Chapter Text
Felix Hugo Fraldarius did not have a vast pool of sexual experience with which to judge recent developments.
In fact, he mostly had what could charitibly be called the opposite. Countless nights of curling over himself, desperate, sweaty, with fingers working and breath coming fast and hard. He’d never been particularly good at it, satisfying himself. In the aftermath, when he struggled to catch his breath and clear his head, he’d always just feel pathetic and drained and more bereft than ever.
When he was younger, he’d go outside, take a long walk, burn it off. While he’d been enrolled at Garreg Mach, he’d roll over in his bed amidst damp and tangled sheets to press one hand against the wall, imagining he could feel a presence tingling up through his fingertips. And during the long years of the war, when he’d thought for certain that everything he’d ever wanted was dead and gone, he’d grit his teeth and fight off bitter tears in the aftermath, hauling his pants up and soldiering on.
Everything he had ever wanted had turned out to be neither dead, nor gone.
In fact, everything he’d ever wanted had become deliriously, incandescently, impossibly real, and he’d finally begun to understand just how far he’d been from the real thing when he’d touched himself.
How good lips against his own could feel.
How incredible teeth along his jaw could be.
How his spine could light up with tingling nerves like a sky full of stars when strong hands tangled in his loose hair to pull his head back.
And how he could shake from head to toe, gasping and sucking in air and seeing stars, when Dimitri pushed into him and he felt full and overwhelmed and complete…
At least.
He had at first.
He growled, his patience snapping, and he kicked one heel awkwardly against Dimitri’s back, baring his teeth up at him. “I’m not going to break,” he snapped.
Dimitri paused, and gazed down with that serious, considering look on his face. It was bothersome in the extreme, how he looked so unaffected by their exertions aside from a flush in his cheeks and one dilated pupil. “Felix?” he breathed, sounding at least slightly breathless. Well, good. It was nice to know that he wasn’t entirely carved from ice, regardless of what his glacial pace might imply!
“Come on. Harder. You’re not going to break me,” he repeated, more forcibly. "Fuck me."
The damn boar had the nerve to look perplexed. And then, experimentally, he rolled his hips in another long, interminably sweet motion, their hips sliding together. Despite his dissatisfaction with the situation, Felix could not help but let his head fall back and his mouth fall open. The stretch of him, the friction, the drag…
“I thought I was,” Dimitri said softly, his voice seeming to come from somewhere very far away. “Ah, and look at you. You have no idea what seeing you like this does to me. Felix…”
Felix felt a hand on his cheek. The contact shook him from his state of bliss, and his eyes snapped open. His king gazed down at him, fine features locked into an expression of such tenderness that Felix couldn’t help but snarl and slap his hand away.
“Stop that,” he snapped. He’d had his fill of tenderness!
He reached up with desperate hands and buried them in the mass of blonde hair that hung down between them. He tugged, just hard enough to hurt. A small puff of surprised air escaped from between Dimitri’s lips.
Felix grinned a challenge up at him.
“See?” he demanded. “Good, right?”
“Felix --”
“Fuck me like that,” he pressed.
Dimitri’s lips folded into a line. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Stop treating me like porcelain. Let go. Lose control.” He released his hair, falling back against the pillows, and insistently, he pressed both his heels tight against Dimitri’s back, pulling him forward. “You’re right,” he breathed, fingers trailing down the expanse of his chest between them. “I don’t know what seeing me like this does to you. But I’d like to. Show me.”
A flicker of something passed behind Dimitri’s one eye. His hips jerked forward, as if by their own will. Just a bit, no more than half an inch, and yet Felix hissed, breath catching in his throat. Yes. There. Right there. That was what he wanted.
“You know I have difficulty gauging my strength,” Dimitri breathed, and then he was leaning over him, pressing him down into the mattress, nose and lips in his hair and on his temple. The weight of him was overpowering. Felix let out a small, desperate whine. “Felix. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Felix couldn’t help the bitter laugh that rumbled low in his throat. Unbelievable. “How heroic of you.”
Unsteady breath on his neck and in his ear. Dimitri buried deep inside of him, relentlessly unmoving. His voice hot against his skin. “Felix…”
He was impossible.
“What if I want you to hurt me?” Felix moaned, and he craned his neck and sank his teeth into Dimitri’s earlobe. The king hissed. Goddess, the pressing weight of him was dizzying. More, more of that. “I’m tired of your soft hands and big eyes while you hold yourself back! I know what you want. I want it, too. Take it. Take me. Fuck me rough and senseless, oh King of Lions, or I swear, I’ll have to --”
A rough, wild sort of growl erupted from deep in Dimitri’s chest, and Felix gasped, heart leaping into a full gallop as the other man pushed himself up onto his hands. His one eye shone with animal intensity, and Felix held his breath.
Come on. Come on.
One hand moved. Fisted into his hair. Pulled his head roughly back. Tears sprung to his eyes, and he whimpered, high and pleading. He’d be embarrassed to sound so needy, so desperate, if he weren’t so acutely aware of how very needy and desperate he was, right now.
Dimitri bent him near in half to press their mouths together, tongue insistently pushing past his lips, plundering his mouth. The shift of their bodies made him intensely aware of the hard, fine cock still buried within him, and if it had softened at all while they spoke, it was certainly back to full attention, now. He groaned deep into Dimitri’s mouth, heart racing in his throat, and when Dimitri pulled abruptly off and gazed down at him, Felix was left gasping for air and blearily blinking up at him.
