Work Text:
Everything hurts.
From the tip of his tail to the top of his head, the pain keeps coming. He hasn’t felt this shitty in several years.
The last time he remembered being so utterly and completely thrashed was when he disobeyed one of Muzan-sama’s rules and was promptly exposed by Kokushibo.
Just the memory of that brutal punishment made his closed eyes twitch in resentment.
That stupid, disciplinarian-wannabe bastard. If Akaza had his way, he would have scratched the creepy pattern of eyes right off that stone-cold, emotionless face. But alas, even he was no match for the much larger mer.
One slap of Kokushibo’s heavyweight tail had sent Akaza flying into the wall of a cave once. And he never forgot the humiliation of being pressed down into the sand by that fat tail of his like was some kind of guppy that needed to be trained how to breathe through his gills alone.
Stupid, condescending, mature old fart.
He hopes that he’ll never be able to find a mate during the rest of his dumb, uneventful years.
His anger is almost enough to rouse him from the dead sleep he’s in, but it’s still useless.
Akaza can’t even feel his arms, let alone the rest of his body. All he knows is that terrible, throbbing pain. It radiates from everywhere.
He must have drifted out of Muzan-sama’s territory by now. The currents feel different against his scales. It’s colder, or maybe that’s just because of how much blood he’s lost. Douma never was one to hold back during a fight.
The image of the blonde mer’s face makes his still unconscious body give a protesting jerk. If he wasn’t passed out, he would have been cursing that insufferable rainbow psychopath until his voice ran out of steam and his throat ripped apart from the inside.
All he wanted was the perfect little cave to prepare for a future mate, but that sly, revolting thing kept pushing him out of the best spots, claiming them for himself and then abandoning them when Akaza gave up after he lost a fight.
The most infuriating part of Douma’s possessive antics is that he only interfered with Akaza’s search because he liked to see Akaza angry. He liked to bother him and rile him up, until he was so red in the face that Douma laughed that shrill, ear-piercing laugh of his and swam out of reach, taunting him with their difference in power.
Akaza had already been bitter about the loss of his spot as second highest top dog in Muzan-sama’s domain, but having someone younger than him beat him for his spot, despite giving no indication that he valued his role as a protector of their colony, made him furious beyond belief. And when he kept getting in the way of Akaza’s meticulous search for a home?
The rage that he felt each time they crossed paths could never be described in mere words alone.
Damn him and his frivolous, pointless heckling. There was only so much harassment that Akaza could take, even as Muzan-sama continued to demand zero interruptions to his free time experimenting with the humans’ strange items and dropped cargo.
Douma tested his patience one too many times, and with mating season around the corner, Akaza had been adamant not to lose yet another piece of hard-found territory to his flippant whims.
Akaza had finally found a spot that wasn’t in the range of Douma’s usual hunting grounds, which he thought meant that he would be able to keep his treasure spot from being discovered while he was still without a mate.
Once he found a mate, Douma wouldn’t be able to steal it from him. Muzan-sama would tear his tail fins right from his tail and leave him to starve. It was never in the colony’s interest to interfere with a mated pair that could one day bring forth a clutch.
The colony needed to constantly be replenished with new life for it to maintain its status and territory. Not only was Muzan-sama’s domain the largest of most merfolk-habited areas, it also needed protectors to chase away or kill predators. Any manner of large sharks, orcas, and deep-sea creatures posed a threat to the colony, and it was only because of mers like Akaza and the other upper moons that they were safe from most dangers.
That was why Akaza sought to find a cave that was both strategically advantageous and near an abundant resource. Once he and his future mate welcomed their first clutch, it was essential that their home was in a defendable spot and with enough food to last their hatchlings for long periods of time. And what Akaza found was nothing short of perfect.
The cave was clean, hidden partially by a sizable field of coral reefs and other similar flora, and had fish and other sorts of marine folk meandering around for easy hunting.
It would have been the ideal place to raise a clutch of guppies had Douma not barged in upon seeing him from some distance away, and provoked him until Akaza couldn’t stand him anymore and took a swipe at his face with one of his webbed, clawed hands.
He hadn’t expected to be found so easily, nor the bloody fight that ensued soon after. And this time, it was especially bad.
To think that all that resulted from his hard work was a couple of claws digging into his tail and chest and almost reaching his neck, and drawing long, jagged lines across him until he could no longer tell where was up and where was down because of all the blood that clouded the water.
