Archive of Our Own

Langa sat on the edge of the pier, staring out at the waves.  Instinctively, he checked his phone messages, only to feel foolish a moment later.  Of course he couldn’t text Reki to ask where he was.  All he had was the memory of what Reki had told him last week when they were last here together.

I have a surprise for you! Reki had said, his eyes bright as the sun reflected off the ocean.  I can’t tell you what it is but I promise you you’re gonna love it!

And so all Langa could do was wait, his feet hanging in the water, his socks bundled up inside his shoes on the pier.

Finally, he saw the telltale splash in the water that heralded Reki’s appearance.  Langa perked up immediately.  His heart always did a flip when he saw Reki appear, beating erratically with wonder the same as the first day he’d seen him.

Langa’s mom had told him about merfolk when he was little, and Langa used to spend hours at the beach looking for them.  Despite the fact that his mom said they were rare, and shy, and very few lived in Canada, where he’d grown up, Langa never stopped hoping one day he’d meet one.

After his dad died and they moved back to Okinawa, Langa found himself spending a lot of time at the beach here too.  He wasn’t sure why – he supposed that a part of him hoped that maybe he could still find merfolk one day.  That if he could achieve one impossible thing, the impossible task of living without his dad might be within his grasp too.

So that first night when he saw a strange splash upon the water, Langa thought maybe he was dreaming.  A head poked out of the water, right in the reflection of the moon upon the surface, and bright eyes stared directly out at him.  It was a boy, with wild red hair and a curious look on his face.  Langa thought at first that it was just a late night swimmer, but barely had their eyes locked when the boy went under again.  And then, impossibly, a fish tail flapped out of the water, sending a spray of moonlit droplets into the air.

Since then, Langa spent every day after school at the beach, desperate for another glimpse of him.  Slowly, with lots of coaxing and bribes in the form of snacks, Langa learned the boy’s name:  Reki.  And he was merfolk, with the most beautiful yellow tail Langa had ever seen.

They spent almost every day together when Langa was done with school.  Reki told him all about his family living in the nearby reef; Langa told him about his life in Canada, his dad, and the snowboarding he missed.  Reki showed Langa how he could jump clear out of the water, his tail trailing spiral water droplets in the air before he cleanly dove under again.  According to Reki, his mother scolded him for it endlessly, since there was too much of a risk that he’d be seen by a human on the surface.

Langa’s heart swelled when he thought of how much that meant Reki trusted him.

He hadn’t seen Reki for a few days, which was probably for the best since he’d had exams at school.  But he was finished now, and he smiled to see Reki appear and swim excitedly over to him.

“Hi Langa!” Reki called, swimming up to the edge of the pier.  He folded his arms atop the wooden planks, his skin shining with faintly iridescent scales.  Behind him, he lazily flapped his tail over the water.  Reki had a beautiful tail; Langa had always thought so.  It was a beautiful yellow with all sorts of stripes, with wide fins that sparkled when they caught the sun.  Langa had always wanted to touch it, but something in his gut told him it was probably rude to ask.

“Hi,” Langa said, trying to sound like the sight of Reki wasn’t taking his breath away, like it always did.

“How did your human thing go?”  Reki always phrased it that way:  “your human thing.”  Langa was pretty sure that Reki was teasing him, because on one of their first meetings, Langa had asked him about what kind of “mermaid stuff” he did for fun.

“Good, I think.  I hope so, anyway.”  Langa stared at Reki’s freckles with wide eyes.  They were so cute, just a light dusting across the bridge of his nose.  Langa thought about kissing them a lot.  “So, um…you said you had a surprise for me?”

“Oh yeah!”  Reki reached up to the thick necklace he wore.  It was where he kept jewelry, seashells, colored coral that he found, anything shiny he could get his hands on.  He pulled free a small bottle and handed it over to Langa.  “This!”

Tentatively, Langa took it.  “What’s this?”

“Okay, so it’s a little crazy.”  Reki giggled and averted his eyes as a shy little blush spread over his cheeks.  “If you’re not up for it I totally get it.  But it’s, uh…well…it’s just a little something I thought you could try.  If you wanted.”

It was a tiny vial of what looked like seawater, but there was something different about it Langa couldn’t quite put his finger on.  “Okay, but…what is it?” he asked again.

Reki sank down in the water a little and said, “If you drink it…you can have gills and a tail like me for one day.”  He blushed all the way to the tips of his webbed ears.  “Then we can hang out.”

