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“We should never have gone out here.”
Byleth gives Yuri his best pleading stare. Unfortunately for him, Yuri has been subjected to this exact same look for just under a year now, and he’s pretty much grown desensitized to it already. “But… the spot I want to show you. It’s worth it, I promise.”
Yuri raises his eyebrows. “It’s worth literally everything that just happened?”
“Well…” Byleth scratches his cheek. “You’ll see when we get there, okay?”
Much as Yuri is used to Byleth’s puppy-dog eyes, he still can’t really say no to them. With a sigh, Yuri reclines against one end of the dingy boat, staring blankly into space as Byleth rows them through the Atlantic Ocean.
Yes, the Atlantic Ocean.
It started with Byleth acting strange, which isn’t really unusual. The last time he had acted strange, he had nearly set the entire camp on fire, but that isn’t important. It was just that he happened to be even stranger than usual earlier today, and Yuri had casually asked if something was wrong, and then suddenly Byleth was dragging him out of the camp and bringing Yuri to Montauk, all the way at the south shore of Long Island.
Of course, being demigods, even the few hours’ walk there had taken forever. First, there were the telekhines that chased them down after Yuri got curious enough to poke around in an abandoned construction site; next was the small herd of katobleps that Byleth found cute and tried to pet, right before they, predictably enough, charged. Possibly best of all was when they stumbled upon what looked like a wheat field and decided to take a short rest, only to be promptly chased down by a murderous pack of karpoi. All in a day’s work, really. The only thing they’d had going for them was Yuri’s ever-impeccable sense of direction, so at least they hadn’t gotten lost once.
Well, until now, anyway. Yuri huffs, blowing a stray strand of hair away from his face—Hermes is the god of roads, but in the middle of the ocean, there are hardly any roads to follow. Even if Yuri could navigate his way through these waters, he’s feeling a mite too seasick to even think about it right now.
Really, Yuri thinks, staring down at their pathetic little boat, Byleth couldn’t at least have gotten something bigger? More comfortable? To be fair, he has no idea how Byleth even acquired this boat at all.
It’s unnervingly quiet with only the gentle lapping of the waves as background noise, so Yuri asks, “About this place we’re going to… wait, you’re sure you know where we’re going, right?” They’d lost sight of land a long while back, though that may be partly because they’d run into a giant, ten-foot-tall crab Yuri just barely managed to keep Byleth from taking a bite out of.
“Of course!” Byleth brightens. “I’ve been here a lot. The first few times, I needed some help, but you memorize the way eventually.”
Yuri takes a long, slow look at their surroundings. There is absolutely nothing in this ocean that might even remotely serve as some sort of distinguishing landmark (seamark?). Honestly, if Byleth’s hair and eyes weren’t blue, Yuri would be getting real sick of the color by now. “The first few times?”
“My dad brought me there.” Byleth pauses, fiddling with a loose thread on his unfashionably ripped jeans. “Afterwards, it was the dolphins.”
“The—what?” And then Yuri remembers: right, kid of Aphrodite, inherited nearly every single one of her powers, including communication with her sacred animals. Yuri sighs—he doesn’t even remember Hermes’ sacred animals, and he’s not sure if the twin snakes George and Martha count. Probably not. “We’re not gonna dive underwater or something, are we?”
Byleth shakes his head. “It stands out in a place like this, really. You’ll like it,” he adds, as if to convince the both of them. “I promise.”
“Oookay. Hey, whatever you say.” Yuri leans back again, staring up at the sky (also blue, gods damn it). He crosses one leg over the other just to get more comfortable, but looks up when he catches Byleth blinking in clear interest. Right—Yuri had thankfully had the foresight to wear his denim cutoffs this morning, before Byleth dragged him out on this boat ride.
He suppresses a grin. It’s been almost a year since they’d first met last summer, and though Yuri’s sure Byleth’s at least somewhat interested, the other man had never done anything more concrete than some furtive glances here and there, despite Yuri’s best attempts. Either he’s not doing enough or Byleth is just that dense. Yuri’s pretty sure which one it is. “You know,” he teases, a bit too amused at how Byleth startles, “if you just wanted to get me alone in the middle of nowhere, the canoe lake was right in camp.”
Byleth stares at him. “But… I wasn’t?”
