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The first time Jungkook saw a mermaid, it was just a splash far away from the shore. He’d been young then -- younger, much younger than he is now. With thick thighs that had yet to find the strength to carry his chubby, infant self across the golden, pale sand, fists held high into the sky.
His mother had told him it bled of pink that day, that his cheeks had been blushed such a lovely shade of vermillion, that she just couldn’t help but plant little, butterfly kisses all over his skin. His fingers -- tiny fingers curling around her dainty hand and using it for steadiness as his footing had shifted. Backwards, he had staggered in surprise upon the splashing noise from somewhere.
His doe eyes, full of curiosity, searched into the horizon, but all he had been able to catch was a glimpse, a whip of seafoam green sneaking from the darker blue of the ocean’s waves.
His mother clutched him close to her chest, red lips glossy as she smiled widely and whispered into his ear what he’d just witnessed.
One of the many jewels of the ocean, she’d told him, and so he had grown up believing.
Later on, around the age where his limbs had begun their growth and his shoulders were broadening into a manlier shape, he found himself with his toes in that same pale, golden sand, staring off into the horizon in hopes of seeing again what he’d once seen. What he was told he’d seen.
For ages -- or so they had felt like -- he’d sat atop a large grey rock, breathing, waiting. He wasn’t searching for something in particular, for he had no clue what he had been expecting to find that day. All he had then was a vague memory, a spark of curiosity rising inside his chest as he’d come across this specific side of the beach. It wasn’t a rational feeling -- neither was it one of his five senses that lured him there. He did not know then, does not know now.
He remembers having heard that familiar splash, having seen this flash, this glimmer of fuschia from the far side of his eyesight. He would not have noticed it had he not been mildly alert of his surroundings. Ears acute to every bit of noise the ocean was making, the subtle roar of the wind, the seagulls crying high up in the sky.
And then, a gasp.
He thought he’d imagined it, but he knew what he’d heard then hadn’t been some illusion, for later on, that flash of pink was swimming its way towards him. Just a shimmer beneath a thin layer of water this close to the shore. Until the figure rose to the surface, carrying a face, a pair of eyes, a nose, lips. He was startled to find no eyebrows, for all of the hair in this creature seemed to have populated it head and nothing else.
Jungkook had pushed himself up higher over the rock, fingernails filling with the green moss lathered across it. The further up he went, the more the creature followed. It had slithered, almost, Jungkook remembers. Slithered its way up until it couldn’t no more. Something had been holding it back, and as Jungkook shifted, he saw where the fuschia had come from.
The creature had scales. Glittery scales scattered scarcely around its waist and blending more heavily to cover its bottom half. They hurt to look at; Jungkook had his eyes flinched as he took in the entirety of this creature’s tail. It extended far along his left, and it waved around, almost in a flailing manner as the creature tried its best to get close to Jungkook.
The young boy had been so scared at the look in the creature’s eyes, had nearly cried out for someone -- anyone -- but then the creature spoke, and his throat seemed to collapse entirely.
“P- pretty…” It seemed the creature was saying, lips curling back to reveal sharp, thin teeth. Pearly white, almost obnoxiously so, and stark against the dark blue of the flesh surrounding its mouth. Jungkook would not know if those were lips, for they had been too thin, too much of a whole with the rest of its face.
Jungkook had taken the creature’s stillness as permission to stare, to ogle at every little bit that was this being in front of him. It seemed, back then, that this was exactly what the creature was doing to him as well. Its eyes were too wide, the irises in them glimmering in shades of blue, green, lilac, pink. The colors had kept shifting the more Jungkook stared. As did the color of its hair. And the color of its tail. Sometimes it glittered in bright, bright pink, then in a darker shade, then lilac, then a dark purple, then back again to that shimmering fuschia.
Jungkook had been mesmerized.
He had wanted to reach for the creature’s face, perhaps brush the tips of his fingers against its cheeks to get to know what its skin felt like. If it was as smooth and silky as it looked.
But the creature’s mouth had suddenly fallen agape, jaw slack and chest spasming underneath the thick strands of multi-colored hair. Jungkook had shifted closer, meaning to help in any way; the creature looked like it was suffocating. The awful ragged sounds falling from its throat indicated so.
