavishing affection on his abdomen. His big hands grip Felix’s hips, pull him tight. He’s going syrupy-slow, so much so that Felix kicks at him in a grunting reminder that they’re not getting any younger-- “Whatever you’re going to do, just get to it already--”

Dimitri nuzzles at his hip teasingly, and puts his lips to the crest on Felix’s lower stomach. Electricity travels up Felix’s spine with a crackle of lightning only he hears, as though Dimitri had reached inside him and kissed his heart--and then Dimitri’s warm mouth wraps around his dick and Dimitri’s warm fingers push slightly against the entrance of his cunt, and the electricity turns to a storm in Felix’s veins. 

“Stop teasing,” he pants, screwing his eyes shut against the fierce bite of tears, against the memories of his teenage fantasies, of touching himself with questing fingers, never quite daring to breach his opening, so embarrassed at the slickness of his arousal-- “Stop teasing ,” he repeats, and kicks his heel into Dimitri’s lower back. Dimitri’s mouth is infernally hot, and though he’s barely doing anything with it, Felix feels hypersensitive, high-strung, explosive--on the verge of an orgasm greater than he’s ever known. 

Then Dimitri pushes two fingers inside him, and Felix realizes he has been a goddamn, goddamn fool. 

They could have been doing this all along, and he--

Fuck.

He’s clinging on to Dimitri’s back with both legs, fisting his free hand in the bedsheets above his head, when Dimitri starts experimenting with his mouth too, sloppily sucking at Felix’s cock, trying to bob his head. The sensation is such that Felix cries out, trying ineffectually to get more of everything all at once--more of the heat and wetness of Dimitri’s mouth, more of his intruding fingers curling up inside Felix’s body, charting impossibly virgin territory. He’s whining, moaning, acting in every way like a wanton slut, and above him Dimitri moans too, as though Felix’s pleasure was a palpable thing that he could taste through his come--

Felix’s body locks up in incredible joy before he has time to realize what is happening. Muscles taut, nerves firing--he arches up off the bed and promises Dimitri everything he has to give, his mouth open on a silent shout as he spurts ropes of come onto his tongue and clenches down around his fingers so tightly it almost hurts . Time promptly ceases to exist.

When he navigates back to his senses, albeit in a meandering way, he sneaks a glance under his arm to find Dimitri looking down at him, extremely flushed, his mouth slick with the shiny droplets of Felix’s come. One glance downward tells Felix he found his own pleasure too--his bedsheets are ruined, and possibly his mattress too. 

Somehow, though, that asshole cock is still standing at attention.

“Forgive me, Felix,” Dimitri whispers, his voice sounding wrecked. “I--I couldn’t--”

Felix doesn’t even bother to listen to whatever self-recrimination Dimitri is fantasizing about right now. He lifts his leg and pins Dimitri’s shoulder down with his foot, plainly showing him what he needs. 

“Your mouth, you beast,” he mutters, still hot all over. He squirms a little, acutely aware of Dimitri’s fingers buried in his pussy. “Just--fuck, please --”

He’s begging the boar-prince to eat him out. He’s begging Dimitri --and he doesn’t know which of the two is worse; the bloody-faced beast, or the boy he’s loved since he knew what loving meant. Was he there all along?

Was Felix wrong all along?

Dimitri complies with such alacrity Felix might almost be convinced he’s done this before. But--no--there is no knowledge and no experience in the way he nuzzles at Felix’s slick folds, in the gentle licks of his tongue over Felix’s sensitive flesh. It’s all desperate enthusiasm as he sucks and laps and greedily moans, his tongue pressing inside alongside his fingers, tasting Felix’s pussy, filling him up over and over. 

Felix feels himself move in rhythmic, tell-tale clenches, his back bowing right off the mattress with every pulse of his cunt around Dimitri’s clever fingers and Dimitri’s wet, hot tongue. He sobs at the ceiling, fists the bedsheets behind his head, cradles Dimitri’s sunlit head with his thighs. His toes are curling tight over Dimitri’s shoulders, and it’s all he can do not to cry as Dimitri adds a third finger to the first two and somehow manages to push them deeper with a twist of his wrist. He may not have any more experience than Felix does, but he is learning fast .

