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Dimitri is approaching the Blue Lions classroom when he hears the commotion within. Something has his classmates riled up, the cause for which seems to be coming from the room itself. In the doorway, Sylvain leans casually, facing away from him with the kind of cheeky grin that makes Dimitri worry—a look that says Sylvain is either doing something unscrupulous or he’s about to. Dimitri hastens towards the door.
As he approaches, Sylvain gives him a panicked, wide-eyed stare and scrambles into the classroom with a speed that would be impressive if Dimitri weren’t sure now Sylvain was up to no good. The laughter that greets Dimitri as he walks into the classroom does nothing to allay his suspicions.
“Go ahead, Sylvain. Claim your prize,” Felix says.
Dimitri stops fully in the doorway. What on earth…?
Sylvain lets out a nervous chuckle. “Ha, I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. That didn’t count.”
“Well, which is it?” Ingrid says, leaning forward on Sylvain’s desk with a smirk. “You don’t know, or it doesn’t count?”
“It doesn’t count! I’m not kissing Dimitri! At least, not until he buys me dinner.”
Dimitri turns scarlet. “Kiss—”
Oh goddess no.
He looks up. There, tied with a bright red string and dangling down from the doorway, is a sprig of mistletoe.
Dimitri’s never been one for the custom—it’s always seemed a bit silly and impersonal, even if it’s only meant to be a kiss on the cheek. Much of his youth during winter in Faerghus had been spent rushing through doorways to avoid refusing—but so much has been occupying his mind as of late that he’d forgotten the season was coming up. Part of him hoped it was something of Faerghus that would be left in Faerghus. Of course Sylvain could not let it be.
“I’m not kissing anyone,” Dimitri protests.
Annette giggles. “It’s bad luck to refuse, you know!”
Eternal flames take bad luck. He’s got enough bad luck to last the next century. It’s a frivolous superstition, and he’s not playing into it, not even if there was someone he wanted to kiss. And Dimitri can’t think anyone he’d want to kiss except…
“Oh, Professor Eisner!” Ashe cries.
“Why are you all standing near the doorway?” the professor asks. She shifts the books in her arms and glances around the room.
Sylvain puts his head down on the desk and groans. Most of the rest of the Lions giggle and look up at the mistletoe.
Dimitri is not sure he can get redder, but the heat of his face tells him he does. The professor frowns, aware there’s something she ought to know but doesn’t. Dimitri opens his mouth to tell her that it’s just nonsense, but his brain hardlocks at the idea of kissing her, even just on the cheek—
Mercedes saves him the trouble, or makes it more troublesome.
“You’re standing under mistletoe, Professor,” she says with a coy smile. “There’s a Faerghus tradition that when two people meet underneath it, the goddess expects them to kiss. The Blue Sea Star, where the goddess lives, is no longer visible this moon. The kiss is meant to be a gesture of peace and goodwill until she returns.”
The professor looks above her head. Squints. Frowns deeper. Then she walks forward, without looking at Dimitri at all.
“That plant is poisonous,” she says. “Take your seats.”
Dimitri exhales like he’s taken a blow to the chest.
For the duration of class, things normalize, the mood as routine as the lecture. But the moment the professor dismisses them, the giddiness returns to the Blue Lions. They linger in the classroom, darting through the doorway one at a time in a fit of giggles. Even Dedue is not immune to the mood, blushing solemnly as he strides out through the opening. Sylvain leans against the door again and shoots a grin back inside until Ingrid pushes him out of the way. He shrugs and leans down to kiss the top of her head, and she punches him in the side.
Dimitri is the last to leave, content to let the theatrics play out before he exits, the same way he has dealt with mistletoe in years prior. Finally, after everyone else has left, he stands and makes his way towards the door.
He gets to the doorway when the professor calls his name.
Dimitri turns back around, preemptively blushing, the sound of her rejection still fresh in his mind.
Ha. Rejection. What was there to reject? Hadn’t he been rejecting the entire notion himself the moment before the professor walked in? It’s just a silly tradition anyway. Dimitri is not sure what he’s about to apologize for, but the apology forms on his tongue and then dies on his lips as the professor says, “I dismissed your tradition without considering it.”
She doesn’t say why she dismissed it or why she’s considering it now, and Dimitri doesn’t ask. There’s a possibility in this moment that he’s not ready to consider the implications of, an idea that he doesn’t want to hope for despite the lightness rising in his chest. It can’t be real, not a moment of it, and if it is, he doesn’t deserve to have it.
Nonetheless, he stays where he is.
Professor Eisner joins him underneath the mistletoe and looks up at it for a moment. Then she looks towards him, but not quite fully at him. Her face is impossible to read, and Dimitri thinks for a brief moment that he might actually give anything in the world to know what she’s considering when she asks, “Mercedes said…the goddess expects those who stand under this plant to kiss?”
“Only on the cheek,” Dimitri blurts and then shrivels. “That is, the goddess doesn’t expect anything—not that I presume to speak for her of course, so whether or not she expects—er, that is, it’s merely a tradition began countless years ago that persists in Faerghus to this day. Someone hangs mistletoe in the doorway, and any two people caught beneath it share a kiss.”
“On the cheek,” she echoes. It’s not a question.
“On the cheek,” he affirms, certain his own cheeks are burning.
