Chapter Text
The outside is overwhelming really.
He’s bombarded with new colors, vibrant like they’re alive, and it makes his eyes ache. Each new sound: a blast of music, a yelling match between the two brothers, the shattering of glass as Phil drops one during one of his yawning fits, it’s all too much for his ears. Each time something happens, loud and sudden like a thunderstrike, his hands clasp over his ears and he tries to shelter himself from it, sheltered in that pool of water that grants him freedom along with exposing him to the outside world.
A prison of his own making some would say. He got what he wished for, right?
He can’t leave the pool of water because he’s still struggling to shift, to even grasp the idea of it. How the hell is he supposed to “feel” his tail change into two separate legs? Even if Wilbur plays The Little Mermaid for the twelve time this month, it doesn’t help him at all.
But even then, the outside is terrifying him. His ears are too sensitive, used to waiting for a single sound, footsteps gathering in the wooden hall, so he can always be prepared, so he can always be safe, so that Dream will like him and Dream’s friends will think he’s pretty and mysterious, an item to be marveled at. Eye contact has become one of the things he hates the most. Guilt eats him alive as he’s unable to meet any of their gazes, opting for staring at their shoulder or a spot on their face instead, whenever the discomfort begins to sit in.
What is right and wrong in their world? Do they follow the same rules that Dream asked of him? It doesn’t seem like they do. There are no gatherings of strange men and women visiting often. There are no wine bottles or precious aged alcohol, something divine and to die for, only worthy of drinking for the ‘right’ moment. Instead of the lies he was taught through trials of food, the difference between wanting and deserving, that Dream practically was owed, these people ask again and again, if he’s sure, if he’s really okay, that if he doesn’t like salmon, there’s always other saltwater fish they could purchase for him.
He’s never used his lung before either. Air tastes crisp on his tongue. Salt lingers in his mouth, the air from the beach filtering in pass the white linen curtains of an open window. Beyond the wooden frame, there is an ocean. It is sparkling, glittering, and it calls to him, as it always has. It’s a craving he cannot satisfy, to be among the fish he blearily remembers and feel the roughness of coral against his own two hands and to breathe as a free mer, not a collection item.
He wants to breathe for himself, to live and want for himself, not for an audience.
It’s a feeling he was taught was wrong, was shameful of him, ungrateful even.
Yet Wilbur looks at him like he would give him every selfish desire he asks for.
“I”m sure Phil wouldn’t mind having a beach day, just the four of us,” He says, kicking his legs on the bed in the room where he stays. A guest room they call it. “Though I think he’d be worried about the sounds overwhelming your ears. There’s lot of people at the beach, especially on sunny days.”
Wilbur doesn’t get overwhelmed.
In fact, Wilbur seems to be in love with sound.
He hides behind soundproof walls, thickened and covered for his sake, as he pours his heart out into guitar strings he doesn’t have the faintest idea of understanding. It’s a strange shape, something wooden and hollow. He cries and he loves with it, he releases emotions that Tommy’s too scared to know, afraid of the gap that divides them will grow farther.
Wilbur is perfect like that.
He pours his heart into sound and loves others closely like life itself depends on him hugging Techno until the man grows red. He looks happy, like being alive couldn’t be a happier experience for himself. There are faint bags under his eyes, but the brown gaze shines underneath the sun’s rays filtering through the windows that it practically eliminates them. His skin is glowing, especially his scales. Beautiful, lovely, majestic — he’s heard those words a dozen times, from Dream and his friends before but he never felt like he deserved the praise. But here, now, he sees what they mean by merfolk being utterly stunning.
He’s not, but Wilbur is.
He’s a perfect merfolk, so much unlike himself.
Broken, bruised, ugly — that’s him.
His world shatters at the sound of a slammed door. His eyes burn from staring at the television screen too closely. His skin is horrifying, marked with blemishes and dried out scales that have been ruined by spending too much time in the water.
“We need to be on both land and sea, which is why it used to be — and still is sometimes — dangerous for us. I mean, I think about it, if we didn’t need to go on land or experience oxygen and its benefits, why would so many of our ancestors go on land and put themselves in enemy’s territory, especially during hunts? Too much water, or air for that matter, can damage your scales and hurt your body.”
He says, examining his tail with hands. He spreads a cold white mixture of something across his legs. It comes from a sort of tube with a tight cap on it. He smears it around until it melds with his scales, properly rubbed into the dry, cracked area.
“Too much of anything can hurt you, Wilbur.”