He’s pushing his cunt against Dimitri’s mouth. He’s riding Dimitri’s face , or trying to, oh Sothis, and his neglected cock is trickling precome all over his stomach, he can feel it dribble down to the bedsheets-- fuck --he’s so wet, he’s so fucking wet, if he just rose up on his elbows he would see Dimitri’s face slick with the proof of his arousal--

“Fuck,” he sobs, pleasure ricocheting up his spine and down his thighs to his toes as Dimitri tongue-fucks him with that perfect focus, “I’m--”

His voice leaves him. He comes in deep, fathomless spasms. It’s not the violent orgasm he had earlier, but something sweeter and better, because Dimitri is filling him and forcing him out the boundaries of his own body; his body, which he has pushed to the limits of physical exertion, and yet somehow never knew could feel like this…

He bites down on his forearm. Tears are trickling from the corners of his eyes. 

Dimitri retreats so gently, so gently, but Felix’s cunt feels empty after he’s gone, clenching down around nothing. He catches his breath, feeling Dimitri’s gaze heavy upon him. 

“Can--can you fuck me already?” he mutters, his voice a-tremble. It’s not enough, it’s not enough, he needs to be fucked into oblivion before he’s satisfied-- “Always making me wait for you,” he adds, almost on a sob. 

He feels Dimitri pick up his leg, then the shuddery touch of his breath, the softness of his lips, against his ankle. Incongruously, Dimitri kisses up his leg to his knee before setting it down. He comes up to kneel above Felix--Felix still isn’t looking at him, his shameful tears have soaked the pillow beneath his head--but Dimitri’s warmth and weight are unmistakable. And Felix would know him in the dark. 

“Felix?”

“Mm?” He’s being stubborn, but it’s that or facing Dimitri’s all-knowing, all-loving gaze, and he--shouldn’t, or he’ll break open.

“Will you look at me?” Dimitri asks tenderly.

Felix takes in a breath and removes his arm. He refuses to look at Dimitri’s expression. He can’t--

Dimitri just cups his cheek, forcing him with extreme gentleness to gaze back at him. 

“Felix. I--”

“Your fault,” Felix tries to say with all the irritation he can muster, “for making me wait this long--”

Dimitri pulls him immediately into his arms, wrapping his hands around Felix’s waist, and Felix grips his hair and buries his face in his best friend’s throat. 

“I’m so sorry,” he hears Dimitri say; he feels the caress of Dimitri’s mouth pressed to his hair. “I’m so sorry I didn’t realize--”

An apology is the last thing he wants to hear right now. “Just stop making me wait, you damn beast,” he murmurs sullenly, before digging his heel into Dimitri’s taut ass. A taunt.

Dimitri pulls away just enough that he can stare deeply into Felix’s eyes, which, ugh . “You really want me to? To--make love to you?”

Felix chokes, and he takes a moment to master himself before he whispers: “Yes.” It sounds pathetic, but Dimitri--fuck, Dimitri smiles. 

Felix has not seen such a smile since Duscur. 

“I’m going to make you the happiest man in the world, Felix,” he says, so damn earnest that Felix feels his ears heat. “This much I can promise you.”

“You can start by putting your giant dick in me,” Felix snaps, and feels more than he hears Dimitri’s helpless laugh. He falls back on his elbows and spreads his legs, conscious of how lewd that looks, caring not at all. Dimitri’s gaze on him is hot with desire. 

“Did I--? Did I do enough?” he asks, gesturing down at Felix’s pussy. Felix’s cock is only half-hard, and he supposes that is mostly spent, but his cunt… he’s never tried… he knows , abstractedly, that he can--

Fuck it. He hooks one foot around Dimitri’s thigh. “Come on. Be the boar that you are, and keep your eyes on me.”

Dimitri wraps his hand around his cock, and then stares down at it as though he’s never seen it before. “I’m big.”

Felix looks to the heavens. “Yes.”

“I don’t want to hurt--”

“Dimitri,” Felix says exasperatedly, “you say pretty things about making love to me, but you want to pound me into the mattress. So fucking do it .”

Dimitri’s eyes darken. He drags his palms up Felix’s splayed thighs, drags one over his knee, gives Felix’s cunt a final longing look, and then covers his body with his own and angles himself inside.

