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No one hated cliches more than Sylvain. That’s why they fell from his tongue like rain around the fifth girl he had no interest in dating that week, but would take home regardless. Sylvain hated cliches. Especially ones that were accurate. Time seemed to slow down in life-or-death situations. Sylvain knew that because science said that human brains went into overdrive, processing more information in the same time period as it struggled to prevent catastrophe.
He also knew because he was in a car accident.
It was storming and dark, despite being only midafternoon. Wind buffeted his rust bucket and rain seeped through the cracked sealant around his windows. His windshield wipers were new and high quality, dutifully leaving him with vision clear enough to see the young, blond man suddenly spin in place and chase his wind-caught rain hat in front of Sylvain’s car. Time slowed, which is the only explanation Sylvain had for how a black-haired, similarly young man managed to sprint from the other side of the street and shove the blond out of the way.
Only to get hit himself.
He fell out of his car and heaved broken sobs into the rain. He crawled across the oil-and-water soaked road to the still form of the man he’d hit. The blond was on the phone and shouting at bystanders with an air of command that went in one of Sylvain’s ears and out the other like so much white noise. There was so much blood the rain struggled to wash it away. The man’s face was locked in a final bereaved grimace.
Sylvain heard nothing over the storm howling where he couldn’t. An EMT wrapped him in a blanket he couldn’t feel while an entire team descended on the still man like vultures. He blinked and found himself in an ambulance, wrapped in a dry blanket with two EMTs trying to talk to him. Then he was in a hospital and an aide was helping him out of his drenched and vomit-stained clothes. He laid in the bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting for darkness to swallow him up, too.
A decade later, his father’s assistant showed up, scolded him for getting into an accident and informing him that his car would be outside his flat. So much for his attempt at cutting the cord.
A century later, the blond man he’d almost hit appeared with a bodyguard somehow bigger than he was. If he hadn’t felt numb, Sylvain would have jokingly wondered how either of them fit through the doorway into his room.
“I can do nothing but express my most sincere regret that I made this happen,” he said.
“I’m fine. It’s fine.” He wasn’t. It wasn’t, but what else could Sylvain say to the face of such earnestness?
“Felix, that is- My friend who-” The man swallowed thickly and leaned against his bodyguard for support. “His condition has stabilized, but I will not lie to you: he is comatose and the prognosis is not good. I- oh.” He stopped and wiped at his wet eyes with a blue, silk handkerchief. “I am Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd and I promise you, he is receiving the best medical care in the world. I am impossibly sorry that this has happened to you.”
“Thanks,” Sylvain croaked for lack of anything else to get this crying fucking prince out of his hospital room.
---
Once the hospital decided he’d recovered enough from his ‘shock’ for the taxi home, Sylvain staggered into his flat and laid face-down, diagonally across his bed. He laid there for hours waiting for sleep or death to take him. He didn’t really care which. His very existence was poison to everyone around him and now it’d finally spread to strangers. To a friend of the fucking prince of Faerghus.
His mobile rang. And rang. He knew it was Ingrid without looking, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk to her. Maybe in the next millennium when the guilt had faded.
“Fuck, answer your phone. What the hell is that ringtone, anyway?”
Sylvain tensed. He’d never heard that voice before. In fact, there had not been a second male voice in his flat in the entire time he’d lived there. He turned his face by inches, neck ratcheting like old machinery. Standing, semi-translucent, next to his bed in a turtle-neck and too-tight jeans was the man he’d hit with his car.
“Um.”
The man, Felix, the prince, the prince, had called him, leaned over and shouted in his face. “Answer your fucking phone.”
Without looking away from the ghost, Sylvain answered his phone, holding it to his numb ear.
“Thank the Goddess! Sylvain! You’re all over the news! You hit the prince’s best friend! Are you out of your mind?” Ingrid took a shuddering breath. “Are you okay? I’ve been calling for ten minutes. The news said you’d been released from the hospital, but I thought-” She broke off, crying.
“I’m… not hurt,” Sylvain said.