Yuri has truly never met a child of Aphrodite more incompetent in love. “Oh, never mind,” he sighs, leaning over the boat to absently trail his fingers along the ice-cold water. Would it be warmer in a few months, when summer hits?
Another summer…
He turns nineteen this year, while Byleth turns twenty. Ashe will be sixteen, nearly time to worry about college entrance tests. Yuri stares down at the rippling waves—with Seteth’s help, he and some other demigods in camp without present mortal parents had been able to get into a college nearby. But what happens afterwards? The future has always been a murky black river for him, with thick fog hanging over it to keep him from seeing further than one step at a time.
Yuri’s never been lost before, but right now, he’s in the middle of the ocean with no clue where they’re going, only relying on Byleth for guidance. In the future, after college, Byleth won’t always be there, and neither will Ashe. What then?
He’s just about to speak—to ask Byleth about his own plans—when his fingers brush against something decidedly solid. With an embarrassing little squeak, Yuri jerks away from the water so fast, his arm tingles with surprise. “W-What was that?” Could it be another sea monster? How unlucky can two demigods get in one day?
Byleth blinks. “What was wh—oh!” He lights up, even smiling a little. “Don’t worry. It’s just them.”
“Them…?” Are there naiads in the Atlantic Ocean? They’re the only ‘them’ Yuri can think of. Then something splashes above water, and he exhales in relief—of course.
A trio of dolphins swim to the other end of the boat, lifting their snouts for Byleth to lovingly pet one by one. It’s almost infuriating how much it looks straight out of a Disney movie. “What, do you recognize them or something?” Yuri asks, scooting backwards. It’s not like he’s scared of the dolphins, not how he was scared of the ten-foot-tall crab, but still.
Byleth smiles. “I see them all the time whenever I come here. This one is new, though.” He rubs one of the dolphins—Yuri has no idea how he can differentiate them, considering they all look the same—and it trills happily. “You’re pretty. What’s your name?”
The dolphin whistles something Yuri assumes is an answer. Byleth’s right, though—it is prettier than its two other companions. All three of them share the same gray and white color patterns and look like they’re probably the same species, but the one Byleth is talking to—now in a variety of the same whistles that Yuri cannot even begin to understand how he’s making—is a little smaller and sleeker, its small eyes glimmering several different colors, its skin shining with something more than just the sun glistening on the water.
The boat rocks slightly, and Yuri has to keep himself from keeling over. While the first dolphin is talking to Byleth, the other two are now bumping against the sides of the boat, letting out their own little cries. “Uh. Byleth,” Yuri chokes out, “they’re not, like, gonna tip us over or anything, are they?”
“Don’t be silly,” Byleth says nonchalantly, finally looking up from his dolphin friend. It’s probably irrational to be jealous over an animal, isn’t it? “They’re just playing around. Their species is called spinner dolphins, by the way.”
“They… spin?”
“Oh, yeah.” Byleth smiles down at the small pod of dolphins now beginning to splash around even more at the word spin. “They can do up to five spins in the air at once—” and then he splits off from there into that series of whistles and chattering again, which Yuri decides is pointless to try and decipher.
After what sounds like a brief response, the dolphins dive back down underwater—Yuri can just see their shadowy outlines beneath the surface, rapidly swimming further up ahead. “What’d you say?” Yuri asks, curious despite himself as he shifts closer to Byleth’s end of the boat.
Byleth just smiles. It’s a bit unsettling, because Yuri doesn’t think he’s seen Byleth, usually so emotionless, smile so much, but it’s also more endearing than it should be. “Just wait.”
That’s cryptic. Yuri doesn’t have to wait long, though—the dolphins suddenly emerge just a few ways away, all three of them leaping into the air at near-absurd heights and, true to their name, spinning around. Yuri can feel his eyes widening at the sight—he’s never really seen dolphins before, considering he’d never had much of an opportunity to visit either a zoo nor the ocean, much less see them spin around like this is a performance. Water droplets fly out around them, shimmering in the sunlight to form hints of what is undoubtedly a rainbow.
“Oh, I…” Yuri stares at the sight. The dolphins dive back down, then return to the sides of the boat. “That was…”
Byleth turns to look at him, that soft smile on his face only complemented further with the clear fondness in his eyes. Like this, it’s even easier to see the similarities between him and his godly parent—his default stern expression tends to hide his natural beauty. “It’s beautiful, right?”