A strangled sound comes unbidden out of Felix’s throat. Dimitri has barely got the head inside, and the stretch is--he’s never--Saints, he should have jumped on Dimitri’s dick the moment they met again at the beginning of the year. It feels bigger than it looked, which should be horrifying but somehow only sends fire coursing through Felix’s veins, and as Dimitri pushes deeper and deeper in slow, careful increments, the stretch turns into a long glide that leaves him breathless and gasping. 

“Oh,” Dimitri says in a very soft voice, and Felix sobs and wraps his legs around his waist. He feels Dimitri so deep he might as well be in his stomach. He wasn’t prepared for the heat, the incredible stretch, the impossible fullness. He can feel their hearts pounding right where their bodies are locked together.

This isn’t a joining of their hands, or the meeting of their mouths. This is Dimitri inside him, pulsing, scorching, and every raspy breath he takes, every slight shift of his hips, makes Felix’s cunt clench so so tightly around his cock. 

“Come on,” Felix pants, running his hands into Dimitri’s hair and pulling his head up to look at him, “come on, do it, don’t fucking stop now--”

“No,” Dimitri promises, and surges forward to claim Felix’s mouth.

Kissing and fucking, fucking and kissing--Felix knows then that he will never be satisfied with anything else, just this, just this! Dimitri’s tongue stroking his tongue, Dimitri’s dick full and thick deep inside his cunt. His slow thrusts pick up speed, gain rhythm, a musicality as he fucks Felix harder and harder, moaning his name. And Felix grips his neck and bucks his hips up into the friction, unwilling to lie back, to do nothing, Goddess be damned he will make Dimitri come inside him, he will feel that warmth and that slickness--

His cunt pulses deeply at the mere thought of it--Dimitri’s come inside his womb, filling him up to the brim, trickling out of him, down his thighs--Saints, he wants to be ruined. 

“Felix,” Dimitri pants, breaking the kiss to lean his forehead against his. His forearm is braced on the mattress next to Felix’s shoulder, but his other hand grips Felix’s cock, as though he were intent on making him feel pleasure everywhere, as though he couldn’t bear the thought that Felix might not feel him in every possible way. “I, ah, Felix, Goddess--”

“Mm mm ,” Felix says. He feels the rasping friction of Dimitri’s trousers against his ass as Dimitri’s pounding thrusts lift his lower body right off the bed, and he might try to deny it but it’s inescapable now, the knowledge that joy comes without mercy. He feels it spreading and rising through his limbs, inevitable, honey-slow. He feels his cock jerk, his cunt clench. 

This orgasm is neither fierce nor sweet, but bone-deep. It feels like the sky over Fraldarius on winter mornings, like the sun on white snow in the North. It feels like coming home after journeying through unknown, shattered lands. 

Felix opens his eyes hazily some time later, and finds Dimitri on the brink of his own pleasure. He’s flushed and whining, and clearly keeping himself at bay with the last shreds of his immense self-control. Felix, still shaking, still laughing, lifts his head and touches his lips to his, and says:

“Eyes on me.”

That’s it: that infinite blue. Dimitri’s hips stutter against Felix’s ass, and then he groans, loud and long, and Felix feels his come spill inside him.

Dimitri holds himself up for long, endless seconds, staring at Felix’s face like he’s seen a god. Then his chest hitches, and he falls. 

Felix gathers him against him, drags the soles of his feet down the backs of Dimitri’s thighs, and lets the last pulses of his and Dimitri’s orgasms throb through them both. 

The sky outside has gone up in flames when Dimitri lays his mouth over Felix’s pectoral, then lifts his head. He’s stroking Felix’s shoulder with his fingertips, seemingly fascinated by the grain of his skin. 

“I’m not sleeping in this bed tonight,” Felix warns him, preemptively. Dimitri’s eyes widen, and then he starts laughing. 

“I assumed you might want to visit my room, Felix?”

“Hmm. You might actually get some sleep.”

“Is that what we’ll be doing all night?”

“Fool boar.”

“Felix,” Dimitri says, and then adds nothing to that statement. His smile dances in his eyes. 

Felix bites his tongue. Dimitri is still inside him . They’re sweaty and covered in come, his hair is all over the place, and he can’t think straight. 

“I love you,” he says. 

Dimitri pillows his cheek against his fist, and the smile fills with an emotion Felix doesn’t yet know, but will come to recognize in the years to come.

“I love,” Dimitri says, dipping his head, “I love--” mouth to his mouth--”I love you.”

.