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The war is finally over and this poses a problem.
A really fucking huge problem, actually.
Yuri hasn't spoken to anyone about it and maybe he should but he can't, not when it feels so much larger than life.
He wants to propose.
He's been telling himself since the start of the year—new beginnings, and all that—that he'd propose when the war was over. He must've promised himself a thousand times over that he would, that he could, even. That he wasn't about to let Byleth slip through his fingers again.
Well, it turns out he can't. The war has been over for months and this ring is still burning a hole in his pocket. A coward, he's a coward, and the war has shown him this better than anything ever could've. Every day for a year, he risked losing everything—his life, his friends' lives, Byleth, again—but this is what scares him? This is what trips him up, makes his hands shake with nerves?
A ring he bought off Anna—he swore her to absolute secrecy, notorious gossip that she is—and a question he's wanted to ask since Byleth came back to him? It should be so easy. It is so easy... in theory.
Yuri's never been the one asking—he doesn't know how to do it, which doesn't make sense because he's been proposed to so many times that surely he can stitch something together from his own memory, but Byleth doesn't deserve that. He deserves something special, something romantic and private and memorable and Yuri just...
He doesn't know.
Pathetic how this stupid ring is kicking his ass. He should throw it into the mountains and forget about it.
He doesn't. He holds it close, turns it in his hands so the light filtering into the Goddess Tower glints off of it, and then he hides it in a panic when he hears footsteps coming up the stairs.
It's Byleth—of course it is, he was probably waiting for Yuri in the dining hall and he never showed up because he was sitting in here, freaking out over a ring and a question that he should've asked months ago.
He joins Yuri at the railing—the metal rusted away years ago with no one to maintain it and, thanks to Dimitri, an Imperial soldier took a pretty nasty fall—and sits beside him on the cool floor. "What are you doing up here?" he asks, voice low in the quiet of sunset.
Yuri sighs, his head falling to his shoulder. One of Byleth's hands strokes his hair back from his forehead, even though it flutters down again anyway.
"Is everything alright?"
Yuri peeks up, finding Byleth's eyes already on him. "It is now," he says.
He presses his mouth to Yuri's forehead, a comfort that makes his eyes fall shut, then asks, "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Yes," he says, and then, "no." He hides his face in Byleth's shoulder, and his mumbled, "I don't know," comes out muffled.
Byleth tips his head against Yuri's, the hand in his hair slipping down to twine with one of his. "You know you can talk to me about anything, right? I'm not going to judge you."
Yuri stares at their hands, his cheek still against Byleth's shoulder, and then he straightens up and moves to stand. Byleth lets his hand slip away uncontested, watching him for a moment before he stands too, clearly taking it as a sign to move on.
So he does, because he's wonderful and kind and considerate and he deserves someone far better than Yuri, someone who can actually muster up the courage to propose to him—it's not as if he's lacking in potential suitors, either. Yuri's just the lucky sap who beat them all to the punch.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," he says simply, an easy smile on his face. "But if you ever do, I'll listen. Now come on, you missed dinner and the dining hall is about to close for the evening."
He turns and starts for the stairs, the waning light deepening the shadows in the wrinkles of his crisp white shirt and Yuri opens his mouth and starts to say "It's really nothing," but he only gets as far as "It's really—" and then he stops because it isn't nothing.
It makes Byleth stop and look back, just over his shoulder, with a hand on the low wall that serves a railing, his face half in shadow and the other half smiling. "Hm?" he hums, and something about it makes Yuri so overwhelmed.
"Marry me," he says, and Byleth freezes for a moment before turning to him.
"Come again?"
Yuri flushes bright and suddenly even the cool evening air is too stifling. "Don't play coy with me. I asked you to marry me," he says again, because it's all he can manage right now, and Byleth is so close that it puffs back against his face, warm and jittery and hopeful.
He continues before he can respond, before he can lose his nerve. "I know it's ridiculous—you're the archbishop and I'm... well—" He gestures to himself, like that explains it for him. "—but I have to know: is there really room in your world for someone like me?"
"Don't sell yourself short, Yuri," Byleth says, tucking a stray lock of hair out of his face. "Without you, I would be nothing."
Part of him wants to agree, take back his insecurity and lock it away again, but there's such a sweet, tender look on his face that he can't bring himself to break whatever this is, to ruin the moment.
So instead, he says, "I'm sure you would've gotten on just fine."
Byleth's hands warm the sides of his face, and he leans down just a little, just enough to meet his eyes, and he says, so soft, so loving, "There is no one in the world I would rather be with. Not in all of Fódlan, or Brigid or Duscur or Almyra or Sreng. You are the one I want to spend my life with."
Yuri's mouth opens, and then closes again when he realizes the implications of those words. "Does—are you—"
The ring Byleth takes out of his pocket catches the fading sun and holds it.
"It was my father's," he explains when Yuri says nothing, his voice soft with memories. "He told me to give it to someone I love. So... it's yours now."
"Oh," he murmurs, staring at it. He tears his gaze away to look at him, searching, but he finds no deceit behind those strange eyes, that ever-present smile. All he finds is pure, sweet, honeyed adoration. "Byleth, I—"
He gestures to his hands. "If I may?"
Yuri gets the hint and tugs his right glove off first, and then the other, because it feels stupid to only wear one. Byleth lifts his hand first to his mouth, the sweet kiss he presses against his knuckles making Yuri flush even hotter, and then he slides the ring over his finger. It catches the light on his finger when he tilts his hand, and releases it when he tilts it back.
He catches Byleth watching for a moment, and then he takes his hand and presses a kiss to his palm, and that's when Yuri remembers that he has a ring of his own—Goddess this proposal has not gone the way he thought it would.
"Wait!" he says, pulling his hand away and fumbling for the ring he'd tucked away earlier. "I—I have one too, I—" Does he admit he bought it off Anna? Byleth's ring is special—of course it is, of course he has this all figured out, he's perfect, better than Yuri deserves—and, while it was pricey, Yuri's is just that; a ring.
Even so, Byleth glows when he sees it, and it almost makes him feel better about it, especially when he says, "You bought me a ring?" He wastes no time in holding out his hand so Yuri can put it on him.
He does, focusing a little too hard on the task just so he doesn't have to look at Byleth when he replies, "I've... had it for a while."
It must be obvious, because Byleth's hand returns to his cheek—the new addition feels foreign against his face, but grounding, weighty—and tilts his chin up to see him. "Have you now?" he teases, and his voice is so warm and sweet that Yuri can only be half-irritated.
Even as he leans into Byleth's palm, his eyes closing, he mutters, "Leave me alone."
Instead of that, instead of doing anything even remotely of the sort, Byleth places his other hand on Yuri's neck and leans in to kiss him. He presses up into it, unable to recall what he'd ever been so afraid of, anyway, when Byleth's "I love you," presses so succinctly against his mouth.