It was almost laughable.
In any case, he wasn’t able to do much damage on the first strike, or any of his subsequent ones throughout the fight, unfortunately, but it was worth it to see the surprise flash across Douma’s usually smugly grinning face.
It was a shame that Douma retaliated and sparked his desire to kill him once again. He was so furious that nothing got through to him - neither Muzan-sama’s warnings nor his own need for self-preservation. He threw himself into the fight, relishing in the appalled expression on Douma’s face as he gave as good as he had and then some.
Still, it was only a matter of time before he was being pushed back. Douma’s superior reflexes and strength proved too much for Akaza to handle, a fact that he hated from the moment he lost his spot as Upper Moon 2.
In the end, he was thrown down into the coral reefs that were starting to become covered in the sand that they stirred up from their fight, and then Douma preyed upon him from there, taking advantage of his vulnerable position to maim him until he was all but a piece of floating garbage in the water.
All marine life either fled or hid within small crevices to avoid the brawl between two apex predators of the ocean, and Akaza lost.
He almost blacked out from the loss of blood, and if that bastard Douma had any conscience at all - which he did not, because it was Douma - he would have at least notified someone of their fight and alerted the other mers in the colony that he was bleeding out and left to fend for himself in the dangerous waters of unknown territory.
They could have carried him back to the healers and patched him up somewhat there, despite their lack of medicinal resources. It was always difficult to treat injuries when the ocean currents washed away any trace of the salves they used. Still, it would have been better than nothing.
At least the worst of his injuries would have been stitched up and healed with little problem. He would have been weaker for a few weeks after, but as Upper Moon 3, he was more than capable of surviving such a fight. It was worse than the last few times, but with care, he would have been able to bounce back like there was nothing wrong with him in the first place.
He couldn’t do all that if his wounds were still left gaping and bleeding into the ocean and attracting all manner of predators, small and large. He couldn’t heal if he didn’t eat, and since he was fairly certain that a particularly strong current had taken hold of his limp body, he was convinced, just before he fell unconscious, that he might not survive at all.
The thought of dying somewhere in the vast ocean made him wonder if he should even try to swim back to Muzan-sama’s territory. The lack of blood had made him nauseous, so much so that strange thoughts that were buried deep within his mind began to surface.
Perhaps it was better this way - that he died in the ocean that he grew up in, rather than continue living in that place he didn’t call home. It had never been home, not since he first emerged as a well-known warrior in the colony.
The aimless, empty feeling that he got whenever he carried out his duties never bothered him before, but on the verge of death, the idea of going back to that place seemed like it was worse than being poisoned by jellyfish.
He is about to give up completely until he hears voices right above the water’s surface, and starts to stir.
Having been in the depths of the cold and dark for what felt like an eternity, Akaza’s consciousness rouses itself when movement across the water’s surface alerts his defence system. His scales rattle, growing erect before flattening again, row after row after row of them.
Wake up. There’s a voice in his head. It hurts.
Wake up. Another time, more urgently.
He can feel the water caressing his entire body, but still everything hurts. His tail flops uselessly when he tries to lift it.
The sense of resignation he felt before suddenly evaporates when his body detects a coming threat.
Something is in the water. And it’s coming straight towards him.
It’s big and loud. Too loud.
The water always muffles sounds when he’s under the waves, but it would seem that he is floating like a dead whale would, right where the merfolk of the ocean want to be spotted the least.
Is it a great white shark?
Those are tough opponents to beat. Akaza has killed a few in his lifetime, but those sharks are more persistent than one would think.
Maybe instead of a shark, it’s an orca?
He doubts that he’ll be able to deal any damage in his current condition, though, whichever one it is. He can’t even swim to escape.
A horrible groaning vibrates through the turbulent waves, making the sharp fins along his forearms stiffen and lengthen, ready to slash whatever comes to threaten his safety. He can feel, even as he slowly begins to claw his way out of the pits of darkness, just how big the creature that’s heading towards him is.
The ocean is parting underneath its rapid approach, bending in ways that Akaza feels is strangely familiar but also too foreign to be part of his world.
The great clanging and banging are finer details that his sensitive ears pick up on, especially above the water. It’s so close now that he feels like even the sun has been blocked out. The warmth of the sunlight on his wet, bloodied skin grows cool, as though shaded by an outcropping of rock or dunked underneath the roiling waves.
It’s too close - he realises belatedly, somewhere in his hazy, muddled mind.