Full of fright, Jungkook remembers having taken hold of the creature’s bony wrists. They’d been so fragile, so smooth under the touch and so breakable -- Jungkook shivers now just at the thought of having been so rough. He’d flung them forwards, yanking the creature’s torso off the rock in one swift movement, and having it land onto the water in a sickening plash.
Jungkook had stared as the creature’s hair danced alongside the crystalline water, swirling all about it, seeming to lick at her ribs. Jungkook had seen the creature’s chest spasm, expand almost obscenely wide before constricting abruptly.
The creature had floated above the surface of the water for a moment, only the tip of its nose visible above the ocean, before it swam away.
Jungkook had hurried towards the edge of the rock, torso just about to tip forward into the water, when the creature swam back up towards him again. This time Jungkook leaned as close to the water as he could, and waited for the creature to do the same. Waited patiently, frozen cold, as the creature reached up to touch his face in the way he had wished to do to it. Its hand was cold, wet against his cheekbone, salty on his mouth; he licked the taste from his lips. The creature’s eyes seemed to hypnotize, and now that Jungkook recalls the moment, he doesn’t doubt that he’d been in some sort of trance back then. To have remained frozen, while the creature had rolled its body up against the rock, while the creature had claimed his mouth with a chaste kiss. While the creature had whispered something to him in a tongue he had no understanding of.
While the creature swam away, a glimmer of fuschia sinking into the depths of the ocean.
He just wished that his mother were there for him to speak to.
She would have believed him, he knows. Unlike his father, who would dismiss it as another of Jungkook’s ‘crazy dreams’. He understood why he thought of it that way; sometimes, Jungkook recalls the memory as if it had been a dream and nothing more. It helped to keep his sanity intact.
Except he can’t believe it to be a dream when he knows that it was not.
He just wishes that his mother were here for him to speak to.
He likes to walk along the beach a lot. Has always done it -- his mother had once told him that it was as if the sea had given birth to him -- that his home was somewhere far off into the horizon, where the waves weren’t crashing against the sand and the water is so deep he’d have to drown and sink to be able to feel the end of it. Where he’d be so far away nobody could hear him if he cries. Nobody but navigators or pirates. Nobody close to land.
It wasn’t a very reassuring thing to say to a five year old, he muses now, and as a toddler, he had been scared at the thought of the large mass of blue giving birth to him, being his parent. But now, now it doesn’t seem as such a faraway idea.
With his toes buried deep into the sand, the soles of his feet warm but not scorched. It’s late in the afternoon, the sun setting in the sky and leaving everything tinged with orange and pink and every color in between. The breeze is cool this time around, and on his bare calves rise goosebumps. His white shirt is thin, blowing away with the wind. The front sticks to his chest and stomach almost uncomfortably, but he makes no move to take the garment off.
He is alone, yes, but that same irrational feeling, that sixth or perhaps even seventh sense tells him that it won’t be for long.
So he walks -- water licking at his feet every once in awhile, waves crashing against the shore and carrying rocks, shells, sand and seaweed. At one point one of the green plants curls around his ankle and he has to bend down to get it off himself. As he does, he hears a faint splash.
Immediately his head whips up, but it must’ve been too late, for he sees nothing but a puddle of white foam over the surface of the water, directly in front of him.
Part of him is disappointed, but it’s replaced by vexation the moment he feels another wave crash the shore carrying more seaweeds. By the time it retreats back into the ocean, his feet are buried in green. Dark green seaweed sticking to his toes and winding around his ankles. He groans, stooping back down to remove them from himself.
The noise comes again, except this time, he glances up just in time to catch a glint of seafoam green glittering above the darker blue of the ocean’s waves. It causes the feeling inside his chest to go wild, the sight, and he gasps. He waits a moment, stares ahead to see if it occurs again, but it never does. Sighing, he shuffles his feet about and struggles to yank the seaweed from between his toes. It takes him a while to do so, with the waves coming again and again and practically undoing the progress he’s done so far in setting himself free.