Yet the way he’s looking at Yuri right now makes Yuri think—hope, wish—that Byleth isn’t just talking about the dolphins.
Yuri swallows, unable to keep himself from looking down—with how they’re sitting, their hands are awfully close to each other’s. It would be easy to lay his palm atop Byleth’s, like this. Just one little touch. “Say, Byleth,” Yuri murmurs—any louder and he fears his voice may tremble. “I’ve been, er. Meaning to ask you about something.”
Byleth doesn’t respond for a moment, and when Yuri peeks back up at him, he has to restrain himself from jumping into the ocean when he sees how Byleth’s cheeks have gone that shade of pink Yuri so adores. “W… What is it?”
On each side of the boat, the dolphins are still whistling and trilling, and Yuri has to force them to fade into background noise in his head. He dearly hopes they aren’t gossiping about the two of them right now, because Byleth probably understands every word (or sound, as it may be). “Well, I… It’s… You see—”
Before Yuri can sputter out more useless filler words, the boat—no, the ocean seems to rumble dangerously, like an earthquake at sea. The dolphins’ whistling turns from gossipy to distressed. “What—What was that?” Yuri manages, suddenly eager to get away from Byleth.
Byleth’s brow furrows. “It might be—” He looks down at the dolphins now swimming circles around the boat, and trills something that sounds a little like a question. They answer in various high-pitched calls that make Yuri’s ears ring, and Byleth’s expression falls. “We have to go.”
“What? Wait—”
Byleth grabs the paddles and starts rowing again, despite how the waves are starting to pick up, approaching a dangerous speed. Under any other circumstances, Yuri would be appreciating how Byleth’s arm muscles work, but the longer he stares out over the horizon, the more he can see what looks like a dorsal fin much larger than that of the dolphins’. “Byleth?”
“That’s…” Byleth swallows, but no matter how fast he rows, the whatever-it-is is faster—much faster. “I-I’m sorry, I should’ve been more careful—”
Another ocean-shaking rumble—Yuri doesn’t know how else to classify the sea-quakes. This time it’s hard enough that their boat tilts dangerously to the side, but thankfully one of the dolphins leans against it to keep it from tipping Yuri into the water. “T-Thanks,” Yuri manages, giving the dolphin a hesitant pat on the head; it trills and leans into his hand before diving back underwater. “What are you talking about? That’s… Well, that’s no dolphin, is it?”
“No,” Byleth responds, casting a harried glance behind him—the dorsal fin is gone, but Yuri has a feeling that doesn’t mean whatever it had been attached to is, too. “That’s a—”
And then the sea seems to erupt.
Breaking the surface of the water is not one, not two, but nine long, serpentine necks—the nine simultaneous roars the Hydra lets out is powerful enough to fully tip their boat over, and Yuri hears Byleth yelp just as they plunge underwater. Yuri fumbles for the Fetters of Dromi, feeling himself grow lighter as soon as the gold chains close around his hand, and he kicks his way up to the surface just in time to see Byleth clinging onto one of the dolphins’ back. “Yuri!” Byleth shouts, over the clamor both the dolphins and the Hydra are making. “Get out of here!”
Yuri spits out a mouthful of saltwater. “How, genius!?” he shouts back. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t anyway! Just give me a minute!”
He has no idea how to swim, but the Fetters of Dromi can do just about anything even remotely related to speed and stealth, and after extensive research Yuri had concluded that’s because it literally reduces the wearer’s weight, making it easier to run faster and steal quicker. With tremendous effort, Yuri paddles his way over to the capsized boat, hops atop it, and draws Killing Edge. Even the sword feels lighter in his grip. “Hey, you!” he yells, which isn’t exactly his most eloquent insult, but it’ll simply have to do. “Over here, shitheads!”
The Hydra heads all swivel to focus on him, hissing in sync. Yuri grins, trying to feel as confident as he needs to. “Aren’t these waters a bit cold for you? What are you doing all the way out here?” And then he jumps, swinging down on the largest head with a cry.
Yuri’s no idiot—he knows cutting one head off will result in two more growing back faster than he can blink. But he’s been in Camp Half-Blood for five years now, and questions about how to deal with the Hydra come up in every single one of Seteth’s quizzes. He slices a large gash down the front of the largest head’s face, falls down to land neatly atop another head, and jabs his sword into its eye. Its roars are deafening, but hearing them is far more preferable to getting eaten. “Yuri!” Byleth shouts, clearly worried. “Let’s—we can’t beat it! Over here, come on!”