Wake up! The voice screams suddenly, jolting him from his unconscious state just as he feels the weight of something heavy flop on top of him and jerk him up. Out of the water.
Akaza’s eyes shoot open instantly, and his first instinct is to lash out at the rope-like net that constricts his movements and is currently hauling him out of the water.
What is this thing??
With deadly accuracy, his claws and sharpened fins slice at the offending thing that’s tugging at his heavy, mostly limp body. The pain that follows his drastic movements makes his head spin and his entire body thrum with protests. He lets out a high-pitched screech that would have ruptured any small fish’s eardrums, his face grimacing from the agony that erupts.
A series of clicks and pained shrieks bursts from his mouth, and he realises with no small amount of panic that there are eyes trained on him from above.
When he looks up with difficulty, holding one webbed hand to his neck to stop himself from losing more blood there, he can make out, with his blurry eyesight, more than a few heads.
Two? Three? No, there’s too many to count, and they’re all staring down at him. He can tell despite his vision blacking out at the edges and his constant struggle against the blasted ropes that have tangled around his tail.
He lets out a protesting squawk, thrashing around in the net that they’ve got around him.
He’s seen this mechanism before. The humans that occasionally wander near merfolk territory always used these nets to capture the fish in the ocean. They would drag the fish up into the sky using some sort of sorcery, and then bring the entire bunch they caught into their big, noisy bodies of hard, smooth exterior.
Akaza had attempted to swim closer to one of those odd-looking sea creatures before, only to be blasted in the face by a torrent of air bubbles that had far too much force behind them than they should have. It was unnatural.
Then again, many things that he’s observed about humans are unnatural.
They seem to waddle on two thin sticks that were attached to their upper bodies, instead of having graceful, powerful tails like merfolk do.
He had once thought it impossible that they could move quicker than a sea slug, what with those seaweed-like, fragile strands they had for mobility. But watching humans work on their huge sea creatures’ bodies led him to the conclusion that humans were simply different from merfolk.
They didn’t have tails, but they sure could move quickly. They dodged and darted around all areas of the big sea monster they rode on, having no fear that they would be tossed from its back or eaten for disturbing its slumber. They had strange devices set up all across the sea creature too.
But what was most interesting to Akaza was the likeness of the humans to merfolk. Their faces looked almost identical to that of his brethren, despite the lack of scales and surplus of funny-looking garments they wore.
Most merfolk didn’t need garments. What use was there in covering the parts of themselves that they were most proud of?
At most, the females in the colony would find pretty shells and string them together to use to support the weight of their ample chests, but many chose to go without coverage, as it hindered mobility and dragged them down when escape was their only means of survival.
Akaza himself had never imagined or thought to cover himself up. As long as his more private organs were hidden from view, what was there to be ashamed about?
He supposed that humans did not have the same values and views as merfolk did, hence the need for their excessive coverage.
Plus, humans seemed to have a wide variety of skin types and colours. Some were much darker than others, probably from being in the hot sun so often, and others were perpetually pale, just like him.
Akaza has never had an issue with the sun despite wandering close to the water’s surface for hours on end at a time, so watching the humans slowly turn red or slighter browner confused him for months on end.
Not only did humans’ faces have similar features to that of merfolk, they also seemed to speak to each other in lilting, continuous streams of sounds that he couldn’t make out.
He hadn’t expected to understand them, given that they were from a different species, but he had found himself disappointed when he first learnt of their foreign-sounding language.
In time, he eavesdropped on their conversations whenever he came across another of those huge sea creatures with humans riding on their backs again, only this time, with the knowledge from Muzan-sama that they were not sea creatures at all, but things called boats or ships.
Muzan-sama, having been studying the humans since he became lord of his domain and established a huge, albeit fearful colony under his strict and somewhat forceful rule, had told him all that he wanted to know when he went knocking at his chambers to ask for permission to leave his guard post one day.
Armed with new knowledge, Akaza had taken to observing the humans as they went about their day. However, from then on, he expanded his senses, picking up on the sounds they made and what they could possibly mean.
Gradually, he learnt simple words. Then phrases. Then came a time when he realised that he was slowly but surely learning the language of the humans.
It had been an incredible discovery to know that he could now understand them and attempt to make sense of what they were saying.
All along, he had been unconsciously absorbing the information and retaining it while keeping his visits to the surface on the down low. Even Muzan-sama didn’t know that he had gained the ability to understand the human language.
