Archive of Our Own

Once upon a time, Linhardt talks to a fish.

This is not very surprising. Linhardt talks a lot, to basically anyone who will listen, but unfortunately there aren’t many people like that. Most of the time he ends up being ignored or interrupted or made fun of, all of which Linhardt has already grown used to, though it hardly lightens the sting of pain in his chest. So he finds things that will listen, or things he pretends will listen, and talks to them instead. Fish don’t ignore or interrupt or make fun of him… well, maybe just the latter two.

The difference today is that the fish talks back.

“Hey! Hey! A human, a human!” the fish shouts, flopping wildly around on the sand, the ebbing waves washing over it. It doesn’t seem to have been injured by the sharp fishing hooks, since clearly it can, well, talk. “Hey! Check me out! I’m a talking fish!”

Figuring this is all just a hallucination induced by lack of sleep, Linhardt turns around and gets the knife.

“Nooo!” the fish cries, its flopping and splashing growing even faster and wilder. “Don’t eat me! I’m not really a fish! Hear me out first, come on!”

This hallucination has gone on for too long to be a hallucination, so Linhardt hesitantly puts the knife away and plucks the fish up in his hands instead. It’s so small that it fits in his two cupped palms together… and at closer inspection, it’s not a fish at all. It’s some sort of shark, with a slightly longer tail fin than Linhardt is used to seeing in picture books. “What are you?” he asks, torn between confusion and awe.

The fish… shark… baby shark?… declares, “I’m a merman! Well… merboy. But right now I’m stuck like this ‘cause I swam too deep in sea witch territory and got cast under a spell. So—” It starts flopping again, nearly jumping out of Linhardt’s palms. “You gotta kiss me!”

“Huh?”

“The spell can only be broken by a human’s kiss! That’s why it’s impossible to break free from it ‘cause no one wants to kiss a human, but like, you’re a guy, so it should be fine!” the shark reasons, if that can be called reasoning, considering Linhardt doesn’t follow it in the slightest. “So come on! Kiss me already!”

Linhardt frowns. “What if I catch something from you?” he asks. He had studied all the possible diseases you could get from fish, if only because Father refused to let him do anything without first relating it to medicine. “Or you might have a worm living inside you. I don’t want to have a worm live inside me.”

“I don’t have worms!” the shark protests, sounding personally offended. “And my dad’s the king of this ocean! If you do catch something from me—which you won’t—then I’ll ask him to make you better! Sound good?”

King of this ocean…? Linhardt hadn’t been aware oceans had monarchies. Then again, some five minutes ago he hadn’t been aware merpeople—or at least talking sharks the size of his palms—existed either. “Okay, fine,” Linhardt agrees. A kiss doesn’t sound like such a big deal. It’s just like giving Mother a kiss on the cheek. “Should I close my eyes?”

The shark wriggles excitably. “Don’t care! Just kiss me already!”

Deciding it would feel less weird to not see a shark up close, Linhardt shuts his eyes, brings it closer to his face, and gives its tiny shark mouth a kiss. When he opens his eyes again, he’s sort of expecting to be staring at a trout, or salmon, or some other generic fish from around here, and realize he had been so lonely he had hallucinated a talking shark that needed his help.

Instead, he stares right into the face of a grinning boy around his age, with ruffled blue hair, pointed finned ears, and a long shark tail from the waist down.

“Thanks!” he chirps, showing off two rows of pointed teeth. “I’m Caspar! What’s your name, human?”

Linhardt examines Caspar from head to fin and concludes he’s most certainly not dreaming. “Linhardt,” he eventually says. “It’s nice to meet you, I think.” Caspar had tasted faintly of saltwater, but not much else, so maybe he really is free of worms.

“Linhardt.” Caspar says his name like he’s trying it out, testing how it feels on his shark tongue. Linhardt thinks it sounds alright, and surprisingly he doesn’t even pronounce it wrong like just about everyone else Linhardt first meets. “Cool name! Anyway, thanks for helping me out. In return, I’ll help you with anything you need!”

“I don’t need anything,” Linhardt says, which is such a blatant lie he’s not sure how he keeps a straight face. “You should tell me all about merpeople instead. I never knew they existed.”

“Probably ‘cause most of us stay away from humans.” Caspar scowls. “It’s dumb! I’ve heard stories and all, but would you really believe it if someone said their second cousin got caught in a fishing net and the humans sliced ‘em up into seafood before they could even explain themselves!?”

“Yes,” Linhardt answers, without a doubt. “Humans are stupid that way.”

Caspar stares at him for a long moment as if unsure whether or not Linhardt’s telling the truth, before puffing his chest out and saying, “Well, merpeople are stupid that way too! I guess we’re the only smart ones of our kind.”

Once upon a time, Linhardt gives his first kiss away to a fish. It isn’t quite like the fairy tales he reads in his books, if only because it wasn’t true love’s kiss and there weren’t any grand weddings, appropriately flashy magic spells, and evil villains to do away with. Most of all, Linhardt didn’t save the world and get everyone to like him and pay attention to him and listen to him, which at the prime, impressionable, lonely age of six years old had felt like the best thing that could possibly happen to anyone.

But he does get a shark, one who grins at him and splashes water on him whenever his tail flops in the water and tells him to come again when Linhardt realizes they’ve talked late into the afternoon. And maybe—maybe—this might be what having a friend feels like, too.

True to his words, Caspar tells Linhardt about his race, his home, and most importantly himself. It turns out he really is the son of this particular ocean’s king, albeit he isn’t the heir to the throne—his older brother is—and he isn’t just half-shark, but half-thresher-shark, which are apparently known for their long upper tailfins, shyness, and overall timid behavior, none of which Linhardt can in good conscience attribute to Caspar.

“Don’t be mean,” Caspar protests, when Linhardt points this out. “My tail’s still growing, okay? It’s gonna be as long as my dad’s and brother’s when I’m older!”

“Hmm,” Linhardt allows, instead of voicing his own opinion aloud. “How old are you anyway? Do fish—ahem, sorry, merpeople follow a different lifespan than humans?”

“I dunno. I turned seven years old a few months ago though.”

“Ah.” So Caspar’s older. It doesn’t exactly matter since they’re still born in the same year, but Linhardt can’t help but feel a little disgruntled. He supposes being bothered over such a small detail like this is precisely why he doesn’t have any friends, though being self-aware of something like this hasn’t really helped either. “I see. I guess it’s the same, then.”

“You’re interested in the boring stuff,” Caspar says, not the slightest bit of judgment in his voice, as if he’s just pointing out a fact.

