victory_road | [closed] February Catch All

[At Felix's denial, Inda wails louder. She tugs on Sylvain's sleeve. Stunned as he is, he's relatively boneless, and so his arm tumbles outward. There's a box in his hand. It's not the box that he bought, now that he's looking at it.]

Felix?

[Inda doesn't wait. She scurries back over to Felix and begins pulling on his pantleg. Please, Papa, she's already in so much trouble!]

Wha--

[Felix stares at Sylvain, and then at Inda, and then at Sylvain.]

...Sylvain. What...is that.

[This is... a mess. And it's made all the more embarrassing by the fact that Sylvain is still half-hunched under the desk.

First things first -- he clambers out from beneath said desk. The box is still in his hand -- that hand is held out to Felix rather limply. By now, his skin has turned bright red, the shade vibrant enough to match the color of his hair, really.]

It's not mine. [He turns his wrist over, then uses his thumb to flip it open. He'd envisioned being that smooth about the motion. The only problem is that the ring in the case is definitely not the one he'd ordered. And he'd checked five times over to be sure it had been right before leaving the store.]

Felix. I'm gonna ask again. What's in your pocket?

[As soon as Sylvain opens the box in his hand, Felix's face turns the same color. He slowly reaches into his pocket and pulls out its contents, afraid to open it now. But he holds it up to show Sylvain the unopened box.

He clears his throat.]

You're wrong. That...that is yours.

[Sylvain's stomach twists. It twists, then flips, then twists again. Each shift sends thrills through his body -- electrifying the tips of his ears, toes and fingers. His mouth feels dry, too dry to figure out how he's supposed to make words come out of it, at least.

The ring isn't his. But it is. Some part of his mind knows exactly what that means. The rest of him simply cannot comprehend it. He looks up, struggling to meet Felix's eyes. He's bashful, afraid to hope, even after everything they'd talked about with one another.

His voice is soft when he speaks.]

What does that mean, Fe?

[Felix doesn't respond right away. Instead, he braces himself and opens the box he's holding. A few seconds later, he even finds the will to look down and see what's inside.

...it's...not a surprise, necessarily, but suspecting and seeing it are two vastly different things. He swallows hard. Did Sylvain...? That can't be right, can it? Maybe this is something else. Felix isn't good at all this...romance tradition stuff. Maybe he's got the wrong idea completely. He doesn't know.

Just in case, though...

He marches up to Sylvain with a sudden determined expression and takes the box out of Sylvain's hand, apparently just so he can thrust it back toward him. The ring, now facing Sylvain properly, looks like this.]

I want you to marry me. That's what it means. Obviously.

Edited 2021-02-05 04:48 (UTC)

[The ring is... perfect. That's really all there is to say about it. The alignment of the stones reminds him of a slashing blade, of all the times that Felix had stepped in to protect him. And the color...

The words Sylvain Fraldarius flash into his mind. His heart flutters, like he's some simpering school girl being charmed by someone. He decides, very quickly, that it's not an unpleasant feeling by any stretch of the imagination.

He realizes he's giving Felix a wide-eyed, dumbstruck expression. His mouth is even hanging open. Upon this realization, he snaps it shut, and quickly sticks his lower lip out into a pout.]

Aw, but Felix --

[This time, it's his turn to snatch the ring out, and his turn to thrust it right back. He angles it just a little, so the light of the room catches the ring just so.]

I wanted you to marry me.

[Yes, Felix was sort of expecting this, and yes, he's seen the ring already, but. BUT. But he hasn't seen it like this. And his brain might have been expecting it, but his heart hadn't really been convinced. So he stares down at it, watches the light play over the stones...they're very familiar colors. Colors he's loved all his life. And the more convinced his heart becomes, the harder it pounds in his chest.

Eventually, he looks up at Sylvain again, trying his hardest not to smile. Or cry. Or whatever it is his face is trying to do. Because he has a point to make first, dammit.]

No. I asked first.

[Sylvain huffs. He tries his best to be stubborn in the face of Felix's insistence. But the way his face looks -- the amount of emotion Sylvain can process on his face and just how shocking that lone is -- he can hardly do more than stick his lower lip out just the slightest bit further.]

Yeah, but -- Save the best for last? [It's a lame attempt and Sylvain knows it. In the end, he just shakes his head before leaning forward. Their foreheads press together, while Sylvain's free hand finds Felix's wrist.]

What if we married each other? No first or last?

