Work Text:
— 1;
Stretching his ankles experimentally, Felix planted his sneakers on the ground and pushed himself to his feet. He slung his shoulderbag over his arm, silently mouthing directions to himself as he began on his journey to the library.
He recalled Hyunjin’s guiding words perfectly, brisk walking down the hallway on his way to meet his only friend for some studying.
Not to focus on his school material—no, he was on his way to his once-a-day human lesson, learning the ins and outs of earthlings little by little. He supposed he was an earthling, too, only from the sea rather than the land. But he liked to think that it was different.
Hyunjin had been walking amongst the humans for nearly three and a half years, and he had a far better grasp on their mannerisms and customs than Felix had managed to pick up in his couple of months. He had gotten the hang of walking, at least, after a day or two of stumbling like a baby deer and falling on his face unceremoniously.
Eager to learn more about the species that fascinated him so much, he paid little attention to his surroundings as he barrelled through the hallway, a pep in his foreign step as he thought about what exciting new slang he could learn today. Yesterday, he learned what ‘Tinder’ was. It was an interesting lesson, to say the least.
He gazed longingly through the windows that spared a glance into the college’s set of swimming pools, crawling with varsity athletes and leisurely students alike.
Felix really, really wished that he could throw the door open and dive right in—but Hyunjin had warned him of the human world’s attitude toward mermaids. If either of them dared to plunge into the pool, they’d be sporting tails and scales in no time, and facing the risk of being captured. Or worse. Felix really didn’t like to think about that part.
Sighing wistfully, he was nearly knocked onto his ass as someone exiting the locker room barrelled straight into him. He wasn’t exactly worried about the condition of his ass, though, as he felt ice-cold water seep through the front of his crisp white shirt and spread to his skin.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry—” the boy who had spilled his water bottle on Felix began, flailing the hand that wasn’t holding his now-empty bottle around in the air wildly.
Felix was only slightly listening, registering what he had learned to be a ‘swear word,’ but the panic pumping through his veins was taking top priority. He knew he had barely forty-five seconds before he’d be sprouting a tail and falling to the ground, so he acted quickly in the best way that he knew.
Without a second thought, he peeled his shirt from his skin and over his head, dropping it onto the floor by his feet.
The boy spluttered as soon as Felix’s fingers grasped at the hem of his white shirt, and he seemed to protest the action.
“What are you doi —oh my god,” the boy screeched, appearing offended but not looking away. In fact, he was doing quite the opposite, staring at Felix’s bare torso and his cheeks turning a color that reminded Felix of Hyunjin’s tail.
Felix quickly grabbed the beanie off of his silver head of hair, using his hat to wipe at the beads of ice water that were still sticking to his chest. He tossed the beanie to the ground too, and he looked up to see the water-spilling boy staring at him with huge eyes.
“Why did you…?! Ahem,” he cleared his throat, ogling for a few more moments before meeting Felix’s eyes again, “What was all that?”
“What was what?” Felix tilted his head to the side curiously, unsure why this boy kept straying from his face to look at his stomach. Hyunjin taught him that humans value eye contact—was this boy being rude? He sure didn’t seem rude. In fact, Felix thought he seemed quite nice.
“You took your, uh, shirtoff ,” he said the last two words rather quickly, so fast that Felix almost didn’t catch them.
“It was wet,” Felix shrugged, sparing a glance at his shirt and beanie that laid on the floor sadly. He’d have to come back for them later, or maybe he could pick them up with his bag as a makeshift glove. Without his hat, he felt strands of silver hair falling into his eyes and he reached up to brush them away from his face—Hyunjin said it was best to wear a hat so that no one would notice that he never had any dark roots.
“Normally people don’t, er…strip in public?” the boy cleared his throat again, and from what Felix knew about humans, he wasn’t doing it because he had to.
“They don’t?” Felix asked curiously, wondering why such a funny rule was in place, “Why not?”
“It’s, um, you know…” the boy looked away and rubbed at his neck, and it was only then that Felix noticed the damp towel that was hanging from his shoulders, “If you don’t already know, then don’t worry about it.”
“Should I know?” Felix tapped at his chin and pondered whether or not he had forgotten a lesson on what clothes are required and when, “I don’t think Hyunjin mentioned anything about stripping,” he said the last bit mostly for himself, rummaging around in the corners of his brain in an effort to recall all of their past human classes.
“Hyunjin?” the boy perked up at the mention of Felix’s merfriend, and his eyes glistened with something that Felix knew as recognition, “You know Hyunjin?”
“Yes!” Felix clapped excitedly, always happy to talk about his best friend. Even just thinking about the brown-haired mermaid filled him with joy, and the idea that this water-spilling wreck knew him as well was rather exciting.
“Shit, he’s dating one of my friends from the swim team,” the boy jabbed his thumb in the direction of the windows to the pool, and Felix supposed that was why his blond curls were still dripping with water, “Neither of them will let me live to see another day if I don’t make it up to you somehow.”
“Make it up…?” Felix was unfamiliar with the expression, but the eagerness in the boy’s eyes made him think that it was probably something good.
“I’ll take you for coffee!” he smiled, gesturing for Felix to start walking further down the hallway before he toweled off his hair once again.
“Coffee,” Felix repeated quietly, only somewhat recently familiarizing himself with the beverage, “Okay!”
He began walking down the hallway while fishing ( ha ) his phone out of his pocket to text Hyunjin, regrettably canceling their daily human lesson. Something gave him the feeling that he was going to learn more about people with this boy anyways.
“Did you move here for school?” the boy—Chan, he had learned on their way to the campus coffee shop—asked him curiously, peeking at Felix from behind his cup of hot chocolate.
Another thing that Felix had learned during their trip was that Chan didn’t actually intend to order coffee; it was just an expression that humans used to invite others to a place that served coffee.
Once they arrived at the doorstep of the cafe, Chan had handed Felix his newly air-dried shirt back, and the mermaid slipped it over his head before they entered and found a table in the corner.
“Yes,” Felix half lied as he nursed a sleeved cup of iced coffee, to avoid the pesky condensation.
He had always lived in Australia—only his hometown was long past the shore and toward the coral reef. But he did move to the land of two-leggeds in order to experience their way of life, curious after Hyunjin returned to the sea to report to him every summer.
“Ah, cool,” Chan propped his elbow on the table and rested his cheek on his hand, staring at Felix so attentively that the mermaid felt his face grow a little hot. He looked at Felix sort of like Hyunjin did, but with an unfamiliar human emotion that made Felix’s heart feel like a jumping dolphin in his chest.