“Am I?” Linhardt mutters, now even more disgruntled. “What’s the not-boring stuff, then?”

Caspar grins, revealing those pointed teeth again. Linhardt would very much like to examine them one day and see just how much sharper they are compared to a regular human. “I mentioned the sea witches before, right? They can do magic and other things like see the future! I got mine told and they said I’d end up meeting a human, and obviously they were right!”

Linhardt thinks about the fortune tellers he occasionally sees out the window during a drive, when he’s not busy being carsick, anyway. “We have those too.” Though he highly doubts their credibility, human or merperson.

He doesn’t want to admit it, but having a shark as his best friend isn’t as convenient as having a normal human best friend would probably be. There are all sorts of games Caspar lauds as the greatest inventions of merkind, but obviously they can only be played underwater, and Linhardt is a terrible swimmer who can do little more than float precariously on the surface. On the other hand, while Caspar can breathe air, for obvious reasons, he can’t accompany Linhardt to the park or the library or the hospital, all of which are places Linhardt has very embarrassingly imagined spending time in with a friend. It’s not that Linhardt dislikes Caspar by any means, but sometimes when Linhardt is stuck at the hospital and waiting for Father, he remembers Caspar talking about his friends back at his home, and somehow Linhardt just feels lonelier than ever.

On one hot summer day, Linhardt heads down to the beach as always, though he doesn’t bother with the fishing gear anymore—he doesn’t actually know how to fish anyway, and had never caught anything aside from Caspar, who had let himself be caught—and, for once, finds Caspar already waiting at the shore. “Lin!” he calls, waving his arms around, tail visibly splashing behind him. “Hurry up! I thought of something cool!”

Linhardt grudgingly picks up the pace, which for his standards is the greatest thing he has ever done for anyone even if he’s just lifting his feet rather than dragging them, until he reaches Caspar. “What is it?”

“Wait here,” Caspar instructs, then swims off, too fast for Linhardt to complain about having been forced to run only for Caspar to make him wait. To be fair, he returns only a few seconds later… bringing with him, of all things, an inflatable rubber duck tube.

“What…” Linhardt stares at it. “Where did you… Why do you…”

“I found this floating away after some visitors left,” Caspar cheerfully explains. “There was a kid our age with them, so I’m pretty sure this should fit you. Try it! Then you can head out into the deeper waters and we can actually do stuff!”

Linhardt swallows. The deeper waters? “I-I’m not sure about this. F… Father always says not to swim too far out.” In actuality, Father always says not to swim at all and to stop going to the beach altogether because his frequent visits apparently interrupt his studies, but Linhardt has never much cared about what Father has to say.

Caspar looks like he means to protest, which Linhardt had fully expected, but his expression turns thoughtful instead. Then he says, “Okay, no deep waters! Just the shallow parts, where you’d still be able to swim up if anything happens. That sounds fine, right?”

Linhardt still isn’t sure about this, but the inflatable tube looks reliable, and the rubber duck’s beady black eyes make Linhardt feel like he can trust it, so he says, “Okay.” Thankfully he’d brought a pair of swim shorts, since it’s always nice to be prepared in case he trips and falls into the water like last time, and he changes quickly before fitting the tube around his waist and very carefully stepping into the water.

“Well, it’s not gonna work if you just stand there,” Caspar points out.

“I know that,” Linhardt mumbles. He takes several steps further, the water now reaching his knees and then his thighs, and then his waist… and that’s it, because even though his feet aren’t touching the sea floor anymore, he’s still floating—safely, not precariously.

Caspar whoops and does a little backwards dive, tail waving happily and threatening to smack Linhardt in the face. “Heck yeah! Alright, let’s go do something!”

“D-Do what?” Linhardt asks, pretending his voice doesn’t shake just the slightest bit.

“Um…” Caspar looks lost. Linhardt supposes his underwater games don’t work very well when one player is stuck in an inflatable tube. Then he lights up. “I know! I’ll show you something cool. You like books, so you’ll probably like it.”

What place do books have in the ocean? Linhardt doesn’t bring any of his to the beach for good reason. “Okay,” he says again, figuring Caspar wants it to be a surprise, and lets Caspar push him through the waters while his long tail whips back and forth behind him to propel them forward. It’s not a bad system at all, and Linhardt actually finds himself enjoying it a little, especially when the water is cool against the hot weather.

Linhardt doesn’t know how far they go from the shore, but the water is still relatively shallow when they reach what Caspar must mean to show him. “Here,” he declares, resting his arms atop the tube. “It’s a shipwreck!”

“A shipwreck,” Linhardt repeats softly. He takes in the sight of what must have been a giant, formidable thing before it had turned into what it is now, an unsettling mess of splintered wood, soaked sails, and knotted ropes, most of its mass leaning against a tall rock outcrop.

Caspar swims forward, and Linhardt follows suit, paddling and flailing along as best as he can. “The current leads to heavy fogs here now and then, not to mention sirens,” Caspar says. Linhardt decides to pretend he hadn’t heard that second part. “So there are always a lot of shipwrecks in this ocean. This one’s just the closest around here.”

“Hm…” Linhardt swims closer, reaching out to touch the front of the ship—it seems to be mostly intact aside from this area, where the wood is all broken and splintered apart, so it must have smashed into the rock formation during a fog, where low visibility would have kept the sailors from seeing this until it was too late. Speaking of, where could the sailors be now? Linhardt shudders to think of dead bodies having floated away into the ocean where scavengers could feed on, or worse, stuck in the shipwreck itself, perhaps weighed down by something heavy…

“So? You look like you like it,” Caspar chirps, snapping Linhardt out of his thoughts. “You were totally thinking of how this could’ve been shipwrecked, right? I know I’m right!”

Linhardt nods, and—he doesn’t recognize the strange feeling on his face for a moment before thinking, oh, a smile. I’m smiling. “Yeah,” he says. “I do like it. Thank you.”

They wander around the shipwreck for a little longer—Linhardt tries to examine every little detail while Caspar dives down to sift through the wreckage underwater, often reemerging with some sort of treasure in his hands and all of which he forces upon Linhardt, insisting he’s already got plenty at home. Linhardt ends up having to balance a cracked, handheld mirror and a rusted fishing float atop the duck’s head…

…only to very nearly lose them when the shipwreck moves. Linhardt almost topples over backwards into the water. “C-Caspar?”

Caspar pops out of the water. “What’s up?”

“Did—Didn’t the ship—”

“Oh, don’t worry ‘bout that,” Caspar reassures. He points at a big black shadow far too close for Linhardt’s comfort and says, “Another shark’s come to visit!”