Yes.
“If you want me to stop, if it’s simply too much for you, you must promise to say something,” the king said, his voice rumbling across Felix’s skin and up his spine.
He bared his teeth, more out of habit than genuine challenge. “I won’t, and it won’t be. Stop talking. Fuck me.”
“Nevertheless. Promise me, won’t you?”
Felix sighed, throwing his arm up over his eyes. This was interminable. “Fine. I promise. But can I also tell you if you’re boring me, so I can get a bit of --”
Dimitri snapped his hips forward, all at once. Felix’s eyes flew open wide, and he lost the rest of his words amidst a gasping groan. He was so used to those slow, rolling movements that feeling him so sharp and unexpectedly was like an entirely new experience.
He showed his teeth in a grin, still covering his eyes. “There. Yes. More like that. Come on. You can do better. You can --”
Then Dimitri pulled all the way out to the tip of him, and the drag and friction followed by the confused emptiness it left behind only lasted less than a second, before he drove all the way back in a rough, mighty thrust, and --
Felix howled.
His arms fell to his sides. He watched Dimitri grit his teeth and shut his one eye tight as he repeated the motion, drawing forth another cry of delight from his throat. He gripped at the soft furs atop the royal bed, then Dimitri’s braced forearms, and then, when Dimitri shifted his grip to push his knees up further and give himself greater access, he had to settle for simply bracing himself against the headboard so that he wasn’t crushed against it.
And it was incredible.
No longer was he forced to watch Dimitri’s considering furrowed brow as he took his sweet time labouring above him. No, now he had the pleasure of seeing him work, to study and admire the tightness of his jaw, the snarl of his lips, the flare of his nostrils, the animal wildness in his eye. He matched his grunts and growls and rough, desperate groans with his own cries of surprise and delight, too lost in the ecstasy of it to worry so very much about how weak or pleading he sounded.
The great bed frame shook. The canopy overhead trembled. He arched his back as well as he could, throwing his head to one side, baring his neck and throat. The cock that plunged into him, over and over, was big and demanding and incredible and, of course, attached to the person he had waited his entire life to feel this from. He rose to meet him, eagerly, desperately.
“Yes,” he gasped, so lost in it, overcome with it, that he forgot that he generally liked to keep his internal commentary inside his head. “Yes, yes, Dimitri. Yes. Yes! Come on! Harder! Harder! Fuck me harder!” The headboard hit the wall on every thrust, thudding like a drumbeat. He gave up bracing himself, reached for the man atop him.
Dimitri responded in kind, hauling him up, bending him over even further, fucking down into him.
Felix saw stars.
“More, more, come on, come on! Dimitri! I -- I’m --!”
Crack.
Felix’s eyes flew open wide. Dimitri stared down at him, frozen in alarm. The pain arrived a half-second after the sound it had made, and Felix barely managed to choke back the cry of pain that tore its way up and out of his throat. Fuck!
Dimitri used the headboard to push himself up. “Felix,” he gasped. “You --”
Felix gritted his teeth, tears in his eyes. “Don’t! Don’t you dare, don’t you dare stop! I’m half a second from coming, you great stupid beast, I’m fine, it’s fine, don’t you dare --”
But even though Dimitri’s next hesitant, uncertain thrust was barely half the force of the ones that had got them to this place, Felix saw stars in an entirely different way, throwing his head back, hissing, clenching his teeth tight --
“Fuck!” he cried. “Dammit!”
He cursed Seiros, Sothis, and their thrice-damned divine professor for good measure as Dimitri, practically fluttering and peeping like a mother bird, pulled out of and off of him. “Felix.”
“I’m fine!” he gasped.
“You’re not. Your back --”
“Is fine! I’ve had worse.”
“Let me see.”
He hissed through gritted teeth, but he dutifully rolled over. Even that motion twinged painfully, and he bit down another cry. He could have happily ripped out his spine just to spite it, he decided, as Dimitri’s maddeningly gentle fingers prodded at him. His balls felt as though they had been slammed in a doorway! “What are you expecting to see, blood and guts?” he snapped. “Do you think you ripped a hole in me? It’s fine. I’ve twisted a muscle before.”
“It seems to be swelling,” Dimitri said. His voice was so reasonable and so apologetic that Felix had to squash the urge to roll over and punch him for it. Well, what would the point be? He’d probably just hurt himself further trying. “We ought to have a healer look at it.”
Felix snorted. “And say what? That the king folded Duke Fraldarius in half and broke him?”
The sound Dimitri made was positively wounded. “Felix… I’m so sorry,” he murmured. “I knew this would happen. I lost myself in my pleasure. I should not have let it go so far. I --”
“Shut up. Stop talking.” Felix took a deep breath. “I’d walk out right now if I thought I wouldn’t be crab-walking the whole way back to my room,” he ground out. “So, if you want to be helpful, either you can leave instead, or you can be silent.”
Dimitri lapsed into reluctant silence. His disapproval practically radiated as he settled down beside him, curling up against him, wrapping strong arounds around him and carefully pulling him in close.