“Shit,” Chan cursed quietly when his phone buzzed on the table, the screen lighting up with an icon that Felix recognized as the most popular messaging app, “I have to go.”
“Aw,” Felix was still learning not to wear his heart on his sleeve, pouting slightly as he kicked his legs back and forth under the table. His simple expression of woe made Chan’s cheeks turn Hyunjin scale-colored again, and Felix wondered if that’s what he looked like whenever his face felt warm.
“Sorry, Changbin wants me at the beach,” Chan said apologetically, quickly gulping down the rest of his drink and looking bashful about leaving after only ten or so minutes of what humans called ‘getting coffee.’
“Oh!” Felix sat up a little straighter at the mention of the familiar surfer Changbin, and the beach, “I know him too! I hope you have a lovely time at the beach.”
“I will, I…” Chan scratched the back of his neck awkwardly again, biting at his lip, “Look, Felix, you’re super cool, y’know?”
“Thank you, you’re quite nice as well,” Felix smiled widely, already having learned that ‘cool’ referred to positive social demeanor rather than temperature.
“Do you maybe wanna, uh,” Chan finally met his gaze again and offered him a sweet smile, one that made Felix’s stomach jump like a salmon, “Would you wanna go on a date with me?”
“A date? Okay!” Felix bounced in his wooden seat, beaming with excitement and brightening Chan’s face with his positive reaction, “Which date? Maybe October 17th? Where are we going?”
Chan faltered as he moved to stand, his expression turning lopsided as he processed Felix’s misunderstanding. He didn’t get mad, though, only chuckling as he pushed his phone across the table in the mermaid’s direction.
“Not quite,” he smiled gently, the stretch of his lips rather pretty to Felix, “Just put your number in here. I’ll give you a call later and teach you all about dates.”
— 2;
After three or so weeks of back and forth messaging, Felix was very glad that one of the first things Hyunjin had taught him was how to navigate a phone. He didn’t have to bother Chan with too many questions, only having to ask once or twice about text lingo like ‘ngl’ and ‘xoxo.’
It was how they talked most often, besides a couple of dates that they had been on since their coffee shop excursion. He had done some independent research on dates, alongside his lessons from Chan, and it seemed like after a few meetups, the participating parties were often bound in an exclusive romantic relationship.
Felix was beginning to grow rather fond of Chan, and he wondered if he should ask Hyunjin about what separated ‘like’ from ‘like like’ at their next lesson.
As he opened his phone to make himself a note of the question, the top of his screen was overtaken with a notification.
CHAT (2): chrisbang97, pixielixie
@chrisbang97
liiiixxxx
@pixielixie
yeeeess?
@chrisbang97
you busy rn?
@pixielixie
no :>
@chrisbang97
wanna come over?
netflix and chill haha?
@pixielixie
chill? i don’t really like the cold…
what’s netflix
@chrisbang97
…
nvm
come over for some food?
@pixielixie
ooh! yes!
i’ll be over soon!!
Felix smiled at his phone, lying on his bed and kicking his feet behind him. He liked to eat with Chan since they usually ended up hanging out even after finishing their meals, and his full tummy helped him soothe the feeling of his insides spinning when Chan touched his leg or smiled with his eyes closed.
He sprung up from his bed, running his hands over his shirt to smooth out the few wrinkles that had formed during his half-nap. Not wanting to waste much time, he grabbed his phone and shoved it in his back pocket before slipping out of his dorm room.
Once he made it to Chan’s on-campus apartment, he had half a mind to shoot Hyunjin a text about the whole thing. His friend had made him promise to keep him updated on his ‘swim team boy toy,’ to which Felix asked how a romantic partner could be a plaything.
CHAT (2): pixielixie, hyunl0ve
@pixielixie
what’s netflix and chill?
@hyunl0ve
FELIX
Felix shrugged, pressing the button labeled 103 and buzzing into Chan’s apartment. The first time he did it, it was rather confusing, but by now he had a few rounds of practice. Rattling to life and unlocking promptly, the door creaked at the hinges as Felix stepped up inside.
It was a short walk to Chan’s apartment unit, on the first floor and just down the hall, and Felix tapped his knuckles against the door cautiously.
(“Jinnie, why do I have to punch the door?” “It’s called knocking, it’s how you ask to enter the room.” “It kinda hurts though.”)
Chan swung open the door in record time, greeting Felix with a kind smile.
He already had the food, to Felix’s surprise, disposable containers of warm Chinese food and a pile of napkins sitting on the coffee table coming into view as he crossed the threshold.
They idled in the doorway, only moving to the couch after Felix received his obligatory kiss on the cheek and Chan got his greeting hug.
Bending down to sit on his end of the sofa, Chan’s hand swung a little farther than he anticipated and his fingers bumped against the glass of water he had set on the coffee table for his meal. The cup tumbled toward the floor, splashing its contents in Felix’s direction and soaking the carpet.
Jumping away like he had been burned, Felix yelped as he flew across the room to avoid the mess. His back hit the wall and the impact jostled one of Chan’s picture frames, the older boy giving him a concerned look. Chan used the pile of napkins to mop up the water from the table, moving a little frantically out of panic mixed with sheepishness.
“Shit, I gotta stop spilling water on you,” Chan laughed nervously, clearly joking to hide his embarrassment, “Sorry, Lixie, are you okay? Did it scare you?”
“Yeah,” Felix breathed out, approaching the damp carpet with his sock feet cautiously, “Scared me.” He crawled onto the couch over the arm, avoiding the wet spot entirely.
“C’mere, I’m sorry,” Chan lifted his arm so that the spot against his side was open for the taking, and Felix dutifully shuffled across the couch to claim it.
He grabbed a container of food on his way, lifting it along with a pair of chopsticks into his lap. His stomach grumbled impatiently, and he clicked open the lid while licking his lips in preparation to devour his greasy food.
Much to his dismay, beads of water rolled off of the inside of the lid, condensation trickling into his palm. Cursing under his breath—he’d found that swearing made him feel much more at home in the human world—Felix clambered out of his spot at Chan’s side, grabbing at the pile of napkins.
All of the ones on the top were just as sopping wet as his fingers, soaked from Chan mopping up his clumsy spill. He rooted through the stack, searching for any dry napkins that may have survived the cleanup.
