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“Okay, I was not expecting that,” Sylvain choked out, gobsmacked. He blinked stupidly at Dedue, flickering his eyes between where Dedue was putting pressure on his wrapped finger and the smile the other man was desperately trying to suppress.
“Do you not normally faint at the sight of blood?” Dedue asked dryly, his lips twitching.
Sylvain spluttered, and his flush deepened. Between the blood filling his cheeks and gushing out of his finger, it seems like there should be none left anywhere else in his body. He was completely dumbfounded. One minute he’d been helping Dedue prepare breakfast for their ride before dawn, the next minute he was on the ground, half sprawled in Dedue’s lap.
The embarrassment of the situation aside - fainting because he nicked himself with a kitchen knife? seriously? - there was the whole addition of just. Being half sprawled in Dedue’s lap. And having Dedue’s big warm hands wrapped around his. And also, being half sprawled in Dedue’s lap. Had he mentioned that yet?
Maybe it was the fact that it was four thirty in the morning or maybe it was the way Dedue’s hair shone in the firelight or maybe it was blood loss or the pain or the fact that since the war ended (no before that, long before that —) Sylvain had found himself pulled further and further in Dedue’s gravity, into his quiet wit and quick smiles and steadfast determination to get things done right — and suddenly Sylvain found his will to be very weak.
That will he’d fueled for so long to strictly keep any affection he had for a friend platonic and not romantic because he, Sylvain Jose Gautier, could not be trusted with feelings, could not be trusted to Not Fuck This Up —
But here he was. Sprawled halfway in Dedue’s lap, in the man he come to love’s lap, light headed and starry eyed and with his very, very weak will.
“You going to kiss it better?”
“Are you asking me to?”
“Yes,” Sylvain breathed, eyes wide and voice soft as if he did not dare to break this quiet moment between them.
“Then I shall,” Dedue responded gently in kind, and brought Sylvain’s hand, fingers still tightly wrapped in cloth and Dedue’s own - and pressed a kiss to Sylvain’s finger tips. Sylvain felt his head swim in a way that had nothing to do with the blood loss. Look. Sylvain has kissed a lot of people. Too many people. But none of them had lips that soft, that gentle that sweet -
“Dedue?”
“Yes, Sylvain?”
“Just put me out of my misery.”
“I do not believe the wound is fatal.”
“Dedue,” Sylvain whined, dragging out the ‘e’ and giving the other man the most distressed look possible.
Dedue just laughed, and laughed, and laughed - and was still laughing when he leaned forward to press his lips to Sylvain’s, their hands cradled gently between them.