“How does it work?” she asks. That is a question, and it makes his knees shake.
“Well,” he gulps, looking at the plant hanging down from the doorway. “One person plucks from the berries, and however many they take is the number of kisses they’re meant to exchange.”
The professor reaches overhead, and Dimitri’s heart leaps up his throat. Just short of the lowest branch, she swipes at the air.
“I can’t reach,” she says. “You’ll have to.”
It is so close that her fingertips brush the edge of the leaves. If she jumped, she could grab at least a single berry, and the fact that she does not try tells Dimitri something he struggles to let himself believe. He will have to reach. He will have to decide how many kisses they share.
On the cheek.
“Of course.” He can hear the strain in his voice and hopes that the professor can’t. She looks at him, perfectly even, then upwards again. Dimitri begs her pardon—she doesn’t move back—and reaches up and over her, all his energy concentrating on steadying his hand. He has to be reading too much into this. Sylvain is fairly tall—likely he hung the mistletoe up higher so he’d be able to more easily reach it, to keep the situation in his favor. Had Professor Eisner come to the door before Dimitri had, Sylvain would have been well-suited to decide how many times he thought the tradition needed to be enacted.
Though she would have rebuffed Sylvain the same as she had Dimitri.
Right?
The idea of anything but sends such a hot rush of jealousy through Dimitri that when he grabs for a berry, he clenches and pulls the entire plant down, crushing it in his hand. Clear, sticky juice oozes over the fingers of his gauntlets, mixed with flat green leaves and pale bits of pulp.
Dimitri feels his soul, if he has one, leave his body.
The professor looks him directly in the eyes.
“So how many is that?” she asks, absolutely deadpan.
Dimitri almost laughs, desperate, pitiable.
It’s a fair question. How does he count this? He’s never vandalized a plant before, accidentally or otherwise.
Dimitri is not conscious of speaking. He hears himself say, “I think one will suffice.”
The professor nods, brows furrowed as though nothing could be more serious. Her eyes flicker once between his hands and his face. On anyone else, it would be too subtle to tell. On her, it suggests nervousness.
She gives away nothing else but the words, “You’ve done this before?”
“H-hardly. I usually try to avoid it,” Dimitri stutters, then wishes he could take the words back. Shouldn’t he be projecting confidence? Anything more he could say in protest will reveal too much of the way he feels. After what feels like a small eternity but is surely only a few short moments, he settles on, “I’m familiar with the concept.”
The professor nods again, a telltale pink in her cheeks sending sparks to his heart. Her eyes, a soft violet, are fixed on him. Slowly, gently, he leans in and, with his clean hand, brushes the hair from her face. Her eyes widen slightly at the contact, the pink deepening into red. Dimitri’s heart is pounding in his ears like a drum, so loudly he’s certain she can hear it, too.
His lips brush her cheek, and he is lost in her.
Her skin is soft and warm, so very warm against his mouth. Her eyelashes flutter against his cheek as the heat of her breath tickles his ear. Despite himself, he lingers. She has a soft scent that he’s never noticed, something like the smell of the earth after it rains. Uncertainty ripples through him. Has he overstepped his bounds? Are his lips too rough? Too dry?
He pulls back.
The professor is red from ear to ear. She presses a hand to the place on her cheek where his lips have just been, as though she can feel them still.
“…an interesting tradition.” She says it so quietly that it’s almost a whisper. “Thank you for demonstrating.”
Dimitri doesn’t trust himself to speak. Tautly, he nods. There is something bright in the professor’s eyes that makes him want to take hold of her, to find out if her lips are as soft as her skin. He tamps down hard on the impulse, turning to face the brisk winter air and squeezing his fists. The remains of the mistletoe ooze out of his hand, falling to the floor with a damp plop. Dimitri stoops immediately to pick them up.
“Peace and goodwill,” the professor says, and Dimitri looks up at her. She’s looking out across the courtyard. “That’s what Mercedes said. The kiss is meant to be a ‘gesture of peace and goodwill’ until the goddess returns.”
She turns towards him, head tilting in uncertainty.
“Were you praying for peace, Dimitri?”
Would that praying for something could make it so. He does not want to lie, and yet he cannot bring himself to voice the truth. Not fully, anyway.
“I must admit it slipped my mind.”
She makes a sound, something like a disapproving grunt, and his heart falls. Yet another failure on his part. He should have been thinking of peace, of anything else but himself and the small pleasure of her nearness.
“We’ll have to try it again then,” she says so neutrally that at first Dimitri’s not sure he’s heard correctly. Did she say they’d need to try again? Try what again? A kiss?
Dimitri blinks rapidly, grateful he’s already on his knees. Had he been standing when he heard that—did he even hear correctly—he most certainly would have wavered.
The professor nods, as though she’s made her mind up about something. “The tradition should be honored in its entirety, shouldn’t it?”
Dimitri rises slowly, warily, mind speeding with his pulse. The opportunity has presented itself—he has but to seize it. One more kiss couldn’t hurt either of them, could it?
For the sake of tradition, of course.
“I couldn’t agree more, Professor,” he says carefully. He opens his palm and displays the mess therein. “Though this mistletoe may no longer be suitable for tradition.”
Dimitri’s heart soars as she smiles and says, “I think it will suffice.”