Running out of options and running out of time, Felix opted to put a pause on his napkin searching, leaning back into Chan’s side, and wincing when a few drops of water fell from his fingers and onto the fabric of his shorts.
He placed his palms on Chan’s chest, wiping his hands quickly with the fabric of his shirt and feeling the hot skin that was on the other side.
“What are you—?!” Chan spluttered, ears bright red as his eyes darted back and forth between Felix’s seemingly groping hands and the innocent mermaid’s face.
“I need to borrow this,” Felix interrupted him, grabbing Chan’s hand like it was an inanimate object to be snatched up.
He guided Chan’s fingers to his leg, placing them between the fabric of his shorts and the skin on his thigh, an inch or so beneath the hem at the bottom. It was merely to create a barrier between his bare skin and the wet spot on his shorts, buying time before the moisture could seep through the fabric and meet his leg, but he squirmed a little at the touch that he brought upon himself.
“Felix—!” Chan choked out, his whole face sporting that fiery red color as his fingers instinctively flexed around Felix’s thigh.
Back to business after a brief moment of bashfulness, Felix fetched the pile of napkins again and carefully avoided the ones that still clung to moisture. Filing through the middle of the pile, he finally found a couple of dry napkins and fished them out with precision. He daintily dabbed at the wet spots on his shorts, ignoring how each press of Chan’s fingers sent shivers down his spine.
Once the water had been soaked out of the fabric and he was no longer at risk of transforming on Chan’s couch, Felix tossed the napkin onto the coffee table and sighed with relief. He gently pushed Chan’s hand lower on his thigh, so that it was no longer resting underneath the cuff of his shorts, but he let the swimmer decide for himself whether he wanted to keep his palm pressed there or not.
He was delighted when Chan made no move to pull away.
“Phew,” Felix breathed out, trying to exhale evenly and will the blush away from his face. He sort of wished that he had worn long pants, so that he could enjoy the pressure of Chan’s hand on his thigh without his nerves being electrified by the touch of his skin.
“Um,” Chan started dumbly, staring down at where his palm splayed over Felix’s thigh and his fingers reached his kneecap, “Are you okay?” He asked concernedly, and despite still in the process of learning the species’ customs, Felix figured that what he had just done was some weird behavior for a human.
“Oh, yes,” Felix smiled reassuringly, leaning his head back onto Chan’s shoulder in an effort to use physical touch as consolation, “These are just my favorite pair of shorts, I didn’t want them to get ruined.”
“Right,” Chan nodded weakly, and he was careful not to jostle the boy on his arm when he shifted forward to grab his own container of food, “They are pretty.”
Felix felt his face heat up at that, stuffing his cheeks with fried tofu before he could say something embarrassing.
He was used to compliments—he was, in his humble opinion, quite cute. Most people found his silver hair charming, and people back home would rant and rave about the beautiful colors of his tail.
But for some reason the simplest words of praise from Chan had him running warm and turning pink, the tips of his ears burning bright.
In fact, most things Chan did made him feel hot in the face, accompanied by his stomach swirling like a sea turtle in a current and his heart beating faster than a swimming swordfish. Like the way he was so cautious as he opened his container of Chinese food, watching closely to ensure that none of the condensation dripped in Felix’s direction. He took special care to balance the container on his lap, splitting and gripping his chopsticks with one hand to keep his other perched on the mermaid’s leg.
The extra attention that Chan gave him made Felix yearn for more, filled him with a fresh and unfamiliar eagerness to give and take.
He decided that he wouldn’t need to ask Hyunjin about ‘ like liking,’ since he had figured it out for himself.
— 3;
It took them less than a week to start officially dating after the night of takeout and thigh touching, Felix constantly glowing with the satisfaction of obtaining his first ever boyfriend.
Chan seemed to be quite pleased, too, since Hyunjin had told him in secrecy that he looked at Felix like he had hung the coral in the reef.
They were rather obnoxious—a word Felix learned quite quickly after solidifying his relationship status—and went on dates as often as possible, usually tagging along with Changbin and Hyunjin. Their classes didn’t exactly line up in a manner that allowed for them to spend more than lunch together on campus, but they didn’t mind the task of picking new date spots and unique ways to spend their quality time.
Felix did most of the planning, wanting to subtly flex his evergrowing database of knowledge of humankind. These days he was pretty much fluent in two-legged, blending into the crowds far more seamlessly than he had a month or so ago. He still dropped the ball on an idiom or two, but really, who could blame him? Humans had the funniest sayings. It took him nearly a week to understand the phrase ‘head over heels,’ which is what Hyunjin had labeled him after his first date with Chan.
(“What did you call me? Head over heels?” “Yeah, it means like, super in loooove! Like you!” “But that’s just how humans are oriented. Aren’t they always head over heels?”)
He had also gained the confidence to tread a little closer to water, daring to sit in the lounge chairs at the swimming pool while Chan swam up and down his lane during practice.
The ocean was a bit of a different story, though, but he supposed he had to face the fear eventually.
“I’m about to get the craziest tan of my life,” Changbin remarked, hand shielding his eyes from the blinding sun despite the black sunglasses already perched on his nose, “Would you still love me if I was a piece of fried bacon?” He rolled over on his beach towel, shooting a huge pout at Hyunjin, who was similarly sunbathing in the sand.
Hyunjin snorted at that, shaking his head and lowering his heart-shaped sunglasses on his nose to give Changbin an amused look, “I don’t like bacon.”
“Okay, but what if I was the bacon,” Changbin whined, propping his head up on his palms, “What about then?”
Felix tuned out right about there, already meeting the quota for his daily dose of those two. He rested his head on Chan’s thigh, draping himself over the swimmer’s lap and silently wishing that he wouldn’t go for a swim in the ocean—he couldn’t be all over him if he was dripping with water.
But he knew that swimming was oh so important to Chan, and that he even preferred swimming in the ocean over the mundane lanes of the varsity pool facility. So he begrudgingly lifted himself up, making a dramatic noise of complaint as he hoisted himself to sit upright.
He shot Chan a look that he hoped came across as betrayed, but it must have been mistranslated as pouty, since Chan cupped both of his cheeks and cooed.
“Don’t give me that cute look, Lixie,” Chan teased, squishing Felix’s cheeks together and making his lips pucker like a fish, “I’ll be back in no time.”
“Or you coul’ jush shtay,” Felix pouted, words warbled by his compromised face, and he thought that maybe he looked cute enough to convince Chan to stick around.
Chan only chuckled, pecking Felix’s lips that were already puckered by force before rising to his feet.
