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There’s a knock on his door.
Sylvain scowls up at his ceiling. Maybe if he pretends to be asleep whoever it is will eventually go away. It’s probably Ingrid, and Sylvain just doesn’t have the energy to deal with her judgment (or worse, her sympathy) right now.
There’s a brief pause, and then the knocking resumes, more forcefully this time.
Sylvain pulls his blankets up over his head.
Another pause, and then the knocking turns into straight up hammering. Sylvain’s next door neighbors are almost definitely going to be woken up by the noise. Groaning, he throws his blankets off.
“LEAVE ME ALONE, INGRID!” he yells.
The pounding mercifully stops. Sylvain’s about to get up and retrieve his blanket from the floor when the door swing opens.
“For the goddess’s sake, Ingrid, I—” Sylvain begins, and then looks up to see Felix standing in his doorway.
“Oh,” Sylvain says. “You’re not Ingrid.”
“Obviously,” Felix replies, rolling his eyes.
It takes a moment for Sylvain to get over the surprise. It’s rare for Felix to be actively seeking him out in the first place, much less at this time of night. Much less with such a big mission happening in the morning.
“What do you want?” Sylvain asks, still lying on the bed. His neck aches from craning forward to look in Felix’s direction, so he settles back down to his earlier position of staring up at the ceiling. He doesn’t mean to be rude while talking to Felix, but it’s not like Felix normally cares about stuff like that anyway. And besides, Sylvain thinks Felix will probably forgive him if he doesn’t feel like being his usual charming self right now – insofar as Felix is capable of forgiveness, at least.
Maybe Felix is just here to yell at Sylvain for being weak and to get over himself already. Mission tomorrow and all that. Can’t be staying up late brooding when the whole class has to go take out some good-for-nothing Relic-stealing thieves tomorrow.
But instead what Felix says, after a long moment of silence, is this:
“Are you okay?” he asks.
The surprise is enough to make Sylvain lurch right up into a sitting position. He stares at Felix, wide-eyed, but Felix is looking down at the ground, and Sylvain can’t get a good look at his face.
“Sorry, what did you just say?” Sylvian asks. “I think I misheard you.”
“You heard me just fine,” Felix hisses. “Asshole.”
Sylvain keeps on staring at Felix, slack-jawed, but Felix still looks like he’s trying to burn a hole in the floor of Sylvain’s quarters from the sheer intensity of his glare. Sylvain takes a moment to study his posture – back ramrod-straight, hands fisted at his sides – and knows that for Felix to be here, to be asking after Sylvain, to be betraying even the slightest bit of worry at all for Sylvain’s wellbeing – well, it’s taking a lot out of him, and it would be kind of touching, really, if Sylvain wanted any kind of comfort at all. Instead he mostly just wants to be left alone.
“Your display of concern is very touching, Felix, but I’m fine,” Sylvain replies, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “So you can go back to—”
“Liar,” Felix says.
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you are,” Felix says. “Do you honestly think I can’t tell?
Sylvain falls silent.
Felix sighs, then shuts the door behind him and crosses the room to stand in front of Sylvain. Sylvain can finally get a good look at Felix’s face, but he still can’t quite tell what Felix is thinking. All he knows is that Felix is looking straight at him now, scrutinizing him, and it’s making him want to crawl right out of his skin. He feels like fidgeting, but he forces himself to remain still.
Felix’s lips part as he sucks in a breath, and Sylvain realizes with a jolt that he’s been staring right back at Felix too.
“I just wanted to say,” Felix finally tells Sylvain, “that I know what it’s like to lose a brother.”
The words feel like a sucker punch straight to Sylvain’s gut. He thinks he can’t stand to look at Felix’s face for a second more, and he drops his head to stare down at his feet.
It takes a while for him to finally regain the ability to speak, and when he does he finds himself saying, so venomously that it surprises him even as the words leave his mouth, “You have absolutely no clue, Felix.”
“Of course I do,” Felix insists.
“No, you don’t,” Sylvain says, so past the point of anger that the words come out eerily calm. “You have no idea, because your brother died a hero, but tomorrow mine will die a criminal.”
Now it’s time for Felix to go quiet, and some terrible part of Sylvain feels a tiny spark of triumph.
“Your brother had a Crest,” Sylvain continues. “And mine doesn’t. That’s the difference.”
“Miklan was—”
“A shitty brother,” Sylvain interrupts. “Not that I blame him.”
“But he was still your brother,” Felix says.
Sylvain lets out a long breath, all his anger draining out of him in a rush, leaving him just feeling hollow on the inside.
“Well,” he mutters. “I guess I can’t say no to that,”
Felix is silent for so long that for a moment Sylvain wonders if he’s just upped and left the room entirely; but then he feels the bed dip underneath him, and he turns to his left only to see Felix sitting down next to him. Sylvain stares at the profile of his face, at the heavy set of his jaw and the bags under his eyes, and it occurs to him all of a sudden just how affected Felix must be by all this as well. Miklan might have been Sylvain’s brother, but Felix knew him too, met him plenty of times, even if the last time was years and years ago. When Miklan was officially disinherited, Felix was one of the first people Sylvain told. He’d witnessed firsthand plenty of the crap Miklan had put Sylvain through growing up, how all that had fucked Sylvain up.
Miklan isn’t just a part of Sylvain’s history – he’s part of Felix’s, too.
“Felix,” Sylvain starts to say, but Felix chooses the exact same moment to start speaking again as well.
“Look,” he says, and something about the look on his face makes Sylvain fall abruptly silent. “It’s just – when Glenn died. You were there.”
It’s true. Sylvain remembers. Felix had been visiting him in Gautier when the Tragedy of Duscur had happened. Sylvain tries not to think about that day too much. Having to watch twelve-year-old Felix carefully tuck his feelings away and rearrange his features into an expression of careful blankness after a messenger had rushed in saying that Felix needed to get back to Fraldarius immediately, that something terrible had happened—
“You were there for me,” Felix continues. “And I don’t leave my debts unrepaid.”
Sylvain laughs. Felix blinks, startled.
“What?” he asks. Sylvain shakes his head.
“No, it’s just – I was just thinking how typical it is of you, to be calling something like that a debt.”
“It is a debt,” Felix insists, scowling.
“No, it’s not,” Sylvain responds, still smiling faintly. “I was just there for you, because I’m your friend. And you’re here for me now, because you’re my friend. That’s all there is to it.”
Felix looks away, and doesn’t say anything.
“Hey Felix?” Sylvain says. “Thanks.”
Slowly, with an unexpected carefulness that Sylvain has never seen him display, Felix shifts so that his hand brushes against Sylvain’s. Just barely, just the slightest hint of skin-to-skin contact, but Sylvain feels himself go warm all over.
“We don’t have to talk about this tomorrow,” Felix mutters, gruff and – maybe? – just a little bit embarrassed.
“Okay,” Sylvain replies.
They don’t say anything else. They just sit there, and that’s all Sylvain needs right now.