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It’s Monday at nine thirty-seven in the morning and Sylvain has a hangover to rival the ages.
Even the lenses of his darkest sunglasses aren’t doing all that much here. Sylvain squints against the light of the early spring sun as he steps out of the cab—still valiantly not vomiting from the erratic motion of the city traffic—and places a foot onto the sidewalk. The car rolls slightly forward with the movement and, in apparent retaliation, the buildings of the city block lurch and wave around him. There's a good second and a half where Sylvain’s pretty sure he’s about to take a nosedive onto the concrete—and then all those years of practice kick in. His other foot hits the ground and things go steady again.
At least, mostly.
Buzzing at the back of his mind like a summer fly around a horse’s mane is a memory: cobblestone streets in the morning sunlight, the sound of various voices all calling out loudly around him, the comforting clop of a horse's freshly shod hooves. He’d been just about this hung over on that day, too. But that’s not one of this Sylvain’s memories; he pushes the images aside.
In the pocket of his jacket, his phone starts ringing again. It’s been going pretty much nonstop since he’d slept through the presentation he was supposed to be giving at nine this morning. Whoops, but that’s just typical Sylvain, right? At this point, he’s almost able to ignore the vibrations rattling through the barrier of thin fabric—made for fashion, never for warmth—and straight to the tympanic bones of his ribcage. You’d think they’d take a hint after the first eight phone calls he’s ignored, but that’s what happens when you’re the boss's nephew: people cut you way more slack than you actually deserve. It’s a little too much like it was the first time around for Sylvain to actually enjoy it. Really, what were the odds of winning the karmatic nepotism lottery twice in a row?
He waits until the vibrations die away, carried safely off to the depths of his unchecked voicemail… then Sylvain does what he should have done twenty minutes ago and powers down the phone.
That’s when the memory surges unexpectedly back up—it’d been early in the morning when he’d stumbled out into the Fhirdad streets, but then again, not exactly early enough. The sun was already high enough in the sky that it scaled the tops of the city walls, spilling its light onto the people milling about the streets, heading to the market or mass or whatever else people usually did this early in the morning. More than one knowing look had been tossed his direction as he’d passed by, tipped off by the color of his hair or the disheveled nature of his clothes. But the pounding in his head was already fierce enough by then that pain was about the only emotion Sylvain was going to be able to feel; shame would have to wait for about a gallon of water and a few more hours of sleep.
Spending the night wasn’t Sylvain’s typical MO. There’d been a unique set of circumstances surrounding this one: a particularly remorseless exchange with his father the night before their arrival, a particularly potent bottle of Almyran arak at the tavern, and a particularly pliant blonde on his arm. All of which culminated in one particularly late awakening and an even more thoroughly fumbled attempt to return to the castle before anyone noticed his absence. Of course, Sylvain knew they’d send someone to look for him. It was just that, in the state he was in, he hadn’t expected it to be someone whose opinion actually mattered. He’d heard their voices calling out to him before he’d seen them. And when he turned—too quickly, the whole world turning with him in a dizzy rush of grays and browns–he’d seen—
Sylvain drags the sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and digs the heel of his palm into his eye socket, hard enough that bright flashes of colors go streaking across his vision. The abrupt shift in sensations sends his stomach lurching unpleasantly, but it does the job: the memory fades away, too. Good riddance.
There’s lots of talk about reincarnation out there in the world today. Entire theological doctrines built around the mechanics of it, yeah, but then there’s the whole pop culture fixation, too. Movies, novels, comics, fanfiction. Millions of people in the world, all preoccupied with the same notion that some part of you continues to live on even after you die.
Maybe, to all those people, it seems romantic. Maybe it’s just another way to cope with all the failures they’ve accumulated over the course of their uneventful lives. Sylvain kind of gets that. Easy to think that growing up with another lifetime’s worth of memories rattling around at the back of your brain would make it simpler to do things better the second time around. You could learn from the mistakes you made, achieve all those dreams you dropped the ball on, maybe even live a life you’re actually proud of this time.
