Archive of Our Own

“Have you ever been to that aquarium down the street?”

Zac looked up from where he was counting his tip money from his latest client to see Hayley looking intently at him.

“Don’t you have a septum to do?” Zac asked.

“They’re not scheduled until 12:45.”

“That’s in five minutes.”

“Yeah, which means you have five minutes to actually answer me. Have you been, yes or no?”

“No, why? I didn’t even know there was an aquarium.”

“Well, clear your schedule for tonight, because we’re going.”

“Again, I ask: why?”

“Because of this.”

A paper was rudely shoved in Zac’s face, and he had to blink several times before it came into focus.

‘NEW EXHIBIT: MARINE MYSTERY! COME SEE OUR REAL, LIVE MERPERSON! ’ it read. There was a cheesy clip-art picture of a mermaid reaching up towards the surface of the water, with the time and date of the grand opening of the exhibit listed in big block letters at the bottom. It had opened that morning, apparently.

“A mermaid? Seriously, Hayls?”

“It’s probably bullshit, but I still wanna go.”

“Why? If you know it’s bullshit, why are you so hellbent on going?”

“Because what if it’s not bullshit, Zac? What if there really is a mermaid there?”

“If there was a real mermaid, it would have made national news, and we would have heard about it by now. There’s no way that it’s real.”

“Zac, have you ever read or watched the national news? How do you know it isn’t national news?”

“Because if it was, my mom would have texted me about it. She sends me all the weird shit from the news, so she’s my source of knowledge. And, since she hasn’t texted me, I’m going to assume it isn’t national news and therefore isn’t real.”

Hayley didn’t seem to like his answer, because her smile instantly vanished under the weight of a frown, and Zac groaned.

“Fine, we’ll go. You’re lucky I like aquariums.”

Hayley’s smile returned, as bright and blinding as ever. 

“Great, then I’ll see you at closing.”

The bell on top of the door chimed, signaling that Hayley’s 12:45 customer had just walked in a few minutes early, and Hayley smiled at him again before leaving.

True to her word, Hayley was waiting for Zac after he finished up with his last client for the day. They waved at him, their hand wrapped in second skin to protect the dragon he had just tattooed, as Hayley opened the door for them.

“Alright, c’mon, let’s go!”

“I have to close up first,” Zac countered. He heard Hayley groaning as he locked up the shop, but he ignored her. He was used to this. 

“Can we at least get dinner first?”

“No! We need to go! Now!” Hayley whined.

“Fine! Fine, okay, but we aren’t staying for long. I’m hungry.”

“Why is it that the only thing that’s on your mind ever is food?”

Zac didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he let Hayley take his hand and literally drag him down the street. 

Even from three blocks down, Zac could see that there was a crowd surrounding the museum that hadn’t been there that morning on his way to work. He had never really paid attention to the aquarium up until this point; if he was being honest, he wasn’t lying when he told Hayley that he hadn’t known there even was an aquarium so close to their little tattoo parlor. As he and Hayley drew closer, he saw that the flyer Hayley had shown him had been recreated on a larger scale and had been placed on the sidewalk on either side of the entrance.

“Holy shit, I didn’t think there would be such a big crowd,” Hayley muttered as they reached the edge of the crowd.

“Yeah, you’d think people would see that it was a fake and tell their friends not to bother with it,” Zac responded.

“It ain’t no hoax,” someone said in front of Zac. The man turned around to glare at him, and Zac put up his hands in a defensive gesture so the guy didn’t pummel him into powder. He was taller and more muscular than he was, and Zac wasn’t about to get into a fist-fight over a fucking mermaid.

“Whatever you say, buddy.”

“It’s real, I’ll tell ya. Look.”

The man pulled out his cellphone and tapped on its screen for a few seconds. He turned the phone around to show its screen to Zac and Hayley, and they both leaned in to see the video.

“Hit play.”

Zac hit play.

The video was of what Zac assumed was the inside of the aquarium. There was a huge wall that was made entirely of glass, with lots of colorful plants and decorations that definitely had Zac distracted for a second. Movement within the video drew his attention away from the decorations and towards something in the center of the tank.