Free from the hands that bracketed his face, Felix flopped backward onto their shared beach towel and made a small ‘hmph’ noise.
“Just five minutes or so,” Chan cooed, bending down to poke Felix’s nose, and Felix could not help the smile that crawled onto his face at his favorite gesture, “It’s not forever.”
“Promise?” Felix was really hamming it up at this point, eyes shiny as he asked a silly question. Of course Chan was coming back. Felix knew he couldn’t stay away for that long.
“Promise,” Chan tapped the tip of his nose once more, leaning down further to punctuate the action with a kiss to the same spot, “I’ll always come back quick to you. You’re the bee's knees, baby.”
“Knees are cool,” Felix made a small noise of appreciation at the affection, and he tried not to audibly whine when Chan laughed quietly at his response and turned to leave.
He watched Chan’s back—because he really enjoyed looking at Chan’s back —slowly shrink as the swimmer jogged toward the shoreline, sighing to himself as he was left alone.
Well, basically alone.
“ Knees are cool ,” Changbin mocked Felix’s response, giggling maniacally as Hyunjin swatted him on the shoulder, “At least you’re pretty, Lix.”
“Whaaat?” Felix whined, scooting across his towel until he was next to where Hyunjin was lying, “What was I supposed to say? What’re bee’s knees?”
“He’s saying you’re like the flounder’s fins,” Hyunjin supplied helpfully, pulling the sunglasses from his face and folding them up over the neckline of his tank top. Felix’s mouth dropped into a small ‘o’ before widening into a smile, and he kicked his feet behind him.
“That’s kinda dumb,” Felix admitted, but he was grinning stupidly. Did bees even have knees?
“Would you still love me if I was a flounder?” Changbin tried his luck again, wriggling closer to Hyunjin until he could rest his chin on the sunbathing mermaid’s thigh.
“I already like flounders,” Hyunjin pointed out unamusedly, but his dull words were contrasted by the way his hand instantly rose from the sand to bury itself in Changbin’s black hair.
“So is that a yes?” Changbin grinned, prompting Hyunjin to roll his eyes and Felix to groan.
“I thought the whole thing was that you’re supposed to ask if I would still love you as a worm,” Hyunjin scratched at Changbin’s hair absentmindedly, yawning as he looked out at the sea.
“Fine,” Changbin huffed, rolling over so that the back of his head was resting in the dip between Hyunjin’s thighs, eyes looking up expectantly, “Would you still love me if I was a worm?”
Hyunjin trailed his fingers down the front of Changbin’s neck, tapping a quiet rhythm on his boyfriend’s honey skin once they reached his sternum, humming before simply saying, “No.”
Changbin gasped dramatically, sitting up to a crisp ninety degrees to stare at Hyunjin indignantly, “Babe.”
Felix was rescued from an earful of bickering when Chan jogged up to their little beach setup, still dripping with saltwater. He stayed a couple of feet away, clearly aware of the way Hyunjin and Felix slightly recoiled when he approached. Felix squirmed around to tug the towel out from under him, sitting directly in the hot sand as he tossed their shared towel to Chan. He caught it with an appreciative smile, throwing it over his shoulders and toweling at his hair.
“God, Chan, your beach hair is crazy,” Changbin snorted, already forgetting about the bone he had to pick with Hyunjin, “How do you manage it?”
“I don’t,” Chan shrugged, moving to dry his shoulders, “They’re called beach waves, look it up.”
“I think it’s called poodle hair,” Hyunjin snickered, and Changbin joined in instantly while Chan scoffed.
“Well, I like poodles,” Felix smiled brightly at Chan, who returned it wholeheartedly, before leaning over to Hyunjin’s ear and whispering, “What’s a poodle again?”
“Dog,” Hyunjin whispered back, not bothering to cover his moving lips with his hand, since he was busy using both of them to make a vague swirly gesture, “All curly like.”
Felix made a small ‘ooh,’ and he pulled away to see Chan giving them both a semi-amused and semi-lost smile.
“You want poodle? I’ll show you poodle,” Chan’s confused smile quickly morphed into a mischievous one, and he wrenched his eyes shut before shaking his head at high speed. He shook off the water like a dog, aiming for revenge as the drops of seawater flew at and showered his three sunbathing friends.
It was definitely not enough to be considered a dousing, but Felix and Hyunjin tensed as soon as the liquid touched their faces, shoulders rigid and high at their ears.
“Fuck, dude—” Changbin shot them an urgent look, his eyes huge as drops of water rolled down his face.
“Oh, Felix, did you see that over there?” Hyunjin said quickly, pointing at a cliffy area near the coast, “Let’s go look.” He was already moving to stand, grabbing Felix by the wrist and tugging him to his feet.
“See what?” Chan stood on his tippy toes to try and get a better look at the rocky cove, craning his neck in an attempt to see past the harsh black ridges.
“Chan, man, come look at this. Seungmin sent me a video of Minho at the club last night,” Changbin harshly faked a laugh, sounding false even to Felix, but Chan bit the bait and bent over to take a peek at the surfer’s phone.
Hyunjin dragged Felix towards the rocks that would obscure them from vision, moving a little faster than a jog as their short timer rapidly ticked down toward zero. They managed to tuck behind the cliffside with time to spare, saving themselves from the risk of being seen by Chan and the other beach-goers.
Felix quickly walked into the tide, letting the saltwater flow over his ankles before dropping to his knees and pushing forward into the ocean. Hyunjin followed suit, splashing into the water next to him and sighing loudly.
It wasn’t long before glimmering scales shone under the sunlight where their legs once were, long tails waving up and down as they swam in the shallow water lazily.
“That was close,” Felix complained, running a fingernail along his seafoam scales and itching at a spot that was irritating him.
“I mean, yeah, but Changbin has our back,” Hyunjin shrugged, swimming excitedly in circles with his bright red tail swishing behind him, “Gave us an opportunity to say hello to the ocean again.”
“I should tell him,” Felix sighed, slowly making his way toward the edge of the rocks, barely peeking his head over them. He watched from a distance as Chan and Changbin laughed about something on the latter’s phone, sitting together and sharing a towel.
“Yeah?” Hyunjin hummed quietly, joining him at the spot where the cliff tapered off into the ocean and watching the swimmers.
“I’ve come close a couple of times,” Felix continued, leaning his cheek on the ledge of the rock face. He tapped his fingers against a few pebbles, rolling one under the pad of his pinky.