After a whole minute or so, he’s red faced, blowing strands of dark hair from his sticky forehead and thinking about giving up and just living here in the sand forever.
But then, “Need a little help?”
He jumps, but with his feet all tied up, he stumbles backwards and lands on the golden sand, wide eyed and surprised. He takes in the source of the voice: a red-haired man with fox-like eyes, eyebrows thick and smirk teasing on his lips as he cocks his head at Jungkook. The latter is stuttering unintelligibly, hands reaching backwards to haul himself far away from the shore. To no avail, for the red-haired man darts towards him and yanks him by the ankle.
The water’s a cold shock against his dry skin, but the hand around his ankle is even colder. Gentle, however, as it unwinds the seaweed from his feet and successfully leaves them bare in a matter of seconds. Jungkook stares at the man’s fingers. They’re joined from the second joint, a thin, jelly-like substance keeping them from spreading apart too much. His skin is a lovely caramel shade, Jungkook notices, looking up the man’s arm until his gaze lands on his face. Which has eyebrows, and a pair of eyes, a nose, lips. Thin, but rosy lips; when he smiles Jungkook is expecting the thin, sharp teeth he’s seen before, but instead is greeted by strangely human-like teeth, pearly white and neatly arranged into a boxy grin.
“T-thank you,” Jungkook breathes out, bottom lip trembling in something akin to fear but not quite so.
The red-haired man blinks at him with what seems like curiosity. His eyes are hazel, but under the light of the darkening sky they shift to a mellower, brown, so light it could pass as grey. Jungkook stares into them, expecting their color to change drastically, but they never do. Just turn light and dark as he shifts back and forth along with the waves crashing against the sand.
Jungkook becomes aware of how much of the other man is outside of the water, and as he takes a look at the rest of him, he finds that he, too, is covered in scales from the waist down. In his fright, he shoves the man away from him, knees digging into the wet sand as he struggles to do so. The man gives a startled yelp, tail flailing as Jungkook pushes him further into the water, until only his head is visible.
“Y-you’ll suffocate,” Jungkook explains vaguely, cheeks flushing as the red-haired man purses his lips in confusion.
“Suffocate?” the red-haired man asks him, looking up at him through wet bangs. He flicks them away from his forehead, and it’s then that his eyes take a new color. They go grey, so grey, then an icy blue before returning to their original light brown shade. All of it in a matter of seconds, as he had blinked. Jungkook stares at him rather dumbly, mouth open wide.
“You’ll die,” Jungkook says, frowning as he sits back on his feet. “You wouldn’t be able to breathe, and you would die.”
“But I can breathe,” the man assures him, smiling. “I am doing so now, see?” He lifts himself up above the water, showing Jungkook his chest as it heaves with every breath he takes. On his ribs are gills -- he’ll say they’re gills, because they flap open as the waves reach up to them, then close against his flesh. Jungkook is wide-eyed as he watches them sink into the crystalline water. They’re decorating the expanse of his ribcage, thin pink openings in between the slots of his ribs.
Jungkook can only open and close his mouth dumbly. “H-how?” He recalls how the creature he’d seen years back had drowned when being out of the water for too long. Then again, the creature hadn’t looked human at all -- barely so. Whereas the red-haired man in front of Jungkook now is clearly a man; from the waist up, at least. He has a torso that, apart from the gills, is very similar to Jungkook’s. There’s a pendant hanging from his neck, a crystal that reflects the vermillion hues of the sky.
“How I breathe?” the man asks him, still propped up by his hands. He’s inching close to Jungkook’s face, he faintly recognizes, and Jungkook lets him. He just hopes the red-haired man doesn’t kiss him like the other creature had done. Jungkook feels something cold against his earlobe and he gasps. “My lungs work on land as well as they do underwater.” The man is toying with the earring lodged in his earlobe. “What is this on your ear?”
Jungkook frowns. “It’s-- It’s jewelry,” he stutters, the man’s proximity a bit too much all at once. He shifts, untangling his legs from under his thighs in hopes of the man moving away. He doesn’t. The newfound position allows him to swim forward into the space between his legs. Jungkook is caged by this red-haired being, who has a hand on his thigh and another twisting the metallic object on his ear. The weight of him is heavy, and Jungkook is utterly trapped under his hand.