“Can’t beat it?” Yuri repeats. He’s never heard Byleth say that about any of the monsters they had fought so far, even the ones Yuri himself had wanted to run away from. “What are you on about? Hurry up and—”
He doesn’t get to tell Byleth to join him in blinding the Hydra, because the head he’s on shakes from side to side, and Yuri loses his balance, toppling back into the water—somehow he keeps his grip on Killing Edge, but even with the boost from the Fetters of Dromi, the water is still the Hydra’s domain. With a curse, Yuri reverts his sword back into a ring and rapidly swims away, grabbing onto a dolphin when it approaches him and seems to offer its dorsal fin. “Thanks again,” Yuri gasps out, as soon as they hit the surface. It’s the same dolphin that had helped steady the boat earlier.
The dolphin trills, but as Yuri glances behind him, he can see the Hydra rapidly gaining—it doesn’t even have to swim far before it can stretch out one of its many necks and open its gaping jaws lined with razor-sharp teeth. “Shit,” Yuri curses, not for the first time. He readies Killing Edge in one hand, but he can’t attack and hold onto the dolphin at the same time—
Suddenly he’s pushed harshly to the side, and he plunges underwater again—the dolphin had shaken him off. Yuri groans, spitting yet more water out as he flails his way back up to the surface—
Just in time to see the Hydra head close its jaws around the dolphin.
Its pained shriek echoes in Yuri’s head. He’s vaguely aware he’s screaming “No,” but the Hydra doesn’t pay him any attention as it rears back and snaps the dolphin up. Blood runs thick and red down its scales.
Again, Yuri thinks, again—
“Yuri!” he hears, and he whirls around to see Byleth quickly approaching, holding onto the other dolphin. It looks up at its podmate—or at the Hydra head, anyway—and lets out a long, mournful wail that Yuri thinks he’s going to remember for forever.
“Byleth,” Yuri manages, his voice scratchy from saltwater. “T-That—I didn’t—it just—”
Byleth shakes his head, but there’s a new darkness in his eyes, one that almost frightens Yuri. “You’re right,” he says—he reaches up to tap his single, glowing red earring, and the Sword of the Creator appears in his hand. “We have to fight.”
Earlier, Byleth had asked one of the dolphins for its name. Do all dolphins have names? Yuri’s sure they do, but probably only in their own language of whistles and trills. The one that had helped him—it must have had a name, too. And Yuri would never know it now.
He tightens his grip on Killing Edge. “Okay. Alright. You know what to do, right?”
Yuri so rarely sees Byleth actually fight—most of the time he doesn’t even really need to, because one charmspoken word and his enemies either drop dead or stay still long enough for him to hack their heads off with one move. But even as Byleth climbs atop the underside of the boat and leaps off of it shouting, “Die!” only a few of the Hydra heads shy away from him while the rest hiss back in clear defiance. Just as Yuri had done, he aims for the eyes, the blade of his sword separating into its segmented parts and sometimes scooping the eyeballs clean out of the head’s sockets—even Yuri has to wince in mild disgust.
But the Hydra is so large that even after they’ve blinded over half of the heads, all it has to do is flail around hard enough and that would be enough to smack either of them clean into the ocean depths. The largest head, despite having a giant gash down the front of its face, can still see too—it seems to have its eyes set on Yuri, which is just great. When it flings Yuri into the water for what feels like the third time, Yuri can swear he’s never swallowed more saltwater than today.
Just a little more, Yuri tells himself—but he’s tiring, and even with the Fetters of Dromi, it’s getting harder and harder to climb atop the boat then jump back onto the Hydra. Byleth is slowing down too, clearly unused to prolonged battle like this. With a tired groan, Yuri struggles to lift himself onto the boat, pain spiking through his hands when he digs his nails into the wood. Just a little more—
“Yuri!”
He looks up, stares up at the stream of acid aimed right towards him—ah, shit, really now—
And then he’s shoved out of the way when Byleth, a black-and-blue blur, appears out of nowhere to bodily block the acid.