Langa’s eyes went wide and it was all he could do to not guzzle the concoction down with all haste.  Twenty-four whole hours with Reki?  Underwater?  He’d get to be a merperson too?

“So I just drink this, yeah?”  Langa was already pulling the cork out of the vial as he spoke.

“W-well are you sure?” Reki asked, pushing himself up onto his elbows again.  “The transformation might hurt a little, it’s gonna change your whole body, you know!”

I’d endure any pain for this.  “I’m not scared,” Langa said, flashing an excited grin.  “Oh well…I guess maybe I should at least tell my mom I won’t be home tonight.”

After a quick phone call to tell his mom that he would be spending the night with a friend, and after stashing his bookbag in a hastily dug hole in the sand, Langa waded out to waist high water.  Reki floated nearby, vibrating with excitement.

“Okay,” Langa said with a deep breath.  “I’m going for it.”

The potion had a weird taste between briny and sweet.  Definitely not like anything Langa had ever tasted before, but he couldn’t say that he hated it.  In fact, it was kind of nice?

He barely had time to reflect more on it before he felt a searing pain on the sides of his neck.  He dropped the vial in the waves and clapped his hands over his neck to soothe the stinging sensation of gills coming in.

“Wow, that was fast,” Reki said, sounding a little panicked.  He held out his hand.  “Come on, let’s go out a little further.”

Langa took Reki’s hand and let himself be led out into the water.  Already he could feel his body changing, his leg muscles burning like he’d just finished running a marathon.  He couldn’t say that the transformation was completely without pain, but it was bearable, like something he just had to grit his teeth to get through.  The further he went out in the water, the more he could feel his body calling for it, adapting to its new form with reckless abandon.  Langa tentatively dove his head under the water, opened his mouth—

--and breathed.

He was breathing underwater.

Langa blinked and looked at the reef below them.  The water was so clear, so much clearer than he’d ever imagined.  And the colors—they were so vibrant, it was like he was seeing a whole new dimension.  The schools of fish darted past them, bright anemones waved in the current, the stately formations of coral held dominion over this tiny world.

He turned and looked at Reki, who was smiling at him with the widest and most beautiful smile he’d ever given Langa.  And Reki was shimmering, his scales catching the broken beams of light coming in through the surface of the water.  This was how Reki was supposed to look, glowing and resplendent.

“Look at you!” Reki laughed, and Langa could hear his voice clearly.  It wasn’t muffled like he’d expect, but then he didn’t have human ears anymore, did he?  He reached up and touched the webbed ears that he’d grown.

“This feels…really cool, actually.”  Langa laughed.  He looked down at his tail; it was white with stripes of blue running through it, ending in a wide caudal fin that sparkled like a pearl.

“No fair, your fin is bigger than mine!”  Reki took Langa’s fin in both hands and ran his thumbs over it.  “It’s pretty though.  Kinda makes me think of what you said snow looks like.”

“Yeah…I guess it does.”  Langa felt his heart grow warm.  He’d told Reki about snow so long ago; the fact that Reki remembered was…he didn’t even know what to call that emotion.

“Come on, I’ll teach you how to swim.”  Reki darted away with a speed that didn’t seem possible.  Langa tried to move forward, but despite feeling pretty good in this body, he really wasn’t sure how to use it yet.  He paddled awkwardly with his arms, wiggling his tail, trying to catch up.

“You’re too stiff,” Reki said as he swam back to him.  “Don’t use your arms so much.  It’s all the tail.  Try to do kinda like this.”  Reki held his hand out flat, palm down, then moved it up and down like a rollercoaster.

Langa tried it, but he only undulated a bit in the water and didn’t go forward at all.

Well, this was perfect.  How was he going to spend a whole day with Reki if he couldn’t even swim?

But Reki said, “You just need to practice.  Come on, I’ll get you started.”  And before Langa could say anything, Reki took his hand and swam off, pulling him along behind him.

They went in wide circles in the reef.  Reki pulled Langa behind him, telling him just the right way to move his tail to get some forward motion.  It was a completely new way of swimming, but it steadily grew easier.  The movements began to fall into place, and after a while, Reki let go of his hand and Langa was swimming on his own.

“There you go!” Reki said, his expression proud.

Yeah, but now you’re not holding my hand….

“Come on, I want to show you some stuff!”  And Reki was off again, too fast for Langa to follow.

