Blue Echo (Yuri On Ice / Victuuri Mermaid AU)

Yurio, demanding

Yuri rested on the bed of his cave, his body snugly tucked in among the algae. Fingers held the locket around his neck a few inches above his face. Tugging at the chain. Open, close, open, close. Victor, no Victor, Victor, no Victor.

It had been two days since he'd arrived back at the nest. His monitor meeting with Takeshi had gone well. The shipwreck he had witnessed still hadn't been recovered, and Yuri was assigned to lead the recovery team there.

The event already felt like something long in his past. Not something that had happened just a few days ago. The ocean swallowing the vessel. The screams he couldn't do nothing about. Saving Victor.

The dark haired shifted in the algae as he stared at Victor's image inside the locket. He hadn't really slept since he'd left the human. Every time he would doze off, Victor would appear. Touching him, saying things to him, stealing away Yuri's sleep. Yuri would snap awake from the dreams, feeling warm all over and with the urge to push his fingers inside his slit.

It was the first time he regretted not paying attention during his mater lessons as a fingerling. What would have been the point of learning how his body would behave when it was getting ready to have fry if he was never going to birth them. At the time he'd been certain he would avoid being paired with someone. That he could use the pity the elders felt for him and use it to his advantage. Beg them not to force a mate on him. Beg them not force him to make another family he could lose.

He'd been so certain. He'd been a naive fingerling. 

And now he couldn't stop thinking about a human.

He needed to talk to Yuko about this. As the head nursing natare she would know what was happening to his body. Unlike most of the natare in the nest, Yuri trusted her. He trusted her, considered her family, and he still needed to figure out what lie he would tell her. Which unpaired, of-age natare in the nest could he pretend was making him react like this? Chris? Seung? Jean?

Yuri shook his head. None of those seemed like good options. He barely knew any of them.

What if he told her the truth? That it was Victor. What would she say if he told her his body wasn't working right. That it was reacting as if Yuri and Victor could mate. Victor was human, their bodies were different. There was no way they could physically bond. No way that Yuri could choose him as his mate. Even though he wanted to... He wanted to...

Yuri rolled and pressed his face against the bed of algae. Hands crushing the plants, fin curling against his chest. The thought of Victor being his chosen mate made his body hot with need. He exhaled slowly, his arms and fin shivering with want.

As he opened the locket again to look at the picture inside, Yuri gave in to his thoughts and imagined that Victor could be his mate, and that they could bond. The natare ran his hand down his body from skin to fin. Remembering the weight of Victor on top of him. The human's skin against his, his body shivering in response, fingers slowly pried open his slit.

"Scotoplane are you in here?"

Yuri straightening up with a hard flick of his fin. He pulled the curtain to see the fingerling Yuri glaring at him from the entrance to his cave.

"Aha!" The fingerling rushed to Yuri's side, invading his personal space. "You're here. Where have you been? Takeshi said you had to train me. You're not training me."

Yuri put space between them. Crap. The fingerling had noticed he'd left the nest? How much did he know? No one else had mentioned he'd left. Takeshi would have mentioned it. He would have gotten in trouble already. "What did you call me?"