“Is that…”

It was. There, swimming up towards the top of the glass wall, was a fucking merman. Zac was shocked to see that it was a male merperson— he had expected a mermaid , since the graphic on the advertisement showed a woman. The merman continued to swim around, but soon he realized that going up would lead him nowhere, so he changed course and began to dart around the enclosure, going from corner to corner at a speed that left Zac a bit surprised and impressed.

“Ain’t he pretty?” the stranger asked. Zac couldn’t make out any distinguishing features, but he nodded his head anyway.

“How do you know that it isn’t just a human in a fake tail?” Zac asked.

“‘Cause I’ve seen ‘im in person! This is my third time goin’ through. He’s real, all right.”

“I believe you,” Zac lied. Satisfied, the stranger turned back around, leaving Zac and Hayley to silently move away from him.

“Did you see that, Zac? I was right!” Hayley yelled.

“Hayls, that’s obviously just a regular human that they hired to swim around for a few hours. That tail wasn’t even convincing,” Zac argued. “Before this, I bet the aquarium had maybe five people visit a year. This is probably just some plot to get more money out of these suckers.”

“Okay, even if it is, I still want to go see for myself. You promised, Zac,” Hayley said, adding the last part after Zac started to groan and complain.

“I didn’t say we couldn’t stay, but I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. You remember the unicorn in sophomore year?”

“I told you never to speak about it again!”

Zac laughed, but the conversation died down on his end after that. Hayley rambled on for a while, obviously excited, and as much as he didn’t want to stay in this God-awful line Zac didn’t want to crush her enthusiasm so he just nodded and listened to her making theories about the merman’s culture and where he had come from, since Tennessee was landlocked.

After a surprising fifteen minutes, they were close to the front of the line, and before he knew it they had purchased tickets and were inside the aquarium. Zac could see why it didn’t get much traction; besides the glorious merman exhibit, the other attractions were lackluster and the animals were obviously not well cared for. The seahorse tank looked oddly green, and there was only one suspiciously fat shark in the shark exhibit. It honestly both gave Zac the creeps and made him sad. 

They trudged through the interior of the museum, following the single-file line that had formed, until they reached a doorway. Judging by the blue and purple light that was coming through the doorway, this door led to the merman. 

He was right. As soon as he stepped into the room, his eyes were assaulted with too many pretty things to look at. Flame Angels darted back and forth in front of his eyes, adding a much-needed dash of red that contrasted the blue, purple, and green artificial plants that started at the bottom and reached more than halfway up the glass wall. Other fish that Zac couldn’t name swam lazily throughout the tank, and as Zac drew closer he noticed that they were staying towards the bottom. Very few adventurous fish were making their way towards the surface— except, of course, for the merman, who was hovering about ten feet above Zac’s head.

The stranger had been right: he was pretty. Zac couldn’t see much of him from his current angle, but then the merman swam down and gave Zac a better view of his purple tail. Intricate and fancy fins protruded from a heavily muscled tail, almost reminding Zac of an angelfish. There were lines of bioluminescent scales that ran up and down his body, and as Zac watched they flared bright purple before dimming down again. Deep violet scales met tanned skin. Zac felt his cheeks heating up as he stared at the merman’s body, so he quickly looked up to his face, which… wasn’t any better. Curly hair, fins instead of human ears, hardened brown eyes, and razor-sharp teeth were what Zac was met with. He was hot, and he was staring directly at Zac.  

“Wow,” Hayley said beside him. He had kind of forgotten she was there.

“There’s no way he’s fake,” Zac muttered.

“No shit,” Hayley responded. Zac continued to stare at the merman, mostly because he didn’t want to look away, but partly because the merman was also staring at him. He didn’t care about the crowd of people that were amassing behind him to also stare at the merman; instead, he focused entirely on this strange being separated from him by only a glass wall. He had an expression of something close to shock on his face, and as Zac watched it turned into confusion, and then curiosity. He decided that he could watch this merman change facial expressions all day.

Soon, though, the intercom crackled to life, and a bored-sounding employee announced that the aquarium was closing.

“Aw, shit,” Hayley cursed. “I wanna stay.”