The ghost broke eye contact and said ‘Finally!’ as he threw up his arms and stomped away.
“What happened?”
Sylvain swallowed and rolled onto his back. “The prince ran in front of my car… and then his friend also ran in front of my car to shove him out of the way.”
“That- What kind of idiot-”
“Apparently Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd.”
“Sylvain! Don’t talk about the crown prince like that!”
“You’re the one who called him an idiot.” Now that he couldn’t see the ghost, Sylvain felt… more than nothing. Having Ingrid yell at him was reassuringly familiar. “His highness apologized. Said it was his fault. That his friend is in a coma, but it doesn’t look good.”
“If he-” Ingrid cut herself off and audibly swallowed. “It’s not your fault, Sylvain. None of it. Don’t make that face; I know what you’re thinking.”
“Yeah, alright.”
“Sylvain.”
He rubbed his eyes. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“He’ll be okay, Sylvain. They said he was being airlifted to Enbarr. They- You know what? I’m coming over.”
“Don’t.”
“You need me.”
Sylvain sat up. The ghost was still there, though now he was seated on the floor, glaring at the door. “Ingrid, I want to be alone right now. I promise I won’t… I’ll text you every few hours, okay?”
“Fine, but I’m ordering Almyran takeaway for you in an hour and if you don’t answer the door, there will be hell to pay.”
“Thanks Ingrid.” Sylvain was about to hang up, but the sight of the ghost made his heart sit uncomfortably high in his chest. “I love you.”
“Sylvain Jose Gautier, I am coming over right now and if you don’t-”
“No, no, that’s not-!” Sylvain let out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “I just really appreciate you, you know? You put up with all of my shit and have picked up my pieces so many times. I’m not okay, but you don’t need to come over.”
“I want to,” she said with rare frailty.
“I know, but I need some time to sort my head out.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I won’t do that to you again. I promised.”
“...Okay.” She sighed and sniffed. “But I’m coming over tomorrow.”
“Alright. Bye.”
Sylvain pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes, but, no, the ghost was still there. “Look, if you’re here to make me feel awful for hitting you, you’re too late.”
The ghost stood and turned to face him, hands on his hips. “Believe me, if I knew why I was here, I wouldn’t be.”
“Shouldn’t you… You know, be with your body? Since you’re still alive, right?”
Sylvain’s blood ran cold at the thought. The ghost hadn’t been there at the hospital or during the taxi ride. What if Felix had only just died?
Felix threw his hands up again. “Why do you think I know how it works? But, yes, I’m alive,” he added grudgingly. “I can hear my heartbeat and it’s distracting.”
“Better than the alternative, right?”
He shot Sylvain a glare so withering, it would have struck a man less familiar with cheating on girls with brothers.
Sylvain held out his hand, because it couldn’t make the situation any stranger. “I’m Sylvain.”
Felix didn’t take it, instead crossing his arms. “Whatever. I’m Felix. And if I understood that conversation right, you’d better not fucking die before I do.”
Sylvain’s smile waxed like the late moon. “No need to worry about that. I absolutely promise not to die before you do.”
---
Sylvain ate his Almyran takeaway at his table because he was depressed, not a damn animal. Felix's right hand kept twitching like he wanted to steal bites, which Sylvain thought said more about his love of Almyran food than his desire to share what Sylvain had. Or maybe it was weird coma-hunger. Not that Sylvain let any of his girlfriends pick at his food if he wasn’t exceptionally hard up, but his guest was a ghost anyway
“So if you’re his highness’ best friend or whatever, what were you doing on the other side of the street?” Sylvain asked between bites.
Felix scoffed and rolled his eyes. He looked away, but Sylvain’s apartment was too clean to criticize and his TV was off. Lacking a distraction, he answered. “My brother is captain of his guard and he’s an ass.”
“He has his own guard, like a group of guards?”
“Are you stupid?”
Sylvain stirred his spicy rice with the plastic spork that came with the food. “It’s a constitutional monarchy. He doesn’t have any real power.”