He kept it to himself, feeling like it was his own little secret, away from the stresses of his duty and the abysmal conduct of his colleagues. It was refreshing, to say the least, to know so much about these strange yet fascinating land creatures and watch them live their lives peacefully.
He had thought that it was the ideal distance to maintain. The dangers of the sea were well-known to him and his kind, but on land, a whole other world was yet to be explored by merfolk.
They’d never tried, and no one ever will. Land was said to be a far more ferocious and treacherous place than the ocean.
Muzan-sama had warned the colony of getting too near to humans before, and while it was curious of him to be so against interacting with the very beings he was studying, no one questioned his orders.
Now, though, Akaza can see why Muzan-sama was so adamant that they stay away from humans and their boats.
He hisses and screeches in anger, scratching and snarling in the netting that he’s trapped in as the humans’ device yanks him further and further away from the water’s surface and up into the air.
Instantly, Akaza begins breathing through his lungs instead of the gills along his ribcage. His gills close, although it hurts him to do so. He must have been injured somewhere there as well.
Fucking Douma and his ruthless claws. He should have gouged his eyes out at least. It would have taken him ages to heal from that kind of wound.
Panicked and in pain, Akaza fights the net every step of the way, growling loud and aggressively as he watches the water pull away from him. With a swoop in his stomach, he claws desperately at the holes between the ropes that have him trapped, reaching for the comfort of the waves and all things wet and blue.
But then the ocean vanishes before his very eyes, and he is hovering above the top of the humans’ boat.
There are many faces staring up at him. The humans look like they’ve seen a stonefish, one that is so poisonous that a touch would kill them. Some of them have their mouths opened in what looks like disbelief, and others are yelling in a shrill cacophony that makes Akaza’s ears ring.
It’s too loud. There’s too many sounds.
His tail throbs with pain, and when he looks down at it for the first time since waking up, he realises that his injuries are much more severe than he thought.
There are at least half a dozen deep, long claw marks stretching across the width of his long tail. His normally vibrant blue scales are dull from the stress and the pain, and they sit tightly against the skin they protect underneath, rattling softly with distress. His pale skin is streaked with crimson and his markings have been obscured by all the blood and his torn flesh.
A horrid moan suddenly comes from the device that is holding him in the air, and he flails a little when he feels himself being lowered towards the humans.
Many of them are standing a good distance away from him, but he can tell that they are intrigued and trying to edge closer. Akaza growls lowly, warning them with his hostile glare.
If any of them try to approach him, he’ll rip their face right off their head. He needs to get back into the water. He can’t even begin to imagine what they’ll do to him now that they’ve captured him.
What if they think he’s a monster and kill him?
He’s seen them use their weapons to kill prey much larger than themselves before. Sharks, stingray, all manner of big fish.
Their weapons - harpoons and spears, as they call them - can deal a lot of damage when he’s unable to swim and defend himself properly. He can barely move in the air without getting even more tangled in the ropes.
When he is finally lowered to the surface of the boat, he snarls threateningly, hissing and clicking in frantic succession as he tries to claw at the netting.
Get this fucking thing off me!
It hurts when the ropes cut into his injuries, and he has to suppress a pitiful shriek of pain when a particularly rough rope drags across one of the deeper cuts on his tail.
His vision goes black at the corners, and he feels like he’s on the verge of passing out again. But then he hears something coming towards him from his right, and he instinctively swipes at it with an outstretched palm. He turns his elbow outwards, cutting through some of the netting and almost making contact with someone before they jump back in a panic to avoid his deadly fins.
“Fucking hell! That was close!” says someone.
Akaza whips his tail back and forth to force away any humans that might have come close to his rear end. He ignores the pain in his neck with great effort, gritting his pointed teeth as he growls and whistles and clicks.
He can understand them, but they won’t be able to understand him.
Humans would never be able to make heads or tails of the language of merfolk. They were inferior in that way.
Akaza used to think that they could wield sorcery just like merfolk, but apparently, all the curious things they used, wore, rode on and ate were just a part of their ability to be creative.
They couldn’t lay eggs, they couldn’t survive in the ocean without their big metal boats and they were much slower and weaker than merfolk in general. But on land, they could do many things with the man-made devices they commanded.
The humans back away from him, cursing and swearing in fear as he crawls along the top of the boat with his face twisted into a feral snarl. He swipes at anyone that tries to come close to him, fearing the worst if they manage to knock him out and drag him somewhere far from the ocean.
