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Eyes that reflected the darkness of the deep sea fluttered shut, stung by the salty breeze of the Above. The siren was a graceful figure lying on one of the craggy rocks that made up the cove, enjoying the warmth of the sun. Her tail curled in the water as she lay, using the silky appendage to splash herself occasionally to keep from drying out. Dark hair spilled out across the rock, the violet highlights brighter in the light from the sky, enjoying the break from the constant buzz of the sea. The world was so quiet, the music of the gulls and the crash of the waves the loudest noises. Kyoukas' morning contemplation was interrupted by a grating shout from the shore. She winced, sharp canines digging into her lip. No human voice could compare to the music of those that dwelled in the sea, and thus the siren found them irritating.
That wasn't the problem; she had exposed herself and had been spotted by humans...but unlike their cousins, the singers had their own ways of dealing with things.
Before the human could call for her friends, eyes caught by the shine of violet scales reflecting the sun. Humming under her breath, the magic of her birthright twining into the sound, Kyouka flipped her tail lazily and raised her voice in song, pure soulful notes, lightly carried by the soft ocean breeze. She sang of the beauties of the deep, and how peaceful the waters could be, how free from responsibility if you just surrendered to them. She sang of love beneath the waves, a hand held out towards the human on the land, enticingly. The siren could feel the moment the land dwelled fell to her song and began to walk towards the crashing waves. A small smile crept onto the siren's face as the water struck the woman's boots, creeping up her calves, waves crashing lightly over her body. The cove was treacherous to the unwary, the angle of the waves and the large rocks with their grottos beneath causing crosscurrents and a wicked undertow. The cove was as beautiful and deadly as the sirens that dwelled there, the bones that lay below, now home for smaller denizens of the sea could speak for that.
Still, the siren sang;
The water here is gentle and warm, the slope easy…
The woman was close enough that Kyouka could see clarity return to her eyes as the water crept over her chin and into her mouth.
𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘮, 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘮...𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘢 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘮 𝘺𝘰𝘶
𝘚𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘦𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺...
The bewitching melody again robbed the desperate eyes of that moment of awareness as the human stepped forward, falling beneath the waves in silence as her foot hit nothing.
Kyouka slipped from the rock beneath the waves, eyes closing as he was enveloped by the cool waters of her home, hearing the song of the ocean once more. Being Above was like being temporarily deaf.
Water carried sound; she could hear the humming of the whales in the distance. Perhaps when she was done here she would sing with them, or seek out a different entertainment. Those dark eyes settled on the human as she struggled, but the undertow had her, dragging her deeper. Kyouka turned her eyes towards the sky, watching the bubbles rise, the sun flickering through the crystal clear water. She stayed, humming, the song transitioning into a soft lullaby as the bubbles sped up frantically—and then stopped. Without a thought for the life she had ended, it was after all a human,Kyouka turned with a flick of her tail towards the head of the cove and the open ocean. The human would be missed, but it would be one less biped to hurt her delicate ears with their voice, one less human to endanger the pods. Humans hunted mers, and mers hunted them.
She swam, amethyst tail moving gracefully through the crystal clear waters, the catfish-like tendrils from her ears undulating behind her, mind moving to other things.
While she normally killed for food, she had no desire to eat the human, she had simply been testing her abilities and protecting the pod.
Her song had been a concern because of this morning. Kyouka had seen a human male swimming— far too close to the nesting grounds. Sirens were all female and needed humans to breed—thus children were rare and to be cherished. She had sung to him to lure him away, he had responded, as usual, only to be dragged back to shore by a second man. A blonde one who had looked right at her with narrowed eyes that shone crimson in the sun.
Kyouka had been startled. Both men should have fallen under her spell, but this human had not. He had yelled something in the human language that she didn’t register because his voice hadn’t been grating like other humans—it had sounded pleasant to her ears. The siren had been lost in the sound of his voice for a moment. In that short time he had dragged his still loopy friend out of the water,and then out of hearing.
Kyouka had ducked under the waves once he’d reached shore, cursing under her breath as she swam from the cove. She’d been spotted and the men had gotten away…This was bad.
What was wrong with her voice?
Her gift had never been as strong as her cousin, Hitoshi’s but she could easily take two or three humans under the waves without straining her magic. Kyouka’s abilities had always lain more in causing disasters with her song, raising waves to swamp ships was child's play.
But it still came back to the fact that two humans should have easily fallen to her thrall.
Why?
And now she was exposed.
She had reported the incident to the pod. The nursery was being moved to somewhere safer, but she had been concerned.
