004 » i feel like i can't break through

[bladehand]

fanart by Living201882687.
for "alexandre" at antileon.

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[bladehand]

[ Byleth swears he can actually feel his own resolve crumbling.

It has been... so long. Truly — so, so long since he last allowed himself to feel anything like desire. When he was young, he had stroked himself a few times, but without desire, and really only to sate the hormonal cravings of his body. He had never thought of anyone in particular in those days; he simply visualized bodies without faces in fantasies where he wasn't even a part of the proceedings.

Later, as an adult, and in moments of great shame, he succumbed and let himself indulge in the fantasy of having Dimitri take him. That happened once or twice in his twenties. But after a certain point — the marriage, maybe, or the delivery of Dimitri's child soon after that — it had seemed pointless to even fantasize about it. It had seemed cruel to even stoke the old fire and keep it alive.

Byleth stopped even masturbating to the idea that Dimitri might love him, years and years and years ago.

So it's not. It's not lust that Alex had to come to him with. If the boy had asked for love instead, Byleth would have given it.

The seat of the archbishop does not ask Byleth for abstinence, but Byleth has been abstinent for many, many years. The goddess never asked him to. The goddess would probably be disappointed in him for being this pathetic, for all this time.

But he wants to. He wants to give in for once. His hands are on Alex's lips and Alex wants him to want him, and he —

Just once, he thinks, so desperately trying to rationalize what he knows will be a great sin. Can't I have the one thing I've always wanted, just this once...?

Can he.

Can he.

The name rises unbidden to his lips, so broken that it might well be a sob — ]

...Dimitri.

[ His voice is so husky that it's nearly a croak, the way he says his beloved's name. Oh, this is wrong. This is so, so wrong. But Alex is the spitting image of him. Alex looks the way he did, all those years ago. Alex's tongue drags over his lips and his lashes are so long and his face is so pretty and Byleth wants him so, so terribly. ]

Do you... do you promise? [ He feels so foolish. So desperate. So full of misplaced hope. ] Will you... please, just for one night...