“Wait up!” he called.  “I’m still slow.”

“Sorry!”  Reki came back.  “I’ll try to slow down.”

As they swam, Reki did slow to match Langa’s speed, but he zipped all around, excitedly telling Langa everywhere they were going to go and everything he wanted to show him.  Langa found himself zoning out to gaze at the reef below them, watching the groups of fishes float by, the lazy sea turtles, the manta rays that sailed along beside him.  He reached out to brush the fin of a ray, but it jerked away like it had been startled.

Reki laughed.  “Careful, they can be mean!  Oh hey…come here a minute.”

He waved for Langa to follow him and dove down to where some rocks sat on the ocean floor, bits of kelp and anemones waving languidly around.  Reki pointed to a bare spot on the rock.

“Look, see that?”

Langa squinted.  “What is it?  There’s nothing there.”

“Just look closer, you’ll see.”

Langa leaned in, and suddenly the rock unfurled and blinked at him as it rapidly changed colors.  Langa cried out, waving his arms wildly as he forgot everything Reki taught him about how to swim.  An octopus flew up in his face, angrily spurted a cloud of ink, and darted away.

Behind him, Langa could hear Reki laughing uproariously as Langa waved the ink away.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Reki said between fits of laughter.  “My sisters don’t fall for that anymore, I had to!”

“I see you’re trying to start some trouble,” Langa said, reaching out to grab Reki’s tail fin.  Reki whipped out of the way just in time.

“You can’t even catch up to me,” Reki teased.

Before Reki could even finish talking, Langa darted forward with all his strength, closing the distance faster than even he realized he could.  But Reki was still quick, and still better at this, so he swam away as fast as he could.  Langa followed the sound of his laughter through the water, chasing him around rocks and into a kelp forest.

For a moment, Langa forgot he was supposed to be finding Reki, so enamored was he with the sight of the underwater garden.  The kelp really did look as tall as trees, light filtering in from the surface like sunlight through leaves.  It was only when he saw a bright flash of yellow tail that he was brought back to his senses, and he resumed the chase.  He would have been scared to get lost in here, since it was starting to look all the same, but Reki never went too far out of his sight.

“So slooooow,” Reki called out, taunting him from afar.

Langa sped up as best he could:  it was getting a little easier to control his own movement now.  His new body was starting to feel more like his own, like he had always lived underwater.  He started to dread the moment when this would all end, even though they still had most of the twenty-four hours left.

He burst out of the forest and saw Reki swimming in lazy circles out in the open water.  From the look on Reki’s face, it looked like he hadn’t been expecting Langa to appear so quickly.  Langa opened his arms and crashed into Reki at top speed, wrapping him tight in a hug.

“Gotcha!” Langa yelled as they tumbled away in a heap together.

“Yeah, yeah, I let you catch me,” Reki giggled.  He hugged Langa back, and Langa felt his heart race as he realized they were both bare-chested, touching skin to skin.  Maybe to Reki that wasn’t strange, but it struck Langa in this moment how little there actually was between them.

Langa didn’t want to let go.  He looked into Reki’s eyes, holding him tight against his body, and watched Reki’s expression shift.  He was still smiling, his eyes still shining, but…was he flustered?  That little fluttering Langa felt against his chest:  was that Reki’s heartbeat?  Did Reki have the same kind of heart Langa did?

Without thinking, Langa reached up and traced Reki’s face from his forehead down to his jawline.  As his finger moved, he could feel Reki tightening his hold on Langa with a nervous excitement.

“What are you doing?” Reki asked with a crooked smile.  Before he could stop himself, Langa gently poked at Reki’s sharp, shark-like teeth as he opened his mouth.

“I’ve just…never seen you this up close before.”

“Oh,” said Reki, voice soft.  “I guess we are pretty close, huh?”

Langa felt something wrap around his lower tail; at the same time, Reki’s face went as red as his hair.  Glancing down, Langa saw that Reki had curled his tail around Langa’s in an undeniably intimate gesture.  It felt…it felt nice, actually.  Some kind of emotion Langa couldn’t name flared in his entire body.

“Sorry, sorry!” Reki exclaimed, and tried to wriggle away.  But Langa held him tight and asked, “What?  What’s the matter?”

“I’m being….”  Reki looked like he wanted to die.  “I’m acting like a creep.”