“Shark?” Linhardt parrots, not proud of how his voice comes out as a squeak. If it comes down to it, could Caspar protect him from a shark attack? First of all, Caspar’s not much taller or bigger than him, and an actual, full-grown, predatory shark might be more than he can take, and Linhardt doesn’t know the first thing about swimming, and—

Caspar grabs his wrist, and the feeling of sharp nails on his skin has Linhardt jolting back to reality. “Don’t worry, he’s nice, he won’t eat you. Their kind don’t even eat humans! Wanna see?”

He doesn’t give Linhardt a chance to respond before pulling him and the inflatable tube closer to the shadow, which in Linhardt’s opinion is the complete opposite of what they should be doing right now, but he swallows and decides to take Caspar’s word for it. He’s never done anything Linhardt didn’t want, and based off how excited Caspar seems to be about talking to a human, Linhardt doesn’t think he’d throw him into a shark’s waiting jaws. Probably.

Then his eyes widen when they get closer to the promised shark, because—“I didn’t know whale sharks live here,” Linhardt blurts out, already itching to make a grab for the fish encyclopedia he’d left at home.

“Just a few! This one probably got curious ‘bout this big old thing. Am I right, am I right?” Caspar dips his head beneath the water, his own tail flopping in the air behind him, then resurfaces after a moment’s pause. “He says he likes your duck!”

Linhardt swallows, staring down at the whale shark (butanding, jinbei-zame, marokintana…) before him. Even under the rippling water he can make out its distinctive spotted pattern, like the many stars its species was named after in one language, its wide mouth slightly open, its dorsal fin just barely brushing the surface. “Pretty,” he murmurs. If he were braver, maybe he’d reach out and touch it, but right now all he can really do is stare.

He doesn’t realize Caspar’s staring at him until he says, “You like it here?”

“Huh?”

“Here. In the ocean.” Caspar blinks wide blue eyes at him. “It’s nice, right? I can teach you how to swim and then we can spend all day out here. Maybe you can even come to my place! But then it’s too deep underwater, and you don’t have gills.” He pauses. “The sea witches could give you gills.”

“Huh?” Linhardt repeats, a little desperately. “I-I don’t want gills.”

“You don’t?” Caspar droops. “But you always look so sad when you’re on land. When you say you have to go back home, you just sorta…” He mimes slouching and trudging away, which is hard considering they’re in the water, and Linhardt huffs out a laugh. Caspar grins. “See? Wouldn’t you be happier here with me?”

“I…” Linhardt frowns. If he were braver, maybe he’d say yes, I would, take me with you. These hours at the beach with Caspar are some of the only hours he can ever find himself smiling and laughing and enjoying himself, because there is nothing he hates more than having to be with Father at the hospital and listen to him drone on about medicine and surgeries and I want you to inherit all of this when you’re older, Linhardt, to carry on the family name…

The decision should be easy. It would just be one word. One nod. One smile. If he were braver…

“I’m sorry,” Linhardt mumbles, gripping onto Caspar’s wrist so tight it must hurt, but Caspar doesn’t say anything or pull away from him. “I can’t.”

Caspar remains silent for a little longer, and Linhardt worries on his lower lip, expecting Caspar to leave him like everyone else Linhardt’s ever tried to befriend—but Caspar simply nods. “Okay,” he says, like it’s no big deal. “I get it. You’ve got stuff at home too. I just…” He looks down. “I heard humans move around a lot on land,” he mutters. “But since Dad rules this ocean, I can’t really leave unless I need to for migration.”

Migration? Linhardt supposes even merpeople have that. “Uh-huh.”

“And, um… I don’t want you to leave,” Caspar says, almost too fast to follow. “A-A lot of people tell me I’m loud and annoying and too much and… all that. But you don’t!” he exclaims, surging forward and, not for the first time, nearly whapping Linhardt in the face with his tail. “You’re nice! You always listen to me and you teach me what I don’t know and you tell me all about cool human things. So—So that’s why I don’t want you to leave. That… That’s all.”

Linhardt’s head is spinning fast enough that it feels ready to explode. He’s never been told something like that before. It almost sounds like Caspar values him, not for the family name or the inheritance or anything but… for himself. It’s a new feeling, one that has Linhardt’s chest warming up despite the water’s coolness, his heart buoyed up like an inflatable tube. He’s still holding onto the mirror and the fishing float Caspar had retrieved from the shipwreck, presents from Caspar, and Linhardt’s never really received presents from friends before either.

He lets go of Caspar’s wrist, just to clench his hand into a fist and hold out his pinky finger. “Have you heard of pinky promises?”

Caspar frowns. “Another weird human thing?”

“It’s when you make a promise and then you lock the fingers together… like this.” Linhardt demonstrates as such. It’s a little hard considering Caspar’s fingers have thin, faint-blue webbing and his nails are so sharp they’re a little frightening, but somehow Linhardt succeeds. “And that means the promise won’t break.”

Caspar stares at him and their interlocked pinkies for a long while before grinning. “Ohh! Wow, that’s cool! It’s like, some form of prayer, right? You humans have weird rituals! But I get it.” He tightens their fingers together, and Linhardt decides it’s too much trouble to explain that it’s not a prayer nor a ritual. “Then should we promise to never leave each other?”

Linhardt nods. “You’re my…” Only friend. “Best friend, Caspar,” he mumbles, the words foreign in his voice. “It’s not like I want to leave you anyway.”

“You’re my best friend too, Lin!” For once, Caspar’s shark teeth spread out in a grin are more endearing than unsettling. “Okay! I guess the ritual’s completed. Your human gods better write this down, or else!”

“…What do you think you’re doing?”

“Hmm?” the man looks up from his phone, giving Linhardt a look that says he doesn’t have time for this. “I’m walking. What, this whole beach yours or something?”

Linhardt jabs a finger at the soda can he’d tossed into the ocean. It isn’t too far away, though in a few minutes it’ll likely drift too far out to see anymore. “Pick that up. The waters are dirty enough without you contributing to the pollution.”

The man rolls his eyes so hard, Linhardt hopes his head hurts afterwards. “It’s one piece of trash in a giant ocean. What’s it gonna do, multiply? Come on. Who are you anyway? Some environmentalist?”

The water ripples, bubbles—and then, faster than the man can react, the soda can flies out of the water to smack right into the side of his head. Linhardt snorts. “Now imagine if you had just taken a few extra steps and picked that up, or just thrown it in a proper trash bin in the first place,” he muses, mockingly thoughtful, as the man curses and clutches his face. “If you don’t want that to happen again, clean up after yourself.”

