victory_road | [closed] a catch all for the new year, but mostly January

Claude...needed some persuading to be dragged out here, truth be told.

It's not that he doesn't enjoy doing things with Felix, especially recreational things(a form of activity Claude feels Felix doesn't pay nearly enough attention to, so it should definitely be encouraged when the man shows an interest). In fact, that desire and willingness to do things with Felix, and indulge Felix in things he wants to do, are the only things that did get Claude outside. Because what those have to fight against is Claude's extreme distaste for the cold, and it's hard to find an activity that's more inextricably tied to the cold than ice skating.

Claude's making an active effort not to whine about the chill. He doesn't want to wet blanket something Felix wanted to do with him - and Felix did point out, not incorrectly, that Claude's always had an enthusiasm for learning new things. It's not unreasonable to put an effort into learning how to skate, if only in the interest of novelty. (It's certainly not going to benefit him anywhere except indulging his boyfriends, he knows that much, so he can't kid himself this will have any practical value.) But, insult to injury...he doesn't seem to be getting the hang of this at all. He's not sure if it's from complete unfamiliarity to anything even remotely like this, to the cold making him clumsy, just being a bad fit for the sport, or some combination of all three.

What he does know is that he's practically having to hang off of Felix to stay upright, and there are admittedly worse things than this. Oh, yes, and one other thing - he knows that he may have to send some prayers Sothis' way if he manages to not break either of his ankles today. They already ache.

"I don't know what kind of experience you wanted to have skating with me," he says, wobbling a little, "but this can't be it, can it?"

Felix is, frankly, surprised that Claude isn't getting the hang of this sooner. Sure, it takes a while to learn to skate well for anyone, but to learn at all, for someone as athletic as Claude?

(Still, he's not going to say no to what amounts to ice cuddling. Especially since Claude has done an impressive job of not whining about this.)

"I'll admit that I thought you would pick it up a little faster." He sighs, but he can't keep a smirk off his face. "Considering the nonsense you regularly indulge in on your wyvern, I didn't think a little skating would bring down the infamous Claude von Riegan. But otherwise, this is more or less what I expected."

He shifts to slip one arm around Claude's waist and use the other to firmly grip his opposite hand. "You need to relax. Tensing up won't help you keep your balance."

"Don't look so smug about it," Claude complains, even as he can't help a smile of his own. It's hard to sulk when Felix has his arm around his waist, and Claude's hand in his. It makes Claude think of dancing...except Claude's actually good at dancing, and he doesn't have to wear knives on his feet or be out in the freezing cold. So, you know, this is like dancing except vastly inferior in every way.

Still, he wonders if Felix would be so positively eager to ask him to go dancing with him like this, or to hold him like this while they did. Ice skating might almost be worth putting up with if being in Felix's arms is the payoff.

"You realize that flying around on a wyvern has next to nothing to do with being able to balance on shoe swords on a frozen pond, right?" he asks with amusement. "That said, I should have known you'd be good at this. Blades are involved."

He cuddles a little closer - for warmth, or out of affection? Felix is free to guess. (It's both.) "Anyway, even assuming it's possible to not be tense when you're constantly in fear of falling, I don't see how relaxing is necessarily going to help me stay on my feet more..."

"Hmph. I endure your smug looks all the time, I've earned it."

Felix leads them in a wide circle around the pond, gradually picking up the pace even while he keeps a firm hold on Claude. He wouldn't normally coddle someone like this, but he's pretty sure he will never get this man onto the ice again and he clearly has little interest in actually learning to skate, so Felix decides it's okay to indulge him just this once. (Having the excuse to hold him close doesn't hurt either.)

He scoffs. "These are not shoe swords. At best, they're shoe knives. And my skating skills have nothing to do with my bladework. That's like saying you're good at fishing because you're an archer and there's a string involved."

Felix allows the cuddling without fuss, and the closer Claude presses himself, the more distracting it gets. Maybe it's for the best that this skating lesson isn't likely to last that much longer...

"Being afraid of falling is another problem. You have to accept that you're going to fall and learn to do it well so you don't get hurt. And relaxing helps you keep your knees comfortably bent and your center of gravity lower."

He takes them on one more loop around the pond in an attempt to get Claude to skate on his own at least a little, but whether or not that works, he leads the other man off the ice after that.

