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“Do you remember…” Byleth trails off, blinking rapidly before pressing her lips together, as if she couldn’t believe the upcoming words had been on her tongue. Dimitri turns to her curiously, raising an eyebrow as he sets his quell down. She stands beside him in one of their few studies, the chair she had just been sitting at vacant except for the now crinkled proposals Seteth had given her. “Oh, uh—it’s nothing.”
She turns away from him, but Dimitri could sometimes be faster. He reaches forward easily, curling his fingers around her wrist gently—a silent offering. Shake me off if you truly mean that is it nothing. After a moment with no movement, Dimitri coaxes her to turn, and she lets herself be tugged willingly. Once she is close again, right next to his chair, he smiles up at her. “What is it, my beloved?”
Byleth furrows her eyebrows, looking to the side for a moment at the endearment. Sometimes, Dimitri found out, she could be rather shy—yet, he supposes the same applied to him. Hearing endearments rolling off her tongue caused his heart to race, his mind to cloud over, his heart to dance with joy; sometimes, she would get her revenge, sprouting off one endearment after the other, causing his ears to seemingly catch fire.
A squeeze on his hand pulls him from his thoughts. Dimitri tilts his head, a small hmm of question at the back of his throat.
“It… Do you… remember,” Byleth says her words slowly, as if the slower she uttered them, the less embarrassing they would be. Dimitri waits patiently, his edges softening at the sight of pink dusting her cheeks. “When you… fell in love with me…”
Oh.
A strange question, but it wasn’t as if he couldn’t answer it.
“Of course,” Dimitri says.
Byleth lifts her head quickly, expression so doubtful that Dimitri has to laugh. He turns to her fully, spreading his legs so that when he tugs her forward even more, she stands between his knees. Dimitri silently takes her other hand, smiling down at the ring nestled there before kissing at the backs of her hands. “I do remember. Who do you take me for?”
“When…”
“Why do you ask?” Dimitri murmurs, void of any ill-intent.
“I remember,” Byleth tells him, giving his hands another squeeze. “I was… just wondering, if you do as well.”
Dimitri nods his head. He can’t help but read what is behind her words—a strange uncertainty that he will make disappear. “Do you remember when I called your smile mesmerizing?”
“Yes.”
“I think… that is when it began. From then on, it was like… a free fall… deeper and deeper,” Dimitri tells her quietly. He lets her take her hands from his grasp, his smile wide as she sets her hands on his shoulders, to the back of his head to twirl the strands around her finger. “Do you remember that you used to take care of the cats and dogs around the Monastery?”
Her motions freeze on the spot, and when he raises his head to look at her, he can see the shock on her face.
“I would follow you around and watch,” he explains quickly. “I mean—in my defense, it wasn’t as if you tried to keep it a secret.”
“I had not… felt anyone… follow me and watch, though.”
“I did,” Dimitri tells her proudly, nodding vigorously as the memories came back to him. “It was—it was really adorable. You were so gentle with the kittens. I should have tried the assassin exam, yes?”
Byleth narrows her eyes as she tries to fight off the embarrassment, shaking her head slightly. She continues to thread her fingers through his hair, working out little knots here and there, pushing it back from his face. There is no hesitation as she leans forward, pressing a kiss in the center of his forehead. “If I had found out, I would have given you detention.”
“You would do that?” Dimitri laughs, giving her his most innocent smile. “To me?”
“Most certainly.”
“Oh, that would have been terrible,” he sighs dramatically as he lifts his hands, setting them on her hips. “How would I have managed, being in the same room as you, alone, after class?”
“I believe you would have managed,” she tells him, mustering up all the seriousness she could—Dimitri is too charming for his own good, sometimes; the way his eye lit up, the way his lips morphed from a blinding smile to a fake pout… It was almost too much for her heart. “I think… the same goes for me…”
Dimitri hums questioningly.
“It was… unexpected. You called my smile—that,” she avoids saying the word. A huff of laughter escapes her as she shakes her head gently. “That was the first time someone said that to me.”
“Hardly believable.”
“It’s true!” Byleth insists, tugging on his hair playfully. “As a kid, often times others… said it was odd, didn’t feel right.”
“It feels more than right,” Dimitri tells her, earnest.
Byleth suppresses the way her smile wishes to grow. She continues to comb her fingers through his hair, looking down at him with what she suspects is love. “For me… as well… it felt…” Byleth pauses here, in thought before she continues after a moment, “It felt incredibly easy to fall in love with you. It was slow, and I didn’t… quite connect the dots until the night in the greenhouse.”
Dimitri ducks his head, his own smile breaking through so widely it almost hurt. Through it all, she still remembered—which was, of course, to be given. Even when she came back from whatever timeless hole she had been stuck in for five years, she had remembered.
He remembers, vividly, his words. Professor, you must close your eyes—and she had done so, quite willingly, much to his younger self’s surprise. Dimitri recalls stepping forward, brushing the hair from her forehead away only to lean forward and press his lips against the skin there. He was not proud of the way he immediately flushed like a raging fire, the way his eyes widened as he had stepped away from her and retreated.
“That long ago?” he asks, voice teetering on teasing, but she hears it nonetheless.
“Please. I could say the same for you.”
Dimitri laughs but agrees. “Back then, everything was… rather… chaotic.”
“Yes,” Byleth hums, but there is a smile in her voice that is undeniable. Dimitri looks up at her, sliding his hands up toward her shoulders, and it is incredibly thrilling, to feel sparks gently tingle at his fingertips as he touches her. “Though, we overcame everything.”
“Together,” Dimitri adds, although he knew full well it was a given. “And now we are here.”
“Together,” Byleth says, rolling her eyes with no ill-intent.
“It had taken us long enough,” Dimitri sighs, but he knows it could not have been helped. He hooks a finger beneath the collar of her shirt, coaxing her down.
“I would not want to be anywhere else,” she tells him gently, pressing her lips to the smile curving his own.