“Jewelry?” the man frowns again. He glances up at Jungkook’s face and pouts at his countenance. “What is wrong with your face?”
“You are heavy,” Jungkook winces, gesturing at the hand on his thigh. The other man moves it away, mumbling a soft oh under his breath.
“It’s amazing how different you are now,” the man mumbles, and Jungkook sees something in his gaze that he cannot quite pin down. “You were so small.”
Jungkook frowns.
The man smiles at him with sad eyes. “You do not remember.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“What is your name?” he asks, because he does not know if he should vocalize any of his other questions. How come your tail does not change color? How is it that you aren’t dying just now? There’s something familiar about this man -- the feeling that bursts within Jungkook is familiar. And yet, Jungkook has no recollection of having ever been near him. “Do you have a name?”
The red-haired man is trailing a fingertip down Jungkook’s jawline. He’s so casual about it; he fails to notice the way the gesture has Jungkook trembling anxiously. “Taehyung.”
“Taehyung?”
The man retracts his hand and nods his head. Jungkook lets out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Yes.” He pauses, stoops down to his elbows to meet Jungkook’s gaze where he had bowed his head. “What is yours?”
The way he asks it, as if he’s trying to find out whether Jungkook knows it rather than to find out what it is himself. “Jungkook.”
“Yes,” the man, Taehyung, says. He smiles.
Jungkook can only stay there, sigh as Taehyung’s face sinks into the water and vanishes into the sea.
It’s too early for him to be awake, but his eyes are open wide and they stare up at the wooden ceiling of his dormitory. From the window, no sunlight sweeps through quite yet. He drowns in silence, only the constant crashing of waves keeping his ears from ringing. The sea sounds violent, and Jungkook wonders if it’s because a storm is about to come.
As he tilts his head to the right towards his opened window, he sees the curtains dance across the air. It’s windy; a strong current of wind sends his curtains into a thrashing fit that makes Jungkook sit up on his bed. The sheets pool at his waist -- the only thing keeping him clothed somewhat.
His chest is bare and cold where he presses the flat of his palm across his sternum, heartbeat beating at a rapid pace.
Jungkook frowns down at himself, wondering what it is that’s causing him to react this way.
He ends up taking the flight down the stairs, the soles of his feet warm against the frozen flooring tiles. It elicits a tiny hiss from between clenched teeth, but nothing more. His mind is intent on getting outside of the castle. Out into the wild sky before sunrise. Still a hazy shade of grey, not enough to provide any natural lighting for the castle.
Inside, at the moment, Jungkook feels as if a ghost is haunting him. A ghost whose lips he can recall and voice can sometimes hear in his dreams. A ghost whose face is all too similar to his mother's.
This ghost forces him to open the large doors of the entrance, frightens him out and unto the sand, barefooted and barechested -- for the shirt he’d slung onto himself remained unbuttoned. Jungkook tips his chin up into the sky, and he finds thick grey clouds hovering heavily above him, ominous thunder grumbling from somewhere closeby.
He sprints away from the noise. Storms had always left him unable to sleep. The constant roaring of the sky had woken him up and kept him from finding sleep once more. He is alert as ever, hyperaware of the painful way his ankles twist as they bury themselves into the grains of sand. They look ashen in the moonlight, and Jungkook feels as if he’s running over clouds. His white shirt flaps behind him, slapping against his forearms in a noise that only quickens the pace of his heart. Anxiety -- or perhaps anticipation -- ripples throughout him as he finds himself nearing that secluded side of the beach where he’d met Taehyung the day before.
The sun should have begun its ascent in the horizon, far, far, away into the ocean, but it's hidden behind clouds and its rays aren’t allowed to shine through. Lightning is the only coruscation visible. It ignites a series of droplets that land on the tip of Jungkook’s nose, his cheekbones and forehead. It starts to pour then, and alongside the tears of the sky, the ocean rumbles. Just as angrily the waves crash against the shore. Their fury beckons Jungkook to come forth, and so Jungkook sprints towards it, unaware that he’s succumbing into the ocean. Unaware of the waves that threaten to hold his calves back. The resistance lasts a mere second, for the next moment it’s as is the waves are hauling him in. Inviting, promising as they swallow more and more of Jungkook’s legs. The water rises to his clothed thighs, caresses his lower abdomen and he gasps at the coldness of the water.