He may never be able to return if he lets them have their way with him. He’d rather die in the ocean than become a toy for the humans to play with.
“Don’t get too close to it. It’s dangerous.” Another voice speaks up.
Akaza’s frilled ears twitch with every sound and movement that he can sense. His nose wrinkles and his eyebrows turn downwards into a frown as he realises how much blood he’s losing from all his struggling.
“Easy, easy. We’re not going to hurt you.” A soft, gentle voice comes from somewhere behind him.
He flips around immediately, hissing at the new person. It’s a petite, short female. Her shoulder-length hair is the most colourful thing Akaza has seen from a human’s features. It’s purple at the ends, and it reminds him a little of Kokushibo’s collection of pretty shells and items he has in his cave.
He’d never admit that he was always envious that Kokushibo managed to snag such a nice cave as a home, but the shells did admittedly give the lonely and otherwise dismal space some life.
Not that his envy was any use now.
He stares at the female human - a woman - blinking the salt from his eyes as he takes in her rather serious demeanour.
His head spins. He’s losing too much blood. He won’t be able to stay awake for much longer.
“We’re here to help you.” the woman says gently. Her voice is both soothing and light as a feather. It’s strangely pleasant.
“Don’t worry. Just go to sleep. When you wake up, you’ll feel much better.”
Fuck… Can’t keep my eyes open…
The last thing he hears before he succumbs to the lull of pain is the coldness of the metal under his skin and the roughness of the ropes cutting into his wounds.
Fuck.
It’s been two weeks since he woke up and found himself on land. And it’s slowly killing him.
There’s no sense of beauty in any of the things he sees in this… this… whatever thing he’s been put into.
The humans called it a tank. It’s made out of something called glass, and apparently lets them see his movements even when they’re not standing above the giant hole in the box he’s been put in.
He should have known, when he first woke up after being told that the humans were trying to help him, that humans and their ways of healing were far different from that of merfolk. But that didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt like a bitch.
It was so painful the first time those quacks with their white garments and strange things over their faces poked something sharp and thin into his skin and his scales and sewed up his wounds.
He remembers lashing out back then, about a week and a half ago, and catching some unlucky human straight in the arm. He hadn’t felt anything when it happened, and he had snarled and growled at anyone who took even a step in his direction, before slipping on the wet, hard thing underneath his body and dropping straight into the very same tank he eventually was let loose in.
He feels slightly bad about hurting the human now. He hadn’t meant to cause so much damage. He just wanted them to go away.
Their medicines stung in a way he’d never felt before when they poured what looked like yellowish water over his wounds. His injuries had protested the moment the mysterious substance touched them, and he had flipped his tail in agony, screeching and making loud, pained squawks.
Even though it’s been two weeks since his arrival, the yellow on his normally deep blue scales hasn’t washed out. It annoyed him to no end when he first realised a good scrubbing with his hands couldn’t remove that ugly stain on his scales.
Akaza prided himself on keeping his appearance clean and neat. He didn’t like having blood all over himself when he feasted on prey, and neither did he tolerate his scales looking dull and dirty.
How would he ever attract a mate if he didn’t bother to keep his scales shiny?
It was a preposterous thing to do to have one’s scales left so filthy with mud and other residues that the ocean currents brought to the colony.
Though, he supposes, now that he’s in the care of these so-called researchers in their big, metal house, he no longer needs to worry about that. The water in the tank has been pure as can be since the first time he accidentally flopped into it to escape the hands of those humans with the white coats.
They called themselves doctors, but Akaza thought they were more like Muzan-sama, what with their interests in taking his blood and keeping it in little glass things that resembled some of Kokushibo’s treasures.
He had growled at anyone that tried to use any more of that stinky yellow substance on his wounds, but he had no choice if he wanted to heal. He still snapped and swiped, at hands that wandered into areas he didn’t want them to touch, or when they came far too close to where the sensitive little patch of skin and scales on his front was.
The first time someone’s hands brushed over his hidden cloaca, he had made a deafening screech that caused the humans to cower away in surprise and pain. Then he had taken a swing at one of the closest humans, thinking to himself: Fucking perverts! Don’t touch me! Stupid humans!
But they couldn’t understand him, much to his frustration.
Hence, with each session that those doctors came and went to check on his injuries - which were healing well despite his previous worries about dying at sea - Akaza grew more and more agitated by their senseless, inconsiderate and inappropriate caresses.