“To telling him?” Hyunjin prompted, sparing a glance or two at Felix but mostly staring at Changbin’s laughing form. He had that look in his eye, the one that Chan often regarded him with.
“To transforming in front of him,” Felix admitted with a laugh, earning Hyunjin’s full attention, “I was really bad at being cautious when I first came to the land.”
“Lixie,” Hyunjin said empathetically, reaching out and tangling his fingers in Felix’s wet hair, “Why don’t you tell him?”
“He’ll think it’s gross,” Felix frowned, avoiding Hyunjin’s gaze and dropping his eyes to his fidgeting pebble, “Everyone thinks it’s gross.”
“Chan could never find you gross, c’mon,” Hyunjin encouraged him, combing his hands through the younger’s messy silver hair, “He finds you absolutely lovely. Bee’s knees, remember?”
“Yeah,” Felix mumbled before swimming toward the shore, ready to dry off and return to his pair of legs, “Bee’s knees.”
— 4;
Despite Hyunjin’s exaggerated retching and Changbin’s constant murmurs of ‘whatever,’ their friends were very happy for them when they reached their two-month anniversary. Felix and Chan were attached at the hip, only breaking apart when Chan had swim practice, and similarly, when Felix occasionally snuck away at night to plunge into the campus pool after hours with Hyunjin.
Chan had grown to accept Felix’s aversion to water, taking precautions to keep his jumpy boyfriend away from the liquid at all times. He compared his fear to that of a kitten, a parallel that Felix wasn’t entirely opposed to.
A dry Felix was a happy Felix—to Chan, at least.
In reality, Felix was itching to return to the sea a little more often. The nights he spent swimming laps in the chlorine-ridden water were nothing compared to the familiar salt water, but it was all that he had. He knew that it could be arranged, that Chan would gladly take him down to the seaside on a daily basis if he only asked.
He just didn’t have the courage.
So he wasn’t all that mad when he accidentally transformed in his bed, spilling his nightstand water bottle all over himself when he reached to take a much-needed swig after a nap. His mouth was so dry that a sip of water sounded like the tastiest thing on Earth to him, so he let his guard down and blindly reached for the bottle. He tilted it too far back when he went to take a sip, splashing himself in the face with more water than he had bargained for.
At first, he panicked, sitting up straight and reaching for a blanket to dry himself off. But when he realized that he was alone, in the comfort of his own dorm, he leaned back toward his pillow. It wasn’t often that he left himself end up with a tail anywhere but underwater, so he was ready to lounge around in what he considered style for a few minutes.
Letting his eyes flutter shut, Felix sighed contentedly as the tip of his tail fluttered around where it hung over the foot of his bed. He relished in the feeling of the cool air on his scales, though the linen against the bottom of his tail was unsurprisingly a little uncomfortable.
Not quite as uncomfortable as the panic that lit up his skin when he heard his dorm room doorknob turning, a key swiveling in the lock and the hinges creaking open.
Felix quickly covered his tail with his comforter, smoothing out the sides to hide the outline that peeked through the blanket.
“Hello?” he called out experimentally, even though he already knew who it was. He propped himself up on his elbows, his tail itching to swing side to side.
Chan appeared in the doorframe of his bedroom, one hand on the side and the other stuffed inside his hoodie pocket. He flashed Felix a wide grin, while the mermaid offered him a feeble smile.
“I came to steal some cuddles,” Chan announced before waltzing himself into the bedroom, sitting down on the corner of the mattress.
Felix gulped, but he still managed to spit out a somewhat normal response, “What, the store was all out?”
Chan laughed lightly with an eye roll, lifting his knees up onto the bed and crawling into Felix’s side. He draped his arm on the pillow above the mermaid’s head, fidgeting with a stray tuft of silver hair.
Nearly forgetting how to breathe, Felix crossed his fingers and his currently out-of-service toes, hoping and praying that Chan wouldn’t make a move to nestle under the covers. He’d be met with a mildly slimy fishtail—probably among the worst things to discover in bed.
Nuzzling his face into Felix’s cheek, Chan paused for a brief moment and Felix’s breath caught in his throat. He took an exaggerated sniff before pulling away and looking down at Felix, his eyebrow raised.
“You smell salty,” he observed, blinking slowly as he appeared to process his own words.
“Excuse you?” Felix squeezed out a joke, but his heart was hammering against his ribcage and threatening to burst right through, “That’s no way to charm a boy.”
He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t passed out from adrenaline yet, nearly shaking from how easy it would be for Chan to simply reach under the covers and unearth his secret.
“No, no,” Chan chuckled, shaking his head, and the sound of his laugh put Felix’s nerves slightly at ease. Only slightly.
“I just mean you smell like actual sea salt,” Chan continued, and Felix gulped unsubtly, “Like the rock stuff that you grind up for your food.”
“Oh,” Felix took only a couple of seconds to come up with an excuse, but it wasn’t necessarily a good one, “Yeah, I uh, had some earlier.”
“Salt?” Chan was thoroughly confused again, placing his elbow on Felix’s pillow and balancing his head on his palm, “You had some…salt?” He looked down at the mermaid, eyes barely squinting as he didn’t quite follow the line of conversation.
“My electrolytes were low,” Felix mumbled, turning to look away from Chan. Half a blessing but mostly a curse, he felt his tail beginning to fizzle away as Chan opened his mouth to speak.
Faking a loud yawn and effectively cutting his boyfriend off, Felix wriggled around under the covers to create a commotion of blankets big enough to disguise the movement of his tail morphing back into legs.
He kicked his tail up and down until they turned into knees, and as soon as his pair of boxers rematerialized around his hips he threw the covers off of his legs and sprung to his feet. Chan flinched at the sudden movement, nearly toppling backward as Felix’s discarded comforter smacked him in the shoulder. He made a confused noise, drawing the freshly-turned human’s attention.
“Just a little restless,” Felix explained as he walked in tight circles, playing up his sudden case of the jitters, “Gotta stretch my legs.” It wasn’t that big of a lie.
He really did have to take his legs for a spin whenever he transformed back, usually wobbling side to side on his first few steps.
“The hell is this?” Chan asked while Felix paced in loops, not slowing his stride as he tried to rid his feet of that weird post-mermaid tingle.
“What’s what?” he asked out of obligation rather than actual interest, his feet freezing in place as soon as he took a moment to see what Chan was asking about.
Between his calloused index finger and thumb, Chan held up a singular gleaming scale. It was surely Felix’s—seafoam green with flecks of gold, iridescent under the yellow bedroom light.