Of course, he wouldn’t leave. Not when he felt so very responsible and guilty and, surely, at least a tiny bit self-satisfied that he’d been right after all! It stung worse than the throbbing muscle in his back, that, and sent his mind twisting off into all manner of infuriating possibilities.
What now, then?
More tenderness, most likely. More kind, gentle expressions, soft, careful hands, long, rolling thrusts, and the overwhelming pressure all those things put in his chest. Was this his punishment, then, for the sin of wanting sex to be something he could use to get out of his head for ten minutes instead of something that made him so acutely aware of his own emotions they hurt?
Ugh.
And it had been damn good, too. So much for that.
Dimitri even breathed carefully at his back, as if worried that a stray push of air might blow him off the bed and injure him once again. Wonderful. What a promising forecast of future encounters. This was what he’d spent his whole life jerking himself off wanting?
Unbelievable.
“Stop fretting,” he grumbled. “I just need to sleep on it. It’ll be fine in the morning.”
*
It was not fine in the morning.
He woke to stiff muscles and teeth-gritting pain. Dimitri was gone, but had left a full breakfast, a pot of Four-Spice Blend, and a full set of appropriate clothing for his day’s schedule carefully arranged at the foot of the grand royal bed.
It must have been torture for him not to hover about like a mother hen.
Getting out of bed was a task. Getting dressed, even moreso. Every movement that so much as twitched a muscle in his back made him grit his teeth and hiss with pain. Lovely start to a busy day.
He held himself tenderly in his seat all through his meeting with the Master of Household, hearing only half of what he was saying and hoping he wasn’t agreeing to anything too compromising when he nodded to hurry the conversation along. He tried to appear simply uncaring and regal as he negotiated with builders repairing some of Cornelia’s worst excesses in the capital. He limped the whole way to the Council of Lords, where at the very least he had a comfortable chair, but had to deal with Dimitri eyeing him with guilty concern throughout.
He met him after the meeting in an antechamber, and stepped close enough that they would likely not be overheard.
“You do not seem much better,” he murmured, a low rumble that made the hairs on Felix’s forearms stand up. That was hardly useful, at the moment, now was it?
“I’m fine,” he gritted out.
“We know of healers who will likely be discreet. One is visiting Fhirdiad as we speak…”
Felix couldn’t help it. He winced at the implied suggestion. “Her? Really? That sounds like a good idea, to you?”
“Felix. I am not trying to…” Dimitri ran a hand through his mass of thick blonde hair. Felix’s fingers itched to repeat the motion. “I’m worried about you.”
“I know. You’ve made that perfectly obvious.” The conversation was raising his ire to irrational levels, considering that Dimitri truly was only trying to help. He would have killed for this sort of attention, once. Not even so very long ago. Wouldn’t it have been quite the thing, to see the feral beast that had crawled out of the grave all the way to Garreg Mach gaze at him with such sad, doting humanity? “Just as I know you’ll be treating me with kid gloves for the rest of however long we carry on this arrangement, now won’t you? You were right, after all! I can’t handle the sheer power of your brute strength, now can I?”
Dimitri stepped back. He looked wounded, damn him. Felix couldn’t help but laugh at that. All the times he’d wanted to hurt him, only to receive patience and understanding. And here, now, when he was just tripping over himself, frustrated and tongue-tied, finally he scored a good hit.
He couldn’t bear to look at him. Nor could he be brought to apologize, not when all those sick feelings of longing and regret and guilt sloshed together in his gut. He brushed past him, hobbling out as fast as he could. It was not very fast. Dimitri could easily have grabbed his arm, pulled him close, stopped him. But it would have drawn eyes… and he was not even entirely sure how he would react if he did.
He was allowed to make his awkward, stumbling way down to his next task for the day.
And standing in the midst of the training yard, surrounded by youngsters with myriad wooden swords all clamouring for instruction, he began to suspect that he might have been hasty in his stubborn insistence that he could simply carry out all his duties as usual.
Skill would buoy him, he told himself, when he took up the defensive position with his wooden sword before him, eyeing down a fierce-eyed, black-haired boy that reminded him very much of himself at fourteen. How much finesse and freedom of movement could he possibly need to show a knee-high squire how to block a hit? They circled, and he breathed out steadily through his mouth and in through his nose. Mind over matter. The body was merely an extension of the mind, and it could be made to obey any command. Pain was only a distraction. He’d fought for his life, for the lives of his friends, with blood dripping into his eyes, his arm limp from the shoulder down, and the world spinning around him. Mind over matter.
The sharp-eyed boy came at him, and when he went to block, pain blossomed all up his back and down his leg. A cry caught in his throat, the training sword caught him in the middle, and he hit the dirt like a sack of old bricks in front of twenty gaping mouths and wide eyes.
He cancelled his next appointment, and took a carriage out into the city.
*
“Oh, no!” Mercedes von Martritz cooed, her gentle hands like a hot brand against Felix’s bare back. “You really did do some damage to it, didn’t you? Poor thing.”
“Can you fix it, or not?” Felix demanded through gritted teeth, voice muffled by his pillowing arms. “I got knocked on my ass by a teenager. I’m essentially useless if you can’t help me.”
She giggled, as unaffected by his sharpness as she ever had been. “Of course I can help you, silly. Have I ever let you down?”
She hadn’t. Not once. And she’d never pressed him for details of injuries beyond what she needed to treat them, nor breathed a word when he offered them up willingly. She had been, had always been, a very good friend.
