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Felix woke to warmth and weight over his thighs; he woke to Sylvain seated on his lap, looking expectantly down at him.
“Fucking hell,” Felix said through dry mouth and lips.
Sylvain smiled and leaned in to kiss him, which—on his own head be it. Sylvain wasn’t romantic enough to claim Felix’s unwashed mouth was pleasant, but he was freakish enough to like it regardless.
“Good morning,” Sylvain said, reaching unabashedly for where Felix had woken erect in his nightclothes. “Up to old tricks, I see.”
Felix was not awake enough to parse much beyond Sylvain cupping a hand to his cock. He hissed and squinted and tried to make out the game at hand. “I don’t know what this is about,” he managed, “and whatever it is, you’ve got no room to talk.”
Sylvain’s face flickered something odd before he smoothed it away. His smile loosened which was some kind of warning sign. He slipped one hand under Felix’s waistband, and with the other sought Felix’s hand, palm up and lax. Felix let him take it and lace their fingers together. Sylvain watched his face as he turned Felix’s hand over.
Felix’s mouth flattened. Sylvain dropped his gaze to look carefully at where Felix’s knuckles were bruised and split. His other hand had stilled on Felix’s cock, but now took up again, the pad of his thumb circling the head.
“I heard a story from the stable hand this morning,” Sylvain said.
“Ugh,” Felix said, stretching his spine beneath Sylvain and doing nothing to unseat him.
Sylvain let go of his hand. “I suppose this is why I didn’t see you last night.”
“We’re not attached at the hip,” Felix said.
“Sometimes we are,” Sylvain said, dragging Felix’s pants down his thighs. “They didn’t know that though, did they?”
“They didn’t know I was listening at all,” Felix said, unhappy to be made to think of yesterday’s visiting nobles at the same time that his dick was hard. “This whole castle has ears, does it?”
Sylvain’s smile was sweet and cunning. “A maid saw you punch a wall, afterward. If it helps, they don’t repeat what they hear to just anyone.”
Humiliating. “That’s not helpful, no.”
Sylvain bent to suck a kiss into Felix’s neck, low where his collar would hide it. “Tell me what they said,” Sylvain said against his skin.
Felix grimaced. Sylvain’s mouth and hands and his own lagging wakefulness made him thick-headed. “I thought you’d heard the story.”
Sylvain kissed his mouth. “I want it from you.”
“Like most things.”
“Yes,” Sylvain agreed happily, his hand stroking Felix’s cock in slow passes over that turned Felix liquid and foolish.
“It wasn’t kind.”
“I know that.”
Sylvain pinned him with a look that said a lot for how unassuming it was. Felix scraped his teeth over his lower lip when Sylvain’s grip tightened. It was a hell of a negotiation tactic.
Preoccupied, Felix considered. Sylvain had come running to hear this from him; had set the terms for how he’d like to hear it, namely while one or both of them got off. Sylvain’s face was intent but not dark. It didn’t look or feel like being made party to his self-destructive tendencies. Whatever Sylvain was after, it was something else.
“They said you’re a rogue. A rake,” Felix said, his eyes falling closed, sensation narrowing to Sylvain’s hands, one petting over Felix’s stomach, the other moving languorous over his cock. Repeating what he’d heard didn’t make him blush—not much would, with what he and Sylvain had gotten up to—but something sparked beneath his skin anyway, to give it over to Sylvain.
“They called you a whore,” Felix said. “They said it doesn’t matter if someone won’t spread for you, since you’ll spread for anyone.”
Sylvain made a noise that suggested a kind of appreciation, as though he hadn’t heard it put quite that way before.
Felix opened his eyes. “They called you a whore,” he repeated. His gaze dropped from Sylvain’s face to the way his cock pressed against his trousers. “And you’re getting off on that?”
“Not on them saying it, no.”
“Bleeding fucking saints. Sylvain.”
Sylvain shrugged. His eyes were not as light as the rest of his face, but he didn’t appear displeased. “It’s different. You like me.”
“It’s no better,” Felix said, tossing his head at a twist of Sylvain’s wrist.
“Isn’t it? Do you think it’s true? Am I a good-for-nothing slut?”
Sylvain’s gaze was half-lidded and intense, like low-burning coals. Hearing the words from his mouth was an entirely different experience to Felix saying them. It redrew boundaries, made the world close and private; here, they spoke to each other in ways no one else was allowed to. Maybe this was what Sylvain wanted, Felix thought, when he’d asked Felix to tell him what he’d heard.
“You’ve been a slut,” Felix said, and watched Sylvain’s lips part, just barely. “History is what it is. But good-for-nothing? You helped win a war. You’re sticking your neck out for peace with Sreng. You’ve never been good for nothing. Not for lack of trying,” he bit out. “You shame those nobles with your existence. It’s probably why they’re so bitter.”
Felix had only a moment’s chance to see how Sylvain’s face changed with that proclamation. His brow had creased faintly. His smile went stiff. He fell onto Felix the next moment and they kissed with force, Sylvain’s tongue lapping deep into Felix’s mouth in the way of kissing he sometimes had—like Sylvain hadn’t ever, and would never, have enough of him.
Sylvain breathed hotly against Felix’s neck. “For you,” he said. “I’d be a slut for you. Good-for-anything.”
