Work Text:
Deep reds and purples like a swirling velvet wine were the walls of the lounge where Byleth had already begun waking up from her nap. Figments of dreams fizzled away and her limbs began tightening and locking up, folding in on themselves as the path of war was laid out before her. Finally, a deep sadness settled into her, thinking of all that had been lost–the war would not bring them back. With no one in her head telling her to get up again (hadn’t that been a dream?), she let her eyes fall closed again, tried to sleep.
Someone was coming in. Boot heels clipped across the stone floor before becoming muffled by the rug. Whoever it was, she heard them crouch down near her. She could feel her brow creasing in bemusement. She wanted only to bury herself deeper in the cushions and ignore everyone who needed something from her. Just for a little while longer.
“Professor…”
Everyone except for him. Byleth’s eyes opened immediately to see Seteth before her, a deep frown darkening his face. She wondered how long it had taken for him to find her. “Sorry,” she gasped, and sat up. “I need to be somewhere, don’t I?”
The monastery was still fairly empty after so many years of abandonment. She’d tried going back to her old room, to breathe in the slightly woody must of the walls once again, to sleep on the best mattress she’d ever slept on, but the dorms were locked up. This room had had to suffice. Had the poor man thought she disappeared again?
Seteth put up his hand, and she dropped back against the couch, “No, no. I simply meant to check in on you.” His face was starting to betray his age, recalling five years of administrating a dying church, protecting her when the Archbishop could not.
Byleth pulled her feet back up on the couch and pulled a pillow to her chest, leaning against the arm of the couch again. He’d found her again only a few days ago, about to take on a horde of bandits by herself in the shadow of Garreg Mach, and how he’d clung to her. It had been so unlike him to show such…dare she say fondness? toward anyone other than his own daughter. Perhaps that fondness was only relief on his part, but Byleth had felt it toward him as well.
“I’m still here,” she said, gently.
A smile crept onto his normally stern face. It was a face that had once lectured her and unconsciously scowled at her through religious education and classroom visits. One that had softened with despair as he begged her for help in his darkest moment when his daughter had disappeared. He smiled and it melted her in a way that it hadn’t done before. Seteth had smiled at her before, and it had always been startling, but now Byleth found that a strange new need for his smile had taken up residence where her heart should have been.
“I’m very glad to see that,” Seteth replied.
She took a deep breath to combat the sleep she felt pawing at her head again–she couldn’t sleep any longer. She wouldn’t suffer leaving him again.
Byleth stood up from the couch, and Seteth stood with her, his ankles cracking. She made a face at the sound, when suddenly he was reaching out for her forearm, and then he was leaning in, and her mind fog burned away. His hair brushed across her eyelashes, and he pressed a small kiss to her lips. Byleth’s entire body tensed at the softness, at the taste of another person in her mouth, his breath on her face, at the surging of sweetly panicking nerves in her core.
He backed away from her, just far away enough for her to breathe, his hand slipping slowly away from her arm.
“O-oh.” Byleth felt that golden wanting swelling hotly in her chest.
Seteth’s face reddened and he looked up at the ceiling. “I-I apologize,” he stammered out. “I suppose I haven’t been thinking clearly recently.”
“Thank you,” she interrupted. It seemed like the thing to say. She pressed her lips together and forced a smile.
They looked at each other, Byleth’s heart pounding, and all she could think of was how much she wished to return his kiss. She took in his green eyes, tightly shorn beard, his well-pressed clothes and the circlet on his brow–the bags under his eyes and the creases around his mouth. The fine hairs of her body practically sang in his proximity. And he’d kissed her. He’d touched her of his own volition. Surely she could…
Nerve failing her, Byleth took his hands in hers and squeezed them. “I think it’s about time for dinner if you’d like to join me.” Perhaps she would kiss him then, sitting hip to hip in the dining hall, his face turning towards hers as she got his attention. Or on the stairs of the entrance hall away from prying eyes, where she could raise his face to hers and assure him this war would not separate them again.
He smiled back, and while he let go of one hand, he kept the other tightly in his warm grip. “I would be delighted.”
They left the room and headed toward the stairs with this new understanding between them. It was something they could address later, but for now they would let it shimmer around them like a veil of gold in this troubling new era.