He’d never have come here, otherwise.
He remained silent as she poked and prodded at him to test the extent of his injury, occasionally grunting affirmative or negative when she quietly asked ‘does this hurt’ or ‘how about here?’ The cracking of the fireplace was soothing, at least, and her healing hands were always exceedingly gentle.
She disappeared for a moment, shuffling away. He liked the sound of her skirts crinkling and swishing when she moved. There was a lulling sort of comfort to the sound. He let it wash over him, trying to relax like she’d instructed when he first walked in here.
He jumped near out of his skin when something cool and slippery and gooey landed on his back.
“Oh!” Mercedes gasped. “I’m sorry, Felix. Did I not heat it up enough?”
“What is that?” he demanded, and then hissed in surprise when her fingers were on him again, gliding through the heinous stuff.
“It’s a salve,” she said matter-of-factly as she continued to massage it into him. “Professor Manuela’s secret recipe! Haha, not really. She’d give it away to anyone who asked! It just wouldn’t be possible without all the amazing reagents for medicine making we grow at the monastery greenhouse. I think that’s kind of amazing, don’t you? Someone took the time to plant so many different herbs and flowers and trees, and because they did, we discovered something so amazing and helpful.”
“It feels like old fat drippings from a roasted goose,” he groused, but without much feeling. The fresh, astringent smell of the stuff was quite calming, and, more importantly, it was actually working. Already, he felt a numbing and a relaxing of the afflicted area, and when he shifted slightly, no twinge of pain set his nerves on fire. He hummed. “That’s good stuff,” he said, somewhat reluctantly.
“It is!” she agreed, so full of pride it was as if she’d mixed it herself. Well, maybe she had. In defiance of her delicate appearance, in all the time he’d known her, she’d never been afraid of getting her hands dirty.
“What, then?” he asked, after another long span of quiet where her magic fingers seemed to simply brush the pain away. “Am I healed?”
She hummed sweetly. “Oh, no. It isn’t that good! You’re not going to be better for a week, at least!”
He groaned. Wonderful. “Then what are you even doing back there? I’d be healed by myself, in a week.”
“You would not!” She slapped him lightly. The wet, sticky sound it made was deeply unpleasant. Felix made a face. “You’d be flat on your back and wishing you’d come to me while I was here, after all! Don’t worry. When I say you’ll be better, I mean good as new… as long as you follow my instructions.”
“Doctor’s orders,” he grumbled.
“Exactly! As for what I’m doing, well. While I’m doing this, I’m channeling just a little trickle of healing magic in with it. It’s not the right kind of wound for a miraculous magical recovery, but if I just get everything all primed and ready to start work on its own, it shouldn’t be too bad to fix up. You’ll just need to reapply it three times a day every day! That’s the important part. All right?”
He scoffed.
She never asked for details, never pressed, no. This was what she did, instead. Handed him a pot of salve, told him he’d never walk again if he didn’t lather it all over his own back, and then wait.
“Won’t be a problem,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“Because if you don’t make sure it gets applied three times a day…”
He groaned. “Mercedes. It’s fine. It’ll get applied three times a day.”
She sighed and clucked her tongue. “Fine, fine,” she allowed, not hiding her disappointment. “You don’t have to tell me anything, Felix. I just want you to get well and to be happy, that’s all.”
His cheeks burned at the last. Be happy, she said, dripping with meaning. As if anything could be that easy.
“Okay,” she said, a few minutes later. “I’m done. You can get up, now.”
He did as he was told, pushing himself over onto his side and then up to a sitting position. He rolled one shoulder experimentally, and then, when nothing happened, stretched both his hands behind his back, meeting them and clasping his hands together. “Huh,” he said as she rustled about nearby. “Pretty good job.”
She giggled. “But of course! Would you expect anything less?” She turned around, holding a large tin up in offer. “This is all I have on me, I’m afraid, but it should last the whole week. Three times, now! Don’t forget! Not even if it feels better!”
“I won’t,” he promised. “How much do I owe you?”
He shouldn’t have asked. She scowled at him, appearing very offended, indeed. “Now, why would you ask me that?”
“You have to replace all those rare plants at the monastery somehow, don’t you?”
“And you don’t think everything you and Dimitri have done for the Church so far is enough, do you?” She stomped one slippered foot in exaggerated temper. “You know what Professor Byleth would say to hear you suggest it!”
“Mercedes! Be respectful of the archbishop. Isn’t it Lady Byleth, now?” He just couldn’t help himself.
She pulled the tin against her chest, wrapping her arms around it and hiding it from sight. “Well, all right, then,” she said sweetly. A little too sweetly, really. Felix winced. Now he’d done it. “If you really want to thank me, I suppose there is something I’d like…” She fixed him with those kind, imploring eyes
He made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat and rolled his eyes. Shook his head. Ran a hand through his hair. It was a mess. He was a mess. “Let’s hear it,” he said, flatly.
Her eyes sparkled as she knelt down to be on eye level with him. She was always doing things like that. He found it simultaneously infantilizing and comforting. “It’s important to talk about things,” she said, kind and soft. “If maybe… someone... is not behaving in exactly the way you want, you should have a conversation with them and talk and share your feelings. Explain just why you feel the way you do, you know? It might be that things aren’t as bad as they seem.”
