#khalid/yuri is honestly the most juvenile thing

[yellowocaballero]

kinda obsessed with yuri and claude in rosetta headstone,,, like theyre just the stupidest smart people, and only now are they finally communicating with each other. like the way khalid has grown up throughout the fic, and yuris complicated issues with trust and intimacy. idk, don't mind me, im just gonna go sit in a corner while rotating them and this whole story in my brain.

Thank you!!! I'm love them also. Honestly, Yuri was the only character who I put in real effort to try and keep in-character. Which was tough as hell - I feel like I only actually landed on his character a few stories after I wrote this one.

Yuri is so good. Your early interactions with him are nothing but him repeatedly trying to convince you how terrible he is. He's a lot of bluster and obfuscation and kinda tsundere but he can be painfully sincere too. Yuri grows close to Khalid because he's one of the few people he does trust - because Yuri and Khalid are the same guy and Yuri will always trust a self-centered asshole, aka Yuri trusts what he understands. But then Khalid grows too close, and Khalid's growth as a person means that he turns into somebody Yuri doesn't understand anymore, and Yuri realizes way too late that he's let Khalid into his heart, and then he panics and starts pushing him away. I think Yuri would have just propositioned him like five months ago and tried to win his affections that way if Byleth (Dimitri vibed out Khalid's aceness for her) hadn't mildly suggested that Yuri try the long way and actually getting closer emotionally with him. ("Try flowers." "How did I know you'd say that.").

I think main characters have to change throughout a story, even if it's just in self-acceptance or a change of understanding. I think a story where the most important person is a teacher should involve a drastic change in their students, and everybody should take away a different lesson. Byleth's influence on Yuri was through allowing him to be a student too: Yuri, like Khalid, understands the world through a give-and-take framework, and he struggles repeatedly to accept Byleth's generosity and care given with nothing expected in return. Yuri's growth as a character comes to a point where he expresses what he wants honestly with Khalid, allows himself to be a young person, and accepts the care that Khalid has learned to supply. Khalid believes that all people are selfish and self-centered, so he has no obligation to try and be a good person. Byleth shows him that we have a responsibility to ourselves and to others, that there are good people in the world who care about him very much, and that the least we can do is return that care.

I've said like ten times that the story is about communication, and despite how Yuri and Khalid are literally the same guy (or because of it), it takes the entire story to get to a confession scene. Yuri pulls the most teen boy bullshit and teases him and flirts with him in a way that he KNOWS Khalid isn't going to really understand, and as a result the Khalid who actually does really like him just assumes that it's not reciprocated, so he doesn't say anything. So juvenile.

In the end, you have to trust someone enough to let them turn you down. You have to trust yourself enough to say what you feel. It's not so bad to be young and do stupid young person things. If you need something said, ask somebody to say it. I should finish that follow-up story with them but it was literally going nowhere jaksldf thanks for the ask!