That’s never been the case for Sylvain, though. The only thing all those insightful little memories have ever given him is the unique pleasure of watching himself fuck up his life in pretty much the same way he’d done it the first time. Because, sure, we’re all the product of our unique environments, but even a 900 year trip to the future in a totally different timeline isn’t enough to stamp out the self-destructive streak he’s been nurturing across two different lifetimes, now. Sometimes it’s hard not to wonder if there’s something rotten down in his very soul, something that makes him act this way even without the nobility and bloodline and the ire of a murderous half-brother weighing on his shoulders.
But maybe—and Sylvain thinks about this one a lot, actually—it’s the memories themselves that have him repeating all those same mistakes. What good is wiping the cosmic slate clean if you can still recall all the little ways your parents ignored you as a human child so they could prop you up as a symbol instead? When you remembered the way it felt to watch the well’s wooden cover slide slowly back across its mouth, blocking out all the light except for a thin, pale halo above you? When you knew exactly what it felt like to have the edge of an axe tear through the side of your body, eviscerating your two bottom ribs and all the organs that lay waiting beneath them? Christ, to this day Sylvain can’t forget the way blood had bubbled up his esophagus and over his lips as he’d bled out slowly onto the ground. He’s been on haldol and clozapine and gin and cocaine and none of them can get rid of all that knowing just waiting around the corner of his thoughts.
None of that actually matters, though. It doesn’t change the fact that, day after day, he wakes up in a world he can never feel like he belongs in. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s still Monday morning, that he’s late to a meeting he gives less than a fuck about and hungover on the wrong side of town. What does matter is that Sylvain would kill—and, here, he decidedly ignores the image of a ghastly lance of bone sliding between the pauldron and breastplate of some nameless empire soldier—for a few shots of espresso right now.
He looks at the dark screen of the phone in his hand, weighing the pros and cons of briefly powering it back on, then sighs.
Looks like it’s the good old fashioned way this time.
-
Sylvain doesn’t hang out on this side of the city.
A few decades ago, back before Sylvain was old enough to walk, let alone go stumbling out of bars in the name of forgetting, it’d been a rough scene. The kind of place you’d warn your kids not to hang around in at night. That’s all changed now, though. All the rough edges of the streets have long been filed down, first by the creatives and their cultural renaissance, then by the unceasing cogs of the machine called gentrification. The whole thing’s pretty bleak.
These days, the neighborhood is mostly condos and chains hiding behind that hip, eco-corporate branding. ‘Shop Small!’ the signs in the windows exclaim, as though the investors behind these places aren’t off sitting on a yacht somewhere, counting on the faux-local charm to work their way into your wallet. Not that Sylvain can really talk, he's got corporate finance sleaze oozing out of his pores by now. He just prefers his sleaze be upfront about it, is all.
Anyway, that’s exactly how Sylvain ends up stumbling into what was probably once an indie, fair-trade coffee shop, two blocks from the “collaborative meeting space” he’s supposed to be presenting in. It looks more like a Starbucks-lite, now, with its glossy, corporate signage and live edge countertop that stretches from one end of the suite to the other.
The bell above the door clatters loudly as Sylvain steps into the shop; the smell of strong coffee washes immediately over him. There’s only a handful of other people inside the place, spread out among the high topped tables and leather lounge chairs. The speakers set into the ceiling are playing something spotify probably labels ‘shimmer pop’, but it’s low enough that Sylvain can’t mind it all that much. He hasn’t taken off his sunglasses yet. With the only windows behind him, the dark lenses give the room a dim, smokey vibe. It’s kind of nice, actually. Appropriately understimulating. He keeps them on as he makes his way up to the counter, grabbing a bottle of water from a nearby beverage refrigerator somewhere along the way.
