Chapter Text
Chapter one
The sun rises from a pale gray mist over the english countryside, and the shadows reach long and wanting toward the west. A castle crests the horizon, shining opulent ivory on one side, and cloaked in sleeping darkness at the other. In that darkness Felix’s eyes open, and he feels dead.
The early chill of autumn has come on biting winds, soaking cold all the way to the bone. His hands shake and violet blue stains his fingertips. The rough ground below him has stolen any warmth,and the smell of wet dirt is clogging his head. His mouth is dry and his eyes feel so puffy and sore it hurts to keep them open.
There's a thunderous pulse in his head, like the worst hangover he’s ever had. In harmony, there's a hollow clanging in his chest, where he knows something should be.
Felix drags himself from the dirt and shivers rack all the way down his spine. The low morning light makes the earth shimmer with little green shards of glass, and the sticky scent of champagne greets his churning stomach. He tumbles forward and retches whatever he had eaten the night before. Not much evidently, plenty of booze though. The smell is vile.
When he can lift his head again, he’s kneeling at the feet of a minotaur, and everything comes rushing back.
You said you loved me-
Felix vomits again, empty gut heaving as bile and spit drip down his chin. His eyes sting but the tears don’t come, they’ve run dry. He’s cried enough in a day to last a lifetime.
The winding path of the hedge maze is a familiar journey, he hasn’t gotten lost in it since he was a child. The brambles catch on his wings and after a halfhearted struggle he just shucks them off and leaves them there.
With every step the damp ground clings to his heels, and it feels like he’s sinking. Like it would subsume him, if he stood in one place too long. Like the earth will open wide and swallow him whole. Like a grave.
The courtyard is still scattered with tattered decorations and empty cups, The gardeners will have their hands full with the mess. The maids too, when he finally takes an exhausted step into the manor. The stench of food and wine and body heat is stifling. A few hangers-on have stayed the night on the settees or parlor floor, and they’ll be ushered out with the rest of the rubbish.
It’s just barely dawn, a few glinting stars still holding out hope as the sun creeps up over the trees, and the earliest house staff will be up soon. Everything will be set back to order before breakfast is called.
Felix feels like a specter, passing through walls.
By the time he gets back to his bedroom, Felix is ready to sleep for another day, at least. He’s cold and wet and sore, and just wants to lie down in his bed and never get back up. Wants to close his eyes and let it all drift away. Wants to crawl under the blankets and curl up around a warm body and be held-
No, he puts a stop to that thought before it can start, because he knows exactly who’s warm skin and strong arms and tired smirk he’s thinking about and fuck he’s thinking about him right now-
Just go to sleep, he tells himself.
He wishes the earth really did swallow him, into somewhere dark and empty and silent. Somewhere he didn’t have to think.
The bed is cold under him, and that disappointment is one more crack in his very fragile heart. His bottom lip wobbles and he really thought he was done crying? How stupid could he be?
Just as his heavy eyes close to probably cry himself to sleep for a few fitful hours, he sees something gold and shiny winking at him from his night stand. It takes him a moment to recognize it, which is ridiculous, since it’s been in his family for like, ten generations.
It’s his signet ring, just sitting there.
And his heart shatters into a thousand little pieces.
In an instant he’s on his feet again, with hot, raging sobs bubbling out of his chest. He slams the dressing room door open and goes stomping through their shared bathroom, ready to break the other fucking door down because he needs to talk to Oliver, right fucking now-
That fucking lying bastard thinks this is over? Thinks he doesn’t owe Felix more than a drunken argument? Thinks he can just leave him like this-
Oliver’s door isn’t locked and Felix comes crashing into the room with such chaotic force that he almost bashes his skull open on the floor. He catches himself on the wardrobe, turns toward the bed to start shouting something angry and incomprehensible, but Oliver’s not there.
The bed is empty and unmade, the costume from the night before tossed on the edge. There’s no book or glasses case on the nightstand. No cheap trainers tucked neatly under the bed. Even the wardrobe is empty.
It takes a moment for him to understand.
“I think you need to leave tomorrow,” he had said.
Felix puts his fist through the wall, because he doesn’t know what to do with all the anger and regret and hurt. He’s lucky it wasn’t made of stone, but electric pain still shoots up his arm and that makes him even angrier. He punches another hole through the wallpaper and this time he feels a sickening crack. He catches sight of his hideously red face in the mirror, wet with tears and snot and spit, and chucks a Tiffany lamp at it. There’s a satisfying shatter and an awful, haunting silence after.
Clutching his bleeding hand to his chest, Felix sinks to the floor as his head falls back and he screams-
In the midst of his tantrum there’s a polite knock at the door-
“ Fuck off!” he shouts, and then cries harder at how bloody unhinged he sounds.
Duncan must linger for a second, but then he obeys and quiet steps disappear down the hall.
Felix feels incredibly rude and kicks the bedframe in frustration, and fuck it hurts, it’s solid oak for god’s sake. That hurts and his hand hurts and his head still hurts and his chest feels like it’s been ripped open-
He grabs a pillow from the bed and buries his face in it to scream this time, which is much more considerate. The lush fabric smells like Oliver, and that only makes it worse.
This time there’s a less polite knock at the door.
“ Please go away, ” he says this time, his voice gone all hoarse and tight. It’s stupid , she won’t listen, and the door isn’t even locked.
“Felix? What is going on?” His mother comes striding into the room in her nightgown and dressing robe, hair rumpled and collagen patches under her eyes. Just from bed, obviously, told that there was an emergency-
Their eyes meet and Felix ducks his head down into the pillow again, racked with more sobs at the embarrassment.
“Oh, sweetheart, ” she says, her tone going soft and sorry. Her dainty slippered feet pad across the floor and she crouches down beside him, a gentle hand on his back. “What’s wrong?”
Felix whimpers and sniffles and tries to hold it together.
“Ollie left,” he mumbles, and then starts blubbering all over again.
“What?” she says, aghast. “When? Why?”
“Last night,” Felix says, trying to wipe away the tears that just keep coming- “I told him to.”
It’s then that Elspeth seems to notice the holes in the wall and the broken glass on the floor, and the way Felix’s aching hand is leaving blood stains on the pillow. She doesn’t say anything at first, just sits down beside him on the floor and guides his head to her shoulder, her elegant fingers combing through his hair.
“Can you tell me what happened?” she asks after a moment, when he’s settled enough to speak.
“He-” Felix begins, chest hiccuping for gasps of air, and then doesn’t know what else to say.
He’s an arsehole who lied to me every day-
He went fucking crazy when I found out-
He left without even fucking talking to me-
He couldn’t just tell me the truth for one goddamn minute-
He was my best fucking friend-
I was in love with him, and he fucking lied to me-
I’m still so fucking in love with him and he just left-
His mother doesn’t press him to answer, just soothes him with her hands in his hair and shushes the worst of his sobbing.
“He just-” Felix says miserably, “He wasn’t who I thought he was.”
“Oh my darling,” Elspeth heaves a great sigh and tugs Felix closer, puts her arms around his shoulders and hugs him tight. Surely he’s ruining her favorite silk robe with all the tears.
“They never are,” she whispers in his ear, as if that might make him feel better.
Felix cries in his mother's arms like a child until every tear has been wrung out of him, and he feels empty and filthy and useless. She ushers him off to bed then, his own bed she insists, but he takes Oliver’s pillow with him because he really doesn’t know what’s good for him.
Just as morning starts to settle into the sky, Felix falls into a dark, dreamless sleep, and wishes to never wake up again.