His face burned all the way down to his neck and up to his ears. He grimaced and reached out a hand. “Just give me the damn salve,” he growled.
She smiled and deposited it into his waiting hand.
“I’m glad you came to me for help, Felix,” she said. “Now take my advice, won’t you? And remember --”
“Three times a day,” he droned. “Right. Got it.”
She patted his cheek. “What a good boy.”
*
That evening, Felix explained the situation to Dimitri, who still had that hangdog look about his eyes. Thankfully, he didn’t pepper the air with apologies or platitudes, merely nodded solemnly and requested that Felix remove his shirt and lay out on the bed.
Definitely the least arousing time that had ever happened.
He applied the salve mostly in silence, only interrupting it to ensure that Felix was all right, to question whether there was any pain, and to make certain he was performing the task correctly. He was, of course. It was not especially complicated. And despite everything, Felix felt a sense of wellness and ease and even delight spread through him. The furs and blankets and perhaps even the mattress itself smelled wonderfully of Dimitri, and it wasn’t so hard to let go of everything and just… languish in it, all of it. His hands, the rhythm of his breath, his low, attentive questions, just the very experience of being in his bed, taken care of by him.
Beneath him, unable to help its response, his cock thickened lazily against his thigh, and while he was certain that he could not talk Dimitri into trying their previous night’s experiment once again, considering his condition… well. Something was certainly in the works. In the month since they’d started this, scarcely a day had gone by without some manner of exploration and enjoyment of one another’s bodies.
But when Dimitri had finished, he merely planted a kiss at the nape of his neck, and then into his hair, and then curled up beside him. “Rest well, Felix,” he breathed. “I am glad you saw Mercedes. It would break my heart to see you in pain any longer than strictly necessary.”
Felix laid there in his bed, a sense of loss overcoming him. That was it?
He roughly shoved away feelings of hurt, and instead ground his teeth and let himself feel something else instead. Let himself be irrational and stupid and ignore the little voice telling him that that was precisely what he was doing, until, fuming, he finally drifted off to sleep with one hand clutched into a fist.
He barely seemed to sleep at all, but when he opened his eyes, it really did appear as if a night had gone by. Sunlight poured in through the windows, warming the bed, and this time, Dimitri was still there. Propped up on one elbow. Gazing down at him, as if he were a princess in a fairy tale.
His nose wrinkled in disgust, and he remembered all of his petty, self-indulgent thoughts from the night before in a rush. He reached up to shove at him. Winced. The pain was back.
Dimitri blinked, and then leapt into action, throwing the furs and blankets aside to pad back over to where he had placed the tin the night before. Felix watched him with his brows drawn down, lips folded into a line, and nostrils flared, even as a tiny sane voice that sounded very much like a certain healer said just explain why you feel the way you do!
When Dimitri turned and saw him glaring, he paused.
“What is it?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
“Are you ever going to stop asking if I’m all right?” Felix shot back testily. Just explain, the voice insisted, and he attempted to squash it. It was getting in the way of perfectly satisfying vexation.
There was something maddening in the way Dimitri always managed to look so genuinely confused when Felix was acting the brat. “Should I not?” he asked, painfully sincere.
He’d been tensed up, ready for a fight without even fully intending to. Dimitri’s innocent question disarmed him, unspooling all the hard-fought tension from his nerves, leaving him boneless and sore and feeling more exhausted than anyone ought after a full night’s sleep.
What was the point of any of this?
He rolled onto his stomach, pillowing his head on his hands. “It’s fine,” he mumbled. He thought he felt heat in his face, his ears, his neck. He refused to even consider that it might be a flush of embarrassment. “Do what you want. I don’t care.”
A long silence followed his sullen proclamation. He imagined Dimitri sighing, throwing up his hands, setting aside the tin and leaving him like that, prone in his bed to hobble about pathetically, pretending that he had not just been knocked flat by a child with a wooden sword and was actually in perfectly fine condition.
It might serve him right if he did.
But of course, he did not. For all his accusations of beast and animal and boar, Dimitri was nothing if not painfully solicitous. The bedframe creaked. The mattress shifted. He felt those strong hands on his back, gently pressing against the places where he was most sore.
He flinched from them.
“Still swollen,” Dimitri murmured, his voice thick with contrition. He pressed his hand against one specific spot, and Felix gritted his teeth. “It feels quite hot, here.”
“That would be the swelling,” Felix muttered, trying to sound unaffected and, most likely, failing.
Dimitri hummed. “It does seem… somewhat better than it did last night, however,” he said, his fingers exploring with tender care. How could his hands be so large and strong, and yet his touch so maddeningly gentle? “I owe Mercedes my thanks.”
If you really want to thank me…
He tried not to grimace. It tensed sore muscles. “You and everyone else. Are you going to put the salve on, or are we just going to get tongues wagging by lounging around in your bed all morning while you poke me?”
Dimitri hummed, low and considering. The air fairly rumbled with it. Gooseflesh rose along Feilx’s back, and the fine hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Those large, strong, gentle hands withdrew, and Felix found himself craving the touch of them once again, left disappointingly bereft in their absence, short as it was.
He hissed through clenched teeth when the cold, sticky salve hit his back… and then sighed and settled into the mattress as Dimitri’s fingers massaged it into his skin, careful but insistent, and, almost immediately, the pain began to subside.