“Dude, me too.”

“We can always come back tomorrow after work,” she suggested. Zac could only nod as he was lowkey pushed out of the exit of the aquarium. Stepping out into the blunted light of dusk brought Zac back to reality: he was starving.

“Where can we go to eat?”

Zac fell asleep that night dreaming of purple. When he woke up the next morning with the taste of salt water on his tongue and the feeling of scales under his fingertips, he felt his heart breaking when he was greeted with an empty bed nowhere near the ocean. He went through his usual morning routine of showering, brushing his teeth, and snagging a chocolate-chip muffin out of the fridge he kept them in on his way out the door. Right as he shoved the muffin in his mouth, however, his phone rang, and he dropped the muffin onto the ground.

“You made me drop my muffin!” he yelled. It didn’t matter that it had landed on the concrete, and it certainly didn’t matter that he had brushed it off and shoved another bite in his mouth; he needed whoever had called to know how serious of a crime they had committed.

“The merman’s gone!” Hayley yelled back, not caring about his muffin tragedy. Suddenly, Zac didn’t care about the muffin either.

“What?”

“... You didn’t eat the muffin after you dropped it, right?”

“No, why?”

“Your mouth is full.”

“Stay on topic! What about the merman?”

“Right! Right, so I was walking to work and I saw that there were fucking police cars outside of the aquarium, so, obviously I stopped and asked what happened, and they told me the fucking merman was stolen!”

“Are you shitting me? How the fuck can someone steal an entire mermaid without anyone noticing?”

“That’s the thing! They’re saying that they can’t find any footprints or anything, and the fingerprints on the glass don’t match anyone in the system.”

“Why did they tell you all of this?”

“I, uh…”

“Is Jeremy working?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well, I’m gonna take the long way around, then. I don’t want to see him.”

“You do that.”

“I’ll see you in a few.”

Zac hung up the phone. Jeremy had founded the tattoo parlor with Zac and Hayley, but had been fired when it was revealed that he was stealing money from them. It only made sense that he became a cop afterwards, where he can actually get away with stealing. Hayley insisted on at least being cordial to him, if only so the police would actually help in case of an emergency at the shop. Lord knows if they were hostile to him they’d never be able to call 911 again.

So, this was why Zac showed up to work ten minutes late. Hayley was sitting behind the desk, vigorously typing on her phone. After setting up his station, he went back out to bug her only to find her still typing.

“Any updates?” Zac asked. 

“Nope.”

“Anyone come in yet?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Do I have anyone scheduled for today?”

“Dude, I’m not a receptionist. Keep track of your own books,” she said without looking up. Zac sighed but still moved behind the desk to look at the giant paper calendar he kept back there. He had one appointment, but it was several hours away, so Zac claimed the chair next to Hayley and pulled out his own phone.

That was how things went until around 11:45, when the bell on top of the door chimed. Zac didn’t look up until Hayley elbowed him.

“Ow! What?” he asked. He looked up to find an eerily familiar face staring back at him. 

The man in front of the counter was exactly Zac’s type in men. Messy, curly brown hair that fell into his eyes, soft-looking tanned skin, and brown eyes that seemed to ring a dozen bells in Zac’s mind, even if Zac couldn’t place where those bells were from. Those eyes followed Zac as he stood up and reached out his hand for a handshake.

“Welcome to Riot Tattoo Parlor. What can I set you up with today?”

“I’d like a lip piercing and a tattoo, please. You guys do walk-ins, right?”

“Yes, we do. Hayley will take care of that piercing for you, and when you’re done I can get you set up for that tattoo. Any idea what you want so I can get started on drawing?”

“I… Roses. I’d like, like, a cluster of roses, on my arm right here.”

He gestured to where he wanted the tattoo, and Zac nodded, trying his best to steer his thoughts away from this man’s biceps. He already had something in mind, and his hands were itching to put needle to skin.

“Yeah, dude, we can totally do that. We do have some paperwork for you to fill out, though, so if you don’t mind doing that first…”

The shop fell into silence as the man bent over the counter to do the forms both Hayley and Zac had placed in front of him. The spikes on his leather jacket reflected the shitty LED lights of the parlor. Zac found himself mesmerized by the assortment of metal buttons and patches on his jacket.

