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It wasn’t the weather that made Dimitri dread this time of the year. Nor was it the holiday cheer – he could find himself swept up in it too, now and then, and he’d always been prone to nostalgia.
No. The issue was fundraising season.
Invites piled up faster than he could get around to answering them, around Saint Seiros Day. Felix always said that he could simply ignore them, but there were so many causes that Dimitri held dear, so many ties to maintain and issues to delicately maneuver around. He did well enough – for the most part – when it came to pleasant small talk, but parties brought about a particular kind of exhaustion.
He had to remember to get his suits dry-cleaned and somehow prevent them from getting wrinkled when he wasn’t looking, to find new ways to politely decline drinks over and over again, to put names to faces to nonprofits.
The ball for the new wing of the Blaiddyd Municipal Library he was somewhat looking forward to, but speaking of his family in public never got easier.
He RSVPed to Mercedes’s Storybook Hour invite – her school was doing so much good, and was still finding its feet. He wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Just send her a check, idiot, said Felix’s voice in his mind. She’ll understand. Dedue would’ve been more polite, but the sentiment would’ve been similar.
As though he’d been summoned by Dimitri’s poor life choices, Felix appeared at the door. There were still snowflakes in his dark hair, and he was only halfway through unwrapping his scarf. He was scowling, and Dimitri braced himself for bad news. Not that Felix usually had a cheerful disposition, but Dimitri had long learned to distinguish commonplace annoyance from genuine displeasure.
“How did it go?” Dimitri asked him.
“They’re claiming the structural damage is too widespread for repairs. Fucking Von Vestra, I know he had something to do with the fire last summer.”
“Felix, there’s no proof of that…”
“It was arson! Who else would try to burn down a church! You know damn well he has mob ties.”
Dimitri privately agreed, but accusing your colleagues of crimes you had no evidence of was a habit he was trying to break. Edelgard had been beside herself when Dimitri had managed to convince the city council to buy Garreg Mach for conservation purposes. A waste of resources on a symbol of oppression when there were families who couldn’t make ends meet! had been her exact words. Dimitri had never been particularly religious – but their parents had been married there. Their funerals had been held there, and Glenn’s, and so many other people’s. He would not allow their history to be erased.
Dimitri and his sister had both stepped away from the project after a particularly public altercation, and it was only because Byleth was both the mayor and unreasonably tolerant that neither of them had lost their position.
Felix was fuming, and Dimitri couldn’t help but smile: he had been the one who'd complained the loudest that Dimitri’s plan for the restoration of the Garreg Mach chapel was an irresponsible waste of our budget, do you have any idea how much stained glass costs.
And yet he’d taken on the project with all of his usual determination. Well, that was Felix through and through. Felix, who had wanted to be a defense attorney – to spite his father and because he had little interest in protecting the interests of the rich – and who was now here instead, in City Hall, by Dimitri’s side. Handling petty zoning conflicts and bike lane construction, and this.
“How bad is it?”
“The roof needs emergency repairs as soon as possible so everything doesn’t get too damp – shouldn’t be too expensive. But two of the walls are badly fissured and the inside is a mess. It’ll be hard to justify all of this, you know.”
“What about our proposal of turning the building into a community centre?”
“It would be cheaper to tear it down and to build something new there than to maintain the current structure. Allegedly. We need to ask for a second evaluation from someone who’s not in their pocket.”
Dimitri could feel a headache brewing, but the other option was to give up, and he would not. He would take up carpentry himself if he had to.
“Ask Sylvain for Claude’s number, would you? If he ran a story on it, we could drum up some interest from the general public… I’m sure Mercedes could find some people from the congregation willing to speak about how much the chapel means to them.”
“Will do.”
The Church of Seiros’s influence may have greatly diminished – the changes had been considerable even in the years that Dimitri could remember, and mostly for the better – but it was still considerable enough that there would be public outcry, and did those people not also deserve a voice?
“Oh yeah, Von Aegir invited us to his wine tasting bullshit again. I told him we couldn’t make it.”
Dimitri sighed. It wasn’t that he objected to Ferdinand, exactly. He was a very kind man. But that was one event he would not be sorry to miss, especially because relations with Edelgard remained – tense, at the moment.
“I’ll send a card.”
“Have Ashe do it.”
“Ashe does enough already.”
“It’s his job.”
Dimitri shook his head and, mercifully, Felix dropped the issue. Conflict de-escalation was something they were getting better at, slowly. The thought made his chest feel warm. But then, of course, Felix noticed the number of empty mugs on his desk and the fact that his hands were slightly trembling. He made a noise of irritation and leaned out the door:
“Ashe, make some decaf! Dimitri’s not allowed more caffeine today!”
“Felix!”
Before he could get up and tell Ashe not to bother, that he’d do it himself, Felix had moved back into his space and was leaning over him, eyes narrowed.
“If you took better care of yourself, other people wouldn’t have to do it.”
It wasn’t the first or the hundredth time they had that conversation. And Dimitri tried, and he was so much better than he’d been – wasn’t he? Maybe he’d been slipping a little. He tried to recall the last time he’d eaten something that wasn’t a protein bar, and found himself unsure. Not good. But his medication – he hadn’t forgotten that.
“I know,” he conceded, leaning back in his chair.
Felix looked tense, he realized, in a way that couldn’t only be explained by a troublesome meeting. But then, if anyone had more of an issue with the relentless social interactions brought about by the season than Dimitri did, it was Felix. Somehow he’d forgotten.
He reached for the hand Felix had slammed on his desk, twining their fingers and ignoring the look Felix gave him – they were careful about workplace propriety, but there was no one else and most of the people working in this office had been at their wedding, in any case. They probably wouldn’t be too scandalized.
“Let’s take a break, when things wind down a little,” he said. “We can get a cabin for a few days, bring the cats, have some peace and quiet.”
“The cats hate being in the car,” Felix muttered. “Since when are you pro-vacation?”
The protests were half-hearted and Dimitri could see the fight leave him, at least for the moment. His own tendencies, the church, Edelgard, the endless flow of requests needing his attention – those battles would come sooner or later and he would wage them as fiercely as he knew how to. But for Felix, he could give some ground.
And the idea of being curled up next to a fire with Felix and Loog and Kyphon would simply have to sustain him through the next month.
He smiled.
“Call it a holiday miracle.”