Phil, a gentle man with a little too much time on his hands, he learns, says.
“Yeah, yeah, dad.”
“I’m just being honest!”
“No, you’re sounding old. What are you now? Forty five? How was the 1900s old man, did you use those Nokia phones too?”
“Now Wilbur you’re just being horrible at math. How can he be born in the 1900s but is only, by your estimate, be forty-five?”
Techno jokes. He has this smile on his face, it's light and airy. It's the kind of smile that isn't paraded around for others but rather works up on your face because you just can't stop yourself from smiling, not when everything feels just right.
“Shut up and stop being a nerd, Techno.”
He doesn't know what to make of any of this.
He's drawn to him, like a moth to a painful flame, he can't keep his eyes off of him. Blue scales glitter underneath the gentle lights of the home, a home he's new to. With four wooden walls painted with gentle colors and floors spread across with carpet that was soft and welcoming. He liked running his hands across it, feeling the way it felt under his palms. It's warm, unlike the cooling water he's always found himself in.
(He tries to not think about how cramped that life was, the only one he's ever known, so different compared to this one where his lungs can expand inside his chest like they're meant to and he can move freely without bumping into the glass restraints of his cage. When he thinks back on the memories, memories he made only a week ago, he can feel the way his throat starts to struggle and his lungs collapse in his chest. It suffocates him, in a way he's never realized before.)
"Tommy, you're staring again," Wilbur says, but it's without the normal malice he expects with others and a cheeky smirk is worn on his lips, like he's endeared by it. He scoots closer, he's in his human state, and he's tall, he thinks.
"Sorry," He finds himself mumbling before turning back to the clear water surrounding him in a large pool, larger than he's ever seen. He wonders how he'll manage the sea with its limitless borders and sinking ground.
"It's okay, I know I'm pretty," He says with that same stupid grin of his that he's become way too familiar with in the last week, forced to spend countless hours with him.
He's right, his scales are pretty. Beautiful even yet Tommy is jealous with insecurity festering inside him, taking him hold. It's the first person like him he's ever met and he's already begun to mess it up. How could he feel so bad towards someone so nice, who's showing him how to take care of his scales and has begun to teach him ever so slowly how to shift between forms? Why is he so ungrateful?
“Yeah you are,” He finds himself muttering sincerely, catching Wilbur’s attention. A spark lights up in his eyes, the warmth of the overhead light shining down on hazel eyes that are keen with interest. “You’re practically perfect in every way, your scales are majestic like mers are supposed to be…”
He doesn’t say it.
So unlike me. If Dream paid a hefty price for me, he deserves a refund, because I’m worthless. Nothing that I am will ever live up to you or any Mer. I am defected.
But somehow, Wilbur hears it anyway.
He slides off the bed, letting his knees tumble against the wooden floors of the cabin, and scoots closer to his pool. He grabs onto the end of the tank, drawing himself up against it, and stares at him. He can’t look at him. He keeps his eyes on the water, tracing the ripples in the clear liquid.
He’s overwhelmed and he’s so exhausted.
His body struggles to adapt and his mind can’t make sense of any of these kind people. People who look at him, trapped away from the sun’s rays and the joy of saltwater on his lips, and offer him care, like it’s second nature when he has always known that getting what you want is not an option. Freedom is not a choice. It’s a dream and that will be all it ever is.
You are a trophy, so pause on the shelf and act like it.
“You’re magical too,” Wilbur says, reaching out, placing his hand on top of Tommy’s wet one. He stares at it, guilt eating him alive. He can’t bear to see Wilbur’s expression. He’s already been so troublesome, he shouldn’t cause harm, he should be lucky he’s even here.
“Right,” He says instead. Short and curt, something he was taught was good but seems to unnerve Wilbur.
“Here, can I get in? Do you mind scooting over?”
That gives him whiplash. Wilbur wants to share a swimming space with him? In this tank when he has the entire ocean beyond wooden doors waiting for him? Why would he want to do that?
He doesn’t have an answer, so he just moves over, and finally looks at Wilbur.
Flawlessly, perfectly, he watches as Wilbur shifts, as he contorts and changes, but it doesn’t look painful at all. The former scattered blue scales turn into forests of decoration on his body; they contour his cheekbones, running down his sides until it meets the waistline of his tail where the scales absolutely cover every inch of it.
He just stares at him.
Wilbur smiles.
He doesn’t know what to say, or what’s right anymore.
(He just wants to feel safe for once, to not feel like the world could turn on him at any moment).
