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recurringwriter · 3 years

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For Felix and your choice! (: 22. How tightly do we need to be pressed against each other before you admit that you aren't doing this for warmth? Tara Love from This. This Is Too Far

I'm glad you liked them. ;w;

ahhh thank you for sending this prompt i love it and was saving it until i could think of which pairing i wanted, and since it's leonie day i went with her. i wrote this with Zero Plan, which is even less than i usually do. it's very much a stream of consciousness but i love some of the sentences so much i found a groove eventually. anyway, 1,194 words of feleonie:

Felix relied on her.

Leonie was strong, she was quick-witted, she was practical and as sharp as a knife. Throughout the war, and after, Felix could always count on her to have his back, even when he insisted he didn't need that. She was always there, despite the way he pushed her away. It had been that way from the start, and he didn't know if it was out of a true sense of rivalry--that she'd seen him as one of the most skilled students at the Academy and had wanted to best him--or if she had known that her persistence would lead to this:

A partnership.

It was something Felix had never even considered. He would have laughed it off, scornful. Attachments were a liability, they meant leaving behind sad, pathetic mourners when you died.

But after the war, Felix hadn't turned Leonie down. He'd gone with her, into the unknown, risking his life while knowing that he'd grieve if she ever did the same.

And Leonie stayed close. Like she was fearless. Like she'd never lose anyone again.

"You and I will make a great team," she'd said, rubbing the top of Felix's head so that he hissed like a cat. "With your skill and my smarts, we'll rake in all kinds of coin in the mercenary business!"

Felix had ignored the jibe about his intelligence, because he hadn't wanted to go home, and he'd agreed. He would work with her for a year.

At the year's end, Leonie asked him to stay for another.

"We're doing so good! And I've got another job lined up and if it's just me I could bring back the arm of this gang that's operating near Derdriu--but with you we could go for the boss of the whole thing and make even more money."

Felix liked a challenge, and he could see how this job would help a lot of people that were being affected by the gang. He agreed, writing his father a letter to say that he was going to stay away for a little while longer.

His father's reply either was never sent or got lost somewhere along the way. Felix used it as an excuse to agree to Leonie's request that he stay on for another five months.

In the Faerghus winter, they left the bulk of their mercenary troop behind to pursue their targets on foot, alone. The terrain was rough and the weather was bad, a heavy sky promising hours of snow to obscure the trail of their quarry.

Under a makeshift shelter, the two of them sat side by side, pressed together like they had been so many times before--back to back, side to side, chest to chest in an impulsive, victorious embrace.

"How many Faerghan storms have you gone through? Like this, I mean?" Leonie asked, and her voice betrayed some of her nerves about the whole situation, not that most people would recognize it. In the distance, a lonely wolf howled.

"Enough to know we'll be fine," Felix said, letting Leonie lean closer. He fiddled with the fastening of his cloak.

"Hm?"

Felix swung his cloak around them both, holding it there with an arm slung across Leonie's shoulders. "Better?"

Leonie headbutted him, gently. "I was fine! You don't have to treat me like a damsel!"

"You? A damsel?"

Leonie snorted. "I know you need me. No one else provides you with the excuses you need to stay on the road."

"Hmph." Felix noticed that despite her insistence that she was fine, Leonie did not throw his cloak off, and in fact leaned a little closer. "And no one else's name brings you the kind of jobs that my famous skills do."

"Smug," Leonie said. Both of them knew that the mercenaries were Jeralt's in memory only. His name meant little this long after his death. Everyone had moved on. It was just Leonie keeping the group alive.

Leonie and Felix.

They sat, staring into their modest little fire, which popped anew with every new spruce branch they added. It would be a long night, and there was nothing to say anymore. They'd spent so much time together, working, fighting, celebrating, drinking--silence spoke of trust. It was filled only by the cry of that distant wolf--or it might have been the wind.

Leonie yawned and shifted her hips, curling closer to Felix like she would crawl into his lap if she could. It made him smile, like she was a cat nonchalantly trying to absorb his warmth without letting him believe that she wanted him.

The fire momentarily darkened, the flicker leaving Felix wondering if he'd just blinked for too long. "Leonie?"

"Mhm?"

"How--" Felix licked his lips. "How tightly do we need to be pressed together before we admit that we aren't doing this for warmth?"

Head resting against his shoulder, Leonie frowned at the fire. Felix wasn't looking at that anymore. He was looking at her hair, the way strands of it seemed like fine, copper wire in the orange glow. It was familiar. It was important to him.

"What do you mean?" Leonie asked, nonchalant--I'm not purring, see? You're convenient, that's all. It's always a matter of convenience, nothing more.

Felix didn't want to be the one to say it. Words weren't his strong suit. "Nothing," he said.

"Oh."

They fell silent again. The safety of their unspoken words settled back over them, and Felix watched Leonie's eyes slowly close. He turned his attention back to the fire. It sent a small spray of sparks towards the sky as a glob of sap exploded. Whatever they'd faced, whatever was still to come, it was peaceful, here. Felix didn't mind. He thought that he could grow accustomed to it.

"You're kind of like a cat," Leonie murmured, surprising Felix.

"How so?"

"I can't pick you up unless you want it. If I try you jump away but if I don't you complain that there's no work. But--you could go home. You always have that--the security of it. I don't know what I'd do if mercenary work dried up forever."

Felix might have teased Leonie for admitting, in a roundabout way, that she needed him. But the darkness around them made the small amount of light they inhabited seem fragile. The wolf's howl far away only made them seem more isolated.

"It's not just for warmth," Felix said at length. "I like this. This part. The being with you."

"Felix?"

He couldn't look at her anymore. He felt his face heating up--the wrong kind of warmth for the night, in his opinion. "This is home."

And home was warm, and home was safe.

"You are home," Felix admitted, just a breath.

Leonie was close enough to hear. "I've never been--"

"Leonie," Felix said. "We're partners."

"We're partners," Leonie repeated. "This is our home."

There wasn't anything else to say, so Felix let the silence speak. He let Leonie find his free hand and thread their fingers together, for warmth--for home.

In the distance, a second wolf joined the first, singing a song of home.

#fe3h #recurring writings #felix hugo fraldarius #leonie pinelli #i tried to leave it ambiguous whether this is romantic or if they're both ace you can read it either way #but know that i like demi felix and aroace leonie best

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