Work Text:
Jace wakes up and can’t move. His instinctive flinch is, thankfully, missed by the mer underneath him.
Who is the reason he can’t move. Sometime in the night, they had shifted in the shallow pool, and now there are tentacles wrapped tight around Jace’s body, curled over his torso and hips and winding around his tail.
Jace forces himself to relax — he still has unfortunate associations with being… with waking up unable to move.
It’s just Sebastian.
Jace feels the one on his back shift against his skin as Sebastian registers Jace’s movement in his sleep, the suckers flexing and releasing as the tentacle slides along his back.
He can feel the sting of where they were stuck to his skin, and the soft ache of forming bruises, but none of that is exactly new.
What is new is Sebastian cuddling him with all his limbs in their sleep.
It feels… nice. Usually, Sebastian is, ah, holding him down for other purposes with his tentacles, to keep Jace in place and exactly where Sebastian wants him.
This time, though, the appendages wrapped around his body are warm and comforting. One is wrapped over Jace’s side and across his back, keeping him pressed to Sebastian’s chest, another wrapped around his hips, suckers pressed against where his skin turns rough just below the small of his back, human body transitioning sleekly into shark skin.
Another is wound a few times around his tail, avoiding his fins and curled only loosely.
Jace is admittedly a bit surprised by how much he likes it.
Jace isn’t quite sure how he slept through this happening. It’d been… surprisingly easy, to get used to sleeping next to Sebastian, but he’s never been able to sleep through people moving when he’s sleeping next to them.
He swishes his fin through the warm, shallow water they’re resting in and feels the tentacle wrapped around his tail slip a little, one of the coils unwinding.
“Jace?” Sebastian’s voice is sleep rough but before Jace can answer, he feels Sebastian tense up underneath him. Jace tightens his arms around Sebastian before the other mer can move.
“Stay,” he says, and feels Sebastian pause in unwinding his limbs.
Jace wiggles slightly, making an annoyed noise when Sebastian starts to pull away again before he goes completely still, letting Jace move how he wants without reacting.
Jace rearranges himself until he’s got his head pressed against Sebastian’s chest, over his heartbeat, giving a happy sigh as he settles down again with his arms wrapped around Sebastian’s waist.
“Comfortable?” Sebastian inquires from above him, voice strained.
Jace cracks an eye open to stare at him for a moment before he pointedly closes it again, turning his head so he can feel one of Sebastian’s hearts beating under his cheek.
Slowly, carefully, Sebastian wraps his tentacles back around Jace, winding the one over Jace’s hips around his tail and sliding the one draped over Jace’s back up and over his shoulder.
Jace tilts his head down to press a kiss to the smooth black skin of the tentacle, eyes open to watch Sebastian’s reaction — the mer’s mouth drops open in shock, eyes going magic-black — before closing his eyes again and settling back down to go back to sleep.
After a moment, Sebastian blows out the long breath he’d been holding. Jace smiles, chuckling slightly when Sebastian makes an annoyed noise above him, before letting himself drift off.