“What, this thing with the tail?”  As Reki tried to pull away, Langa responded by wrapping his own tail right back around Reki’s own.  Whatever this gesture meant, he liked it, and he didn’t want it to stop.

“I know humans are weird, but I know you don’t do this the first time you meet someone,” Reki mumbled.

“Reki, humans don’t have tails.  This isn’t creepy because I don’t know what it means.”

Reki went even redder, if that were possible.

“Is it like…” Langa mused aloud, “like holding hands?”

“No,” Reki mumbled.

“Like kissing with tongue?”

“No!”

“Is it like…more…adult?”

Reki buried his face in Langa’s chest.  “I guess like…more than handholding…less than kissing.  Kind of between.”

“Oh!  That’s not so bad.  I like it.”

“But…that’s for….” Reki whispered something too low for Langa to hear.

“It’s what?  I can’t hear you.”

Reki peeked out and straightened up again.  “It’s for…couples,” he muttered.  “That’s why I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Oh.  I see.”  Langa paused, thinking it through.  “I don’t mind, though.”

Reki raised an eyebrow.  “What?”

“We might never get to hold tails again.  And I like it.  And if any other merperson says something, well, I’m a human who doesn’t know any better.”

Reki snorted.  “You’re so weird.  Even for a human.”  But Langa could feel Reki relax in his arms, and he didn’t try to pull his tail away again.  “Okay, fine.”

They continued swimming around the reef, up and down the coastline.  They found a spot where they could just barely see Langa’s apartment building in the distance, and Langa pointed out exactly which light was his.  They found an outcropping of rock that stretched out of the water; Reki showed Langa how he could break through the surface and jump over the rocks, landing perfectly on the other side.  Langa was in awe watching Reki jump, his vibrant tail trailing sparkling water in a graceful arc behind him.

Langa wanted to try too, but he was lucky to even get any real lift going out of the water.  Meanwhile, Reki kept showing off, jumping forward, backward, spiraling, flipping…he was beautiful.

“It took me like two months to learn how to do that,” Reki said proudly.

“I bet I could do it in one.”

“I’d have to save up a lot of money to buy one of the month-long potions.”

Langa’s eyes went wide.  “There are potions that last longer?”

“Don’t give me that look, I can’t afford those,” Reki laughed.  Then his expression softened.  “But maybe if I start saving now…well, never mind.”

Langa didn’t push the issue, but just the thought was sending his heart racing.  A whole month with Reki under the ocean?  It would be incredible…but could he leave his mom for that long?

“Do you have ones that go in reverse?”

“What do you mean?”

“A potion to turn you human.  So you can come visit me.  Or do you have to give up your voice or something?”

Reki looked confused.  “My voice?”

“Oh, you don’t know that story?  I’ll tell you later.  But can you do that?”

“Yeah, they make those…but I don’t know, walking on two legs seems hard.”

“If you can jump out of the water like that, I bet you can learn to walk no problem!  I’ll teach you, just like you taught me.”

Reki grinned.  “Yeah…yeah, that sounds nice.”

Before long, the water around them grew darker as the sunset began to fade into dusk.  Reki suggested that they head over to where his family lived in the reef for the night, since it was much harder to navigate once the sun went down.  Langa begrudgingly agreed:  after all, nighttime meant sleep, and sleep meant that tomorrow would come sooner.  Tomorrow he’d be back on land, and who knew when or if they’d ever get to do this again?

“I didn’t tell my mom that I was bringing you home,” Reki said as they swam side by side.  “But I bet she’ll love you!  Are you hungry?  Humans eat fish and stuff, right?”

“Yeah,” Langa replied, realizing only now that Reki had mentioned it that he was starving.  Probably couldn’t get poutine or burgers down here.  He wondered what Reki would think if he brought him some fries one day.  “Won’t your mom wonder why you’re bringing home a human though?  Does she know how we met?”

Reki’s face went blank.  He clearly hadn’t thought that far ahead.  “Oh…” he groaned, “yeah, maybe we uh…maybe let’s not mention that part.”  He grabbed his chin thoughtfully and scrunched up his face, contemplating his options.  “How about I get you into my cave without anyone seeing, then I bring you some food to eat?”

Reki slept in a cave, then?  Langa wondered how big it was, and secretly hoped it was small enough that they could curl up close together.  “Okay.”