It’s the smell of burning flesh that hits Yuri first. No, no, again, not again—he grabs Byleth’s uninjured arm as the Sword of the Creator reverts back into an earring, props Byleth’s body atop the boat—and Yuri has to force himself to keep his eyes open when he sees where the acid had hit. Byleth’s entire right arm is already turning a sickly green, and—and if Yuri looks any further, he’s just going to get sick, but how is he supposed to treat this? He hadn’t bothered with bringing ambrosia along, because that’s hardly the first thing he thinks of when not going on a quest—
The Hydra roars again, but this time it’s only one lone voice—Yuri turns around and sees the eight smaller heads thrashing around blindly while the largest one advances towards them. With a snarl, Yuri grabs his sword, launches himself off the boat, and lands right in the center of the Hydra’s head. “Man,” Yuri sneers, “fuck you,” and then he digs his sword into its eyes.
It shrieks so loudly that Yuri thinks he goes temporarily deaf—he has just enough balance to dig his sword into its other eye before it flings him back into the water. But he’d done his job, and the Hydra bubbles piteously as it sinks back into the water, leaving golden dust trailing behind in its wake like blood.
Yuri paddles weakly back to the boat, but in the short time he’d been away, the poisoned area seems to have just gotten worse. “No,” he whispers, “no, no, no—Byleth, wake up!”
No response—Byleth’s unconscious, his breathing rapid and shallow and his eyes screwed shut. It’s supposed to be me, Yuri thinks, numbly, I was supposed to be hit, not him, I was supposed to die, not the dolphin, not Mom—
If he were Byleth, he would have called for a dolphin to help them swim somewhere where they could get help—if he were Ashe, he would have shortened the distance from here to camp or a safe place. But Yuri is just Yuri, and while he knows to appreciate his strengths, why do they have to be so limited? In here, in this ocean, there are no roads for him to follow, nothing for him to use to his advantage. Even if he equipped Byleth with the Fetters of Dromi to make it easier to carry him, where would Yuri go? All he can see around him is ocean for miles on end.
Yuri swallows back what would have been a sob. After Mom, he’d sworn to be strong enough to never need protecting again, to never need anyone die for him again. And yet, and yet—after five years, isn’t he still the same scared child, hiding in the cabinet, watching as his mother sacrificed herself for his safety?
“Byleth,” he whispers, again—without the Hydra, the waters are still and calm again, but this time the quiet from earlier carries a different feeling altogether. “Byleth, I…”
Didn’t even get to tell you what I meant to say, didn’t even get to hear you answer me, didn’t even… didn’t even get to see where you wanted to bring me so badly…
Something whistles in the distance, and Yuri glances up—at first he nearly leaps five feet out of the water when he sees the dorsal fin, but he relaxes when the dolphin swims closer. It’s the slightly-smaller one from earlier, the one Byleth had mentioned being ‘new.’ It trills something Yuri doesn’t understand, before nudging Byleth’s leg with its snout.
“You…” Yuri stares. “You’ll carry him?”
The dolphin bobs its head up and down, and Yuri’s surprised it knows how to nod, but he won’t question it—he maneuvers Byleth’s prone body onto the back of the dolphin, then gently grips onto its fin to secure Byleth between the dolphin and himself. “You know where to go?” Yuri asks. He doesn’t know where the dolphin might bring them, whether it be back to the shores of Montauk or wherever dolphins might live, but right now he doesn’t have much of a choice.
A high-pitched whistle is his only answer before it starts swimming away.
Yuri can’t tell how long the dolphin swims, but it can’t be more than half an hour before it starts slowing down and Yuri starts seeing land, blessed land, again. Right away he can tell it’s not Montauk, though, or whatever is on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean—as they grow closer, it looks more like a large rock formation than anything with a dark opening in the middle. A cave, he realizes. In the middle of the ocean, sure, but he’ll take it if it means he can have something solid under his feet again.
When the dolphin slows to a stop by the mouth of the cave, Yuri drags Byleth atop the craggy surface, wincing at how it scrapes against his legs and further rips his jeans—they’ll just have to ask Bernadetta at camp to stitch it back together.
Assuming they ever get back to camp, anyway. Yuri rests Byleth against one side of the cave as the dolphin whistles, lingering by the shore. “I can’t understand you,” Yuri says, reaching over to rub its head. “Thank you. But I… I don’t know how I can help him, I didn’t bring any ambrosia…”
The dolphin chatters, sounding irritable. It dives back underwater, and Yuri wonders if he’d irritated it with his petting or something—he peers down, just to catch its outline disappearing beneath the cave surface. What the?