“Nice jacket, by the way.”

“Thanks, I made it myself.”

Zac needed to marry this man.

“Can I see some ID?” Hayley asked once the man was finished. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a driver’s license, and Hayley passed it over to Zac once she was finished inspecting it.

Taylor York was his name. Born in the same year as Zac, 5’10, and with a Nashville address.

“Alright, you’re good to go,” Hayley chirped. “Zac, give the man his license back so I can stab him already.”

Zac laughed but handed back the license anyway. Taylor thanked him and followed Hayley into her piercing station as Zac brought out his iPad to start drawing; within a few minutes, he heard the countdown, and soon Taylor was back at the desk, looking hotter than he had before with a fresh metal ring in his lip. He paid for the piercing, handing Hayley a $20 bill for a tip, and then followed Zac as Zac made his way to his own station. 

They made pleasant conversation as Zac finished up the sketch, but when he showed Taylor the finished product everything stopped as Taylor stared at it in what Zac hoped was awe.

“Does this look good? I can always draw something different, or—”

“No! No, I mean, this looks good. It’s amazing,” Taylor interrupted. Zac nodded and went to print out the stencil.

“You ever gotten a tattoo before?” Zac asked.

“A really small one, on my ankle.”

“Well, arms hurt a hell of a lot less than ankles, so this should be relatively easy,” Zac said. He peeled the stencil off of Taylor’s skin and fired up his tattoo gun. 

“Let me know if you need to stop or anything, and don’t be afraid to speak up.”

Taylor nodded, and Zac leaned in and started the linework. They didn’t really speak during the process, except for Zac periodically checking in to see if Taylor was okay. When Zac was finished, he turned off his gun and slid back on his stool to look at the finished product. Taylor looked a bit shaken up, but he still smiled from ear to ear.

“Do you like it?”

“Absolutely. I… I love it. Thank you so much, dude.”

Zac led the way out of the station, and while Hayley complimented the tattoo Zac rang Taylor up at the cash register. He paid and then gave Zac a huge cash tip. He wished Zac and Hayley goodbye and left; Zac tried not to feel heartbroken as he walked out of the door.

The merman was still missing when Zac closed up that night. He wasn’t back the next day either, or the day after that. After three days the police stopped coming around as often, and after a week the aquarium took down the signs that advertised the attraction. Every night since seeing the merman, Zac’s dreams have been filled with purple scales and sharp teeth, but the merman’s face escaped his memory after every visit.

Hayley also seemed upset about the merman’s disappearance. She didn’t say it out loud— neither of them did— but Zac still caught sight of her frowning in the direction of the aquarium sometimes. 

Two weeks after the disappearance, Taylor walked back into the shop and back into Zac’s life, and Zac had never been happier to see a customer twice.

“Hey, welcome back! How’s the tattoo healing?” Zac asked.

“Oh, it’s doing fine. I actually came in to get another, if that’s alright?”

“Of course, but I have someone else coming in soon, so if you don’t mind waiting I could see you after that. It’s a really small one, so it shouldn’t take more than an hour at most.”

“Yeah, that’s totally fine with me.”

Taylor sat down on a bench across the room from the main desk. He occupied himself with his phone, and Zac occupied himself with trying his hardest not to stare at Taylor. Every once in a while Taylor would look up, and Zac tried his hardest to not make eye contact, but he still knew that Taylor knew that he was staring. His cheeks felt hot, and Hayley elbowed him under the table as she threw away some trash from her previous appointment, which, in Hayley speak, meant “go and suck his dick already”. Eventually, Zac’s appointment came in, and 30 minutes later he had exchanged the 18-year-old college girl who wanted an infinity sign on her wrist for a 29-year-old mystery of a man. Zac went through the usual routine of draw, print out stencil, and tattoo. The entire time, neither he nor Taylor said a word. Once he had paid, Taylor lingered for a moment, obviously debating on saying something, but in the end he decided against it and wished Zac a good day as he left. 

