[ Byleth sets the book down on the table. Not to abandon it, of course — he'll take it with him to have a longer look at it later — but he's noticed now that in the time it took him to flip through it, Dimitri's smile faded somewhat.
That can't be borne. He likes it when Dimitri is happy and that invisible tail is wagging.
And he shouldn't — he knows he shouldn't — but, sensing a faint need to placate him, Byleth reaches up and brushes some of Dimitri's hair out of his eyes. It's gentle — fatherly, he thinks? Something he could make excuses to paper over. He is a priest now, sort of. He was Dimitri's professor once. It should be alright. To want to touch him. It should be excusable, the idea of touching him.
(He knows that this is only a guilty man's pretense.) ]
Would you really look into it for me?
[ Byleth's voice is soft. ]
I haven't any way of repaying you now.
[ Now that the war is over, he means. What good is he now that the war is over?
What a terribly funny thing for the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros to say, but Byleth seems quite serious about it, on the whole. ]
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That can't be borne. He likes it when Dimitri is happy and that invisible tail is wagging.
And he shouldn't — he knows he shouldn't — but, sensing a faint need to placate him, Byleth reaches up and brushes some of Dimitri's hair out of his eyes. It's gentle — fatherly, he thinks? Something he could make excuses to paper over. He is a priest now, sort of. He was Dimitri's professor once. It should be alright. To want to touch him. It should be excusable, the idea of touching him.
(He knows that this is only a guilty man's pretense.) ]
Would you really look into it for me?
[ Byleth's voice is soft. ]
I haven't any way of repaying you now.
[ Now that the war is over, he means. What good is he now that the war is over?
What a terribly funny thing for the Archbishop of the Church of Seiros to say, but Byleth seems quite serious about it, on the whole. ]