“Can I get, like, seven shots of espresso in a cup?” Sylvain asks the moment he reaches the register. Kind of an asshole move—no greeting, no eye contact, not even a quick half-smile of acknowledgment. On any other day he’d be flirting with the barista just for the hell of it, because he could. In his defense, today is not a normal day. It’s taking pretty much all the concentration he has available just to fish his wallet out of the tailored back pocket of his pants. And anyway, the barista behind the counter isn’t exactly chatty themselves. They don’t respond to Sylvain’s (admittedly fucked up) order at all. But who knows—maybe they’re just looking for the right combination of buttons to type it in. Sylvain’s not exactly in a position to judge another person’s ability to communicate, today or any other. He doesn’t do so much as glance at the other party involved in this transaction until his hand is out, ready to pass over the recently liberated card. “Look, if that’s an issue I can just—“
But the rest of the words die on the tip of his tongue.
Because it’s Felix standing there.
Inexplicably, unmistakably Felix.
Sure, it’s been a literal lifetime since the last time they’d been in the same room and, yeah, the lip piercings and that tattoo winding its way out from under the collar of his v-neck are new, but god. He’d know that face anywhere; it’s one he knows as well as his own, one he’s seen almost nightly in his dreams for as long as he’s had the capacity to form memories.
Sylvain takes off his sunglasses, then. The pain behind his eyes flares up spectacularly in response to the sudden influx of light, but Sylvain barely notices.
“Well fuck me,” he laughs, astonished into stupidity. It sounds more like one long exhale of breath than a series of words. “You know, this is really not how I thought this day was gonna go.”
“Sylvain.”
Felix says his name like he hasn’t decided whether or not it’s a question yet, his tone stuck somewhere between uncertainty and an entire eon of familiarity. If Sylvain were a slightly more hydrated man at present, well, he might’ve cried just hearing the sound of that voice again.
Instead, he grins. “Hey. It’s been awhile, huh?”
It’s a little funny, actually; he’s still smiling when Felix plants his fist right into the side of Sylvain’s face.
-
You know, the actual worst part of reincarnation is that you come back into the world alone. You have all of these tender scenes that play out like a movie in your head, a deep cut of all the friends and lovers accumulated over the course of a lifetime, and then one day you get to realize they’re all long dead and gone. Sylvain couldn’t tell you the first time he’d remembered Felix or Ingrid or Dimitri; they’ve been a part of this version of him just about as long as the last—which is to say, before his memory really begins. He could tell you about the particular kind of anguish their absence brought on, though. The way it felt like he was missing a vital part of himself without them—the better part of himself. How the feeling built up more and more with each day that he woke and failed to find them out there in the world, waiting.
It’s always been the worst with Felix, though.
How do you really explain the tragedy of falling in love with your childhood friend in the middle of a continent-wide war? Because that’s what it’d been, in the end. Really beautiful, the best fucking thing that had and would probably ever happen to Sylvain. But still—a tragedy.
Think of it like this: if there’s a set amount of days allotted to each person in life, nearly all of yours have been spent in the orbit of one particular person. You’ve been a lot of things to them over the years: an accomplice, a comfort, an annoyance, a friend. And, for most of those years, that’d been more than enough. Very few of the relationships you've experienced in life have ever been so consistent; what more could you ask for? You tell yourself you’re content.
Until one day they send you sprawling onto the ground of the training yard floor and, through the daze of having the wind knocked suddenly out of your lungs, you catch a glimpse of the sunlight caught up just so in their eyes. And you realize—huh. Turns out it’s not actually all that platonic to see your friend breathing heavy above you with the exertion of solidly kicking your ass and immediately imagine licking a line up the edge of their throat. Who would’ve thought.