“I hope you didn’t just let him walk away again without asking him out,” Hayley called from her piercing station.

“Worry less about my love life and more about where you’re putting your needle!” Zac yelled back. Laughter was his only response. Zac sighed, and he knew he was going to get nothing but teasing from Hayley for not getting Taylor’s phone number or something.

The bell chimed again. Zac looked up and saw Taylor standing in front of him for the second time that day, face flushed and phone in hand.

“Can— Can I get your number?”

Five weeks after the merman disappeared, Taylor had gotten three more tattoos and Zac had gotten a boyfriend. The merman exhibit remained empty— Zac went through sometimes to see if he had magically reappeared, but he never did. Zac still dreamed of him, but those dreams were appearing less and less frequently. They had been replaced with dreams of Taylor, of them going on picnics and getting married and other shit that Zac didn’t want to speak out loud. They had a pretty good thing going on; Taylor's body became more and more heavily tattooed, and Zac just thought that every addition made him look infinitely hotter.

Around three months after they started officially dating, Taylor stopped texting.

"I'm telling you, Hayley, this isn't like him. Like, he usually takes forever to respond, sure, but this is just weird."

"How do you know he's not just asleep or something?" Hayley asked. Zac had called her after he woke up that day, and they were both currently getting ready for work as they spoke.

"Because he at least replies to my texts before going to bed at the very latest, and I haven't heard anything for two days."

"Okay, that's a bit weird."

"Yeah, I know! That's why I called you!"

“Okay, well, let's just get to the shop. I'll talk to you when we get there.”

Zac, after hanging up the phone, got in his car and drove the twenty minutes to the tattoo shop. As per usual, he had to drive past the aquarium, but this time the usual empty doorway and dark windows gone, replaced by a large crowd and a banner.

‘THE MERMAN IS BACK! LIVE, EVERY DAY FROM 8 AM TO 8 PM! ’ 

What.

Zac sped up on his way to the tattoo shop, nearly hitting a car as he pulled into a parking space. He raced inside, startling Hayley, who had apparently beat him there.

“What? What’s wrong? Did you hear back from Taylor?” she asked.

“No, but the fucking merman is back.”

“What? Are you shitting me?”

“No! I just drove past and saw that they had put the signs back up, and the crowd is back!”

Hayley was quiet for a minute, staring at the floor in front of the counter, but eventually she looked back up at Zac.

“When was the last time you saw T?”

“Friday. He spent the night at my place the night before, and we—”

“I don’t wanna know what you did! Gross!”

“... I was gonna say we ordered takeout and watched Disney movies, but alright. Anyway, he stayed the night, and I dropped him off at his house Saturday morning before work.”

“Did you check his house?”

“Yeah, I went and knocked yesterday, but all the lights were off and the door was locked.”

“And you said the last time you saw him was Saturday morning?”

“Yeah, why?”

“When did the aquarium people start putting up the signs again?”

“I don't know, I didn't see any yesterday. What does this have to do with Taylor? You're confusing me.”

“Isn’t it strange,” Hayley said, “that Taylor showed up in our lives the same day the merman went missing, and now that he’s gone again the merman is suddenly back?”

“I don’t follow,” Zac admitted.

“Just… Come with me.”

Hayley put up the “Be Back Soon!” sign that they used to take lunch breaks and promptly pushed Zac back out of the door. Zac knew better than to try and stop Hayley when she had an idea, so he said nothing and followed Hayley into the large crowd of people outside of the aquarium. They bought two tickets, just like they had last time, and soon they were following the same path they had followed a few months ago.

“I still don’t see how this is connected to Taylor,” Zac whispered in Hayley’s ear as they passed an empty tank. With a muted sense of shock, Zac realized that it used to be the shark exhibit, but the fat shark was gone and the tank was empty of all water. 

“Just shut up and follow me,” was the only response Zac got. Eventually they reached the room in the back where the merman was held, and Zac was greeted with something very different than the first time. There were no extra fish in the tank, and the artificial plants that had decorated the tank were gone. The only thing in the tank was the merman himself; it looked like they had gotten him back just as they were packing up the exhibit and didn’t have time to put everything back in order. Even the lights seemed dimmer, and what once instilled a sense of awe and beauty in Zac now left him with a sense of dread and depression.