Thus the test of a few minutes ago. The female human’s drowning gurgles had been confirmation that she had not lost her gift.
So why had the blonde man been immune?
Maybe—But it was impossible.
The violet-haired siren's curiosity had returned with the confirmation of her song—so she returned to the inlet beach where she had last seen him. She let the waves push her closer to land, a place she had visited out of curiosity, but not in a decade.
Many of her kind chose to walk among humans for a time, some for curiosity, others to add to the few children born each century. Some went to find their soulmates—humans destined to be bound to them. Kyouka had been one of those who walked the land once. She had searched and found nothing. The only thing she had found intriguing about humans was their music. Song was the only time their voices didn’t grind her sensitive ears like sand on a rock. Needless to say, she had never had the desire to return—until now.
Kyouka waited, waves licking over her tail until the sun set. The siren would return in the morning. She knew the odds of seeing the one she sought in the sea were low now. Humans preferred to swim during the day; sharks primarily hunted at night.
And what the sharks didn’t eat, someone else would.
Even as she thought about it, the sensory fronds drifting about Kyouka’s head caught the vibrations of a large body moving through the sea behind her. She stilled her movements, making a soft echoing noise. Her echolocation showed her the dark grey form of one of the few predators her kind feared.
A large tiger shark.
And it was between her and the open sea.
With a slow flick of her tail, she prayed that the creature could not sense her heartbeat speeding up. If it wasn’t particularly hungry, distress would be the first thing it latched on to.
It looked like she was beaching herself tonight after all.
Kyouka sent another burst of sound and sped up as she felt the water behind her shift. The shark was headed in her direction. She gave up any pretense and finned her way towards the shore as fast as she could. Siren's song didn’t work on the devils of the deep, and she was alone.
She could sense the sand rising beneath her, she was almost to shore.
A sharp pain tore through her and Kyouka screamed, it felt as if a thousand knives had pierced her tail. Twisting back, she began to beat at the shark’s grey head, drawing the stone knife from her sash. She managed to sink the blade into its dead-looking eye and it freed her. Pain and adrenaline thrummed through her body as she swam until she felt the slippery presence of sand under her. The waves pushed her higher on the beach and as she levered herself up, she looked back to see the fin circle barely ten feet out. A shiver ran through her body—that had been far too close for comfort. Kyouka swallowed as she saw blood staining the beach from her injured tail.
She needed to get help.
But Kyouka couldn’t betray her pod to the humans. As the adrenaline faded and pain took its place solo, she concentrated on the one other gift sirens had. As she felt legs replace her tail and the pain grow she felt all energy leave her and she collapsed to the beach.
“I swear I heard someone scream, bro.”
“ And I said it was probably people fucki— Hey! Shit…Eij, call the hospital.”
Kyouka saw a figure approach and suddenly she was being lifted by strong arms— and all she could see were intense red eyes.
“ Hey, Look at me. My name is Katsuki, I’m just trying to help. Stay awake… Jesus fucking Christ, who goes skinny dipping at this time of night?”
Kyouka lifted her head enough to glare at him as she spoke, the human tongue feeling dead and unmusical in her mouth.
“ I wasn’t skinny dipping.” She could see some relief in his eyes when she spoke. She supposed she should be in shock, but the adrenaline still ran high.
“ Well, why are you naked then?” He was stripping off his own shirt and wadding it against her leg. Kyouka had known that changing would make the bite smaller but it still bled freely.
She crossed her arms over her bare chest as he glared at her. His abysmal attitude was distracting her from the pain at least.
“None of your business.” She was curious about the way his eyes flickered to her lips as she spoke before responding.
“Well, whatever your reason it was stupid as fuck with shark-watch up.” She wasn’t sure what a shark watch was, but she gathered it meant that they knew the tiger was in the area. That would be why she hadn’t seen him swimming earlier.
Kyouka heard voices and looked over the man's shoulder, he seemed steadily focused on holding his now bloody shirt over her leg and ignored everything else. It was to the point that he was startled when someone in a blue uniform put his hand on his shoulder and said something.
It was then that she realized that the blonde man's voice had only been irritating in words alone. The discordant voices of the other humans were as painful to her ears as rocks grating together. She had hoped that they had gotten better since she had last been on land.
Obviously, it was just him.
He was looking at her strangely as she covered her ears. His eyes seemed focused on her face as if trying to place her.
Kyouka's eyes swam for a moment and then she was being lifted to a solid piece of equipment and carried. She instinctively reached out to grab the blond's arm.
She had come here looking for him, she wasn’t going to let him vanish again.