"All right, that's enough. You look like you're going to start whining about the cold any minute. But..." He glances back over the pond and hopes Claude can't tell the difference between his cheeks being rosy from the wind and flushing faintly at the thought that Felix performing on the ice for him might...impress him. Maybe in more ways than one.

He pulls off his coat and scarf and hands them to Claude. "I want to show you something before we go inside."

To Claude's credit, he does make an effort. It's wholly for Felix's benefit; he doesn't care if he stays bad at this, since he doesn't intend to do it much, and especially since the benefits of staying bad at it - getting to be held by Felix, for instance - are so self-evident. But Felix wanted Claude to skate with him, and Claude loves Felix; he wants to give Felix what he wants.

He won't be particularly good, or graceful, but he manages to some tentative degree. He at least seems, for a few moments, capable of standing without Felix's support. He could probably improve with time, even, although Felix wisely cuts the lesson short soon afterwards. Truth be told, Claude's ankles ache, and he's not sure he wouldn't start screwing up purely due to fatigue if he kept going. Apparently this is a sport that requires specific muscles to be built up in specific ways, ways that nothing else Claude has done have properly prepared him for.

"I've been good about not whining this whole time," Claude says with dignity, as Felix leads him off the ice. But that doesn't mean that, when Felix hands over his coat and scarf, Claude doesn't immediately put them around himself. Oh, was this not why Felix handed them over? Too bad.

Still, at the mention of Felix showing him something, Claude perks up. "Oh? What's that?"

"You have. I'll give credit where it's due." But when Claude bundles up more the second Felix hands his outerwear over, he smirks. In fact, though, that had in large part been why he handed them over rather than just putting them on the ground.

"You'll see." For once, it's Felix's turn to give Claude a look that could, if one chose, be described as mysterious. Without his outer layers, there's nothing flowing or hanging on his person that might trip him up or get in the way. He reaches over to pull his Gear out of his own coat pocket, fiddles with it for a moment, then sets it down at the edge of the pond and skates back out to the middle as a song starts playing.

And then he's moving with confident purpose, and what follows is an ice dance filled with jumps and spins but also grace and poise; reminiscent of the way Felix moves with a sword in his hand, but athletic and performative rather than the efficient violence of battle forms.

When the song ends, so does the dance, and Felix takes a few seconds to catch his breath before he circles his way back to where Claude waits. He tries not to look like he's eagerly anticipating Claude's reaction but doesn't quite succeed.

Edited 2021-02-10 13:13 (UTC)

Claude watches; honestly, he'd be hard-pressed not to. Felix is always riveting when he's doing anything physical; he's got a natural athletic grace that's a beauty to behold, and there's very little athletically that Felix hasn't made the effort to get good at.

Claude has to admit, though, that he didn't expect this. He hadn't expected something that borders on dancing from Felix...or, more to the point, he wouldn't have expected Felix to put so much effort into getting good at something that's blatantly not related to combat. Because Claude's own weak efforts on the ice have been enough to tell him how much skill Felix has to have to be able to do what he's doing now, and how long it must have taken him to get good at it.

It's breathtaking. And so perhaps Felix won't be too surprised when, as soon as he's close enough for Claude to grab, Claude hauls him in for a hungry, heated kiss.

As it turns out, Felix is still a little startled--he hadn't quite expected such an immediate reaction, but he sure isn't complaining. After a brief surprised noise against Claude's lips, he returns the kiss with just as much hunger, sliding his arms around Claude's waist and pulling him close.

He and Claude haven't done this all that much yet. Which has certainly not been due to lack of interest on Felix's part, but they've all been busy, and it's a little hard to know how to find the time for it when your boyfriend is also dating three other people, two of whom you're also with.

So Felix still hasn't had the opportunity to shove Claude up against a wall again like he wants to, and there's no wall here either but he'll make do for now.

Eventually, he has to pull back to breathe; between the effort he put into the performance and this, his face is flushed hot and he's a bit breathless when he fixes Claude with a fervent look and a smirk, more hair falling into his face than usual after all the skating and spinning.

"I suppose I'll take that to mean you liked it."

"How could I possibly not?" Claude grins back at him, brushing some of that hair away from his eyes. He doesn't want anything in the way of his gazing at Felix's face right now, flushed and smirking and utterly breathtaking. "You were stunning." He winks. "And the skating wasn't too bad, either."