“By the goddess,” Felix muttered, looking at the ceiling. “You are stupid.”
“It’s not that weird of a question! I’m descended from the great Margrave Gautier from the War of Unification and I don’t have a bevy of knights at my beck and call.”
Felix groaned.
“Oh no.”
Felix groaned louder.
“Is your brother an actual, honest to the goddess, knight?” Sylvain laughed as Felix stuck his face in his hands and moaned despairingly.
“Don’t remind me.”
Speaking of reminders, Sylvain pulled out his phone. He expertly texted Ingrid with one hand. Did you know Faerghus still has knights?
She responded before Felix recovered. Yes. Why? Is one of them at your flat?
As much as Sylvain was tempted to reply with ‘Sort of’ he still wasn’t sure he could convince Ingrid there was a ghost in his flat. No, there was just a giant with the prince when he visited to apologize. He stuck his phone in his pocket. “So are you adopted?”
Felix looked up and glared. “What the fuck kind of question is that? Were you raised in a barn?”
Sylvain gestured to himself, eating politely at his table, but Felix was unimpressed. Before explaining his thought process, Sylvain fussily laid a paper napkin over his lap. “Well, when the prince showed up at my hospital room to apologize-”
“Of course he did,” Felix muttered.
“-the guard with him was a giant of a man with stereotypically Duscur coloring. Now, you may be a ghost, but you don’t look anything like him.” Sylvain went back to eating.
“That was Dedue. The boar is trying to get him unknighted so they can get married without causing an international incident.”
Sylvain held up a single finger as he tried to parse that, but even his history minor couldn’t help him. “Nope. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. Glenn thinks it’s funny, so he hasn’t said anything, meanwhile the rest of us are suffering because he won’t listen to reason.” No wonder Felix’s default expression was cranky.
“So are they…” Sylvain held out his two index fingers horizontally, moving them together until they touched. “You know, or suffering in Regency Drama silence.”
“One, I hate you. Two, I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Three, that’s not how that works.” Felix looked ready to jump across the table and because he had no self-preservation whatsoever, Sylvain mostly wanted him to.
“I know that’s not how it works.”
“Do you?”
Sylvain put a hand over his heart, as if he was mightily offended. “I just thought using” he made a ring between his thumb and index finger, “would perpetuate toxic heteronormativity.”
“I hate you so much,” Felix said as Sylvain laughed himself to tears. Felix stalked off as far as he could, which was only about three feet before he hit the wall, which he stared adamantly at while Sylvain finished eating.
Sylvain threw away the styrofoam container and wiped down the table before washing his hands. He yawned and peeled the tape off his IV tap that had long-since stopped bleeding. He tossed the cotton ball in the trash and rubbed futilely at the glue that remained. He yawned again, covering his mouth with his elbow, even though Felix wasn’t really there. “Look, we both had a long day, what with the car accident. You can sleep wherever you want. Preferably not-”
“Think over whatever you’re going to say next very carefully because if I wake up and kill you, my father can get the police to look the other way.”
Sylvain cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m going to bed.”
“Good riddance.”
---
The riddance was not nearly as good as Felix’s tone made it out to be, since less than an hour later he was shouting at Sylvain to wake up. He was able to ignore it for a solid five minutes, those cheating skills again coming in for the clutch, but Felix’s throat was incapable of becoming sore as it wasn’t corporeal, so Sylvain finally had to wake up. “What?”
“I can’t sleep.”
Sylvain blinked bleary eyes at him. “But you don’t want to talk to me?”
Felix gestured to his chest with both hands. “I physically can’t sleep because I’m not physical.”
Sylvain put his head back onto his pillow. “I don’t think that’s how that works.”
“Sylvain, wake up!”
He pulled the covers over his head. “Complain to the goddess. What am I supposed to do?”
“You have a laptop, don’t you?”
Sylvain sighed and lowered the blankets. “I’m pretty sure you can’t use it anyway?”