He waits until the man has flung the soda can into a garbage bin and sulks away, leaving the beach empty once more, before sighing and sitting down on the shore. “Thank you for that.”

He sees the dorsal fin first, protruding from the water and growing rapidly closer until Caspar surfaces, his signature toothy grin on his face. “‘Course! I wasn’t ‘boutta just let him get away with that! Also, I didn’t like his hair.”

Linhardt hums. “I suppose it was less than attractive.” But he can hardly say the same for Caspar’s hair, which has vastly improved since his last style. What Linhardt would give to run a hand through the ruffled blue hair, tease those frilled ears… ahem. “You haven’t visited in a while,” he says, rolling his pants legs up to dip his feet in the water. “Is something wrong at home?”

Caspar sighs, resting his chin atop his folded arms. His tail waves lazily in the air behind him, lacking its usual wild energy. “Well, you already know my dad passed recently,” he mumbles, “and my brother was coronated just the other day. So preparations for that kinda took up my time. But, uh…” He picks at his sharp nails for a moment, not meeting Linhardt’s eyes. “Well, y’know. Water’s getting dirtier too. I’ve been going everywhere trying to help out those who get caught in nets and plastic and stuff.”

“Oh,” Linhardt murmurs, “yes. It has.”

The city has changed over the past twenty years, far too quickly for Linhardt’s liking. There are new buildings and construction projects everyday, the trash and waste all spilled into the largely-deserted beach, too small to capitalize on as a tourist attraction and too devoid of fish to consider popularizing as a fishing spot. If only they knew of the underwater kingdom, Linhardt used to think to himself. Now that would be quite the tourist attraction.

There are some things that hadn’t changed: Father’s hospital is still growing strong, and Linhardt wakes up dreading today may be the day Father kicks the bucket and promptly hands his absurd inheritance over to his only child. Mother has been dead for a while now, and Linhardt is finding it more and more of a nuisance trying to find new flowers he hasn’t yet laid on her grave. And, of course, Caspar is still as constant as ever… or was, anyway.

“You don’t have to make time for me,” Linhardt says. “I know you must be busy taking care of the ocean. I… wish I could do more.”

Caspar shakes his head with unnecessary vehemence. “No way, Lin! The last few days were exceptions, but I’m not missing another visit with you, especially—” He cuts himself off, snapping his jaws shut so quickly his teeth audibly clack. “Uh, never mind that,” he mutters right afterwards. “Anyway, I meant—”

“Don’t try backtracking out of this. What was that?” Linhardt asks. He usually lets Caspar have what he wants, but unease prickles at the back of his neck at that especially.

Caspar seems to struggle with himself for a few long seconds before giving in. “My… My brother told me not to see you anymore.”

It takes a long, quiet moment before Linhardt says, “Ah.”

“I-Is that all you have to say!?”

“May I ask for his reasoning, then?” Linhardt says, speaking slowly to keep himself calm and composed and not at all panicky.

Caspar frowns. “The pollution’s been getting to all of us, but ‘specially to him. I mean, it was all the trash that sorta did Dad in, after all. He said it’s the humans’ fault we’re suffering like this and that us seeing each other is a betrayal to our species and blah blah blah, whatever, he’s just being an asshole. It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to listen to him.”

“Except the part where he’s the king now,” Linhardt points out, “and not just your older brother anymore.”

“That… yeah, you’re right,” Caspar grumbles. “But it’s no big deal, okay? He can say that, but it’s not like he can stop me as long as I stay sneaky. We can just keep these secret, and it’s not like he’d know any better. Besides,” he adds, grinning again, “you really think some fancy words can stop me from seeing you, Lin?”

Linhardt smiles, the feeling no longer as unfamiliar as it used to be. “Of course. It wouldn’t be fair, after all, if I’m the only one taking time out of my studies to see you here.” I wouldn’t miss you for anything.

He wishes these feelings were new, that he’s only just now discovering the way Caspar’s smile makes his heart rattle around in its rib cage or the way Caspar’s saltwater-cold touch on his skin is enough to have Linhardt’s entire body heating up. But that would be a lie—they may have been new, once, but at the time Linhardt hadn’t even realized he had begun to fall in love until he had, completely and fully, found himself head over heels for the man… well, merman, to be exact, but details.

Remembering that only brings his own mood down, though. It’s a miracle they’ve managed to keep the existence of merpeople a secret from the rest of the city, as far as Linhardt knows, but he knows this won’t last forever. The water pollution is bad enough, but with Caspar’s older brother now having taken over the underwater throne, he probably has powers strong enough to keep Caspar from returning to the surface if he ever finds out about these little trysts—and Linhardt knows he will, because Caspar has never done things subtly. Someday Linhardt will leave this beach for the last time, and he may not even know it.

“Lin?” Caspar waves a webbed hand before his face, bringing Linhardt out of his rapidly-spiraling thoughts. “You there? You’ve been spacing out way too often lately.”

“It’s the textbooks,” Linhardt automatically replies. “Also, I haven’t gotten decent sleep in days.”

Caspar shakes his head. “The human world gets more awful the older you get,” he says, so wisely Linhardt’s almost fooled for a moment. “You know, my offer’s still up. About the sea witches and you getting gills and a tail, that is. I think you’d make a great shark.”

“I would rather be a turtle, I think,” Linhardt says. “Imagine just sleeping in your shell all day. What I’d give for that…”

They share a cheap McDonald’s meal together, talking about whatever comes to mind, like Caspar’s recent rescue missions and Linhardt’s favorite college professor, and night comes before Linhardt even notices. “Well then, I should be going,” he says, standing up and stretching his sore legs, shaking the sand out of his clothes as best as he can. “When can I see you again?”

Caspar grins, so confident that Linhardt’s terribly tempted to feel the same. “How does day after tomorrow sound? I got patrol duty, but I’m free after!”

“Alright. See you. Eat the fries before they get soggy.”

Except when they do meet again, on the promised day-after-tomorrow, Caspar nearly leaps several feet out of the water like the breaching shark he is and lands smack in Linhardt’s lap. “Lin!” he shouts, so panicked that Linhardt’s brain momentarily shuts down as if trying to avoid reality. “You gotta help me!”

“W-What is it?” Is it another seal trapped in a fishing net? A pelican choking on some plastic? Linhardt never thought his studies would come in handy for situations like these, but he’s helped Caspar out with so many of these rescues that he’s actually getting better at it.

Caspar shakes his head, and only now does Linhardt realize he doesn’t just look panicked—he looks furious. “Think of something my brother wouldn’t be able to give me!”