It still brought him a particular sort of bliss, damn him. He ought to have learned his lesson last night. The night before. In the month since a long diverted heart to heart had gotten closer to either of their hearts than they had anticipated, and changed everything between them forever.
That moment, that incandescent, bright incident, frozen in time, when Felix had seized his collar, hauled him down, pressed their mouths together and thought he was throwing his very life away… only to have Dimitri pull him closer, deepen that kiss…
Despite the pounding in his chest, the thrumming in his veins, every nerve alight and every hair electrified, it had felt somehow fated. Transcendent, and yet inevitable. The apotheosis of a lifetime of touching himself to the tune of dizzying, impossible emotions that stabbed and pulled and snarled at him in an endless cycle of ever complicating realities, all wrapped up in the man whose changing faces and fates had defined his life from before he had even been born. He had loved Dimitri since he was five, long before he ever hated him. How else could it possibly have ended? They were as they should be, come together at last.
Or so it had seemed.
Words formed on the back of his tongue. He felt them there, and did not examine them too closely. If he considered what he was thinking, what he might say, he’d doubt himself. Lose his nerve. The moment would pass, and slip away.
“You don’t see me as an equal,” he breathed.
Dimitri’s hands stilled.
“I… what?”
He couldn’t repeat it. He wasn’t even sure what, exactly, he meant by it! He turned his face into his arms. Heat in his face again, stretching all the way down to his shoulders. Ugh. Ridiculous.
“Felix.” Dimitri was beside him, then, slick hands on his shoulders, then his neck, then his face. Fingers coaxed him to look back outward, to meet his one prying eye and the scarred remains of the other. “What do you mean, saying such a thing? Of course I do. How could I see you as anything else?”
Goddess. What had he been thinking? Now he was meant to explain himself, make sense of the madness that had prompted him to speak? Mercedes had no idea what she was talking about. This was lunacy.
He folded his lips.
But Dimtri gazed at him with imploring attention, awaiting elaboration. He could hardly just keep his mouth shut and let the puzzle of his pronouncement speak for itself, now could he?
Ugh.
Best if he simply disconnected his tongue from his brain. Channel Sylvain’s way of handling any sort of emotion whatsoever. Simply run his fucking mouth until either something lucid managed to emerge from the idiocy, or the other person outright begged him to stop. It always seemed to work for him.
“I --” It was considerably harder than it looked. Emotions and thoughts and anxieties all crowded together in his mind, stopping each other up in a messy tangle. He growled. Pushed forward. “That is what this is all about, isn’t it? It is, and we both know it. The first time. When you looked at me with that maudlin look on your face and fucked me so slow and sweet I thought I might die, it was -- bliss. Beyond bliss. I lost myself in your gaze. I could have drowned in it. I’d never felt so --”
Another tangle. If he stopped, he was done for, so he feinted and countered as if he were in battle. Find an opening.
“But it wasn’t what I thought, wasn’t --” Things he couldn’t say, couldn’t admit. Avoid them. Press onward. “You hold back. You restrain yourself. You’re so in your damn head while you fuck me, Dimitri, it’s like you’re not even there. I hate looking at your face, hate the way it makes me feel! It makes my heart swell like it’s going to fucking burst! And you’re just measuring your pace, barely there you’re so worried about not losing control.”
Dimitri brushed hair back from his face. He looked stricken. “Felix…”
But if he stopped now, he would never find the stream of his thoughts and words again, so he gritted his teeth and pushed on.
“The first time, I thought -- fuck! Look at this! Look at how much he cares for me! He’s so tender I could die! But that’s not it at all, is it? It’s a performance. A kindness. You’re servicing me. And you take your pleasure, certainly, but only once I’m properly seen to, only when I’ve been humoured, and only very, very carefully!”
That look of genuine, baffled confusion again. He couldn’t stand it. He pulled away from his touch.
“I don’t understand,” Dimitri said, as if that wasn’t patently obvious by how he peered at him as if he’d started speaking Almyran! “You don’t want me to concern myself with your pleasure?”
He could be so dense!
“I want you to fucking want me!” Felix snapped, too loud, too high, and there was an edge of something very close to hysteria in his voice. “I feel so many things when I look at you it’s like my insides are coming apart, like my heart is going to fucking explode! Do you get that? And there you are, just placidly, cordially humouring all of it!”
The boar had the cruelty to look hurt.
“Felix…” he said again, and Felix opened his mouth to let the flow of words continue, to mine deeper into the pit of Too Much he’d already nearly cleared entirely, but all that came out was:
“And frankly? It’s fucking boring sex!”
Dmiitri blinked.
And then began to quietly laugh.
It stung. He went to twist about, to throw himself out of the bed. Enough was enough! This had been a bad idea from the start, and he should have known it! He was done with this, with all of it, and --
Dimitri seemed to sense his intentions. He stopped laughing, and moved with surprising speed and dexterity to pin Felix by his shoulders against the mattress. Felix gritted his teeth, grabbing at his hands and forearms to push him away, but -- of course, it was like fighting with a stone wall.
“Let go of me,” he commanded, squirming. Salve rubbed against the blankets beneath him, turning his position into a precariously slippery pit.
“So that you can walk away from me? Absolutely not.”
His face burned. “Boar. I swear --”
“No. Felix. Listen to me.”