Felix yanked at his hair, pulling it out of its ponytail. Sylvain was thankful he was laying down because otherwise he might have swooned. Felix didn’t seem to notice, since he wasn’t kind enough to ignore it, and scrubbed his hands against his scalp.
“Can you even feel yourself?” Sylvain’s tone was dreamy to his own ears and if he wasn’t so tired, he would have flinched.
“Yes. Shut up. Get your laptop. Open up YouScreen. I’ll give you the channel name. Just put it on autoplay.”
Sylvain did as he was told, making a mental note to snort in the morning over the choice of viewing material. He left the volume on as loud as he could without his neighbors complaining and then set the laptop on his bedroom chair for Felix to watch. He fell asleep without questioning the strangeness of it all.
---
Sylvain woke up to timid knocking on his door. Knocking he could barely hear over the blacksmith talking from his laptop. Sylvain rolled from his bed, throwing his blankets as close to “made” as he could. He yanked a shirt out of his closet, deciding to take the hangar with him to open the door. He yawned, then opened the door. “Morning Bernie.”
Bernadetta lunged at him at her top speed, nearly knocking him over with the force of her hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I saw everything on the news!” She pulled back and shut the door behind her. She held out a canvas bag. “Here, I brought breakfast.”
“Thanks. And thanks for visiting.”
Bernadetta nodded and walked her bag to his table. She unloaded banana bread and travel mugs. “I bought Ingrid’s regular, too. I assumed she’d still be here?” She looked at Sylvain’s couch, but it lacked the guest blankets, so her face paled as she looked to his bedroom door.
Sylvain followed her look, but Felix was standing behind his other shoulder, so it wasn’t the ghost that- “Oh! No, no no. No. Ingrid didn’t come over last night. I just got out of hospital. I needed some time to think.”
“You were in hospital?”
Sylvain ushered her into a chair before she fainted. “Just for shock. I mean, I thought I killed him. I was nearly catatonic.”
Bernadetta grabbed his arm like she was clinging to him for her own life. “Oh Sylvain. It’s awful. They sent him to Enbarr.”
Sylvain pulled out his own chair. “I know. Ingrid told me.”
“Glenn texted me so I wouldn’t try to see him.”
“What?” Sylvain said. A moment later, he realized he should have said “Who?” He fought against the urge to look over his shoulder and see Felix’s reaction.
Bernadetta shoved a piece of banana bread in her mouth, but at least she didn’t try to run. Sylvain followed her lead and started eating. After a few minutes, she took a long drink from her mug and sighed. “Remember how I said my life was kind of like a fake marriage AU until I got to university? Well, Felix was my fake husband.”
“Felix. The man I hit with my car.” Sylvain spoke slowly, watching her nod along at every point. “The angry gremlin with long hair and a longer stick up his ass was your fake husband?”
“Yes?” She hid behind a piece of banana bread. “He’s actually really nice and not going to actually kill you except for that one time.”
“What one time?” Felix shouted, though Bernadetta couldn’t hear him. Thankfully. Sylvain didn’t want to have to figure out how to strangle a ghost for scaring his friend.
Sylvain focused on his food to keep from laughing. Then a thought struck him. “Fuck, I didn’t call out.”
“D-don’t worry. I talked to Alois this morning when I picked everything up. He said he saw the news and assumed you’d be out for a few days. He wants you to call when you feel up to it.”
“Thank you. And thank you for visiting. It means a lot, but I’ll be alright, I promise.”
She glanced at his wrists, moving her eyes and not her whole head, but Sylvain was used to it. He’d never even thought of that, but that was the first thing everyone checked. He just wished he’d never ended up in that situation. That he’d never worried any of his friends, even the ones he hadn’t met yet, like Bernadetta.
She swallowed and wrung her hands. “Is Ingrid coming over later?”
It took Sylvain a moment to take the tiredness, the frustration out of his voice, but he did it. Because he owed her. “Yeah. She bought me dinner last night, too.”
“Good.”
Before the silence could last long enough to become awkward, she perked up like an alarmed rabbit. “Is that DBF?”
“What?”