He had no clue that his tail was capable of leaving remnants behind, assuming that any shed scales would disappear along with the tail itself. His brain short-circuited before shutting down altogether, realizing that the cat was out of the bag.
“This is a…” Chan looked deep in thought, staring at the scale with an air of enchantment floating around his head, “It’s a…”
Felix faltered, reapproaching the bed and prepared to lay it all out and come clean, “Chan, I—”
“Sequin!” Chan interrupted him before he could spill his guts, eyes lighting up with satisfaction as he recalled the word that he had been searching for, “It’s a sequin!”
“Sequin,” Felix repeated in disbelief, blinking hard as he tried to recall what a sequin was. He considered himself to be more than fully fluent in human by now, but some of the harder words still escaped him on occasion. Like sequin . What a fucked up word.
“Why’s there a singular sequin in your bed?” Chan seemed to realize how odd the whole scenario was, turning the scale over in his hand and admiring the way the light bounced off of it.
“I’ve been dabbling in arts and crafts,” Felix said unconvincingly, shrugging and walking back toward the bed until his knees bumped up against the side of the mattress, “I’ll make you a homemade card for your birthday or something.”
“It’s pretty,” Chan smiled, holding the scale up toward the bedroom light and staring at it like it was more than a craft supply.
This brought a raging blush to Felix’s face, his heart flipping pitifully at the indirect and unintentional compliment.
Chan thought his scales were pretty.
Would he really think it was gross if he knew? Hyunjin’s words echoed in his head, bouncing around between his flushed ears.
“Why don’t you tell him?”
He grabbed the scale from between Chan’s fingers, flicking it toward the ground and shoving it under the bed with his foot. Chan pouted, following the path of the ‘sequin’ with his eyes before looking back at Felix.
“I’d love anything homemade from you,” Chan opened his arms and made grabby hands, coaxing his boyfriend back into bed and into his embrace, “I love everything about you.”
Felix rested his head on Chan’s chest, staring up at the ceiling, “I know.”
— 5;
With their four-month anniversary on the horizon, Felix felt like he was about to burst at the seams with the evergrowing pressure of his secret.
Everything else in his life was going absolutely perfectly—he got the highest mark in his class on his most recent paper, he went swimming with Hyunjin three times a week, and he had the greatest boyfriend on the whole continent. Including the ocean surrounding it.
He felt like he was wild and free whenever he was with Chan, his cheeks warm like a hot spring and his heart soaring like a stingray. It reminded him of a whale’s breach, the way his stomach flipped when Chan reached out to tuck a stray strand of silver hair behind his ear, or when he kissed him goodnight on his doorstep.
But whenever his brain unhelpfully reminded him that he was dancing around a huge, vastly important secret, he realized that he was swimming with sharks.
The thought jumped out of nowhere and spooked him, jolting him to his feet from where he was sitting on Chan’s couch.
“Lixie?” Chan instantly noticed his discomfort, rubbing the side of Felix’s thigh, “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” Felix turned to give him a convincing show, smiling brightly and shrugging, “Just need to run to the washroom.”
Chan gave an affirmative hum, watching the mermaid’s back as he retreated down the hallway and into the small apartment bathroom. The door clicked shut and Felix let out a long breath, leaning over the counter and bracing himself with both arms.
The longer it went on, the more it weighed down on him.
Realistically, he knew that Chan wouldn’t reject him. Chan was kind, good-natured, and ever understanding—Felix knew this.
But he was scared, so much so that the thought of confessing his real identity made his head spin. It was a vulnerable conversation that he avoided like a jellyfish’s sting, a huge piece of his being that he had been reluctant to share for months.
Felix knew he couldn’t pretend to be using the bathroom forever, so he pulled away from the counter and pushed down on the toilet’s lever, flushing it despite not going anywhere near it. He had to cover all of his bases, taking extra precautions to ward away any suspicions on Chan’s part.
He opted to actually wash his hands, though, hoping that the cold water would help to rinse away his worries. He had lots of practice with finishing the task at record speed, on a strict budget of his time.
As Felix reached to turn the knob for cold water, it came off in his hand with a small clink , watering spewing out from the broken tap. To anyone else, it would be a slightly inconvenient trickle, a small spout of water spraying out in the direction of where someone would stand to use the sink.
To Felix, it was an actual nightmare. With drops of water speckling his t-shirt and wetting his face, the steady flow of tap water doomed him to confront his scales. He tried in vain to block the water, holding his hands in front of his face reflexively. This only brought the spray to his palms too, effectively soaking his upper half and sealing his fate.
His forty-five seconds were gone in the blink of an eye, and he lost his balance and collapsed to the tile floor as his feet were replaced by his fin. Although his resistance was futile, he tried to grab at something on the counter to keep himself upright, knocking a bottle of soap and a can of hair mousse down to the ground along with him.
The resulting fall was rather loud, Felix’s figure thumping against the bathroom floor and the bottles hitting the porcelain toilet on their way down. It took less than five seconds for the sound of Chan’s footsteps to echo through the hallway, the shadow of his socked feet visible through the crack under the bathroom door.
Felix had a great view of Chan’s arrival from his spot on the linoleum, pushing himself up onto his elbows and his eyes growing huge.
The doorknob jiggled, Chan trying to burst in and check up on him, and Felix was sure that his heart was beating fast enough to put him in serious medical danger. Only the wooden door stood between Chan and his secret in all of its glory, his green tail curling and relaxing instinctively as drops of tap water still battered at it intermittently.
“Felix,” Chan called out as he knocked at the door, his taps and tone somewhat frantic, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Felix croaked out, voice betraying him and wavering, “I’m good.”
His response was so unconvincing that he thought even he wouldn’t believe it, and he struggled to sit upright on the damp floor. He really had no clue how he would get out of this one.
“Baby, did you fall?” the concern in his voice was palpable, sending a pang through Felix’s chest, “Are you hurt?”
“No! I mean no, I-I…” Felix stammered, shuffling across the floor toward the toilet, “I’m fine, you can go.”
The doorknob only rattled again, coupled with Chan trying his luck at another knock. Felix hoisted himself up with the toilet seat, his tail curling uncomfortably against the bathroom wall.
“I thought I heard…” Chan trailed off as his voice tinged with uncertainty, and he jiggled the handle once more, “It kinda sounded like splashing in there.”