Only his mate and himself are permitted to touch such an intimate and sensitive part of his body. To make matters worse, he was much more sensitive than normal due to the mating season approaching. It was all he could do to not take someone’s head off and still try to get the message across that he didn’t want them touching anywhere near his pelvis.
Dumb humans, he thinks to himself every time the doctors leave to go somewhere else in a hurry.
They would always exit via a huge, rumbling wall of rock that groaned and creaked like it was going to collapse.
He never saw how the humans controlled its opening and closing feature, but he didn’t particularly care. Not when he needed to find a way to leave this place by the time mating season came around. He couldn’t be without a mate this time too!
Any opportunities he had before to court someone were always thwarted by his lack of a home. He couldn’t possibly welcome a mate into his life without providing them with some form of protection, least of all a clean and spacious cave to stay in while they mated.
All this time, only the doctors and the woman who he saw on the boat that day he was captured were the ones who came to see him.
He wondered, for a brief moment when he was left blissfully alone in the tank, whether there were others like her. Others who were as vibrantly coloured as her.
His own markings made him fairly popular in the colony, even though he never had the chance to look for a mate. His unique pattern of stripes all over his body and face, wrapping around his biceps and neck, together with his brilliant gold eyes and exotic pink hair always garnered him attention back in the colony.
He would swim through the town square and be faced with numerous tribesmen of his, all curious about his day and thanking him for protecting the colony.
He had swam away to avoid their attention before, but he always felt a little disappointed that none of his admirers caught his fancy.
Akaza didn’t have a specific type of mer in mind, or even a look, but for some reason, none of them had been to his liking.
Even as he swims in aimless circles in the small tank he’s in, he can’t help but sigh in the water and watch as bubbles blow out from his mouth and rise to the surface.
He doubts he’ll ever be able to find someone who he wants as his mate.
For once, the idea of mating season makes him feel glum instead of excited.
He changes his mind the very next day, when the most beautiful human he’s ever laid eyes on walks through those moving rock walls.
Immediately, Akaza shrugs off the grabbing hands of the doctors who were attending to his injuries and trills loudly to get the man’s attention.
He’s pretty! And colourful!
The man’s hair is tied rather messily into a half ponytail, and it’s a colour that Akaza rarely sees in the ocean.
Douma’s ugly cream-coloured hair could never compare to the gorgeous blonde he sees before him.
The man’s eyes snap to Akaza, responding to his call.
Akaza loses his breath almost instantly, and he can feel his scales ripple across his entire body. His fins soften and go limp against his tail and his forearms.
“I see that you’ve all been working hard with the merman!” the man speaks, and his voice is loud and lively - like himself. He exudes a sense of confidence and feels larger than life.
Akaza finds that he likes it, and him.
His throat rattles with a soft croon, and he flops over onto his belly, trying to bend his back so he can look up at the beautiful human.
What’s your name, pretty human?
He remembers too late that humans won’t understand him.
But instead of edging away from Akaza like most of the other humans that hang around his area do, the man creeps closer. He bends at the knees and crouches down until he is at eye level with Akaza.
His eyes are fierce and fiery, and his intense, owlish gaze sends shivers down Akaza’s spine.
Hello. He chirps, sliding forward on his arms. Your eyes are lovely.
The pain in his tail as he drags it across the wet floor beneath him makes him wince internally, but he needs to get a better look at the human’s face! He needs to know his name so he can use it!
The human tilts his head at Akaza, not fazed at all by his slow approach.
Akaza finds that he really likes him. The attraction he feels is instant and feels like a tangible force. It pulls him towards the man, until he is the only one he can see in his sight.
Several voices speak up from behind Akaza, panicked and afraid, and he has half a mind to turn and hiss at them to shut up, but the human does it before he can.
“I’m alright! I don’t think he’ll hurt me! Please, it would help very much if you could all remain silent.” the man says.
Akaza wants to tell him that he won’t hurt him. He just wants to know his name.
The pretty man turns his attention back to him then, and looks him right in the eye with a curious but also cautious expression. “I’ve heard that you’re a handful to treat! Did you know that I was called in here specifically to see if I could offer any help? People have always said that I had a knack for befriending others!” he smiles at Akaza, and Akaza is dazzled.
He stares at the man, his mouth refusing to open even as he tries to make a sound.
All he can do is blink his wide eyes in awe and admire the man’s blinding, sun-kissed beauty.