“Dagdan Blade Forge. The YouScreen channel. It’s Felix’s favorite.”
Sylvain didn’t know what to say to that, so he just laughed awkwardly and relied on her being too timid to ask again.
---
“Fake marriage AU?” Sylvain asked once Bernadetta was gone and he’d paused the video stream. “Fake marriage AU.”
“You can keep saying that. I still won’t understand what it means.”
“You got engaged so she could move to Fhirdiad with no intention of ever getting married.”
Felix nodded. “Yes. I did that. It was the right thing to do.”
Sylvain smiled and felt his heart ache. It was bad enough, mostly-killing a stranger, but this? Meeting Felix and seeing what a great man he was? It hurt. It hurt badly, but he couldn’t let himself fall into the pit again. As great… and as hot… as Felix was, Ingrid and Bernie and everyone deserved better from him.
“Don’t make that face. That’s the same expression Glenn made when he found out. Oh, and if you even think about telling Dimitri, I’ll kill you.”
Sylvain laughed, covered his mouth and then laughed harder. “Dare I ask why?”
“No, you daren’t,” Felix said.
Sylvain waited. And stared. And stared.
“Ugh, I hate you. He found out this girl he had a crush on as a kid was his step-sister and got all weird about, so I faked this huge dramatic breakup to get him out of it.”
“Wait. Wait- ”
“No.”
“Wait-”
“I am not telling you anything else.”
“He had a crush on-”
“Shut up!”
“He, the prince, had a crush on-”
“Stop talking!”
“The Imperial-” Sylvain stopped, but it was because he heard a key in his lock, not because he didn’t like the weird ghost-flush on Felix’s cheeks. “We’ll get back to this,” he whispered.
“I hate you!” Felix shouted.
Sylvain did a double take right as he got to the door. He whispered, “I thought he was…?” He jabbed his fingers together and tried not to laugh as Felix slapped his hands over his face.
“Wow, not even going to greet me at the door? Now I know you’re gonna be fine.” She hugged him from behind and then dropped her own bag of groceries on his table.
Felix was staring at her like he’d seen a ghost. Which would have been funny in any other context. Sylvain mouthed, “What?”
Felix whispered, even though she couldn’t hear him. “Do not let her meet my brother. She’s too much his type.”
Sylvain glanced at Ingrid, but, as ever, he saw a little six year old girl with pigtails who yelled at him because he had a horse and she didn’t have a pony. He lifted an eyebrow at Felix and tried to think of how to say ‘She’s a big lesbian’ without getting yelled at. He settled for bumping ringed fingers together, which did get him yelled at, but not by Ingrid.
“Bernie was here earlier,” Sylvain said so he wouldn’t laugh at Felix’s outrage. “She brought you a coffee, realized you hadn’t slept on the couch and almost fainted.”
“What?” Ingrid looked between him and his couch a few times before she noticed his open bedroom door. Then she gagged. “Ugh, why would you tell me that?”
“If I had to think it, you have to think it.”
“You’re an ass.”
“I did almost kill the crown prince’s best friend.”
“Sylvain-”
He held up his hands. “I know, I know. I’m just joking. Speaking of jokes, Alois gave me indefinite time off.”
“That’s good.” Ingrid opened up one of the food containers and started eating her Brigidan street roast without even waiting for him to sit down. “Let me know if you… You know, with rent or whatever.”
“Thanks, but I got an email from my landlord saying I was paid up until the end of the year.” Sylvain sighed. “Diana showed up at the hospital.”
“Diana?”
“The new one.”
“Ahh.” Ingrid took another bite. “I’m sorry your father is using this as an opportunity to get back in your life.”
“Thanks. If his highness decides to find me and apologize again, I’ll ask for his help.”
“You will not,” Ingrid and Felix said at the same time.
Sylvain laughed. “Maybe, maybe not. You’ll see.”
“Did you just practice your wink at the window?”
Sylvain laughed again because that was easier than explaining about Felix’s ghost glaring at him.
---
With Felix’s ghost to reassure him that he wasn’t a murderer, Sylvain only two a second day off of work from The Brewing Storm.