[What if we married each other? Somehow, the way Sylvain says it drowns out everything else, makes it real. Drives home the fact that Sylvain was planning the same thing, that without knowing what Felix was doing he wanted this just as much. That...that Sylvain brought him here to this fancy hotel to do this. Of his own volition. Sylvain said yes before Felix even got the chance to ask. (Or demand. Whatever. Same thing.)

His hands tremble the tiniest bit, but his voice is steady.]

All right. We'll marry each other.

Okay. [When he tells the story later, to their Pokemon, to their friends, or to newcomers to this world, he'll let everyone know that Felix asked first. The caveat to that, however, is the fact that Sylvain would be the first to put a ring on Felix's finger.

Even if his hand is shaking a little, and his vision is starting to blur. At their feet, Inda has finally stopped crying, and is instead staring up at them with wide, pleased eyes. Which can only mean her crocodile tears have transferred to him.]

Dammit. [Sylvain speaks through a wide, pleased smile.] Hold still.

[Finally, he manages to slip the ring from its case. He holds it out for Felix to see, for him to read the inscription.

Stick Together, Die Together. It is, very notably, in Sylvain's handwriting. Nothing but the best for Felix.

Once he's certain that his partner, his fiance, has had a good look, he slips the ring on.]

[Felix blinks. He's not sure why he didn't expect this one to have an inscription. Maybe because he had to have it suggested to him in the first place. He squints a little, reading the tiny text. And then he reads it again. And then he reads it again, and notices the handwriting this time. After almost twenty years, Sylvain has given the promise physical form. Felix would read it a fourth time if he could still see it properly, but it's blurry now. Oh, no. No. This is bad. And it gets worse when Sylvain puts the ring on his finger, as if his eyes decided to disobey him on purpose.

Quick, do something to distract him so he can't see this crying nonsense.

He blinks rapidly, but for all his embarrassment, he doesn't want to rush this. So he doesn't hurry when he carefully takes the other ring out of its box and holds it up similarly so Sylvain can read what's inscribed around the inside--in Felix's own best penmanship, too.

For Sylvain Fraldarius

He'd wanted to add more, but his family name is too damn long. So...he hopes this will be enough for Sylvain to understand. This makes him more nervous than anything else--the idea that Sylvain might not like these words. That Felix might have jumped the gun. But once that's done, Felix returns the gesture, awkwardly but gently grabbing Sylvain's hand and sliding the ring onto his finger.]

[By Sylvain's estimation, he has but seconds to reach up and hold Felix's face. He won't comment on the tears, if only because he knows how much Felix hates showing this kind of emotion. But he does wipe just beneath his fiance's eye, smiling brighter than ever.

Felix is beautiful. He always has been.

And then he's shifting, moving Sylvain's ring -- or the ring for Sylvain out of the box. It's Sylvain's turn to read it. He only has to do so once, even if he stares long enough to read it ten times over. He knows that handwriting from the letters they'd exchanged as kids, to the notes he'd stolen from Felix to study as adults.

And what he says? It's something he's been waiting years to hear, even if he didn't know it.

The tears are flowing down his cheeks before Felix has the ring on his finger. He can barely hold still long enough to let him finish -- the second he has the chance he's thrown his arms over Felix's shoulders and is clinging for dear life.]

I love you, Felix. It's perfect. You're perfect.

[Dammit, Sylvain noticed. (Well, of course he did.) But he doesn't say anything about it, and that's one of roughly a billion reasons that Felix loves him. Another is that smile, which makes him feel like the snow has stopped and the sun has come out right here in the room.

And now that his vision is clearer, Felix can see that Sylvain is crying, too. Oh. Wait, but Sylvain never cries. He's made a point of never crying, ever since he decided to put on a happy face for the world years ago. ...but this time he's crying because he's happy. And Felix did that. And now everything's getting blurry again...ugh.

No time to worry about that, though, because suddenly Sylvain is clutching him close, and Felix doesn't even have to think about it before he wraps his arms around his--...his fiance...--and squeezes as tightly as he can. His voice comes out muffled because he's busy pressing his face into Sylvain's chest, but who cares?]

You're perfect. And I love you too, Sylvain. And...

[He feels like he should say something else, instead of just parroting things back, but words have never been easy for him. So instead he just grabs handfuls of the back of Sylvain's shirt in an attempt to somehow hold him closer, shaking his head a little at his own failed attempt to say anything.]

[closed] February Catch All

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