That epiphany came in the months before the war began, when the axe hanging above Sylvain’s head was the metaphorical sort instead of the physical. Realizing he’d fallen in love with Felix, the very antithesis of a suitable match for the life already laid out for Sylvain, wasn’t exactly something he’d found worth celebrating. There’s a pretty fine line between practicality and hopelessness; if Sylvain’s feelings were so meaningless that they couldn’t even alter the trajectory of his own future, why burden Felix? Sylvain kept his mouth shut, long enough for the entire world to go up in flames around them, long enough for his problems to become focused more on the daily task of living than on any future he may or may not survive to see.
Life is funny like that. Give a guy a handful of years and a few dozen run-ins with death and it’s no wonder perspectives changed. All it took was one measly arrow, just barely high enough to miss any vital organs, and Sylvain was pouring those same feelings out onto the floor of the medic tent like it was just another pint of Felix’s bright red blood.
In the end, out of all those thousands of days that make up a life, they’d had five months, maybe less. Five months of searching each other out in the hours after the battle, alive and burning with the combined force of residual adrenaline and relief. Five months of murmured confessions in the early morning hours, when the winter sun hadn’t yet crested the line of the horizon and Felix still lingered behind the heavy canvas of his tent. Five months tempering the kind of elation Sylvain didn’t actually deserve with all the fighting and killing that a war demanded.
The hubris of it all, huh? To think he’d get a happy ending after all the shit he’d done.
But arrogance or not, those five months together had been enough to ruin Sylvain for anyone else—in that life and in the next. How could anyone else even come close? Sylvain’s been searching for a shadow of Felix in every person he’s ever met since he was old enough to really understand how deep the pain of losing him could cut. Every touch, every kiss, racking up the same kind of bodycount that he’d accomplished the first time—just with a slightly different flavor of grief behind it all.
Well. Guess he’s not looking anymore.
“Ow.”
The single occupancy restroom is large in the corporate leftist, faux-handicap-accessible kind of way. Sylvain sits on the floor of the far wall, one hand pressed against the cold, ambiguously colored tiles while the other stuffs a blood soaked wad of hand towels against his left nostril. His eyes, however, never leave Felix.
Felix, who’s standing at the bathroom’s sink and examining his own hands as the water flows over them, carefully not meeting Sylvain’s eyes in the mirror.
The last time he’d seen Felix was from the dusty ground of the battlefield, vision fading black at the edges as Sylvain rapidly descended into the unconsciousness that would precede death. That wasn’t a version of Felix that Sylvain was particularly keen to remember. Less to do with the actual dying, this time, and more about the look on Felix’s face: underneath the confusion and the horror that’d come hand-in-hand with realization, well, Sylvain is pretty sure there might’ve been betrayal somewhere in there too. He probably should’ve seen that punch coming.
So yeah, even with his jaw clenched hard enough that Sylvain is kind of worried for the long term integrity of his teeth, the Felix standing in front of him is still a more welcoming sight. This whole time, Sylvain’s been studying Felix’s reflection in the mirror with the kind of attention that should be pretty forward for two people who’ve never actually met in this life. But how is he supposed to look away when Felix, still gorgeous and gravitational even under the cheap fluorescent bathroom lights, is alive and here?
Sylvain’s spent the better part of two decades tamping down the seemingly impossible hope of running into Felix by chance one day. A barista in a hipster coffee shop hadn’t really been on Sylvain’s bingo card, but weirdly? It suits Felix. His dark hair is still pulled up high on his head with the same jagged pieces falling down to frame the same amber eyes. Under the corporate issued apron, it’s obvious that Felix still has the physique of someone who trains obsessively each day. The visible line of bicep peeking out from the hem of his short sleeve shirt, still toned deceptively lithe, is just about enough to replace the ache in Sylvain’s head with a more novel thundering of pulse through his veins. Every time he catches a glint of metal from the rings in Felix’s lip, he imagines what it would feel like to run his tongue along them, to catch the metal between his teeth, to tug.
And, to think, this is a version of Felix that everyone but Sylvain has been enjoying this whole time.