Claude's flushed for his own part, although in his case it's probably the cold more than any exertion.

Now this wink, Felix feels pretty confident that he understands the meaning of. Between that and the grin and his stupid sparkly eyes, Claude's making it difficult not to just keep kissing him like that indefinitely. But then he'd probably freeze to death, and Felix would have to explain to the others that Claude was just too pretty and he couldn't stop making out with him, so...

"Hmph. Flatterer." Not that he looks like he minds. "This is your clever scheme to entice me back inside, isn't it? Much as I hate to admit it, it's working."

"Being held by you and kissing you, I could almost forget the cold." Almost. "But I certainly wouldn't mind going back inside, no." He grins. "We could get warm mugs of hot tea and cuddle up together on a bed to get warm...maybe kiss some more..."

Felix snorts. "Is that supposed to be some kind of line, like Sylvain's? If so, it's terrible." It's the 'almost' that ruins it, really. "Not that his aren't."

The complaining is a little distracted, though, considering the rest of what Claude's saying. "I'll agree if you drop the 'maybe.'"

He leans in one more time to lightly bite at Claude's lower lip briefly before he pulls back entirely as though it never happened to sit down and start unlacing his skates. ...quickly.

"I was going to say, the first time I kissed him I had to complain about his lines." Claude grins, licking that nipped lip of his before he begins undoing his own skate laces. "The mistletoe, you know? The best he could say were things like 'not half bad'. I told him I honestly expected more charm from somebody with his reputation."

He gives Felix a sly sidelong look. "And I'm happy to guarantee as much kissing as you like. I just wonder how you expect to stop once we get going..."

"Pff. He's absurd." It's fond. "And not half as charming as he thinks he is when he does that."

Felix pulls off his skates and starts putting on his boots, glancing briefly over at Claude in turn. "Who said anything about stopping?"

"It's funny. He seems to bounce between incredibly charming and not nearly as charming as you know he can be." Claude hums thoughtfully. "I haven't quite picked up on a pattern yet as to when and why his charm fails him sometimes, but it's certainly not because he doesn't have plenty of the genuine article. All I can think of is that sometimes his head gets in his own way."

Felix's words earn a questioning eyebrow. "Well, I've definitely got no objections to that plan...but at the same time, depending on just how far you plan to go with the not stopping, I do want to make sure everyone's okay with it in advance. Sylvain particularly. You two have had some jealousy issues caused by me, so I want to be careful with that."

"The harder he tries to do it on purpose, the less charming he becomes. To me, anyway."

Felix finishes lacing up one boot and starts in on the other, doing his best not to meet Claude's eyes anymore. "...I didn't mean it like that."

Not yet, at least. Sometime in the future, maybe. But it's a little hard for him to even imagine going all the way with anyone who isn't Sylvain, right now.

"Oh?" Claude chuckles, looking over at him as he pulls on a boot. "Well, in that case, that definitely implies stopping at some point." He looks back down at his boot. "I would like to go that far with you someday, though. With all of you, really. I've never actually slept with someone I love before." He huffs a sort of half chuckle out through his nose. "But I don't mind waiting, either, if you guys aren't ready yet. My physical needs are currently being met well enough, so...whenever you're ready."

"I just meant...ugh, never mind."

Felix continues to studiously keep his eyes anywhere but on Claude, even as his cheeks color. Someone he loves, huh? He snorts quietly at the oblique mention of Jaskier, but he quickly puts the bard out of his mind--this isn't about him.

The thought of going that far with Claude is a good one. He does want that. The whole thing is just still so new to him--both the sex and dating people who aren't Sylvain. He feels like he needs time to settle. To adjust. ...great, now his brain is diving into the gutter, thanks mental Sylvain voice.

"...I would like that, too. When we're ready. Maybe..." He pauses, flushing a deeper red. "I know how this sounds. Don't laugh at me. But maybe it would be easier if we did it together, the first time. All three of us, I mean. Me, you, and Sylvain."

Claude doesn't laugh at Felix. In fact, he simply stares at nothing for a moment as the thought sinks in.

"You know," he says, a touch faintly, "I thought we'd have to work up to that idea? But if that's how you want to start...well, I'd be crazy to complain."