“I don’t think it’s sluttery if it’s for one person alone,” Felix said, frowning.
“Sluttery,” Sylvain repeated on the breath of a laugh.
Felix pulled him back with a grip on his hair to look Sylvain in the face. Sylvain’s mouth was kiss-bruised and his teeth gleaming behind it in a faint grin. He did look roguish, and a little youthful for it, though war and age had changed him in ways Felix couldn’t entirely track, having been beside him through it.
He thought of how he’d describe Sylvain now—dogged; conniving; loyal, with a heart that sometimes felt both entirely guarded and frighteningly bottomless. He didn’t know that he wanted anyone to know everything Sylvain was. But he himself wanted to know.
“Say it again,” Sylvain said.
Felix drew himself to sitting, his legs bent beneath him and Sylvain mirroring him. He freed Sylvain’s cock from his trousers and lined them up and took them both in his uninjured hand. Sylvain’s hand joined his, their fingers overlapping.
Felix tipped his forehead to Sylvain’s, so close he could hardly see him for it. “You’re a slut. No one knows the half of it.” He felt Sylvain’s faint inhale. “I don’t intend to let them know.”
“Possessive,” Sylvain accused, in a voice that suggested a smile.
“Stop throwing yourself on my mercy if you don’t like it,” Felix said, working them in his grip, slick with pre-come. “Don’t act so much like you’d like to wear my teeth marks on your throat. Don’t spread so easily for me, every time.”
Sylvain took a shaky breath. He hid his face in the crook of Felix’s neck. “I like it. When it’s you, I like it.”
The straightforwardness and the hitch in Sylvain’s voice cinched something in Felix like a knot pulled tight. It felt good and true and the acceptance of both those things had been a long time coming.
Felix scraped his teeth over the line of Sylvain’s shoulder to the juncture of this neck and laid down marks. Perhaps later Sylvain would find them in the mirror and contend again with what Felix felt for him. Sylvain was the kind of man who always wanted for proof.
The quality of Sylvain’s breathing changed. The choked sounds he made against Felix’s skin came faster with no reserve or artifice. It stoked a deep pride in Felix to hear that tempo falling to pieces.
Felix was not far behind. He eyed Sylvain’s slack mouth and the pink of his face and his lidded eyes, which sought Felix above all else. He felt fuzzed with heat within and without. All his priorities fit, for the moment, within his hand.
“Please,” Sylvain said, and did not need to, only he must have wanted to ask. “Please.”
“Do it then,” Felix said, and pressed a kiss to Sylvain’s throat, his teeth poised on the skin.
It only took the suggestion of a mark. With Felix breathing against him, Sylvain spasmed and came, and the sound and feel of Sylvain was enough that Felix was dragged along in his wake. He placed a hand over them both to catch their spend, his last logical movement before he was blind and gasping and still.
Sylvain nosed into the space behind his ear. “Holy shit,” he said in an exhale.
“Why do you sound surprised,” Felix said. “What was the plan when you woke me with your hand down my pants?”
“This, about,” Sylvain said. “But you’re always a surprise.”
Felix reached for his discarded pants with which to clean the come from his hand. Sylvain, his weight leant against Felix, shifted with him as he moved. Felix smirked at the blind reliance, the way Sylvain gave his body to Felix to be kept upright.
“Should let me heal that,” Sylvain said, when Felix had settled them on their sides. He nodded to Felix’s hand. “Why haven’t you already?”
“It’s fine. Nothing broke.”
“It’s unlike you, not to let your fists find their mark.”
“A wall is less likely to cause a diplomatic incident,” Felix said. “It’s bad enough as it is.”
“Ah,” Sylvain said, and took Felix’s battered hand gently between his own. “Diplomacy. My lord has appearances to maintain.”
“Don’t,” Felix said, in warning, to which Sylvain only smiled.
He watched while Sylvain conjured a heal spell, nothing that any palace healer couldn’t have done the day before. The truth was complicated. Or it was simple; stupid, even—Felix hadn’t wanted the hand healed because he didn’t want anyone, least of all himself, to think he regretted it for a moment. He’d do it again. He’d do worse.
The light from Sylvain’s spell faded, Felix’s skin knit neatly together, no more scarred than it was the day before last. He flexed it, then set his eyes on Sylvain.
“Thanks,” he said, and leaned in and kissed him briefly.
“No problem.”
He heard Sylvain say this as much as he felt it, his lips pressed now to Sylvain’s throat, just below the underside of his jaw, to the right of his pulse. He dragged his teeth over the spot, tenderized and kissed it, deep and sucking, marking Sylvain unmistakably.
“Felix.” Sylvain’s voice was tight with need and restraint. “Too high. I’ll have to heal it.”
“Don’t.” Felix pulled away. His work bloomed on Sylvain’s neck in purple and red.
“You want them to think I’m up to no good?”
Sylvain’s eyes creased at the corners. He wore a smile that was not happy, but bargaining.
“Tell them it was my doing,” Felix said. “And have them see me if they don’t like it.”
Sylvain’s features froze a second, in a rare, unguarded look of surprise. Then a grin stole over his mouth, very slowly.
“I fear for the walls if they do.” Sylvain’s fingertips brushed the mark on his neck. His tone was light with disbelief.
Beneath that, Felix thought he heard something warmer. Who leaned in for the next kiss, Felix couldn’t say.