But right about then, Felix finally turns off the faucet and reaches an arm—also tattooed, Sylvain notes, though he can’t make out the details of the design from this side of the bathroom floor—for a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall. Without the sound of the running faucet, the bathroom becomes so quiet you could probably hear the sound of Sylvain’s still-erratic heartbeat. And since Felix seems to be content just standing in front of the sink doing his best impression of a glacier, it’s up to Sylvain to break the ice. As usual.
He says, “guess you’ve still got a hell of a right hook, huh? Think you broke my nose with that one.”
It does the job. Felix finally looks at him, their eyes meeting across the glass surface of the mirror. It’s been awhile since Sylvain’s been on the receiving end of that particular brand of Fraldarius intensity; it takes just about all the nerve he has not to flinch under the force of it. Must be out of practice.
Felix, as is traditional, appears to be fresh out of any sort of sympathy for Sylvain. If he’s feeling guilty about the aforementioned broken nose, he doesn’t let on; if anything, with his hands gripping the side of the sink so tightly that they’ve gone almost as white as the porcelain, he looks ready to throw a second punch.
“You were supposed to wait,” Felix finally grinds out, the words forced through the gaps of his gritted teeth.
Unfortunately for Sylvain, he knows immediately what Felix is talking about. He kind of wishes he didn’t, though. Was it really so wrong to hope for a nice reunion on this side of the astral plane? Seems like with Felix everything always comes down to a fight—which Sylvain’s not exactly up for right now. Instead, he gives a flippant wave with the hand not holding the paper to his nose. “Nah, it’s okay. I’m good, actually. Nothing like a couple of broken bones to make you feel alive, you know?”
If anything, Felix’s jaw clenches tighter, the muscles jumping impressively under his skin. Swing and a miss, then. “Your orders were to stay with the rest of the mounted units until the ballista fell. You left your men without a commander; the entire right flank was compromised because of your bullshit decision.”
“Jesus, Felix, really?” Sylvain asks. “We’re doing this now? Here?”
But it’s like Felix doesn’t hear him. Instead, he whips his body around from the faucet to face Sylvain; without the separation of a reflection between them, those eyes glaring down at him are just about lethal. “It was reckless and idiotic. If you had stopped for one fucking second to think about what you were doing, you would’ve known that.”
Okay, then. Looks like they’re doing this.
“My bad,” Sylvain says. His voice is rough from all the blood he’s swallowed, from the unpleasant way it’s started to clot while still dripping down the back of his throat. “Guess I got so used to you running off on your own, I started thinking it was some kind of astute new tactic. Had to try it for myself.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Felix snaps.
“It means that axe was meant for you. If I hadn’t made that ‘bullshit decision’ you would have—“
“I would have handled it.”
Sylvain’s own patience is wearing thin, helped along by the steady throbbing of his head. It makes the sarcasm a little sharper, the words a little more barbed. “Yeah, because you were doing such a good job taking on all four of those guys before I got there.”
“It was under control,” Felix insists. Arms crossed, eyes narrowed to points as sharp as daggers—he’s clearly as obstinate as ever. “I didn’t ask for your help.”
“Well, great. Glad we cleared that up,” Sylvain says, smiling humorlessly; it does nothing to cover the feeling of nausea that comes roiling suddenly into his stomach. “Got any other insults you want to send my way while we’re at it? Maybe an issue with my hair?”
Something dangerous flashes in Felix’s eyes. “You think this is funny.”
“Sure, a little.” He shrugs, one shoulder lifting a fraction of an inch before falling limply back down. “I mean, you really haven’t changed at all, have you? I actually died trying to save your ass and you still can’t even muster up a thank you.”
“Fuck you,” Felix spits. The volume of his voice is rising, the words echoing against the tiled walls as what little restraint he was managing falls away. “I watched you bleed to death on that field. I buried you. And you think that warrants gratitude? You asshole.”