“You live in that shitty apartment. With that trash heap of a car-”
“Which was structurally sound enough to almost kill you,” Sylvain pointed out. He had his wireless headphones in one ear so he could pretend he was on a call if anyone came in.
Felix ignored him, anyway. “But you work here? I live in this district.”
“Wow, way to make assumptions.”
“Shut up.”
“Like I said, descended from the Margrave Gautier.”
“The philanderer.”
“Well-”
“From what Ingrid said, it’s apt.”
“She’s descended from that Countess Galatea, too.”
“Yeah, yeah, and the boar is the Savior King and Glenn is the Shield of Faerghus. I get it.”
“Actually-”
Felix rolled his eyes and beat his head against the counter. “Don’t.”
“ Actually, Felix Hugo was the second son of-”
“I know. Forget I said anything.”
“You don’t know what that history minor cost me. I’m going to use it.”
Felix glanced at his wrists and Sylvain really wanted to tattoo something like “be more creative” on them or anything to keep the awkward moment from happening every, single time. “Whatever. Neither of our ancestors married, so for all you know we’re bastard lines anyway. Who cares?”
The laugh started in Sylvain’s feet and by the time it made it to his mouth, it was a full, evil cackle. He leaned across the counter. “Hey Felix.”
“No.”
“There’s a rumor.”
“By the goddess.”
“About our ancestors.”
Felix tried to leave the cafe, but the invisible, ghostly tether kept him from even touching the door.
“And why they never married.”
Felix looked at the ceiling. “Kill me.”
“I tried,” Sylvain said. Before he could get back to flexing his not-degree concentration, the door opened. He nearly choked on his tongue because the customer was none other than the crown prince himself, in a terrible approximation of normal person clothing. He either hadn’t been as bad the day of the accident or, more likely, Sylvain had been too out of it to notice. He backed up as far as he could to bow, but the prince flinched, holding up a hand.
“Please, there is no need. I’m here incognito.”
Felix and a man that could only be his brother snorted in unison. Glenn had longer hair than Felix and wore most of a nice, tailored suit under a ratty jean jacket. He wasn’t visibly armed, but he had an earpiece and carried himself like all of the people who could, and regularly did, obliterate Sylvain at the gym.
“Of course, your-er, strangeness.” Sylvain gave him a winning smile.
Felix rolled his eyes and walked through the counter to Sylvain’s side. “He’s going to take twenty minutes, ask Glenn what to get, then not order what Glenn suggests and hate it.”
Sylvain fought to keep a straight face as Dimitri read the menu in a whisper to himself.
“Then he’s going to insist that Glenn get something. Glenn will refuse, saying he’s on duty. That’ll go back and forth for another five minutes-”
“You can get back to… Cleaning or whatever you were doing,” Glenn said, unwittingly interrupting his brother’s monologue. “This will take a while.”
“There’s usually a line at that point. Outside, since everyone can spot the boar from three blocks away.”
Tears started budding in Sylvain’s eyes as he held back the laughter.
“Glenn will then concede and get a plain latte, just so everyone else can come inside, and he won’t be happy about it.”
Just then, Dimitri leaned down to ask Glenn what he should get and Sylvain was positive he tore something in his chest from not laughing.
“Make the boar a salted caramel latte, extra salt. He can’t taste, he just doesn’t like the texture and the salt helps.” He paused. “Do you have any booze? Spike Glenn’s. He’s an ass.”
Sylvain shot Felix as much of a glance as he dared and made negating motions under the counter. His father might think he was ready to sit back at the table, but Sylvain had no intention of accepting any more checks. He needed this job.
“Oh fine. Loser. Put a shot of peppermint in it. He’ll like that.”
“Please, your highness, my boss would kill me if I took-”
“Please, I insist.”
“Just take his fucking money, Sylvain. He doesn’t have any is going to have to bum it off of Glenn anyway.”
Sylvain mock-bowed with a flourish. “As you command.” He had to bite his tongue when the scene played out exactly as Felix predicted. He didn’t think he’d survive if Dimitri came again.