After a lengthy pause, all Linhardt can manage is, “What?”

Apparently, Caspar and his brother had gotten into an argument the other day, after some passing fish had snitched on Caspar to his brother about visiting Linhardt in secret. His brother had eventually pushed Caspar into making a deal with him: if Caspar can ask for something that his brother can’t grant him, either through the ocean’s natural resources or his kingly powers, then Caspar can go and keep seeing Linhardt. If not, Caspar would have to stay in the ocean and never see Linhardt again. It’s almost certainly a trap, but with Caspar riled up because of the argument, he’d recklessly agreed anyway. His brother had given him three chances over the next three days to think of something.

It all sounds like such a fairytale-esque plot that Linhardt can’t respond for the next few seconds. When he finally collects his thoughts, he easily suggests, “A cure for cancer, then?”

Caspar frowns. “Cancer? Like the crab?”

Right. He shouldn’t have attributed human diseases to a race that is decidedly not human, despite the similarities. “Can he create a living being?” Linhardt tries again. This one’s definitely impossible, at least—surely Caspar’s brother, kingly powers or not, could create an entire merperson.

“A living being…?” Caspar mulls that over for a moment, then nods. “Yeah, okay! He can create robots and stuff, but those don’t count as living, right?”

“Wait, robots? Underwater?”

“I gotta get going, Lin! See you later!” And Caspar disappears back into the ocean depths before Linhardt can try to drag him back for an interrogation on these supposed robots.

Linhardt sighs—they’d barely even talked today like they agreed. Knowing Caspar, he might either frantically swim back after his brother concedes defeat or proves him wrong, though how he might do the latter sounds absurd, so perhaps Linhardt should just wait a little. He scrolls mindlessly through social media on his phone, trying to come up with yet more impossible ideas just in case this one doesn’t work out.

Caspar doesn’t return that day.

Linhardt trudges back the next day, still shaking sand out of places he didn’t know could contain sand, only to find Caspar’s long-familiar dorsal fin circling the waters like an actual hunting shark. “Caspar?” he calls out, after double-checking that the beach is empty.

Predictably enough, Caspar leaps out of the water at an incredible height, dives back down, and swims towards the shore so fast it almost looks like he’s cutting through the waves. “Lin!” he gasps, hair mussed and messy. “It didn’t work!”

“Your brother created a living being?” Linhardt asks, torn between feeling aghast, bewildered, and shocked.

“He and his wife just stayed in their bedroom all day and later he went out and told me she’s gotten pregnant just like that,” Caspar whines, all in one breath. “I hate biology! But it makes sense! And he technically fulfilled the request without even needing his powers!”

Linhardt hates to admit it, but it’s true—he hadn’t specified not going the biological method, and… now that he thinks about it, how do merpeople reproduce? Eggs? Before that, how do they… you know…

He decides this isn’t worth thinking about right now, especially if it will never be relevant to him if he doesn’t focus on coming up with a suitably impossible idea. “Can he cure the entire world of pollution?”

“With enough time, yup,” Caspar easily agrees, which hadn’t been quite what Linhardt had been hoping for. “He’s kinda busy with just this ocean though. But it’s definitely possible. I think the rulers of the other oceans are just lazy and selfish.”

That sounds pretty normal to Linhardt. “Perhaps you should ask for something… human-ish,” he suggests. “Something he wouldn’t know anything about.”

Caspar pouts. “But that’s not fair. I’m not gonna play dirty.”

“Sometimes you really are too righteous for your own good,” Linhardt says, amused.

His smile fades quickly when he remembers they still don’t have anything to challenge Caspar’s brother with, and Caspar seems to catch on, because he says, “I got an idea earlier. How about, like, a job he’s really bad at? I’ve seen him do absolutely awful at weaving and embroidery. And he can’t cook either!”

“You say that like you can cook.”

“Anyway,” Caspar forges on, an embarrassed blush on his face, “I could ask him to embroider and cook a buffet at the same time. What do you think? At the very least, even if he does manage to do it somehow, we get a buffet.”

Linhardt snorts. “Sure, alright.” This seems almost easier than creating a living being, although Linhardt himself has never tried embroidering before and the best he can cook is an omelette, but that’s beside the point. Trying to do both at once would almost certainly end in disaster and the house up in flames. “Stay here first, Cas,” he says, before Caspar can dive back down underwater. “I read something interesting about sea urchins you might like.”

“Sea urchins!” Caspar’s tail waves excitably. The upper fin there really has grown longer than it was before, when they were still children and teasing the growth stunt there had been the funniest thing for Linhardt. “Okay, tell me! Maybe it’ll help when I try to talk to the guys. They’re not great conversationalists at all.”

The next morning—or afternoon, thanks to Linhardt’s terrible sleep schedule—Linhardt decides to check the beach for any inconsiderate idiots as usual, something he doesn’t get to do too often because of his classes. Today he’s free, though, which is good, because for once he gets to take his time making tea and dozing off at the kitchen counter before leaving the house.

He’s immediately glad he had made this decision when he sees Caspar on the beach, lying face-down on the sand and devoid of his usual energy. “C-Caspar?” Linhardt stammers; then, louder: “Caspar! Are you alright?”

“Mmngh?” Caspar lifts his head up off the sand just as Linhardt skids to a stop beside him. When was the last time he’d run that fast? “Oh, Lin…”

With incredible effort, Linhardt manages to drag Caspar towards the shore where the water will reach him, and Caspar sighs in relief the instant the waves wash over his body. “Man, that feels good,” he mumbles. “Sorry ‘bout this, Lin, I was… was…”

For the first time throughout their entire friendship, Caspar falls asleep instead of Linhardt. Linhardt opens his mouth, ready to shout Caspar awake, but he takes one look at Caspar’s peaceful sleeping face and decides he can wait a little while, just like what Caspar does every time Linhardt falls asleep on him.

But why had he gone so far out from the water? Sure, he’d barely been halfway through the beach, but if anyone other than Linhardt had come across him, he would probably be sliced up for shark’s fin soup right now and possibly sensationalized on social media. Had he wanted to tell Linhardt something? He couldn’t have just waited for Linhardt to come down?

This is your fault, a little voice whispers in Linhardt’s thoughts. If you weren’t such a pesky human who can’t even swim, he wouldn’t have had to injure himself like this.