The thing about war is that you spend a lot of time imagining all the people you love dying in the most gruesome, terrible ways. Half the time, it’s not even all that hard. You see a blast of magic go whistling through the sky, exploding into a sea of fire that engulfs a nearby soldier, and you’re suddenly dreaming it’s your friends writhing there in the flames for the rest of the month. You put your lance through some bandit’s stomach and, somehow, it’s your mother’s eyes you see slowly losing their light in her face.
Back on the battlefield, there’d been a moment, a split second as he’d watched that soldier hoist the axe above his head, where Sylvain had seen Felix’s mangled body lying down there in the dirt. Glimpses of the rest of his life flashed across his vision, years and years spread before him, only now without Felix in it at all. And that was something Sylvain just couldn't come back from. He’s never been like Felix—he’s never been the strong one. So, sure, it was selfish and more than a little cowardly, but dying felt like the far better end of the deal at the time.
Sylvain doesn’t say that, though. “What was I supposed to do, then, Felix? Stand around, have some tea instead? I told you before, I wasn’t trying to get myself killed.”
“Then you should’ve tried harder,” Felix bites back, anger gaining traction with each additional word. “Damn it, Sylvain, you’re the one who hasn’t changed. You’ve never once in your life taken responsibility for your actions. Always so caught up in your own bullshit, always chasing the easy way out, while everyone else is left cleaning up the mess you leave behind. Did you ever—”
But Sylvain can’t listen to this. Not from Felix, not now. He’s interrupting long before he can think better of what he’s about to say. “Pretty sure I’ve heard this one before, actually. If you’re gonna lecture me, could you at least get some new material?”
All the things Sylvain could’ve said, all the things he has said, and this is the hit that lands? Felix reels back like Sylvain’s the one throwing punches, his eyes momentarily wide with surprise. It doesn’t last long; by the time Felix recovers, it’s all come back around to anger again, anyway.
“You promised.” Felix says it like an accusation, the fury and hurt laid thick enough that his voice cracks under the weight of it, cleaving the words wide open.
And it’s like taking that axe to his ribs all over again.
The thing is, Sylvain’s made a lot of promises over the course of his two lives. Most of them came as easy as breathing, specifically because he’d never had any intention of actually keeping them. Not with Felix, though. Those promises he’d taken to heart. Those, he almost always tried to keep.
“Felix, I—“
But, for the second time in the span of half an hour, the words don’t make it out of his mouth. Out of nowhere, there’s someone pounding at the door, loud enough that the sound covers up anything else he was planning to say. The pattern is erratic and insistent, like whoever’s on the other side is more than a little concerned about what’s going on inside. Felix goes suddenly rigid while Sylvain’s eyes flick automatically to the lock; it’s still turned firmly to the left, the little red ‘occupied’ sign clearly visible even from the other side of the room.
Neither of them says anything, even when the handle starts to jiggle and a muffled voice joins in, most of the words drowned out by the sheer thickness of the trendy, solid wood. Something about ‘help’ and maybe ‘key’? Guess that’s what happens when your employee punches someone in the face before dragging them off to one of the only restrooms in the building for a quick shouting match.
Jesus, they’re lucky it’s not the cops.
The surprise succeeds in one aspect, at least: the tension in the air shatters like a rock through a pane of glass. It doesn’t come back, even thirty seconds later when the knocking fades away and Sylvain risks a glance back to Felix. It’s like all the righteous indignation has leached out of him, right onto the bathroom floor. Without it to buoy him, he looks deflated, awkward there in front of the sink like he doesn’t know what to do with his body if he can’t continue charging forward. Some things really don’t change.
Sylvain sighs; this isn’t how he would have wanted this to go. This can’t be how Felix had wanted this to go, can it?
“Hey,” Sylvain says, soft. “C’mere, would you? I'm tired of staring up at you.”
Felix lifts a tired eyebrow at him—which, okay, fair—but still walks the three steps across the bathroom and sits down on the floor beside Sylvain, close enough that their shoulders are almost, but not quite touching. That handful of centimeters between them is charged space, an electromagnetic force buzzing through the air to drag two opposing halves together. Sylvain doesn’t try to fight its pull—he leans over, bumping their shoulders together. Just hard enough to be solid, to be something real.