“Just very enthusiastically washing my hands!” Felix called back, finally crawling high enough to reach the bathroom counter. He quickly snatched up the detached sink knob, hastily shoving it back onto the spurting tap. It clicked into place after a few moments of trying a couple of different angles, the spraying water relenting once the metal hole was plugged.
The clinking metal only served to worsen Chan’s concern, his knocking coming to a stop but his feet still visible beneath the door.
“Let me in Lix, I’ll help you,” Chan called through the door, and Felix could hear him leaning up against the wood. The doorknob shook back and forth a few more times, as if Chan thought that it would have unlocked itself in the past minute.
“Don’t come in!” Felix said it harsher than he meant it, his voice coming out distressed and irritated. His nerve ends were fried, hair on the back of his neck standing up straight. He hoped to Poseidon that none of his scales would be left behind on the bathroom floor.
“Felix, I—” Chan tried the doorknob yet again, eager to help, but Felix couldn’t stand hearing his worried voice for much longer.
“I said don’t!” Felix cut him off, chest heaving with labored breaths despite barely moving. His heart was pounding harder and harder with every word he spoke, the fear of getting caught mixing thick with the foreign feeling of yelling at Chan.
“Okay,” was the defeated mumble that came from the other side of the door, and Felix closed his eyes tight after watching the shadow of Chan’s socks trudge away and back to the living room.
He opened them again once he felt tears stinging in the corners, blinking them away and rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand.
It was foolish to think that he could keep such a big secret from someone so important to him, and the gravity of the situation was beginning to crush Felix. He never wanted to betray Chan’s trust, to keep things from him and leave him in the dark without any choice in the matter.
Felix glanced down at his tail—blues, greens, and gold gleaming under the dull bathroom light, and for the first time in his life, he wished that he didn’t have it.
— +1;
Pushing against the cool metal bar, Chan swung the door to the pool open and stepped onto the deck with a sigh. He really shouldn’t be at the pool—it was late, far too late for him to be allowed in the school facilities without a lifeguard.
But he figured that it wouldn’t hurt anyone, and even if he did get caught, there was no way that his coach was going to punish his star swimmer.
He was in desperate need of a head-clearing dip into the pool, still reeling from the half-argument that he had with Felix a few days earlier. It wasn’t even enough to consider a fight, he thought, just a random bout of snapping from Felix and an abnormally long trip to the bathroom.
After nearly 20 minutes spent locked inside, Felix came out of the bathroom with his gaze fixed on the floor and his face downtrodden. The rest of their evening was tense, an incredibly unfamiliar atmosphere for them.
Felix hadn’t exactly been avoiding him since then, but Chan still felt that something was off. He went to Changbin about it, asking for advice and seeking a friend to share his troubles with. Besides, Hyunjin and Felix were rather similar, so Changbin was his best and only option.
“He’ll come to you when he’s ready,” Changbin had said, shrugging noncommittally and sipping on his coffee.
“But I just want to help him,” Chan frowned, and he leaned his head on his hands, “I don’t want anything to come between us.”
“Are you kidding? You guys are amazing together. You’ll be fine,” Changbin laughed lightly, looking so unworried about the whole thing that Chan felt a little at ease, “You teach him about emotions and communication, and he’ll teach you a thing or two about swimming.”
“Swimming?” Chan looked up from the table, eyebrows furrowed, “Felix hates water.”
“I’m sure he does,” Changbin smiled, rising from his seat and exiting the cafe, leaving Chan alone with his confusion.
It was safe to say that his brief meeting with Changbin was less than helpful, only leading him to more questions and dead ends.
So he turned to the coping strategy he knew best—swimming laps until his arms felt like they were about to fall off.
He poked his head past the door, looking out at the dimly lit aquatic center. Moonlight poured into the windows and bounced off the water, the pool shining blue and white against the darkness.
The heavy door clicked shut behind him, the mere noise of the latch making him flinch. It was a little nerve-wracking, breaking the rules and using the pool so late at night, but who would ever know?
“Hello? Who’s there?” a hesitant voice called out from inside of the pool, spooking Chan so hard that he nearly bumped his funny bone on the door handle.
His fright didn’t last long, as he instantly recognized the voice and softened around the edges. He squinted to see through the darkness, eyes finally falling on Felix’s head poking out from behind the rim of the pool tiles.
“Felix?” Chan asked like it was a question, beyond shocked to see Felix in the pool. As long as he had known him, the younger was always dead scared of any shape or form of water. He hated the ocean and always complained whenever Chan so much as went near it, and he always kept a safe distance when watching Chan practice in the pool.
Felix ducked his head a little, sinking so that only his eyes were peeking past the edge of the pool before hoisting himself high enough to rest his chin on the deck.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, tilting his head to the side, and Chan was mesmerized by the way his silver hair clung to his face.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Chan shrugged, walking to the pool and fisting his hands in the towel that was draped over his neck.
Felix only hummed at that, avoiding Chan’s eyes and staring at the glare on the windows. Chan followed his gaze and then looked around the pool, searching for a spot to put his towel down. He intended on setting it down next to Felix’s stuff, to keep all of their belongings together. But despite his eyes being well adjusted to the dark by now, he couldn’t seem to find any of Felix’s clothes or his towel on the deck.
It was clear that Felix was shirtless, if the smooth skin of his shoulders peeking out from behind the edge of the pool was anything to go off of, but Chan couldn’t see his discarded shirt anywhere in sight.
He shrugged, brushing off the oddity and deciding to file it away with all of the other weird things that had happened in the past few days, like Felix swimming.
“I just came to practice a bit, but it can wait,” Chan offered a small smile, tugging his towel off of his neck, “Wanna get out of here? Go back to my place?”
Felix faltered, his back straightening and his lip catching between his teeth. He seemed to glance down at his legs in the pool, staring for a moment before looking back at Chan with unreadable eyes.
“No, I…I’m,” Felix had a hard time finding the right words, taking a pause before continuing, “I’m good here.” He glanced down again, looking so uneasy that Chan was overwhelmed with the urge to scoop him up and hold him close.
Chan briefly thought that maybe he was getting softly rejected, but he didn’t let it slow him down. Felix had never rejected him once, and despite Changbin’s advice to let him come on his own terms, Chan knew that sometimes he needed someone to coax him out of his shell.
“Then I guess I’ll just have to be good here with you,” Chan lifted his shirt over his head, tossing it aside with his towel and diving into the pool.