That’s not true, Linhardt wants to say, but he can’t, if only because he knows it’s true. When they were younger, Caspar was even more brash and reckless than he is now and got himself in this sort of situation more than once because of something related to Linhardt. It had taken much longer for a panicking Linhardt to drag him back into the water then, largely because he hadn’t yet carried enough heavy textbooks to develop the required arm strength. It was Caspar who fought off other angered merpeople who shouted that Linhardt shouldn’t know of their existence, and Caspar who ferried Linhardt back to shore whenever he got too tired to keep swimming.

It was always Caspar getting hurt for him, one way or the other. Linhardt swallows, carding a hand through ruffled blue hair and gently untangling the knots.

If he were braver, Linhardt would have accepted Caspar’s offer to visit the sea witches and ask them for gills and a fish tail. If he were braver, Linhardt would have thrown everything of his human life away for the ocean, to spend all day with Caspar, learning how to swim without his legs and finding sea creatures in trouble to rescue.

If he were braver… If he were just more like Caspar…

Minutes stretch out into an hour. Linhardt ends up nodding off a few times, too, only to snap immediately awake when Caspar begins to stir. “Uh, whoa,” Caspar mumbles, looking disoriented when he blinks his eyes open. “What am I doing out here?”

“You went too far from the water again and passed out,” Linhardt sighs. “Are you feeling better now?”

Caspar stretches his arms, humming to himself. Water glistens enticingly on his bare shoulders and chest. “Yeah! Can you give me a sec, though? I am starving.”

“Be my guest.”

After circling the nearby waters for a few minutes, Linhardt gets the privilege of watching Caspar’s tail lash out like a whip to stun a passing fish before he chomps down on it with his impressive jaws, then swims back to the shore to happily tear into the trout right in front of Linhardt. The blood is disgusting as ever, but Linhardt’s grown used to it by now that he barely even blinks at the gruesome display anymore. “I meant to tell you,” Caspar says, in between ravenous bites, “that, uh, my brother did it.”

That gets Linhardt’s attention. “He did what?”

“He embroidered and cooked up enough for a buffet at the same time,” Caspar grumbles, wiping blood off his chin and tossing the fish bones towards the sand. Linhardt supposes it’s payback for all the trash humans throw in the ocean. “What I forgot to say was that it had to be, you know, good. I’ve never hated salmon so much in my life! And his wife swam up to a nearby island just to set the… thing he embroidered on fire.”

“Ah.” Linhardt looks down. “So today is our last chance, then, isn’t it?”

Caspar now looks like he wishes he hadn’t thrown the fish bones away, because his hands are fumbling for something to fiddle with. “I… Yeah,” he mutters. “But—But that doesn’t mean we should give up! I just know there’s something we can do. Some request that’s worded super specifically so—”

“Caspar.” Linhardt reaches and takes Caspar’s hand in his own, sharp nails and webbed fingers and all. Caspar quiets, swallowing thickly. “It’s fine. I… don’t think there’s anything we can do.”

“Are you giving up?” Caspar asks, voice so uncharacteristically small and soft that it makes Linhardt’s chest hurt more than it should. The words On me? On us? hang in the air between them, unspoken and loud.

Linhardt tightens his grip on Caspar’s hand. “I could never,” he whispers. “You know I love you more than anything.”

He doesn’t even care if he sounds a bit too genuine and sincere for his words to be taken in any way other than romantic—there’s a sinking feeling in his gut, one that refuses to go away no matter how much he might try to tell himself this can’t be the end of twenty long years.

After all, perhaps Caspar’s brother is right. Perhaps their two races aren’t meant to know each other, talk to each other, love each other. It’s humans that had polluted the waters, humans that had killed Caspar’s father and countless other merpeople and aquatic creatures either through hunting or their trash and garbage… it’s the humans’ fault this is happening at all. Linhardt’s fault, really. What sort of person fell in love with their best friend?

Caspar blinks, a bright red flush creeping down from his cheeks to his neck, before he laughs, loud enough to scare a pair of seagulls away. “G-Geez, Lin, what’s gotten into you? You’re not usually this…”

He trails off, evidently unsure of what word to use, but he hasn’t drawn back or pulled his hand away from Linhardt’s, who decides to take this as a good sign. “No, I’m not,” Linhardt agrees. He can’t bring himself to meet Caspar’s eyes. “I just wish being with you didn’t have to be so… controversial, I suppose is one word.”

There’s a long pause. “It’s fine,” Caspar eventually says. “You can say ‘difficult.’ It’s true anyway.”

“Being with you is not difficult. It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”

How is he supposed to describe it anyway? Caspar makes everything seem so much better, brighter, easier. Linhardt could go a whole week without sleep because of his studies but he’d still be able to make time to head down to the beach he’s made his home for the past two decades and find himself smiling and laughing with Caspar. He had even painstakingly learned how to swim, just good enough that he doesn’t need an inflatable tube anymore, to follow Caspar out whenever he wants to show him a new shipwreck or meet a rare sea creature Linhardt would spend the next several days researching about. Being with Caspar might be the one thing that has come easy to Linhardt for his entire life.

And now the ocean is going to take him away, back where he belongs. Maybe it’s meant to be that way, Linhardt thinks. Maybe they were never meant to be together at all.

“That…” Caspar sighs. “Yeah. Okay. I, uh, I feel the same—I mean, I lo… lo… uh… you know what I mean, right?”

“That we’re best friends?” Linhardt repeats, nonplussed.

“What? No! I mean, yes! I mean, yeah, but that’s not—” Caspar’s so red, he looks two seconds away from exploding. “I-I mean—what you said earlier—you mean it?”

“I said quite a number of things earlier,” Linhardt says, only growing more confused.

Caspar struggles with words for a moment, then sighs again, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “Gah. Never mind. I just… uh… being with you isn’t difficult either, Lin,” he mumbles, now blushing even harder. “And even if today might, um. Be our last day together, I… I’m not about to forget you. In fact,” he adds hotly, “who cares what my brother says? I have to surface every now and then for rescue work too! I bet I’d be able to see you from miles away—no, an ocean away, a continent away, however far you might be!”

“Don’t say things like that,” Linhardt mutters, just to ignore the stinging heat behind his eyes. “Just… Let’s… stay here. Stay here with me. Alright? Until I fall asleep, maybe, or… I don’t know. Just don’t leave.” He takes a deep breath and leans forward to rest their foreheads together—Caspar’s skin is, as always, refreshingly cool, and this close Linhardt can smell the mix of saltwater, seaweed, and what Linhardt supposes is the scent of shark. “For as long as you can.”

Caspar nods. “Okay. Wanna talk about starfishes or something?”