As it turned out, Reki’s family lived in a mostly open section of the reef with a row of small rock caves that laid side by side.  A big sandy circle looked like what Langa would call the living room, and from his hiding place he could see a little family of five other mermaids, all women.  There was the oldest one, definitely Reki’s grandma, and a larger one with Reki’s same facial features that had to be his mom.  And then a smaller girl with her hair tied up in pigtails, and finally two small twins, identical down to the yellow and green stripes on their tails.  Langa really wanted to go meet them all, and he couldn’t stop looking away.  Reki’s family was so pretty.

But none of them were prettier than Reki, of course.

As Reki distracted his family, Langa made his way into the cave on the far right, which was Reki’s room.  It was surprisingly spacious, and there was even stuff in here that Langa thought looked like furniture.  Mats woven from kelp and seaweed were held down with rocks, bottles and small bits of metal were arranged on little shelves, and pictures were etched into the walls.  Langa couldn’t help but scrutinize every inch of this place, picking up Reki’s things and examining them from every angle.  It was every bit as colorful in here as the coral reef, a new surprise around every corner.

He wished he had something to give to Reki to add to his room.  Something really cool…like a piece of jewelry?  Or maybe a bottle?  Reki seemed to like bottles the most, he had one in every color.  Except blue.  Maybe Langa could get him a blue one.

Just as he was chastising himself for even considering giving Reki something so lame, Reki came in with a handful of clams.

“Time for dinner!” he announced, unloading the shells onto the floor.  “You eat clams, right?”

“Uhh…yeah, but usually cooked.”

“What do you mean?” Reki asked, happily pulling one shellfish apart.

Right…of course.  They don’t have fire underwater.  Not wanting to be rude, Langa forced a smile, “Nothing.  Can you show me how to open them?”

After failing to get the hang of it after several tries, Reki resigned himself to opening the shells for him and feeding Langa the meat.  It must have been the fact that his whole body had changed, but eating raw shellfish wasn’t as gross as Langa had been expecting.  They tasted pretty good, and getting fed by Reki wasn’t hurting either.

Once the food was finished, Langa helped Reki sift through the pile to pick out the prettiest shells.  They set them aside and Reki showed Langa how he turned them into necklaces and other bits of jewelry.  Evidently this was how Reki made his spending money, by selling to other merfolk.  That, and the occasional odd job where he would look after children for a few hours.

“You’re a babysitter?” Langa blurted out.

“A…a what?”  Reki frowned.

“Sorry, I mean…it’s just what humans call it when you watch someone else’s kids.”  Now that he thought about it, he could see how children would like Reki.  He had a lot of energy, he was fun, he was nice….

There was so much to like about Reki.

They laid side by side on the matted sand; Langa watched Reki pick through his tools, beads, and shells.  Langa wanted to stay here and watch him work forever.  He wanted to meet his family; he wanted Reki to teach him how to jump over the rocks.  He wanted to be able to open clamshells on his own and feed them to Reki, and he wanted….

Tentatively, Langa wrapped his tail around Reki’s.  The blush on Reki’s face was immediate, and he glanced shyly out of the corner of his eye.

“I had a lot of fun today,” Langa said, his voice quiet.  “I never thought I’d ever have a day like this.”

“Me too,” Reki replied.  “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to do it, you know.  I thought maybe you’d think I was crazy.”

“Of course not.  I’d do this every day if I could.”

A pause.  “You don’t mean that.”  Reki’s voice was nervous, though he tried to laugh it off.

“I do.”  Without thinking, Langa grabbed Reki’s hand.  “I don’t want to leave you.”

Reki stared down at their intertwined hands.  After a moment, Langa saw a tiny, shy smile spread across his lips.  And maybe he imagined it, but it felt like Reki moved a little closer too.

“Thanks,” Reki said, his voice barely a whisper.  “Thanks for being here with me.”

Langa wanted so badly to lean over and kiss Reki’s cheek, but he resisted.  Reki leaned his head against Langa’s shoulder, and Langa nuzzled him in response.

Tomorrow he would get his legs back and climb back onto land, but today had changed so much more than his body.  He knew now that he loved Reki, that he had always loved him since the first night they met, and that Langa would never be happy unless they were together.  Whether on land or in the sea, they fit side by side just like this.

“You know,” Langa said, “humans have a story about a mermaid and a land prince falling in love.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  It’s kind of got a happy version and a sad version though.  Want me to tell you the happy version?”

Reki giggled.  “Yeah, tell me.”