And damn him if he hadn’t been conditioned all his life to obey a command from this man, even one as soft and quiet as this. He went still, practically choking on his tongue as he gazed up at him. His serious expression. His pursed lips.
“Aren’t you worried you’ll hurt me?” he asked. He wanted it to be cutting, sardonic, but it came out quite pathetically innocent.
Dimitri shook his head. “I wasn’t laughing at you, Felix,” he said, with such painful kindness that Felix had to turn his face away, close his eyes. “I was laughing at -- Goddess. It’s very easy to get trapped in our own heads, is it not? All day and all night, I thought of what you had said. However long we carry on this arrangement. I had thought it an ultimatum, a threat, and I have been tormented with ideas of how you must see this, see me. Something transitory. A diversion.”
Felix swallowed hard.
“I see what you meant, now. I ought to have seen from the start. Felix… I have not been very thorough in expressing my intentions, have I?” Gentle fingers on his cheek, a thumb rasping along his jawline. “I am sorry.”
He squeezed his eyes tighter. “What are you even apologizing for?”
“Let me make myself clear. This thing between is, this arrangement, as you say -- I intend for it to be permanent.”
Surprise caught up with a shock of other emotions in his chest, and a barked laugh escaped his throat as he twisted about to look at Dimitri once again. His heart hammered like a drum. “You -- what? Do you even know what you’re saying?” He shook his head, choking down something like hysteria. “Permanent? Ridiculous! You don’t know what will happen in a year. You don’t even know what will happen tomorrow!”
“Of course not. I am not making a vow, Felix. Only stating my intentions. And… my feelings. Ah, I have made rather a mess of all of this, haven’t I? You’re right to be confused. I’ve been so afraid of…” He shook his head, and leaned down over him.
Felix felt faint as he captured his lips, his gentle touch against his cheek turning to a firm grip on his chin to guide him into the kiss. His chest ached with it, especially when Dimitri’s tongue traced the line of his lips before plunging deep, licking into his mouth with agonizingly purposeful intent, and --
Felix broke off, twisting his head to the side. “You’re doing it again!” he gasped. “Slow, romantic, detached...”
“I love you,” Dimitri said.
Oh.
Whatever was between his ears disintegrated into white noise.
Dimitri smiled at him. “I should have said so, already. I thought that you knew… or that you would not want to hear it… regardless, it was my mistake. You deserve to know. Felix… ah, Felix. I am not humouring you, not in the least bit detached. In truth, I am -- well. Terrified.”
It was a special sort of pleasure, to see Dimitri colour, for once. Of course, he did it much more elegantly than Felix ever had, his cheeks pinkening prettily like they had when he’d been a delicate, handsome boy, still strong enough even then to lift Felix one handed.
“You have called me a beast for so long. And you’re right. I have never denied it, and yet I have always hated how easily you saw it, how it disgusted you. And what I feel for you, Felix, ah. I want you so badly it terrifies me. I want things you ought to be disgusted by, to see you gasp and beg and cry for me. The hunger I feel for you -- it terrifies me! I want to claim you, to dominate you, to devour you! You are right, yes, I am holding myself in check, distancing myself, focusing entirely on your pleasure, your comfort. It’s all I can do to hold myself back!”
It was becoming very difficult to breathe, especially when what little air left in his lungs escaped in a gasping little bark of incredulous laughter. “Fuck. Dimitri.” He shook his head, and then rolled his hips up. His back twinged. Fine.
Dimitri’s eye widened.
“That’s just from hearing you talk about it,” Felix said, his face so hot it practically burned. “Does that feel like I want you to hold yourself back?”
The ball of Dimitri’s throat bobbed. His lips parted, breath coming out fast and shallow, now. Felix couldn’t help the slow grin that spread over his lips. Finally. That was what he wanted to see. All the wonderful, dizzying things Dimitri had said swirled through him, making him delirious with emotion and desire, and the only thing that might take the edge off all of it was seeing Dimitri want him the way he did, with a hunger that could never be fully satisfied.
“Felix…” Hands on his face. In his hair. Hot breath on his face, and when Dimitri rolled his hips down, he was hard, too.
Felix bit his lip, closed his eyes, tilted his head back and arched his back. Fuck, he wanted it. He licked dry lips, and resolved to return the frank honesty that had gotten them this far with his own. “I want you to let yourself go,” he breathed. “You want to devour me? Good. I want to be devoured. I want to feel what you feel. I want the beast, Dimitri.”
Their mouths met again, and this time -- yes, there. No more restraint. No more romantic, sentimental bullshit. Dimitri’s tongue claimed him, demanding and all encompassing. A deep, animalistic growl reverberated through his chest, making all the hair on the back of Felix’s arms stand up straight. Hands in his hair, tight and tugging, guiding him, and the weight of him, pressing him down into the bed…
A hand slid down his neck, along his chest, tight against his hip and down his thigh hooking down around his leg and drawing it up, pushing him back, pinning him down, and --
Fuck!
He broke the kiss, squeezing his eyes tight and hissing in pain. “Shit!” he gasped. “Fuck! Dammit!”
Dimitri pulled away, sitting back on his haunches to regard him solemnly. “Ah,” he said, and Felix cracked open his eyes to meet his almost comically woeful gaze. “And then there is that.”
Felix bared his teeth. “I didn’t tell you to stop.”
