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"You trust me, right?” Yuuri asks into the crook of Victor’s neck. “Even after everything?” Even after my existence nearly got us both killed? is the question that goes unsaid, but they both understand. They’re curled around each other, hidden in a cove on the beach, only the stars and some bioluminescent algae providing light, only their clothes and each other’s body heat providing warmth.
Yuuri shudders as Victor sighs, his breath ghosting over Yuuri’s ear. “With my life,” Victor says quietly. “Or my death, if that turns out to best option.”
“No,” Yuuri hisses. “I’ve told you before and I’m telling you again, your death will solve nothing.” His grasp on Victor tightens, “You promised to stay close to me, didn’t you? You can’t do that if you die, Victor.”
His lover- fiance, laughs a little. It’s a heartless laugh, all morbidity and no humour. “If I do die, you’ll lay me to rest, won’t you? Carry one of my knucklebones with you once I’m nothing but a skeleton in the deep sea. That way I can stay close to you forever.”
“Victor.”
Victor’s breath hitches, and he shifts his body so that Yuuri is on top of him, instead of next to him. He brings a hand up to trail his finger on Yuuri’s face- from the blue scales that peek from under his bangs to the lighter ones that pattern his neck, his delicate cheekbones to the corner of lips that he’s kissed many, many times. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, “I would happily die so that you can escape from the hunters. You don’t belong in an exotic aquarium, or on a dissection table, Yuuri-”
“I belong by your side,” Yuuri says insistently, narrowing his eyes to stare at Victor with a reprimand. “Don’t start pulling that romance protagonist crap on me now, Victor. Your death will solve nothing.”
A sob chokes its way out of Victor’s throat. “How we escape then?” he squeezes his eyes shut and Yuuri rolls off of him to resume cuddling into his side. “They’re combing the beach for us, surely. They’ll find us by dawn- noon, at best. I love you, Yuuri, but I hate being so... uncertain.”
Yuuri closes his eyes for a moment, and takes Victor’s hands in his. “Look at me, Victor.” Victor turns, albeit reluctantly, blue eyes full of confusion. It’s a look that hurts Yuuri, pierces his heart, makes him regret every decision that led up to this moment, because that is not a look that Victor should wear, ever. Victor belongs to happiness and endearing heart-shaped smiles, not despair and fear of what may happen in a few hours. “Victor, I have a plan.”
“A plan,” Victor repeats. “What plan?”
Yuuri shakes his head. “I can’t say anything. Just- I need you to trust me, Victor.”
“Of course I do,” Victor whispers.
They fall asleep like that, legs tangled together and hands clasped, a mimicry of nights long past which they had laid in post-coital bliss.
“Trust me?” Yuuri asks as they stand at a precipice overlooking the ocean, hand-in-hand, the waves crashing below them, the sun rising behind them. The hunters are yelling, trying to figure out a way to capture Yuuri without them possibly falling off the edge and into the water. The moment Yuuri enters the water, they know that the hunt is lost.
“With my life,” Victor swears. There’s the slightest tremor in his hand, though, fear mixed with acceptance in his eyes. Yuuri knows what he’s thinking: that this situation has only one sort of ending for them. Death. But Victor is the kind of lovestruck fool that would die together with Yuuri rather than let Yuuri be captured by those that hunt his kind.
Yuuri gazes at him intently, backing closer and closer to the edge as he brings up a hand to cup Victor’s cheek. “Are you sure?” he murmurs, barely audible above the waves and the mer-hunters’ angry yelling.
Victor swallows, keeping his gaze on Yuuri as they inch closer to the edge together. “I just wish that we had had more time together,” he says. There’s an unspoken grief in his voice, and Yuuri can only smile. “I love you, Yuuri Katsuki.”
“I love you, Victor Nikiforov,” is all Yuuri says as he leans up for a kiss, and tugs them both backwards into the ocean’s embrace.
The plunge is quick and icy, the ocean accepting Yuuri back with joy, his legs melding together and his scales reappearing after ten seconds in the water, gills fluttering within fifteen. He blinked only when they had hit the surface, and quickly grabs Victor’s face with both of his now-webbed hands, keeping their lips together.