It’s the last thing he feels before everything seems to go blank.
He doesn’t hesitate to continue diving into the sea despite the cold, carries on until the salt is in his mouth and streaming into his nostrils.
His eyelashes flutter closed upon the contact, and when he opens his eyes, it’s to meet utter darkness. He thrashes, the wildness of his limbs subdued to sluggish sways. To the fish, it must look like he’s dancing, what with the wide arch of his arm and the languid line of his back as it arcs in a failed attempt to reach out towards the surface.
For a moment he’s lost in the tenebrosity, trying to find where the tips of his fingers are, trying to extend his legs to see if the tip of his toes touch sand. Nothing, he’s floating in nothing. And it should have frightened him, the fact that the sea has somehow managed to grab a hold on him and it doesn’t plan on letting him go anytime soon, but his heart is beating at a steady pace and his lungs are working perfectly fine.
His lungs.
He’s not given enough time to process the information he’s just gathered, for as he spins around, he finds that he’s not alone. Somebody else is with him, sharing the vast space of nothingness.
At first, all his sight is able to make out is another pair of grey eyes, glinting back sparks of blue like cat eyes do in the darkness. Then Jungkook’s gaze is torn apart from that sparkling to give his attention to a lithe extremity behind this pair of eyes. Also sparkling, rather dull in comparison to the light the eyes provide.
It’s Taehyung swimming in front of him, he sees. The blurred out image of him slowly becoming something solid as Jungkook’s head manages to focus. Jungkook can see his grin amongst the murkiness of the water, can make out the perfect outline of the bubbles of air that are slowly ceasing to escape from his own nostrils.
He can see Taehyung in front of him, face getting closer and closer still. He can feel the weight of his hands as they hold onto his waist, drag him further into the depths of the sea. He notices the subtle change in the color of Taehyung’s red hair, how it shifts to a darker hue.
What catches him off guard the most, however, is the fact that he can breathe.
His lungs aren’t spasming at the water slowly drowning them. They don’t ache, they feel at ease. They’re working just as they would if he were on land.
He’s breathing; the fear of drowning is nonexistent, but the fear of the darkness that lay beneath the both of them is what’s causing him to reach up in order to breach into the surface once more. He does so with little effort now. The ocean must have let go of him, as Taehyung’s hands do -- albeit reluctantly -- before he follows him up.
Unnecessarily, he gasps a mouthful of air once his head is outside of the water. His arms are flailing around in a vague attempt to keep himself afloat. The ground is too far below for even his toes to reach. He turns around, and nearly sobs as he realizes how far away the shore is. He’s stranded in the middle of the water, too deep in to swim back by himself.
When Taehyung comes up, he notices his struggle. He says no words as he swims close to Jungkook and holds him close to his body to keep both of them afloat. Initially the man pushes at Taehyung’s shoulders, the feeling of the scales on his tail uncomfortable as they brush against his calves.
Then Taehyung begins speaking, and his voice leaves Jungkook frozen, the heels of his hands limp against Taehyung’s clavicles. “I thought you would forget you could do that,” he is saying, dazed. Jungkook stares, confused, not quite sure he comprehends what the other man is saying. “But you did not die.”
“I was meant to,” Jungkook gasps, fingers twitching against Taehyung’s clavicles. Something’s dusted over them; Jungkook can feel something coarse beneath the pads of his fingers, but he doesn’t divert his gaze to find out what it is. He stares into Taehyung’s shifty eyes instead, marvels in the way they turn a lovely hazel brown.
“No,” Taehyung tells him. “You were never meant to.” Then, he smiles. “All the ocean means to give you is life. All it has given you is life.”
Jungkook is taken back to the shore by Taehyung, whose arms lock protectively around his waist and cradle him like a child into the crook of his neck. All Jungkook is able to do is hold on.