“No,” Dimitri allowed. “But you did scream.”
Unbelievable. “I did not scream.”
“The point remains. I did let go, you know. Let the beast loose, briefly, the other night. Let myself feel how badly I wanted you.” He shook his head. “And look what came of it. I am sorry, Felix. But I don’t know how I can in good conscience do what you ask, when I risk doing harm to you!”
He had certainly not screamed -- but damn the boar to all blue hell, he certainly was fucking about to!
He shoved him off. Dimitri didn’t even have the courtesy to look affronted by it, only resigned and accepting of his fate. He sighed deeply, as if in quiet understanding, and made as if he was going to get off of him altogether.
Felix stopped him, seizing his closest hand and pressing it against his right side, right between his bottom two ribs, where an ugly puckered scar marred his skin.
Dimitri met his gaze in askance.
“Do you remember when I got this?” he demanded harshly.
Dimitri nodded slowly. “Fort Merceus. I hadn’t seen the sniper on the inner wall. He thought he had a clean shot to end the war in one clean motion. You shoved me aside. You were in the infirmary for almost two weeks. I didn’t think you’d make the march to Enbarr.”
“As if I would have missed it,” Felix snapped. And he dragged Dimitri’s hand to another scar, a long slash that had cut deep but healed cleanly across his chest, just above his left nipple. “What about this one?”
Slow understanding seemed to dawn on Dimitri’s handsome face, and he nodded slowly. “Our first campaign. In the far west. To put down the rebellion. When we -- when things between us --” He shook his head. “I was so lost in battle fury, I’d gotten myself surrounded. You were already horrified by me, by what I had become, and yet you fought to my side, your sword flashing, covered in blood. You defended me when I’d gone berserk. You taking that wound brought me back to myself…”
Another scar, a long, thin line under his chin. Dimitri seemed to recognize where this was headed, now. His gaze had turned soft, tender, and he bent to press his lips against the old scar, faded from time.
“I hit you with the edge of my training sword, in the yard at Fraldarius. I hadn’t meant to swing so hard. You went down like you were inanimate, and you were so dazed and insensite you couldn’t speak, bleeding everywhere, cross-eyed and confused… by the Goddess. I screamed and cried and held you. I truly thought that I had killed you.”
“There are half a dozen others,” Felix said. “And those are only the ones that have scarred.” He didn’t need to drive it home, he didn’t think -- but he wanted to. He was only human, and pettiness could be very satisfying. “It’s part of who I am, part of who we are, and if you think for one moment that a damned strained back muscle is going to break me -- Dimitri! Have some sense.”
Dimitri cupped his cheek, resignation writ clear on his face. “It kills me to see you hurting because of me,” he whispered.
“Okay. That’s nice. I don’t care,” Felix replied.
Dimitri’s startled, genuine laugh brought an unbidden, foolish smile to Felix’s lips. I love you seemed to echo in the sound, sweet and full of promise. He ought to say it back.
He wouldn’t, though. Not yet. He felt it so acutely it ached inside of him, but… he didn’t think he could get it out if he tried.
Later. There would be time, later. After all…
This arrangement was intended to be permanent.
“I’ll heal,” he said. “It’s not even so bad. It’s not as if you’ll fucking break me in half every single time you fuck me like that, and if you do, well -- fuck it. It’s still better than the agony of watching you choke on your own dick every time you’re trying to make me come.”
“That’s right,” Dimitri said, shaking his head and still laughing faintly. “You didn’t.”
“You didn’t either.”
“Yes, but after all of this, you deserve to!” He gazed down at him, and the look of utter frustration on his face was nothing if not just a little bit gratifying. “I understand that you want me to lose control, Felix, to --” Hunger in his gaze, in his voice. Definitely gratifying. “To consume you utterly, as I so desperately want to. But surely -- surely, right now, at least, with circumstances being as they are! Surely, you will understand if I show some restraint!”
He’d given up hoping that he might get anything at all, this morning. It was late. They’d had an understanding to not be behind closed doors past a certain point in the morning. It would be wise to maintain that rule.
He did not want to be wise.
“I don’t want restraint,” he breathed. “I want you to take what you want from me. If you can find some way to do that without making my back explode, fine. But I want to feel the hunger.”
“What I want from you,” Dimitri echoed. He nodded slowly. “All right.”
Breath scraped through his throat. Blood roared in his ears. Dimitri took him by the hips, grasping the fabric of his trousers, and then slowly hauled them down. Felix threw his head back, lips parting. He gasped when his cock bounced free, hard and hot in the cool air. He shuddered.
Then Dimitri was atop him again, finding his mouth, and it was good, demanding, hungry. His mind lingered on that word, the way he’d felt when Dimitri had said it, the way he felt now, his cock trapped between them, trapped against the tight, hard muscle of their abdomens, as Dimitri breathed roughly through his nose, hot against his face…
He pulled back, leaving Felix gasped and bereft. “Look at me,” he gasped.
Felix shook his head. “I said no more romantic shit,” he said. It came out like a plea.
“No,” Dimitri growled, and it went right to Felix’s head, making him dizzy. He smiled, showing teeth. Felix saw the beast, and welcomed it. “You said you wanted me to take what I wanted. And I want your eyes on me… while I devour you.”
And then he slid down his body, slow but purposeful, and did just that.