Yuri turns back around—the cave depths loom ahead of him, dark and foreboding. He doesn’t have a flashlight or anything on him… but Byleth’s earring does glow. With a sigh, Yuri fixes the Fetters of Dromi onto Byleth’s unhurt hand, then lifts him into his arms in a bridal-carry. “Don’t get embarrassed,” he mumbles, more to himself than to Byleth. “Or you can, as long as you live after this.”
Predictably enough, Byleth doesn’t respond, his head lolling slightly. The earring glows, almost pulses, just enough for Yuri to see exactly one step ahead of him.
If Byleth had weighed his normal weight, Yuri’s fairly sure he would have collapsed from exhaustion after the first five minutes; as it is, he manages to walk for around thrice that length before he hears a familiar whistle up ahead. It’s like the dolphin doesn’t want him to rest. Yuri forges on, spurred by the occasional impatient whistle, and it’s only when he lifts his head to look around him that he realizes he doesn’t need Byleth’s earring to see anymore—there are actual light sources, and not from holes in the ceiling to let sunlight in.
At first glance, the decorations strung up in the cave ceiling look like, of all things, fairy lights—but that’s impossible, because they’re in the middle of the ocean, and there wouldn’t be anywhere to plug those in. Yet whatever the things are, they bear a striking resemblance to fairy lights, or Christmas lights, or… whatever. Lights, basically. Multicolored ones, but mostly pinks and blues and whites. They blink and flicker, but in a way that implies they were made to operate like that, not from a lack of electricity.
Yuri’s so distracted staring around him that he doesn’t realize how near the dolphin’s whistle is now—when he looks back in front of him, there’s a small pond where the dolphin is lazily swimming circles in. No, not a pond—it’s an opening underwater to the rest of the ocean. The cave seems to open up slightly here in a vaguely-circular room, filled with all sorts of things: fishing rods, buckets, sleeping bags. In one corner is a half-opened box filled with a variety of things Yuri can’t make out from here, but the dolphin points its snout towards it and trills importantly.
He hastens to lay Byleth down again and heads over to the box—it’s demigod-related stuff, Yuri realizes with a start. There are daggers of Celestial Bronze, various spoils of war, bags of golden drachma, and even bottles of Greek fire, but most importantly is the slightly-crushed pack of ambrosia cubes at the bottom of the box. Yuri snatches it up and looks over at the dolphin, which is now jerking its snout in Byleth’s direction, as if telling him to hurry up.
“You—How did you know about this?” Yuri stammers. “And are these even edible? Does ambrosia have an expiration date?”
The dolphin practically screeches now, impatient and insistent.
“Alright, alright,” Yuri grumbles—being told off by a dolphin wasn’t on his bucket list, but he supposes he can check that off now anyway. He sits down next to Byleth, moving his head atop his lap, and starts slowly feeding him the ambrosia—Yuri can faintly smell his mother’s famous pheasant roast and Ashe’s fish and bean soup, which means the ambrosia hasn’t expired, at least. Can ambrosia expire? He should ask Seteth about that soon.
It takes a while, and Yuri finishes all the ambrosia in the small plastic bag, but finally Byleth seems to relax—it takes less coaxing for him to eat the rest of the ambrosia, at least, but he still doesn’t open his eyes. Finally, just as Yuri slips the last of the ambrosia into his mouth, Byleth stirs, mumbling something. “What’s that?” Yuri asks, heart beating rapidly in his chest.
Byleth leans into his hand, as if wanting more of the food. “Dad…?”
Yuri stills. The ambrosia… It’s supposed to taste of whatever the eater’s favorite food is. Did Byleth’s father cook for him often? “Byleth…”
Byleth groans, before his eyes flutter open—his right arm is slowly but surely returning back to its normal tan. “O-Oh—Yuri? What are—”
“Hey, hey, stay down,” Yuri orders, nudging Byleth back when he tries to sit up. “You’re still recovering. Are you feeling okay?”
“Stings a little,” Byleth says, wincing as he flexes his arm, “but not so bad… How did we get here? Did the dolphins help?” He looks around as best as he can while still lying down, and the colors of the not-fairy-lights dance in his eyes, making him look a tad too similar to his mother’s multicolored eyes.