“I’m sorry.” He doesn’t look at Felix when he says it, his eyes focused on the beige tiled wall across from him instead. Safer that way: you never knew how a Fraldarius was going to take an apology.
“No, you’re not.”
He’s right. It’s not even something that requires thought. From the moment he’d remembered his death, realized what it’d been for, Sylvain had known: he would take that axe over and over again.
“Okay, not about all of it,” Sylvain concedes, sheepish. Maybe it’s easier for them both to talk this way, side by side, on equal ground. “I am sorry for leaving you though. Really.”
“I know.” It’s about the closest thing to an apology Felix is ever likely to offer. Sylvain knows better than to need one, anyway. He’s about to leave it at that when Felix adds, unsentimental and matter of fact, “I missed you.”
Sylvain risks a glance up for that one. For the first time since Felix pressed him into this bathroom and locked the door behind them, he catches a glimpse of his own reflection beside Felix’s in the mirror. The bleeding’s mostly stopped by now, but there’s a path of dark blood drying down the front of his chin, splattered all over the front of his jacket and pants. Dark bruises are already starting to bloom from under both of his eyes. Frankly? He looks like shit. Top ten worst reflections he’s ever had the pleasure of encountering. But Felix is still there in the space beside him, watching Sylvain with eyes gone raw and vulnerable in the way they only got when he was really letting himself feel something, without all the walls and anger to get in the way. After all this time, it catches Sylvain off guard. He really could stare at Felix for hours, pain from the hangover and possible broken nose be damned.
“You’ve sure got a funny way of showing it,” Sylvain replies. The back of his fingers brush against Felix’s, laid out between them on the tile floor. “I’d say I missed you too, but that’s kind of the understatement of the century.”
A long moment passes. They watch each other through the reflection in the mirror, with a silence that hasn’t exactly reached comfortable yet, but at least isn’t openly hostile anymore.
And then, Felix asks the question of the hour: “what now?”
For being two little words, the question’s a lot more loaded than it lets on. Sylvain understands what Felix means. He’s been pushing the thought away since his first good look at Felix—really, since he first noticed the lack of his scars. Once upon a time, they’d been riddled with them. There’d been one that ran the length of Felix’s jaw on the right side. A knobby mess of scar tissue that used to sit above his left elbow. A jagged patch beneath his chin, a line nearly bisecting his left index finger. Countless close calls and near misses scattered across his body that Sylvain had, at one point, spent hours charting like landmarks on a map. They’re gone now, Sylvain had seen that even from across the bathroom floor.
And that, more than the tattoos or the unfamiliar backdrop, is what reminds Sylvain that the person beside him—the person he would once swear up and down he knew better than anyone else in the world—is also, technically, someone Sylvain doesn’t know at all.
So, what do they do now? They can’t stay here much longer, that’s for sure. The fact that the bathroom door is still standing, that they haven’t come face to face with a police-issue battering ram by now, is a small miracle in itself. But they can’t just walk out, expecting things to be the way they’d been before, either. This bathroom, by the simple virtue of being separate from the rest of the world, has become a sort of liminal space in Sylvain’s mind. Behind the locked door, they can exist as both the people they were before and the people they’ve become now, without having to draw in any distinct lines. The second they leave, though, things go back to being real again. They’ll have to sort out the pieces, decide what goes where and how they might fit back together again.
But… maybe that’s the good part about reincarnation, huh? Sylvain glances sideways to take in Felix’s profile from the corner of his eye, all his sharp edges and harsh words dulled into an unfocused blur by sheer proximity. Maybe that’s something Sylvain can actually say now. The good part is that, without the war or the crests, they can take all the time they want. The best part is that one little word: together.
