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friend he wanted to stay close to, Felix had grown beyond that. He had seen Dimitri’s
change, accepted it with a fair amount of rage, and adapted their relationship to
that very change. The prince objected to that and continued to approach Felix as if
nothing had happened. He was met with Felix’s rightful anger each and every time,
but didn’t relent, going through their academy days still clinging to an illusion of a
friendship that didn’t exist anymore.
Dimitri was well and truly blind. Sometimes he feels like he lost two eyes instead of
one, and sometimes he feels like he never had them at all. Looking back, he can tell
that he failed to see so much ever since he was little, even long before the tragedy.
As a young boy, Dimitri could see Ingrid’s anxieties over the pressures of marriage,
but he failed to understand how much clinging to her ideals of knighthood helped
her cope with it all. He could see how Miklan hurt Sylvain as a child, but he failed to
grasp how deeply that messed him up inside, and how it affected him all the way to
his adulthood. He could see the way in which Rodrigue treated Felix differently than
he treated Glenn or even Dimitri himself, but he failed to discern how that made Felix
feel, and how it conditioned his interactions with his family for the rest of his life.
The friends he had known since childhood, the people he had grown up with, were
people he took for granted, and it is only by looking back that he can see how unfair
he might have been to them, how he clung to a shallow ideal of friendship that he
simply could not see through.
Sometimes he feels like he wasn’t the only one, and that Ingrid and Sylvain also
refused to acknowledge what the Tragedy of Duscur, time and growth had done to
their relationship. They all played at being friends at the Officer’s Academy while
stubbornly averting their eyes from the emotional wounds festering inside them. But
Felix saw through it all, and refused to play into those twisted dynamics. He had been
steadily growing into a grump as he entered his teens, but during their academy days
he was extremely closed off and prickly, always trying his damndest to be alone and
away from his childhood friends. He was a little softer on Sylvain and Ingrid than he
was on Dimitri—though only a little, for Dimitri knew that the people he was truly
softer on were those who never met him during his childhood—but he never blamed
him for that, knowing in his heart that Felix was right about him. He simply decided
to look the other way; the way that lead to his eventual revenge, all for the sake of the
ghosts that had been clinging to him for years on end.
Now he knows that, through his taunts and visible hostility, Felix had wanted to
draw a reaction from Dimitri. Even if it was through harsh words and vitriol, his
friend had wanted him to look his way, to avert his eyes from the ghosts of his
past and look at who was there in the present. Dimitri regrets not realizing at all,
he regrets fueling the pain that Felix held inside and feeding him more constant
reminders that both him and Rodrigue could only look at the shadow of Glenn’s
corpse instead of the living, breathing boy that had remained in that family. Dimitri’s
revenge, as crucial as it felt to him at the time, should have never mattered more
than his friends and their feelings, it should have never kept him from looking back
at Felix—who, he knew by now, always had his eyes on him—and realizing the little
things he had missed since the tragedy, things like the changes of his demeanor, the
improvements in his sword technique, or the growth of his hair.
The king glances at his partner’s face, making sure that he’s still asleep. Felix’s relaxed
features ease him into picking a strand of hair between his fingers and slowly, gingerly
bringing it to his lips in a reverent kiss. Things have changed now, and Dimitri’s
one remaining eye is wide open and attentive, following Felix whenever he can. He
takes the little details into account now, he carefully chronicles the ins and outs of
the man that Felix Hugo Fraldarius is and catalogues them in his mind, mentally
filing them out as he does with his paperwork and revisiting them in quiet, peaceful
moments like this one. Felix’s hair has its own neat little folder. It has grown past his
shoulders, reaching his shoulder blades, and its ends are slightly split and in need of
a trim. Even though it looks beautiful when it’s down he still wears it up all the time,
and Dimitri thinks that is because neither Glenn nor Rodrigue ever wore their hair
up—though Felix will probably argue it’s just because it’s easier to fight without his
hair getting in the way.
You’re so in love, Sylvain told him the other day when he managed to coax the king
into having a drink and Dimitri just started rambling about Felix’s hair just so.
Dimitri agreed with his words. It has done you good, Sylvain added after that. Dimitri,
smiling softly, agreed once more. He believes being in love has made him a better
person as well or, at the very least, gotten him closer to the person Felix deserves to
have. He wishes he could say otherwise, but Felix’s love was completely unrequited for
many, many years, always burning bright and strong. Though Dimitri still has a hard
time deeming himself worthy of such devotion, he is trying, and reciprocating the
love, the attention and the loyalty Felix always had for him is something that puts
him at ease and makes him quite happy. It isn’t particularly hard to do either, not
when he has finally opened his eyes and managed to look directly into who must be
the most fascinating and wonderful human being in all of Faerghus. He was seriously
an idiot before, for never assessing Felix carefully and realizing his value as a person,
as an advisor and, above all, as a lover.
Dimitri cannot help but indulge himself once more and he kisses Felix’s hair again.
He closes his eyes, buries his face in black tresses and breathes his scent in.
“Are you sniffing my hair?” a gruff voice asks, deep with sleep, making Dimitri flinch.
He doesn’t deny it and doesn’t move back either, so Felix groans and throws an arm
over his eyes. “Shit, Dimitri, do you really have to be such a weirdo so early in the
morning?”
“Weirdo?” Dimitri parrots, scrunching up his nose. “I was simply lost in thought.”