The merman was curled up in a corner of the tank. Last time he had at least been swimming, but this time he seemed unwilling to do even that. As Zac got closer he could make out intricate details running along his spine and merging with his tail at his waist. Some people were getting angry, banging on the glass and demanding that he move, but the merman never once budged. 

“Sad, isn’t it?” a stranger asked as Zac moved to take the place next to them directly in front of the glass. Zac looked over to see a little old lady, whose head of fluffy white curls only reached up to his chest. She held one of the advertisement flyers in her hand, but it was crumpled and destroyed from how tight she was balling her fist around it.

“Yeah,” Zac answered.

“A thing like that shouldn’t be cooped up in such a small space. He should be free, not held captive.”

“I agree. It’s… It’s depressing. I don’t think I could ever stand to be cooped up in a place like this for a day, let alone my entire life.”

While Zac was speaking, the merman had started uncurling himself from the semi-fetal position he had been in, and by the time Zac finished his sentence he had turned around fully. Before Zac could blink the merman was right in front of him, looking at him with the same brown eyes that had followed Zac into his dreams for weeks… and the same brown eyes that he had stared into during a dinner date a week and a half ago. The merman, since Zac had last seen him in the tank, had gained a single lip piercing, and when Zac looked at his arms to confirm what he was seeing he saw the tattoos he himself had put underneath his boyfriend’s skin.

Zac was an idiot.

“Guess I was right, then,” Hayley said from beside him. 

“I can’t believe it took me this long to realize that my fucking boyfriend is a merman,” Zac muttered.

“To be fair, the first time you saw him, he had pointy teeth and a giant tail, so it’s not that hard to believe—”

“Save it. We need to figure out how to get him out,” Zac interrupted.

“How, though? They’ll probably have this place on lockdown because of what happened last time.”

“Leave that to me, dear,” said the old lady, who had been standing next to Zac the entire time. Zac had no idea what she was going to do. The woman walked away, weaving through the crowd so that Zac lost sight of her eventually, and within a minute people were screaming and shouting.

“Hey, somebody get an ambulance!” someone yelled. 

“Did she fake a heart attack or something?” Hayley whispered. Zac honestly didn’t have an answer. 

Security started moving towards the commotion, and while one person knelt down to help the old lady the other two started ushering everyone out of the aquarium. Whatever the old lady had done had worked. Zac and Hayley moved as fast as they could to get out of sight, and they managed to slip into the “EMPLOYEES ONLY” door without any trouble. There was a flight of stairs leading up to the top of Taylor’s tank, probably so the people who were keeping him here could feed him or something, and Zac didn’t think twice before racing up the staircase. Hayley was right behind him. Taylor must have seen them go into the side door, or he must have heard their footsteps or something, because when Zac reached the top he had already swam up to meet him.

“Let’s get you out of there,” Zac said to him. He reached out both hands and Taylor grasped them. His fingers had webbing between them now, and his nails were more like claws that dug into Zac’s skin, but Zac didn’t care. He hauled Taylor up and out of the tank so that he was entirely out of the water.

“Won’t that kill him?” Hayley asked. Taylor, before Zac could answer, shook his head and held up a hand that (probably) meant for them to wait. Taylor shook out his tail, flinging water droplets everywhere. Zac blinked, and suddenly the tail had split in two, and as he watched further the scales receded into his skin and his feet and legs and… everything else returned.

“Why are you naked?”

“What, did you want me to wear clothes in the water?” Taylor snapped. His teeth weren’t pointy anymore (why was Zac kind of upset about that?) and his ears had returned to their normal human form.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were a merman?”

“Because I thought you knew? We need to have a conversation about both of you being fucking faceblind.”

“Later, please! We need to get out of here!” Hayley yelled. Taylor stood up, a little shaky but otherwise okay. It was then that Zac noticed he had a black eye, and his lip was split on the opposite side from his piercing.

“I’m going to kill them.”

“Zac, we can kill people after we get T out of here and back to my place.”