He looked up at her, startled.
“What, you want me to call someone for you?”
His acerbic attitude was something she could ignore after he’d tried to help her.
“I’m alone…” And she was. With the pod moving to an undisclosed location and her trapped ashore by an injury, Kyouka was alone. The inlet was also the closest access to the open sea, and there was no telling if the monster still lurked within. She watched his eyes widen, and then soften before he turned away with an irritated huff.
“Tch, you’d better not be taking her to the hospital without me.”
Hospitals…hospitals meant testing, and human money, right?
“No hospitals…Please…No hospitals.” She hissed softly, Humans had strange ways of registering their identity. “ I don’t have my ID”
Luckily the infuriating human her magic hadn’t worked on seemed to have the answer. He gave her a sharp look, then nodded and turned away.
“ She had a swim lanyard, she used the edge to stab the shark's eye, it’s probably halfway to China by now.”
He was speaking to the men in uniforms and Kyouka relaxed slightly, though she wondered why he was helping her.
“Do you know her?” The men seemed oddly suspicious of the blonde for some reason and it seemed related to the fact that Kyouka was naked.
“Yeah, I do, tell 'em, Ears.” The slight hesitation in his words made her realize he was fishing for what to call her. His eyes seemed to have caught on her ears, which she knew were still slightly pointed.
“ Don’t call me Ears, Katsuki.” She said softly and smacked his arm in what she hoped was a friendly manner. “ It’s Kyouka.” He seemed pleased that she’d remembered his name.
“Fine, fine. Tch.”
“Ears?” The man seemed insistent on questioning everything.
"Do you not know what a fucking nickname is?"
“My ears are very sensitive, so please, speak more quietly?” She asked, wincing again.
“ Look, we just want to know what happened. Why were you out in the water with a shark watch in effect? The bite’s not bad but you should still get stitches. Maybe we should speak with you alone?” The man glanced at Katsuki and Kyouka gripped his sleeve tighter. She didn’t understand why they were insistent on separating them unless…did they know what she was?”
“Fucking Christ, I didn’t molest her.” The blond man—Katsuki, seemed angry.
It slowly dawned on the siren that perhaps the humans thought Katsuki had attacked her and chased her into the water.
“ No…I” She frowned and looked down as she thought. “My... clothing got carried off by a wave and I went in after it. I didn’t think the shark would be so shallow.” She knew humans tended to be unaware of exactly how little water a shark could lurk in. Kyouka was proud of her excuse when the man asked.
“ And why were your clothes not on you?”
She flushed in embarrassment and ducked her head again. The siren had been so frantic to think of an excuse that she hadn’t thought about that detail.
She was surprised when a warm, strong arm was thrown over her shoulder. “ Hey, it’s not illegal, this is a private cabin. The beach in front of it’s technically private property since we’re renting”
Kyouka looked up quickly to see Katsuki very studiously not looking at her as he stared the man in blue down. She felt her heart beat oddly as he pulled her against his side, the hand on her hip seemed almost too warm through the thin layer of his shirt. She wasn’t sure why he had decided to help her, but he was. For some reason, his presence was making her human body feel odd.
Why did she feel attracted to this human?
She tuned back into the conversation to the people around her glancing between the two of them. Kyouka didn’t like being stared at by so many humans, so she turned to hide her face in the closest object…Katsuki’s shoulder.
“ Well, the bite seems superficial but she will need stitches.” Kyouka was beginning to get lightheaded, she focused on the warmth of Katsuki’s shoulder and the strange kindness of the man.
That was the last thought she had before her body finally succumbed to the stress of blood loss and transformation.
****~*~ ****
When Kyouka awoke, she heard beeping monitors and she could smell an unpleasant chemical odor. Her hands rose to cover her ears as she tried to adjust to the noises of so many machines—so many humans. A hand caught hers.
“Careful or you’ll rip the IV out.” As she looked down at the strong, tan hand that held hers she realized a small needle had been inserted into the crook of her elbow. Her eyes followed the arm to the face of the blonde man she had become so focused on.
“ Why are you helping me?” She asked softly. He had no reason to, past finding her bleeding in the sand in front of the place he was staying. Kyouka was surprised to hear him snort as he answered.
“Well, as far as they’re concerned, you’re my online girlfriend and we were having some vacation fun when a fucking wave carried off your clothes and you stupidly dove in after them when I went in to get a blanket.” His words were measured as his intelligent red eyes ran over her face. She realized that he was giving her their story—one he had made up so she could get help.
"Why?"