Victor flails a little from the shock of the fall, and his eyes are squeezed shut. Yuuri keeps him close in his embrace, pulling at the magic in his center, praying that the ocean would understand his intentions, grant his wish like Minako had said it could-
When this man dies, he begs in his mind, let him be reborn from my magic, let him be one of us. Let him shed his human life, let him be one of the children of the ocean, Please, please, please-
Yuuri is screaming mentally the whole time, screaming in his heart as well. It grows louder when he feels Victor go limp within a minute, starts rattling in his head when Victor’s skin loses its warmth. He doesn’t let go though. Please, I beg of you, please let him live-
I love him with my all, so let him have half my magic and half my being so he can be with me, please-
Victor opens his eyes again with a gasp, lungs burning and his everything in pain. He registers water first, and shoves what is holding him away, lunging for the light of the sun above him.
“Oh my god!” he wheezes as he breaks the surface, gasping in air in deep breaths. “I- where-”
All around him is ocean. In the distance, he can faintly make out the beach, and the cliff that he and Yuuri had jumped from. “That height should have killed us,” he realizes.
“Victor!” A head pops up next to him, and it’s Yuuri, in all of his mer glory- fins lacing behind his ears, vivid blue scales crawling from his neck down his shoulders and to his webbed and clawed hands, his tail beating below.
... There’s two tails below the water, Victor registers. He looks at the other tail, Yuuri’s words flying over his head, because the other tail is covered in deep purple scales, with lavender fins and its... where his legs should have been.
Victor yanks his hands up, looking in shock at his hands that are now webbed and clawed like Yuuri’s, touches his ears and feels fins lacing behind them. Clasps his neck, only to feel scales instead of human flesh. “Yuuri?” he croaks. “What happened?”
Yuuri is watching him carefully, maintaining an arms-length distance between them. “I... You’re a mer now,” he treats the words with infinite delicacy, as if they could shatter in the air between them and damage their relationship. “When we fell, I prayed to the ocean to let you live. I gave you part of my magic, too.” He takes a deep breath. “When I went to visit home the other day, Elder Minako told me how to become human if I wanted to stay with you. She also told me how you could become mer, if you wanted to.”
Victor stares at him in silence, uncomfortably aware of the movements of his own tail keeping him in place in the water. “You couldn’t tell me?”
Yuuri looks away, shame coloring his features. “I couldn’t,” he mumbles, “One of the prerequsites of that ritual is unconditional trust - if you had known, it wouldn’t have been unconditional, or something like that. Minako said so, at least.” Yuuri hesitates for the briefest second. “Do you hate it?”
He has to pause and collect his thoughts there. “It’s more of a surprise than anything,” Victor admits. “But... I don’t hate it, I think. I won’t be able to see Yuri or Mila or Yakov, though... my friends... I’m happy to have the chance to stay with you as a mer, but it’s all sudden. And I think... I’ll miss them.”
“Oh, you can visit them.”
“What?”
Yuuri chances a smile. “Remember how I could shift into a human form? Well, I gave you half of my magic, so you should have similar capability. When the hunters’ fuss die down, it’ll probably be okay for us to sneak onto land and visit them!”
“I’m not dreaming, right?” Victor says weakly, lifting his new hand up to observe it. “I really became a merman with you.”
“You did.”
Well, Victor thinks wryly, I did always wonder what being a mer would be like. There are so many worse endings than this.
“Victor?”
“Yes?” Yuuri looks at him hesitantly.
“You... you don’t regret it, do you?”
Victor lowers his hand and propels himself closer to Yuuri, taking his hand in his. “No, my sunshine,” he says. “It’s just a shock. But I’m happy that you’re not dead, that I’m not dead, and we can continue being together.”
Yuuri smiles at him. It’s shaky, uncertain, as if he can’t quite believe Victor. It’s also the kind of smile that makes Victor lean forward and press their lips together. Repeatedly. “Are you sure?” Yuuri asks between kisses.
“Very sure,” Victor answers, “It will take a while to get used to it, but I’m good at adapting.” He grins, “So do I finally get to meet your parents now? What about our wedding plans? What are mer weddings like-?”
He’s cut off with Yuuri’s laughter, and Yuuri initiating a kiss, and Yuuri leading him back underwater so they can swim to his home together.
It’s not a bad reason to be interrupted, Victor thinks as he swims alongside Yuuri. He wouldn’t mind these kinds of interruptions for the rest of his life