Felix in Two Can Play: Anatomy of an Obsession

Felix in Two Can Play, analysed with spoilers up to chapter 400. Includes a pregnancy loss, mentioned without detail.

In the first hundred chapters, Felix is barely a character: Celeste's protective older brother, with a lingering soft spot for her glamorous best friend. By chapter 325 he's in handcuffs, having cost his fiancée their child. His slide is one of the book's clearest stories, and one of its saddest.

The boy who fought the bullies

The book gives us one memory of Felix at his best. When Celeste was bullied at school, he found her crying, marched her to the three boys responsible, fought all of them, and promised he would always protect her. He also walked her down the aisle at her first wedding.

That's the man Seraphine takes apart.

The weak spot

Felix has carried a torch for Seraphine since university. She knew it, and never gave him the time of day. When she needs a weapon against Celeste, she remembers it.

Her playbook with Felix is the same one she uses on everyone:

• A story nobody can check. Celeste had her taken and wanted her gone.
• A bought witness. A doctor who "confirms" she was made ill.
• A staged breakdown. A performance of despair, timed for Felix to "save" her.
• A fake message. A threatening text "from Celeste".

Each time, Felix chooses Seraphine's story over his sister's evidence. He slaps Celeste in a car park. He lunges at her in her office. When shown a live feed of Seraphine abroad, happily spending other men's money, he calls it a fake.

The cost

The cost doesn't fall on Felix first. It falls on Sierra, the fiancée he left at the roadside, who is pregnant with his child. When she runs to him in the Helix lobby, he shoves her away, and she loses the baby.

Even then, Felix's response is to promise marriage and "another baby", and to have Sierra blame Celeste to the police.

Celeste's line

Celeste cuts Felix off twice. The first time, at their mother's house, it's anger. The second time, at the police station, it's a verdict: a man who put that woman above the life of his own child can never be her brother. For a character who has forgiven Pat, paid for a stranger's surgery and spared Mr. Fisher's company, it's significant that this is the relationship she won't save.

What the book is saying

Celeste's own story is about recognising that "love" can be a name for control. Felix is the mirror image: someone who calls obsession love and lets it overrule everything he knows. "Love is blind," Celeste thinks, "but this stupidity certainly cannot be called love." Celeste even wonders whether something is medically wrong with him, which the book may yet come back to.

Where he stands at chapter 400

Released after Sierra dropped the charges, about to marry her, cut off by his sister, and blocked by the woman he destroyed everything for. If Seraphine comes back, he's the most likely person to be used again.

A detail from chapter 425

Celeste's memory of the night Castro's men came to their home adds one small, painful fact about Felix: while she froze against the wall, her brother slipped out of the back and ran barefoot to the neighbours until someone listened. He was the child who went for help.

That makes his fall harder to watch. The boy who ran for help grew into the man who let his sister take the blame for what he did. If the book gives Felix a way back, we suspect it will start from that night.

See also: [Recap Part 13: Free](/posts/two-can-play-recap-part-13-free).