“Your place? Why?”

“Because they were waiting for me at my house Saturday morning, and they probably know where you live, so Hayley’s place is probably the safest bet,” Taylor answered.

“Alright, well, we still don’t know how we can sneak a naked and soaking wet fully grown man out of an aquarium, so we have that to deal with,” Zac pointed out.

“There’s a back door,” Taylor replied, “It’s where they brought me in. There’s an alley without any cameras back there, so once we get out the back door Hayley can go get her car and drive it around while we wait in the alley.”

“Is that gonna work? What if they notice you’re gone, and—”

“We don’t have time for that! We gotta go!” Hayley practically pushed the two boys down the stairs, and they ran as fast as they could towards the back door, following Taylor’s directions as he leaned on Zac for support. As they ran, Zac wasn’t focused on the danger at hand; instead, he was focusing on the warmth of Taylor’s skin against him and how right it felt to have him back after just one day of not seeing him.

They burst out of the back door, and the sunlight assaulted Zac’s eyes. They were free. They were free, and as soon as Hayley left to get her car Zac turned and pulled Taylor to his chest in a tight hug.

“Sorry for getting kidnapped again,” Taylor mumbled against Zac’s shoulder. Zac just laughed and held him tighter as they waited.

Shortly after their big escape mission, the aquarium shut down. Zac watched with glee as the animals were packed up and shipped to a bigger and better-kept aquarium down in Georgia.

Taylor was a bit shaken up after the kidnapping fiasco, but over time he got better. He tended to hang out at the tattoo parlor most days, and when he wasn't being tattooed or pierced he was hovering over Hayley's shoulder as she pierced people. Whenever a client asked about why he was there, Hayley smoothly lied and said he was her apprentice, and eventually it stopped being a lie and Taylor became their newest (and, honestly, only) piercing apprentice. 

They didn't really bring up the whole merman thing for a while. It wasn't that Zac was avoiding it, he just felt like a fucking idiot whenever he remembered that he had dated Taylor for three months without ever once making the connection between the man in the glass tank and the man in his bed. Hayley talked about it all the time, asking Taylor question upon question whenever the shop was empty or during movie nights at Taylor's house. Taylor was more than happy to answer everything; they found out that he could only transform in salt water, his family was from Virginia Beach but they moved inland because of hunters, and that mermaids were natural predators, hence the pointy teeth and clawed hands. He'd been living in Nashville for most of his life, and his family home had a saltwater pool so that he didn't go crazy from being away from the water for too long. Hayley lapped up the information Taylor gave out, but Zac silently processed it and refused to do anything about his embarrassment.

Zac finally bit the bullet and cornered Taylor around three weeks after everything went back to normal. "Cornered" was the wrong word; it was more like Zac bringing up the topic after dinner, when they were laying in bed and Taylor had his arms around Zac. 

"We need to talk," he began.

"If you're going to tell me that we're breaking up after I spent two hours making dinner for you—"

"No, it's not that," Zac interrupted. "We need to talk about you being... y'know, not human."

"What about it?"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I already told you: I thought you knew what I was. I went to your shop the day after I escaped because I thought you would recognize me, and to me it seemed like you did."

"What does that mean?"

"Like... You wouldn't stop staring at me. You had this dumb, really cute look on your face, and it was the same look you had at the aquarium, so I just thought you knew who— what— I was, and— why the fuck are you laughing at me?"

Zac had, indeed, started laughing, but it took him a second to calm down and actually explain himself. Taylor looked annoyed, which only made Zac laugh harder.

"Oh my God, T, I didn't recognize you, I was just having a total gay freak out both times."

"What?"

"When I saw you in the aquarium, I thought you were the hottest thing ever, and then when you came into the shop that next day I thought the same thing. I just never put two and two together to get four, so I had a period of, like, three weeks where I was daydreaming about both versions of you at the same time."

This time it was Taylor's turn to laugh, and Zac laughed along with him.

"You really are just an idiot, huh?"

"Yeah, I really am."

The next day, Taylor, Zac, and Hayley went swimming in Taylor's saltwater pool, and Zac finally got to admire both sides of his boyfriend.