He answered the follow-up question her look conveyed with a shrug.
“At first you were hurt, then you looked fucking familiar and I needed to figure out why.” His eyes grew sharper. “ Now I know.”
She felt her stomach drop at his words. What did he believe he knew? Her breath came short as he leaned in, lips a breath from her skin as she blushed again before his words registered.
“ You fucking tried to lure Eiji into the sea…What I want to know now is what happened to your scales, and why’d you follow him? How the fuck do mermaids exist”
Kyouka met his eyes with hers and snorted. “ Never call me a mermaid again. I’m a siren.” He seemed to know the word because he pulled away, frown growing deeper.”I wasn’t following your friend. I was following you.” He had helped her, and that deserved some honesty.
“Why the fuck were you following me?”
“Because I wanted to know why my song didn’t work on you.” The words were soft, frustrated. She had originally believed that she had lost her birthright…but the woman she had killed had responded. Even before that, his friend had responded. He was the only one who had not.
If that was true…
“Work? It was pretty, but what was it supposed to…” He snarled. “Is that why he went spacey? You were controlling him?”
“Shhhhh” Kyouka hissed. The last thing the pod needed was for more humans to discover them. “ He was too close to the nursery. I was doing what I had to.” She looked away, hating the way her cheeks flushed when he was that close.
She had followed him to find out why her song didn’t work…but there was only one other reason—.
“Nursery? You’re a mother?” The look in his eyes made her laugh.
“No, I haven’t mated yet.” She crossed her arms delicately to not dislodge the strange needle. “ The nursery is where the few children in the pod are kept before their magic develops.” Her fingers played along the edge of the blanket on the bed.
“ So, what? You were going to kill him for that? And then you followed…Me?”
“Yes. It’s how it’s always been.” She turned her eyes to him curiously. “You pulled him away even though I turned my song on you.”
He cursed and stood, running a hand through his hair and pacing. “ So…what? You followed me because your song didn’t work? So you couldn’t fucking kill us?”
Kyouka shook her head. “ I followed you because there's only one reason my song wouldn't work on just you.”
He was her soulmate.
“...Sirens are always female.” She looked at him and raised a finger as he opened his mouth. “ When young are born it is always with a human.”
“Is that why you were naked?” His tone was cocky now, eyes focused on her again. “Trying to seduce me?”
Kyouka flushed and smacked him, a smirk crossing her lips as the smug expression died.
“ No, idiot. Sirens don’t wear clothes. I shifted because I beached myself to escape the shark, not to mate with you.” She crossed her arms.
“Thought you implied that was why you followed me though.” The smug tone hadn't left his voice.
She looked away, ears red. She had admitted it.
“The only one a sirens song won’t work on is her soulmate.” She mumbled.
“Soulmate?”
“ Destined mate…” She looked down irritated. In fairytales, soulmates immediately clicked. He irritated her as much as he attracted her—yet he didn’t seem attracted to her at all.
He stared at her for a moment. “ Soulmate? Sounds like bullshit to me.” He looked away but she could see a slight pink tinge to his cheeks.
“ Well, it’s not.” She moved to try to get out of the bed, Kyouka hadn’t wanted to admit that, even to herself. It was why she had tried to think of any other reason. She’d been trying to avoid...this.
Soulmates were a guppy tale she’d been fascinated with. Someone who’s soul song harmonized with your own. It had sounded beautiful.
It was something she had given up on.
Why had she even hoped—.
Her legs wobbled as she stood, and again she was caught by strong, warm arms. She was tired but she struggled slightly. He didn't want her, and it shouldn't be causing a pit in her stomach.
“ So...How long are you going to be rocking legs?” The casual question caught her off guard.
“Until I heal and can go back.”
Kyouka looked up as she spoke. His gaze seemed soft even as he looked away and snorted.
“ Well, until then we’re dating I fucking guess. We can figure out your soulmate thing as we go.”
Dating…that was courting for humans.
Her heart raced again as she looked up, dark eyes wide and he shrugged, hand running through his spikey hair.
“ Don’t look so surprised, fish girl. Girlfriend was my excuse for you being here, and you’re fucking cute... when you’re not trying to kill someone.”
Kyouka stared at him, then laughed at his logic.
“Tch…see if I try to be nice again.”
She shook her head and relaxed into his arms experimentally. It’d be interesting living on land while her soulmate decided whether he’d stay with her or not, but it was almost refreshing too.
Something new.
It helped that her new mate was still the only human whose voice didn’t hurt her ears.
So, it was definitely a plus that he was usually the loudest thing in the room.