Yuri nods. “Just the one.” He looks over at the cave pond (what else is he supposed to call it?), but the dolphin from earlier is… already gone. “Huh? Wait, hold on, it was… just there…”
A little smaller and sleeker… its small eyes glimmering several different colors… its skin shining with something more than just the sun glistening on the water… “You’re pretty…”
“Oh, come on,” Yuri sighs. Can’t Aphrodite just help her son out in a normal way that doesn’t involve turning into one of her sacred animals?
Byleth stares up at him. “What is it?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Yuri looks back down at him, and the reality of what had just happened comes crashing back—Byleth taking the attack for him, Byleth nearly dying for him. “Oh, gods,” Yuri mumbles, stroking Byleth’s hair out of habit; “what were you thinking? Why did you do that?”
Byleth’s nose scrunches up. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t have to protect me.” Yuri feels his throat clog up with emotion so thick it feels corporeal. “If Aph—I mean, if that dolphin hadn’t helped, you… you would’ve died, you know. I didn’t have any ambrosia on me.”
“Oh.” Byleth shrugs weakly. “It’s no big deal.”
“I—no big deal?” Yuri repeats, incredulous. “Do you hear yourself right now? You almost died. Byleth, I—I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. My mother died because she protected me, too,” he adds, unable to keep the words from spilling out of his mouth; they taste as sulfuric as Hydra acid. “She distracted the monsters, gave me time to escape. Earlier, that dolphin also… and then, and then you…”
He trails off after that—there’s not much else to add, and Yuri thinks Byleth gets the point.
With difficulty, Byleth sits up, and this time Yuri’s too tired to force him to stay down again. Byleth shuffles to sit next to Yuri, leaning his back against the cave wall while bumping their shoulders together. “Do you know what this cave is?” he asks, softly, instead of responding to pretty much anything Yuri had just said.
Yuri shakes his head. “Was this some sort of hideout? Or a safe house?” It makes sense—Byleth had been on the run for as long as he could remember, apparently, and Yuri’s heard tales of demigods often making safe houses for themselves when they could, stocking up on resources and leaving them in strategic spots.
“Sort of,” Byleth says. “This is where my dad met my mom.”
Of all the answers Yuri had been expecting to hear, that was not one of them. “What?” he says—it at least explains how the dolphin from earlier, which he now knows is just yet another one of Aphrodite’s disguises, knew this place.
“My dad liked fishing,” Byleth says. He picks at the loose thread on his jeans again, not minding how the fabric seems to have ripped even further. “He went on a fishing boat with some friends in this area and, well, fished. But the Hydra attacked, wrecked the boat. Aphrodite was in this cave… talking to the dolphins or something. She rescued him and brought him here. My dad fell in love and kept coming back here to talk to her. They decorated the place, as you can see.” He waves a hand at the not-fairy-lights, which Yuri supposes is driven by Aphrodite’s magic rather than electricity.
Yuri takes a long look around the cave. There are definitely signs of it being lived in, with all the items scattered around. Byleth sighs, folding his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around his knees. “When I was twelve,” he murmurs, “my dad tried bringing me here. He wanted me to at least… feel the presence of my mom, I guess. But on the way, the Hydra attacked again. He protected me with his life. Aphrodite didn’t show herself, but the dolphins brought me here, and it must have been her who turned Dad’s body into sea foam.”
“I…” Yuri looks down. Even if he hadn’t been there, he’s almost a hundred percent sure Aphrodite had disguised herself as one of the dolphins at that time. And this definitely explains why Byleth had seemed so scared of the Hydra earlier. “Oh.”
“I don’t want to keep losing people important to me,” Byleth says, lifting his gaze to meet Yuri’s eyes. Yuri’s not sure if it’s the Aphrodite lights, but Byleth’s eyes are still flickering a hundred different colors, beautiful and entrancing in a way a siren song is enchanting and dangerous at once. “I think I’d rather die than grieve again. You know what that feels like, right?”
Yuri looks down at his palms—even now he can remember how they had looked, smaller than they are now, stained with his mother’s blood. The Stymphalian birds had picked at her body down to the bones, and he was—is—too much of a coward to return to his home to bury her skeleton, at the very least. After all this time, even those bones may have been taken away by stray dogs. “Yeah.”
For a while, it’s silent, only the bubbling of the ocean water serving as noise. If Yuri listens closely, he thinks he might be able to make out more whistles and trills in the distance, and he wonders if the other dolphins may be mourning the death of one of their kind.