He made the drinks as Felix instructed, wondering if Glenn would accuse him of making the wrong thing to poison the future king. He hoped not. Though it was certainly an interesting tidbit that Dimitri had no sense of taste.
Felix leaned across the counter as Glenn took his drink. “Watch, watch his face. He won’t complain, but he will give the ground the evil eye.”
“You said he’d like it,” Sylvain murmured from between clenched teeth.
“He will. He’s just an ass.”
On cue, Glenn scowled at his drink, read the directions written on the cup and gave Sylvain an ugly look, but he dismissed it before Dimitri could notice and comment.
The prince paused at the door anyway. He looked at Sylvain. “Thank you. If Felix is ornery when he wakes… I will be certain to tell him you’re a good man.”
The moment the door closed behind them, Sylvain ran to the back and laughed so hard he thought he was going to throw up.
---
Three days later, Sylvain stared at the ceiling of his bedroom, unable to sleep. It wasn’t the DBF keeping him awake, honestly, he might use the narrator as a sleep-aid, once it was all over. “You know… I was really hoping I wouldn’t get used to this, but I really like hanging out.”
Felix snorted.
“Yeah, I know, if you had it your way, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Felix got off the floor and stood over Sylvain’s bed. He reached out to grab the collar of Sylvain’s shirt, but of course his hand went right through. “Just because it hurts you, doesn’t mean it has anything to do with you! I’m not gonna play, oh it sucks to be Sylvain like you do with your own subconscious every night. Yeah, I’d rather not be here because I’m a fucking ghost, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
He scrubbed his head with both hands, his ghostly hair tie lost some time on the second day. Felix reached down more gently and, literally, ghosted his fingers over Sylvain’s cheek. “Look, being here’s not terrible, but I just… want to be alive. Okay?”
“Okay.” Sylvain closed his eyes on the feeling sorry for himself tears and fell asleep in moments.
He woke up alone and he really had to remind himself that his friends deserved for him not to do anything stupid. He sat on the edge of his bed with his face in his hands until he got a text. It chirped with a horrible screech that had been labeled as a fox cry, so he knew it was Bernie and got up to check.
Hey, um, so, good news. You’re not a murderer. Felix woke up. Confused. Still lots of broken bones. A little confused. Wants your number. Probably not to kill you. Should I give it to him?
Trust Bernadetta not to question how Felix knew she’d have his number.
Yeah. Sure. What’s the worst that could happen?
---
The answer to Sylvain’s hypothetical and he should have known better than to ask question came five years later. It started with a speech from Glenn, who wasn’t drunk enough for the tongue lashing he was about to earn. “So when my baby brother met his husband-”
Sylvain put his head in his hands, not sure if he wanted to laugh or cry as Felix bristled next to him.
“-Sylvain hit him with a car. That’s true. Here’s the news footage.”
As it played, Sylvain tried to sink under the table, but Felix held him by the collar.
“Now, Felix has always been competitive,” he said to the now-chortling crowd. “So I guess he decided to get back at Sylvain for almost ending his life by taking Sylvain’s. Albeit less violently.” Then he had the audacity to wink.
“I’m going to kill you,” Felix said, just loud enough to be picked up by the mic still attached to his collar.
Glenn bowed at his brother with far too much depth. “Well, everyone. I have to remind you that Sylvain almost took my little brother, so now I’ve got his best friend. Sucks to suck, Gautier.” He made finger guns at Sylvain before retaking his seat next to Ingrid and dramatically falling to one knee to give her a ring.
“Your brother is an ass.”
“Oh, now you believe me.” Felix scowled, uncaring that they were still on mic and still being videotaped and watched by more than half of Faerghus. “This is your fault.”
“Uh, we just saw video of the accident. It was Dimitri’s fault.”
“You said she was--!” Felix dramatically hit his hands together, fingers formed into rings.
Ingrid took a break from her tears to stand and shoot daggers at Sylvain. “You said what? ”