Linhardt shakes his head. Talking about his research always makes the time go by too fast, and that’s the last thing he wants right now. “Tell me about… whatever you did today, and yesterday, and the day before,” he says instead. “All I’ve heard from you is your brother this and your brother that. Easily my least favorite merman, I must say.”

“Am I your favorite merman?” Caspar beams.

“I’m not obligated to answer that.”

“I guess that’s a yes! Y’know, there’s this stingray who really reminds me of you. He’s kinda stuck-up and snobby and all he ever does is sleep…”

Linhardt doesn’t know how long they stay there, because after trying to see if seashells would look good on Caspar (they do, but Caspar insists they don’t and stop touching there, Lin, what the heck), playing a random work-out playlist from Spotify on Linhardt’s phone for Caspar to swim laps to, and watching a short documentary about actual thresher sharks (also on Linhardt’s phone, its battery almost completely drained) that Caspar mocks at every opportunity, Linhardt finds himself nodding off without meaning to.

“You should go,” Caspar says, chin atop one hand, when Linhardt’s eyes close for too long during a blink. “It’s getting late, and I know you’ve got classes tomorrow.”

“I do not,” Linhardt grunts. “Classes don’t exist unless I perceive them.”

“Classes or no classes, you’re getting tired,” Caspar points out, and Linhardt has to admit it’s true. According to his phone, it’s nearly two in the morning, and though Linhardt’s used to all-nighters, today has been so utterly exhausting in both good and bad ways that keeping his eyes open is becoming an absolute chore. “Come on, Lin. It’s not like you can sleep out here anyway.”

Linhardt huffs. “Try me.”

“If you won’t leave,” Caspar returns, “then I’ll just have to leave first. Then you’ll have no choice!”

That’s certainly true as well. Linhardt’s never sure if he should be happy or not when Caspar gets things right. “You wouldn’t,” Linhardt mumbles, despite his voice already sounding heavy with sleep. “You promised.”

“Promised?”

“That you’d stay.” He pauses. “That we’d stay. Together. That you wouldn’t leave. I…” Linhardt swallows. “For the longest time, I thought that if either of us had to go somewhere, it would be me. Because… you know, humans and all. And this ocean is your territory, after all, so it never occurred to me that…” He shakes his head. “Never mind. My point is that… that… I don’t know what my point was.”

Caspar stares at him for so long that Linhardt starts squirming in discomfort before he finally speaks. “No, I get it. You mean, like…”

Another long pause. “Do you not get it after all?” Linhardt asks. “Not like I really get it either.”

“It’s… I…” Caspar takes a deep breath through his nose and exhales through his mouth. Linhardt tries not to wrinkle his nose at the smell of raw fish and blood. “I’m sorry,” he says, which is the absolute last thing Linhardt was expecting to hear from him. “I broke the promise after all.”

He doesn’t give Linhardt a chance to respond before he leans in, presses his lips against Linhardt’s forehead, and then turns away to dive back down into the water. Linhardt gets one last glance of his long upper tail fin before Caspar’s disappeared, not even leaving a bubble behind on the surface.

Linhardt’s first class is some ungodly hour of the morning (10am) that he absolutely refuses to acknowledge. When he does wake up after the most restless sleep he’s ever had, it’s definitely several hours past 10am and probably lunchtime as well, but all he does is stare at the ceiling of his room and watch the shafts of sunlight move throughout the day.

How long, exactly, does he lie there? He can’t say, but when he does eventually get up, the bright sunlight from earlier has shifted into warm pinks and oranges, just the way he likes his late afternoons. If only today didn’t feel so cold.

He still has classes, but taking the train to campus doesn’t seem worth it. He’s hungry, but he can’t be bothered with anything in the fridge and cabinets. There’s a text from Father and an email from one of his professors, but Linhardt puts his phone on do-not-disturb. The Angelica plant on his windowsill needs watering, but he’s sure it can last a few more hours on its own. There are usually people on the beach around this time of the day, and Linhardt’s made it a habit to go down and make sure no one litters in the water, but…

Without thinking, Linhardt reaches up and touches his forehead, the spot where Caspar had… kissed… him, last night. It didn’t feel real then, and it still doesn’t feel real now. If he was going to give me a goodbye kiss, Linhardt thinks, eyes warm with frustration and something else he doesn’t want to acknowledge, then he could have at least given me a proper one on the mouth. Even if he’d taste of raw fish and blood.

Whatever. It’s not like Linhardt plans to attend his classes today—he’s done just fine cutting a few every now and then—and he can’t imagine just puttering around the house and feeling sorry for himself. He grabs his phone and a jacket and heads for the beach.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, it’s empty, so he can’t take out his frustration on any trash-throwers. With a world-weary sigh, he plops down on his usual spot near the shore, just close enough that the waves reach his bare feet. Ridiculous. Had this place always felt so lonely? Without any humans nor Caspar around, Linhardt can almost see why everyone had looked at this place and thought it would be a good dumping ground for garbage and waste. If he hadn’t met Caspar back then, would he have been just like everyone else, thinking one soda can in the ocean isn’t such a big deal? Thinking entire barrels of oil and chemicals wouldn’t hurt anybody?

He rests his forehead against his knees. He still hasn’t cried yet, perhaps because nothing had felt real last night—but alone in a dirtied, deserted beach, it feels more real than ever. Will Linhardt ever see Caspar again? Ever run a hand through his hair, ever tell him new things about newly-discovered sea creatures (and hear Caspar say he’s known what those things are since forever ago), ever hear his voice again? If Linhardt closes his eyes, he can almost hear Caspar calling his name: Linhardt, Lin…

“…hardt—Lin! Over here!”

Linhardt sighs. He has to stop doing this to himself. Why had he come here in the first place? If he walks at a slightly faster pace than usual, he can probably still make it in time for his next class—

“Lin, you big idiot, quit staring into space and get over here!”

Okay, those were certainly not his thoughts. Linhardt stands up, dusting sand off his pants, and stares into the distance—on the other end of the beach, he can see something… no, someone sprawled out on the sand, someone with suspiciously familiar blue hair and a suspiciously familiar loud voice. Caspar? he almost calls, but holds himself back at the last moment—no, no, that’s impossible. It can’t be Caspar. For one, Caspar has fins and gills and a shark tail.

Caspar does not—should not—have a pair of decidedly human legs.

Cas—The stranger is still waving their arms over their head, definitely shouting Linhardt’s name, so maybe, maybe this is someone from campus who has suddenly found themselves unable to move or something. Yes. That’s it. Maybe they got bitten by a sha—Maybe they got stung by a jellyfish and need help getting to a hospital. That makes sense. “What is it?” Linhardt shouts, trying to keep his voice steady as he jogs towards Ca—the stranger in what must be the biggest show of effort he’s made all day.