“This is where you wanted to show me?” Yuri asks. “Badly enough that you risked the Hydra? How come?”
Byleth scratches his cheek. “I didn’t think it would even work. This cave is only visible to those approved or blessed by Aphrodite, so if you’re here, I guess she must like you.”
Yuri’s fairly sure that dolphin had absolutely hated him and only let him in here because it was an emergency, but he decides against pointing that out. “Well, it worked. So, uh, what was the point again? The fairy lights are nice and all, but I wouldn’t say they were worth… literally everything else that happened today.”
Byleth smiles, and it’s the first real bit of happiness Yuri has felt within the past hour. “Um, Yuri. Well. I… I guess, what I mean is—this is where my parents fell in love. You know?”
“Yes,” Yuri says, patiently. “You told me that some two minutes ago.”
Byleth makes a frantic gesture with his hand that Yuri can’t help but find cute, despite Byleth looking clearly flustered. “So, um… you know, I… Do I really need to say it?” he mumbles, pouting a little. “You’re Yuri. I bet you already know.”
“Yes,” Yuri says again, now more amused than anything, “but hey, doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear you say it, you know.”
“It’s embarrassing,” Byleth grumbles.
“You can’t be embarrassed about anything that involves me!”
“Fine.” A pause—Byleth fumbles with his hands for a little while until he eventually rests them atop Yuri’s. Yuri blinks—alright, he certainly hadn’t been expecting that, and his heart chooses now to start flinging itself around in his chest. “Yuri,” Byleth says, perfectly seriously now, “I like you. I like you very much.”
Yuri feels ready to float off into Olympus. “Th—uh—I-I like you too,” he stammers out, hastily adding, “Stop snickering and acting all smug, damn it!”
“But—” Byleth snickers. “You’re the one who was telling me not to be embarrassed, and now you’re stuttering.”
“I am not stuttering.”
“Sure.” Byleth smiles, soft and fond and so caring, and—Yuri swallows back the emotion in his throat. He can’t remember the last time he’s felt cared for like this. “So… if we like each other… can I kiss you now?”
Yuri rolls his eyes. “Byleth, you can do much more than just a kiss.”
“All good romances start with a kiss first,” Byleth insists, despite the blush rising to his cheeks. “So? I-Is that a yes?”
“Pretty sure it is.”
“Consent’s always important,” Byleth mumbles, more to himself than anything, before he leans in and tilts his head just so.
Yuri closes his eyes. Byleth’s lips are soft and taste of saltwater, which Yuri is getting pretty sick of, but getting to kiss Byleth means he’ll allow pretty much anything. Byleth’s hand tightens into a grip around his own, and Yuri lets their fingers intertwine. This is it, Yuri thinks—this is what he wants when he thinks of the future, this is what lifts the fog and turns that murky black river a sparkling clear blue. This is what he wants. And by the gods, he hopes this is what Byleth wants, too—
Something splashes from behind.
Yuri shoves Byleth away, draws Killing Edge, and hacks off the head of a sea serpent that had surfaced from the cave pond. It dissolves into golden dust near immediately, which is the fastest Yuri has ever killed a monster. “What the hell?” Yuri shouts, just as two more sea serpents rise from the water like Hydra heads. “Can’t we go two damn minutes without being attacked by monsters!?”
“Ow,” Byleth mumbles piteously. “You didn’t need to push me…”
“Sure, tell me that again when it chomps your head off.” Yuri belatedly realizes Byleth’s still wearing the Fetters of Dromi, but he doesn’t particularly care—seeing Byleth wear the golden ring makes Yuri’s heart flutter like a deranged butterfly. “Alright, let’s take care of these guys.”
“W-What? Wait!” Byleth protests. “That… That was barely a kiss. It lasted… I don’t know, three seconds. Can’t we do that again?”
Yuri glances back at the sea serpents, then steps over to Byleth’s side and mashes their lips together. Byleth yelps in surprise, but melts endearingly quickly when Yuri nips at his lower lip and licks at the inside of his cheek; when Yuri pulls back, Byleth leans just slightly forward, looking adorably dazed. “You can do whatever you like,” Yuri says, grinning at the sight of his lip gloss smeared across Byleth’s mouth, “after we get rid of these monsters. Sound good?”
Afterwards, Yuri can safely say he has never seen Byleth look so motivated while chopping sea serpents’ heads off.