Mate. His instincts scream suddenly. Court him! Mate him!
And Akaza is very much inclined to agree with the more primal side of himself.
He takes in the man’s smiling face, and involuntarily reaches out with his less injured arm to touch him.
The water that splashed all over the floor as he crawled his way to his new object of interest is touching the man’s hand. He has it splayed on the floor, as though to keep his balance as he crouches on his feet.
The moment their skins make contact in the water, a sudden jolt runs through Akaza’s body, and he startles, yelping with a click of his tongue.
The man moves away to avoid him, and Akaza wilts when he realises that he’s scared him away. He doesn’t want him to go away. He hasn’t even learnt his name yet.
But before he can slither his way back to the man, he feels a hand on his shoulder, right where one of the wounds on his front side meets the back, and he snarls. He whips around, gripping his shoulder in pain as his large tail swishes violently and trips whoever it was that dared to hurt him.
“Wait!” the man’s voice rings out from behind him then, just as he is about to take another well-deserved swipe at the offending hand.
Akaza freezes instinctively, and for some reason, all his anger drains from him. He turns back around to face the man, tilting his head at him and chirping at him questioningly.
“I know it hurts.” the man says, his arms out in a placating manner.
Akaza tilts his head to the other side, his ears twitching. It does hurt. The doctor humans hurt him again.
“I’m sorry about your pain. But they don’t mean anything by it. Don’t hurt them, alright?”
Akaza frowns, huffing a little in protest.
But it hurt! They keep poking and touching my injuries. And my ovipositor!
He rears up on his tail, pushing away the pain to make his point.
There are footsteps behind him as people scuttle away. But the pretty human stands his ground. He smiles, stepping closer slowly.
Akaza doesn’t move, he doesn’t lash out either. He doesn’t want to hurt the pretty human that looks like he could be a potential mate.
“I know. I know.” he nods, as though he really does understand what Akaza is saying. “But could you please put your fins away? They are trying to help you heal. The faster you heal, the faster you’ll be able to get back home, alright?”
His fins, sharpened and fanning straight out, droop at the man’s comforting words.
He has a nice voice. Akaza realises that he likes his voice too.
Feeling more drained than angry at this point, Akaza grumbles under his breath with a series of low, rumbling growls. But he listens to the pretty human and puts away his battle fins. The ones on the back of his tail soften and lie flat against it as well.
He slumps back down into a pile of resigned flesh, glaring at the doctors that come forth again at the man’s beckoning gesture.
“Come. I don’t think he’ll hurt you again. He seems to understand us to some extent, so please talk to him if you need to. Merfolk are dangerous, but apparently just as intelligent! I believe they’ll respond in kind if you treat them the right way.”
Akaza stretches his neck carefully to peer in between the arms of the doctors who are fussing over his tail. Once most of them have moved on from his torso and neck, he trills again to get the pretty human’s attention.
What’s your name? He tries to will his message across, to no avail.
The man merely smiles at him again, before standing still and watching as the doctors finish patching him up for the day. When the man turns to go, Akaza feels a spark of concern in his heart as sees him move towards the moving walls.
Wait! When will you come back? Don’t go!
But it’s no use. The man turns back one last time when he makes a saddened, wailing screech, but all he does is wave at Akaza before disappearing beyond the doors.
“I shall see you tomorrow!”
Akaza stops his screeching when he hears that. Instead, he brightens up, his scales glowing a deep blue from happiness.
Tomorrow. He said he’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll ask him his name then.
When the sun rises the next day, he learns the man’s name.
The man appears again while the doctors are once again having trouble with some of his stitches.
Akaza chirps at him, feeling elation bloom in his chest when the man smiles. He scans the entire length of the man’s body, finding his broad shoulders strong and his legs thick with muscle.
He licks his lips unconsciously, wondering what it would feel like to run his hands all over the pretty human’s smooth-looking skin.
Would he have scales? Probably not. Humans didn’t live in the water, so they weren’t adapted with aquatic characteristics.
Does that mean that the human’s entire body is covered in soft skin?
Akaza wants to know. He wants to take his time to explore his sensitive spots.
He snaps out of his daydream when something glints in the corner of his eye. There seems to be something attached to the man’s chest that reflects the false sun above and shines like the surface of the water does.
Akaza squints at it, and realises that it has writing on it. With his eyesight, he manages to catch what the writing is, although he doesn’t recognise the characters.