But he slows down and stops altogether when he gets closer, because he can’t keep lying to himself anymore—this is not a stranger. To think Caspar could ever be a stranger to him is so absurd, Linhardt wants to beat himself up for even pretending not to recognize Caspar. He would know this man in sleep and in death, with a shark tail or human legs.

He’s hardly aware he’s dropping to his knees next to a grinning Caspar, who seems to have wrapped himself up in a tattered, off-white sail (probably from a shipwreck), the cloth secured in place by old brown rope (also probably from a shipwreck). “Hey there,” Caspar greets, smiling like an idiot. All that remains of his shark teeth are a pair of canines that are sharper than they probably should be—otherwise they look like perfectly normal human teeth a dentist would coo over. “Did I surprise you?”

“What—What—” Linhardt takes a deep breath and tries to speak without sounding ready to jump into the water and become a turtle like he’d promised. “What happened? What did you do?”

“I thought of something after I left,” Caspar says, crossing his arms over his chest. “I wasn’t sure if it would work, but I had to try! When I went back to my brother, I used our last chance to ask for your hand in marriage!”

Linhardt almost keels over. “You what?”

“Look at it this way! If my brother said yes, then I’d have you, and if he didn’t, then I’d still be able to keep seeing you. Either way, we’d win!” Caspar grins again, and Linhardt has never hated human teeth so much in his life. “He gave up and said I could do whatever I wanted. Thing is, I don’t want something like this to happen again, and I think you’d like it a lot more if I was way nearer, so I went to the sea witches and made a deal with ‘em. Now I can do this!”

With great effort, Caspar crawls back into the water, his legs flailing uselessly behind him, and in a brief flash of light, turns into—oh God, turns into a shark, a full-grown, six-meter-long thresher shark that nearly stabs Linhardt in the eye with the tip of its tail. The shark—no, Caspar dives into the water, swimming around for a few seconds before suddenly leaping up to breach, his long tail waving behind him like a banner.

When he swims back to shore, he’s back to his human form, although now he’s thankfully retained the shark teeth, as Linhardt sees when he grins wide. Linhardt never thought he would be so attached to teeth in his life, but he never thought he would get to see Caspar with a pair of legs either. “How’s that? This way I can still return to the ocean whenever I like!” Caspar exclaims. “I’ll need your help for rescue work even more now though, at least until I know how to use these legs. They’re so ungainly, Lin. How do you—”

Linhardt rushes forward and tackles Caspar in a hug. Caspar doesn’t topple backwards, but he does let out a little oof of surprise. “Uh, Lin? Are you…”

“You shouldn’t have,” Linhardt breathes against Caspar’s neck, his voice shaking so badly it’s taking every bit of his self-control not to break down into sobs entirely. “Don’t you miss it? Don’t you want to stay a merman? That’s—You were happy like that. You can’t ever have that again, just because of… of…”

Caspar wraps his arms around Linhardt, hands resting on his back. “Don’t be stupid, Lin,” Caspar mumbles, resting his chin atop the crown of Linhardt’s head. “This wasn’t something I did on impulse. I thought real long and hard about it before I made the request to the witches. Even as a human, I have to soak in water often, and there might be other side-effects I don’t know about. I’m still craving raw fish, for one. It’s not like that much about me has changed. And besides—” He nudges Linhardt up to meet his eyes, and Linhardt blinks the dampness away as best as he can. “What’s love without some sacrifices?”

“That is the single cheesiest thing I have ever heard in my life.” Linhardt sniffs. “It… I should have done the same. All those years ago, I should have—”

“What? Turned into a fish yourself?” Caspar snorts. “Today’s a real weird day for you to be so silly! Look, Lin, what matters now is that I made my decision and I’m happy with it. Or I will be once I learn how to walk. And run. I’ve wanted to use one of those treadmill things so bad ever since you showed me a video.”

Linhardt swallows. Caspar’s right—this was a decision he made himself. He’s not a child, and it’s not Linhardt’s place to scold him about it. More importantly… “A treadmill? Really?” Linhardt huffs. “What about my hand in marriage? Was that just something to mess with your brother?”

“Oh.” Caspar grins. “Damn, nearly forgot. Okay, no problem! What kind of wedding do you want? You probably don’t want too much work, so maybe something simple, but I want a really big wedding cake, like an obnoxiously giant—”

“Caspar,” Linhardt gently interrupts. “You haven’t even asked me yet.”

“Oh,” Caspar says again, a little numbly. “You’re right. Lin. Hardt. Linhardt.” He coughs, clears his throat, and draws himself up as best as he can, even though they’re sitting in front of each other. “Linhardt,” he says, smiling just slightly, and Linhardt never thought his name could ever sound so sweet, “will you marry me?”

Linhardt leans forward, tilting his head to the side, and kisses Caspar—properly this time, none of those silly forehead or cheek kisses that could still pass for platonic. And it isn’t the smallest, quickest peck on the lips like when they were six years old and Linhardt didn’t know what to do about the talking fish in his hands—no, this one is a fairytale kiss for the movies, where Linhardt tastes saltwater on his tongue and doesn’t even care because it’s Caspar he’s kissing, Caspar he’s going to be marrying, Caspar, Caspar, Caspar.

“A big cake,” Linhardt agrees, pulling back just slightly so he’s speaking right above Caspar’s lips. Caspar himself looks pleasantly dazed. “As big as you like. And we’re having it here.”

“N-Now?” Caspar stammers. “Can we kiss some more first? You know, as practice for the big one?”

“Not now, but here,” Linhardt amends, unable to keep the smile off his face. “On this beach. And shouldn’t it be your turn to kiss me now?”

“I have no problems with that.”

Once upon a time, Linhardt gives his first kiss away to a fish (again). It isn’t quite like the fairytales he reads in his books, if only because their grand wedding ceremony has yet to be planned, the appropriately flashy magic spells happened off-screen underwater, and environmental pollution, playing the role of the evil villain, is much harder to vanquish than a typical antagonist. Most of all, the world isn’t saved and life still isn’t perfect: there are still classes to attend, sea creatures to rescue, exams to take, and perhaps a hospital to inherit. If Linhardt were braver, perhaps he really would have become a merman all those years ago, and all this kissing could have happened much earlier without all the angst that led up to it.

But he does get Caspar, who smiles at him and kisses him within an inch of his life and tells him he loves him with blue eyes that sparkle like sunlight atop the ocean waves. And maybe—no, definitely—this is what happiness feels like.