The sound of Felix shrieking was cut off as water crashed over his head, the familiar sensation of his ears being plugged combining with the feeling of goosebumps instantly forming on every inch of his skin. The water was colder than normal, sending a rush through his veins and a chill down his spine.
He did a few strokes across the pool before coming up for air, flipping his hair back and running his fingers through it. Blinking the chlorine from his eyes, he saw Felix watching him with tense shoulders.
Now pressed up against the corner of the tiled pool, Felix had wide eyes and paled skin, looking like a scared, wet cat. The moonlight caught on the water in his hair, the silver glowing against his skin.
He looked frightened.
“Chan, I…” Felix stammered out like the words physically hurt him. His gaze dropped down to his legs again, and Chan’s eyes followed, looking beneath the rippling water.
He squinted, unable to see the blurry form of Felix’s pale legs through the distorted waves and the evening darkness. It looked like a larger shape beneath his torso, something swaying side to side.
Curious, he moved a few strokes closer, paddling slowly and approaching with caution. Felix, despite having nowhere else to go, didn’t look like he had any intentions of retreating.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you…” Felix trailed off, looking away and out the window.
His words made Chan’s gut twist, filling with anticipation and his mind preparing for the worst. He searched Felix’s face for any hint of what confession was coming next, scanning the curve of his mouth and the crease in his brow.
But his attention was pulled rather quickly by something moving underneath the surface, floating into view and catching Chan’s eye with its shimmer.
It was a stunning array of glimmering scales, emerald mixing with robin’s egg blue to skew like the color of the sea. He traced its shape with his eyes until he reached the fin, wispy gold webs dancing with the slow movement of the pool. At first, Chan thought it looked like a fish’s tail, all scales and gold freckles, but as more of it came into view, he realized that it was what he had come to recognize as a mermaid’s tail.
“It’s been so long that I thought I might never tell you,” Felix continued, willing himself to look back in Chan’s direction, “But I guess I can’t really hide it anymore…I’m sorry for keeping this from you.”
Chan could only stare, eyes taking in the overwhelming sight of Felix’s glowing silver hair and his fluttering tail. He knew that mermaids were meant to be captivating, tales of bewitched pirates and siren songs, but he was still caught off guard by how striking Felix looked in the water under the moonlight.
He forgot that Felix had even said anything, really, too caught up in admiring his speckled tail and the way it tapered into his waist.
“Stop staring,” Felix whined slightly, his cheeks unmistakably pink despite the poor lighting, “I know it’s gross, but—”
“Gross?” Chan interrupted him right then and there, unable to bear hearing the rest of Felix’s sentence.
Felix’s mouth hung open for a few seconds after he was cut off, closing it and rolling his lips between his teeth. He stared at Chan with huge eyes, though the fear was beginning to wash out of them. He blinked once, twice.
“You’re not gross, Felix,” Chan said gently, ever so slowly making his way along the side of the pool to close the distance, “You’re beautiful.”
“Even like this?” Felix’s voice sounded small, as he hesitantly looked back and forth between Chan’s approaching figure and his tail beneath the water.
“Especially like this,” Chan affirmed, quickening his pace before stopping within a couple of feet of the mermaid.
Cautious yet secure, Felix brought his tail closer to the surface of the pool. Chan watched in a trance, enchanted by the way the scales flexed and the colors refracted through the water.
He reached out a hand without thinking anything of it, only realizing what he was doing once Felix brought his tail further up to meet him halfway. Marveling at the feeling of cold scales under his moisture-wrinkled fingers, he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
Felix seemed to be just as enraptured by the interaction, a shiver shaking his shoulders and a cutoff gasp leaving his mouth.
“Fucking cool ,” Chan breathed out, and Felix’s giggle echoed throughout the empty pool.
“I could never find you gross, you know,” Chan mumbled quietly after, still running his hand up and down the viridescent tail.
Felix’s cold hand came out of the water to rest gently on Chan’s shoulder, his eyes drained of fright and reignited with affection, “I know.”
“In fact, it’s the opposite of gross,” Chan slid across the edge of the pool until he was close enough to wrap his arms around Felix’s waist.
“The opposite of gross…?” Felix tilted his head, a small pout on his lips as he thought the words over with incredible concentration.
“It’s pretty hot,” Chan grinned as he tugged Felix against his chest, wiggling his eyebrows and running his hands up the younger’s back.
With an indignant squawk, Felix wriggled from his hold and splashed him with a face full of water. Chan only laughed, wiping the water from his eyes and reaching out to bracket Felix’s sides again.
Felix had other ideas, though, quickly evading his advance and slipping away toward the middle of the pool. With a lighthearted frown, Chan swam after him like his life depended on it, only catching up when Felix laughed so hard that he slowed to a stop.
Chan practically tackled him, enveloping him in a huge bear hug that left them both coughing up water and pushing their hair out of their faces.
“Catching mermaids is easy,” Chan laughed once his eyes were free from chlorine and he had a secure hold on Felix, “Don’t know why pirates have such a hard time with it.”
“Please,” Felix scoffed, his tail swooshing back and forth under the water in a way that reminded Chan of a kitten, “You only caught me because I let you.”
“Really?” Chan smirked lazily, oozing so much confidence that Felix nearly believed him.
“Really,” Felix nodded slightly, looking like he wasn’t even aware of the way his eyes dipped down to peek at Chan’s lips.
Chan didn’t waste a second, surging forward as soon as he knew what Felix wanted. It wasn’t their best kiss in terms of your standard qualities—their lips were both chapped and blue from the cold water, their mouths tasting of pool water and their fingers wrinkled.
But in terms of their relationship, Chan felt like it was their best kiss yet. He could feel in the way that Felix’s lips moved, the way he melted into any and every touch, that he finally had everything off of his chest.
It made Chan feel freer, too, knowing that they were on the same page at long last. So he relished in the kiss as long as he saw fit, moving slowly and taking his sweet time because he knew that they had every second in the world to themselves.
Which meant that they had time to get back to kissing later.
They couldn’t stay in the pool forever.
“Race you to the other side!” Chan said immediately as he pulled away, making a break for it and getting a head start.
“Race you to th—?!” Felix called after him, flabbergasted by the ridiculous proposition and the pain of being ditched mid-makeout, “I’m a mermaid. You’d lose so hard if I raced you.”
“Prove it!” Chan called out over his shoulder, ducking his head to swim harder once he saw Felix diving underwater to give him a run for his money.
(Felix won the race. And the race after that, and the race after that, and every race they had over the following months. And every single time, Chan insisted that it was only because he let him.)