Merfolk don’t have their own written language. What use would it do in the ocean? They just needed to communicate via sound waves.
He shouldn’t know what the writing means or even says, but for some reason, the more he looks at it, the more a word comes to mind. Eventually, when the man has stopped a few lengths away to observe Akaza twisting and turning and overall giving the doctors a hard time, the word is clear in his mind.
Kyoujurou. It says Kyoujurou.
But what is it? What is a Kyoujurou?
Then, one of the other humans that seem to work in this space perpetually calls the pretty human. “Ren-san!”
The man’s head turns to the small, mouse-like squirt in the corner, who immediately shrinks under his fiery gaze.
“I believe my name was Rengoku Kyoujurou, Young Agatsuma! Has working with the merman frightened you so much that you would forget your own superior’s name?”
The man’s tone- Kyoujurou’s tone is accusatory, although there is a hint of playfulness hidden under it.
The little yellow squirt clutches the strange stick in his hands a little tighter. His eyes bug out of his head as he shakes his head frantically. “Not at all! I’m really sorry about that! I just wanted to let you know that the next shipment of fish has been delivered to the merman’s supply. I was told that you would be here to oversee the merman’s feeding session today, so I was wondering if I could get off work a little earlier since I’ve finished sweeping!”
Akaza thinks faintly in the back of his head, as he tunes out the rest of that conversation to stare intently at the back of Kyoujurou’s head.
Kyoujurou. His name is Kyoujurou…
He tests the name on his tongue, and it comes out as a short, clipped whistling trill. It’s beautiful even in Akaza’s own language.
What a pretty sound, for a pretty human. A pretty potential mate.
Akaza needs to convince him to be his mate. They would have such beautiful guppies together.
“Are you hungry?” Someone waves their hand in front of his face.
Akaza blinks a few times to get rid of the image of Kyoujurou smiling at him, before realising that he is, in fact, hungry.
He nods enthusiastically. With a heave of his body, Akaza checks that none of the doctor humans are still messing with his tail, before starting to glide on his belly towards the tank.
They always feed him live fish in the tank, but he always thinks that they taste awful compared to what he hunts himself. But today, his stomach is truly rumbling with a vengeance.
Usually, he would force down two or three larger fish and ignore the rest even as the humans tried to encourage him to eat more, but he feels like he could eat an entire shark’s worth of fish now.
Maybe it has something to do with Kyoujurou being his prospective feeder. And he is, because he picks up a metal container of some sort and dumps the contents of it into the tank.
Akaza delights in the number of prey that Kyoujurou has got for him, and dives headfirst into the tank.
It’s all for me! It’s mine!
As he snatches up handfuls of panicking, darting fish, Akaza turns to Kyoujurou, who is standing at the edge of the tank with his arms on his waist and a satisfied look on his face.
Akaza chomps down on the fish, the flavour bursting across his tongue in a way that makes him groan. It tastes so good. Kyoujurou’s fish tastes the best.
“What a relief! I was told that you’ve been rather picky with your food since you arrived, but you’re eating them so well. That’s good!”
Akaza latches onto the last two words.
Good. I’m good. Mate says I’m good. I can be good.
Those pretty eyes trace his path in the water as he swims closer to the edge of the tank. Kyoujurou crouches down again, smiling as he reaches out a hand hesitantly.
Akaza doesn’t know why, but a sudden thought comes to his mind.
If I grab it, I’ll be able to tell him. I can tell him my name, and ask him to be my mate.
It’s a strange thought - one that has never occurred to him at all. No one has ever tried to interact with a human in his colony. Muzan-sama forbade it.
But now, with Kyoujurou’s hand stretched in front of him, all he can think about is how soft his skin would feel and how warm or cold he would be.
He wants to know. He wants to know everything about Kyoujurou. About this pretty, pretty human that looks like he’s been carved out of sunlight itself.
Be mine, Kyoujurou. He thinks. I’ll make him mine.
And so he grabs Kyoujurou’s wrist, and yanks him straight into the water.
First, he’ll introduce himself. Then, he’ll do his best to attract him, until Kyoujurou accepts his fate as his mate.
Yes, that will do.
As he watches Kyoujurou sink into the water and start to flail his arms about, he thinks back to when he was still floating around in the ocean after being beaten half to death by Douma.
For once, the platinum blonde mer doesn’t rouse his ire.
Thanks for helping me, you dickhead. I hope you never find a mate for the rest of your life.