Claude definitely looks like a man who's having trouble focusing from the salacious visions Felix's suggestion have prompted in his head. Felix doesn't need to wonder if he likes the idea or not.

Felix finally chances a sidelong peek at Claude as he finishes lacing up his other boot and slips the blade guards onto his skates. "Good." The look on the other man's face gets his lips curling up into a faint smirk, despite the lingering pink in his cheeks. "Now hurry up, I want to get back to kissing you." He hops up to his feet and will offer a hand up to Claude once he's finished putting his boots on.

"Do you think Sylvain will go for it, too?" Claude is probing this idea for any possible downsides. On the one hand...well, it's Sylvain. Claude has a hard time imagining him having a reaction too different from his own. But on the other hand...well, Sylvain's meaningless sexual experiences with people before this may have left him with some unexpected hang-ups about who he sleeps with when it comes to people he loves. Claude doesn't want to assume too much.

He knows what he hopes for, though.

He readily accepts Felix's hand in getting to his feet; his ankles are still aching. Skating is definitely an exercise that works them in ways they're not used to being worked at all. "And I want you to get back to kissing me," he says with a wink.

"I do, but it may take time. And...some explanation." Felix sets a hand on one hip. "But you were the one who told me that when you and Sylvain joked about it, you both wanted me there, too. So apparently, the idea is already in his head."

Felix sets a brisk pace on the way back, resisting the urge to forget about waiting and just push Claude into the snow right now. Only the prospect of the other man inevitably interrupting him to complain about the cold keeps him moving, really. "Good."

"Well, I wasn't planning on walking naked into the room while you guys were having sex and going 'hey, got room for a third?'" Claude says, with some dry amusement. "So, yes, some explanation would probably be a good idea. Although saying it might take time, too...I wonder if you're saying it'll take more explanation than I might think. Do you think he's going to have some reservations? You know him, and your relationship with him, better than I do. What kinds of obstacles do you foresee?"

Claude doesn't have any trouble keeping pace with Felix. Normally he prefers a more relaxed pace than Felix's quick, businesslike stride, but...he's been out in the cold for awhile now. Even without the incentive of making out with Felix to entice him, he'd be happy to rush to get indoors.

Felix splutters a little. "I--that's not what I meant! I meant an explanation for...why." Why he suggested it in the first place, he means; why he feels like it would be easier that way. Maybe it's obvious, he's not sure, but Claude seemed surprised enough that maybe it isn't.

Then he shakes his head. "No. Not more explanation. Just time to feel ready. For me, too. We waited a while to tell Dimitri about...what we wanted, in part because we hadn't even had sex with just the two of us yet when we first talked about Dimitri, and it seemed like a...an important milestone, I suppose. And Sylvain wanted--well, you know what Sylvain wanted." He shrugs. "He may want to settle into the idea before we act on it, for similar reasons. He won't want either of us to feel like a third wheel, and he won't want to feel like he's...taking advantage of us. Obviously, you and I both know that he wouldn't, but he doesn't always know that."

Claude grins a little at Felix's explanation. "Well, there's an easy solution for those concerns," he says lightly. "He can't possibly feel as though he's neglecting us or taking advantage of us if we gang up on him. I think I'd want to do that anyway, even if it was just me with him, but having your help will make it even more effective.

"I know Sylvain was so worried about his first time with you, about making you feel wanted and special to him...and I don't think that was wrong. Given his history, I know exactly why it was so important for him to demonstrate those things to you. But I think for my first time with him, I want to make him feel wanted and special. We both know his self-esteem is so much lower than it should be. And what do we have to offer in spades? Confidence, assertiveness, and unshakeable belief in Sylvain's own worth." He ticks these off on his fingers.

"So rather than him worrying about treating the both of us right, as though that's some kind of duty to us he has to take on that he'll worry about screwing up...I think we've got an incredible opportunity to make him feel taken care of, loved by, and utterly irresistible to two of the hottest men he knows. We know he deserves it. And who else has the nerve to do it? Dimitri? Grant?" Claude winks. "We're the ones with the audacity to push him down on a bed and tell him 'we're going to love you the way you deserve'. The others may know he needs it, but I think only we can really give that to him."

[closed] a catch all for the new year, but mostly January

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