“Hi,” Sylvain says, turning his body enough to reach out a tacky, blood covered hand to Felix. “I’m Sylvain. Come here often?”
Felix frowns, wary eyes flicking from Sylvain to his outstretched hand and back. “We should get you to a hospital.”
“Come on, Felix. Work with me here.”
It takes another second or so, but Felix gets there. When he takes Sylvain’s hand—still calloused and cold, exactly the way Sylvain remembers—it’s like everything in the world falls into place again. “…Felix.”
“Great. So, Felix, you wanna get coffee sometime? Preferably some place that’s literally anywhere but here?” Sylvain’s smiling, now, really smiling. “To be clear, I’m asking you out on a—“
Date, he doesn’t say, because Felix is already pushing himself away from the wall in one fluid movement, his knees coming to rest on either side of Sylvain’s left thigh. And if Sylvain thought those eyes were deadly from across the room, well, up close they’re downright devastating. Sylvain keeps his own eyes open wide as Felix braces his hands at the nape of Sylvain’s neck, as he guides their foreheads firmly together.
“Idiot,” Felix says, voice low but so fierce that it knocks the air right out of Sylvain’s lungs mid-breath. “Yes.”
Pieces of Felix’s hair have fallen forward to brush against the skin of Sylvain’s cheek, blocking out some of the harsh bathroom light in the process. It makes the scene feel somehow even more intimate, even more surreal. Sylvain laughs, airy and a little dazed. “Okay. I’ll call you.”
Time probably slows down then, if it even still exists at all. The only measure they have is the rhythm of Felix’s breathing, marking the moments that pass in steady exhales that ghost over the edges of Sylvain’s lips. The urge to kiss Felix, then, is overwhelming. How many times has he done it before? A hundred? Never? It would be so easy to do it again now, painfully so, especially when Felix tilts his own head just the slightest bit, lining up their lips like he knows it’s coming, like he’s waiting for it.
But ‘painful’ has been the operative word since this whole thing started, hasn’t it? Their noses brush with the movement—and, fuck, it’s like taking a taser right to the goddamn face. Way worse than the initial hit. Then, he’d had all the adrenaline and borderline euphoria of seeing Felix again. There’s nothing left to numb it, now; the pain is electrifying. Tears instantly flood into his eyes. Sylvain jerks back, smacking his head against the wall behind him in the process.
“Shit,” Sylvain murmurs through his wince. “Fucking ow.”
Through all this, Felix has settled back on his heels—bright light and cool air rushing to replace the suddenly vacated space. And maybe there is a goddess looking out for Sylvain somewhere up there. How else can he explain the kind of dumb luck he feels when, wiping the tears gingerly from his eyes, he finds Felix looking back at him with a smirk playing on the edges of his lips like he can’t help but be amused? Figures. Sylvain finally gets to see Felix smile again after all these years and it’s his pain that causes it. It’s worth it, though; the sight could still lay Sylvain out right there on the spot.
“You’re as pathetic as ever,” Felix says as he gets to his feet, sounding fond through the sheer lack of hostility in his tone. Sylvain’ll take that—he’s always been a sucker for Felix’s particular brand of affection, after all, acerbic and acquired as it is.
“Yeah, well, I bet I’m not the only one wishing you hadn’t broken my nose right about now, am I?”
“Come on,” Felix says, rolling his eyes as he reaches out his hand to help Sylvain up from the floor. “Hospital. Let’s go.”
What else is there to do but take it?
With his body vertical and feet firmly on the ground, Sylvain risks a look back down. Felix’s hand is still firmly closed around his own, with no sign of letting go anytime soon. There’s a question in Sylvain’s gaze when his eyes flick back up, prepared to search for an answer in Felix’s eyes. But Felix has never been the type to spend his time hesitating or looking back. He’s already turned, reaching out the hand not clasped around Sylvain’s for the lock on the door. It slides into place with a definitive click, red “occupied” replaced by green.
And Sylvain grins. “Whatever you say.”