“See, we’re alike?” Wilbur grins, sharpened canines peaking beyond it. His hands reach out and take Tommy’s face into his hold. He has talons that could cut him, dig into his skin and cause agonizing pain but those same fingers offer him nothing but softness and gentleness in their wake. “You’re a little siren, a little mer.”
That flash of embarrassment runs through him as his shoulders jump up and everything in him tells him to fight this bastard on the idea of being ‘little’. He’s just about ready to until Wilbur snorts, like he’s endeared, and ruffles his hair.
“I don’t know what you’ve been convinced of but you’re not less, Tommy,” Wilbur says, like it’s the plain truth and Tommy doesn’t know how to believe him. “I don’t know what’s going on in that brain of yours for you to hold me to such high regard, but I’m just like you; we’re no different. We’re both merfolk and just because we differ doesn’t mean it’s a flaw. That’s what collectors try to brainwash people into thinking.”
Without missing a beat, refusing to let him sit in the silence of his own mind, “Scars don’t make you ugly, Tommy, they make you brave.”
“How?” He finds himself asking, slipping it out like a sob, as his shoulders draw tight and he hunches over himself, looking at the floor of the water tank, just staring at the way the light reflects through the water.
“They tell a history,” Wilbur says, simply, and somehow it’s everything he needs as he takes his hands, holding it tight but he never grips his fingers. “It might be a bad history, but it’s your history. It doesn’t have to define you, Tommy, your worth isn’t based in the shine of your scales or the blemishes of your skin, especially not when you were so badly mistreated. I can’t get rid of your scars but I can promise you, I will never let another bastard ever hurt you like that again.”
That word, bastard, is spoken with a hiss. It screams of real anger, of real pain, of hurt and agony for a person you love and Tommy has never known a kind embrace.
He looks up at him, curling his fingers around Wilbur’s, just like he does to his own.
He feels so incredibly small as he asks, “Really?”
And Wilbur, as if he melts at the sound, scoots closer until their tails bump against each other. He smiles so sweetly, almost patiently, down at him with a sweetness in his eyes as he says, “Really.”
There’s a moment of silence where nothing in the room movements, not even the wind disrupts the linen curtains.
Then everything he ever knew breaks, crashing down on him, and the next thing he can understand is that he’s holding tightly onto Will, like his life depends on it as heavy sobs wrack through him like a festering sickness that has had a hold on him for far too long.
It doesn’t help that Wilbur holds him like he’s dying and is clinging as if he’ll cease to be any moment now.
“You’re safe now,” Wilbur whispers, something powerful on his tongue like it’s a vow, “You’ll always be safe here. The ocean is your home and I will show it to you if it’s the last thing I do, it’s the least I could do, from Mer to Mer.”
He hears himself sniffle and hates the sound.
“If that’s the case,” He asks into his shoulder, “Where will I return to? There’s no one waiting for me, I have no one. All I ever had was Dream.”
Wilbur’s hug tightens but it doesn’t suffocate him like love used to.
“You have me now,” Wilbur says, promising. “You have me and Techno and even Phil. This cabin is your home, the ocean is your home, and no one will ever take it away from you again.”
He heaves, hot tears marking him as an embarrassment but never has Wilbur whispered a word tangled in shame when it comes to him, so he lets go and unravels in his arms with the only one who would understand, with the person he belongs with, the person who sees him.
“It’s okay, it’s going to be okay little mer,” Wilbur whispers softly, gently patting his head.
And for once, he doesn’t correct him.
It’s a Monday when he sees the ocean in all its glittering, shimmering glory. When he dives it and breathes, it feels like every blessing he’s learned in the past six months, spending every day with them as if they were a family, tied by blood. He sees the coral, how colorful it glows, underneath the sea and stumbles at all the fish that swirl around him, rushing somewhere else.
When his head breaches water again, oxygen flooding his lungs like it’s meant to, he turns back to the beach.
There they are, waiting, smiling, loving as they always have.
And always will , something tells him inside.
His hand breaks through the water and waves at them, grinning underneath the heat of the sun and the saltwater surrounding him.
Wilbur grins wide, like he’s proud, saying something far off where he pretends not to hear.
“Look at him go, he’s doing great — hey, Tech, listen to me! Our little mer is already that far out in the sea!”
He hopes the dolphins can’t tell the way his face burns as he ducks his head back underneath the saltwater, watching them circle around, living their own life amongst the chaos of the sea of predators and busy prey.
It feels something like belonging, something like family, but if he thinks about it too much, he’ll combust.