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Chapter Text

The Allsea Conference was the biggest political event in the Western ocean, so far as anyone in the hemisphere could say. The journey to the Central Kingdom was a time-honored tradition, wrapped in spectacle and excitement. Every year the Cang Qiong pod arrived in their most elegant regalia, ready to posture, perform, and network with their neighbor pods. 

Shang Qinghua had heard about the meetings a dozen times at least while his parents tried to get him not to give up hope on finding agemates who he would click with. This year, though he was still young enough to be a little translucent and very sensitive about it, they'd insisted on bringing him along.

"There will be other little ones there," Shang Qinghua's mother had assured him, like a liar.

To be fair to her, Shang Qinghua had heard other people whispering about it—how they hadn't dared bring their fingerlings along this year, much less their fry. Not with the abyssal mers AND the Ultima pod suddenly in attendance.

The Abyssal Mers weren't entirely unusual—terrifying, yes, but not unusual. Their leader, Tianlang-jun, was nearly as sociable as the lightwater mers, despite dwelling in the volcanic darkness of the ocean twilight. But for the Ultima pod to be in attendance… They rarely answered the summons, always saying their migration didn't line up with the schedule, or there was a hunt too important to put off. Dark-ocean dwellers of the frozen far-north, they were the mers of horror stories told around the hot bubbles of steam vents.

Shang Qinghua wasn't sure if they'd actually carried a chill with them, but the water sure felt colder than it was supposed to. Maybe it was always like this, away from Cang Qiong and the distant warmth of the Abyss that let their coral mountains flourish.

"Just stay close to the pod," his father told him, delicately fixing the mother-of-pearl necklace he'd allowed Shang Qinghua to wear for the event, making sure the shining exterior was facing outwards after Qinghua's fiddling turned half of them around. "Don't be rude, but don't let your guard down. I know we promised you fun but… Well. This will be good practice for you in the future."

It wasn't until they were all gathered in the meeting hall that Shang Qinghua actually saw them for the first time. Shen Yuan would have absolutely dropped strings over the sight of the red-black looming forms of the abyssal mers alone, much less the lythe, dangerous, glowing Ultima pod!

There were seven of them, all eerily still in the water. They didn't flash or fan their tails like any of the mers Shang Qinghua had seen before, only shifting to maintain their buoyancy before falling into floating silence again. They wore their hair long, and didn't even have ornaments in their hair, much less necklaces or bracelets.

There was a flicker of movement, and Shang Qinghua's fascinated attention dipped lower, behind one of the cold water mer's curved, ash-dark tails, glimmering with faint white-blue light.

Dark eyes peered out at him, fixed and attentive. Shang Qinghua ducked back behind his father's fanned fins, then slowly peeked out in return. Jun Wu was swimming to his place on the dais, which meant it was time for speeches and fealty-swearing ceremonies and stuff, but it all sort of seemed to fade away at the sight of another kid here after all.

Carefully, Shang Qinghua lifted a hand and waved. The Ultima fry remained achingly, creepily still for a long moment, then lifted his hand and gave it a brief jolt to the left before curling back behind his adult.

The thrill of recognition made Shang Qinghua's fins flare, and a giggle bubble inside him, though his mother shushed him seriously, pressing a hand to the top of his head to keep him from floating higher and disrupting the careful hierarchy of Cang Qiong's pod presentation. The other little ones back home never paid him any attention—he wasn't good enough at the pod games and personal politics, even though he took notes and practiced all the time.

"Dad," he whispered, tugging on his father's lacy dorsal. "Dad, there's another small fry here!"

"That's great, Qinghua," his father whispered back. "You'll have plenty of time to meet him after the official introductions are over."

"But," Shang Qinghua muttered, only for his mother to cut a sharp look his way. He sank a little, then peered back out past his father's fin, watching the so-still stranger watch him back.

The introductions took forever. There weren't any tide dials around—and they worked differently this deep in the ocean anyhow—but by the time the talking was done it was already time for the banquet and Shang Qinghua had to pick at fancy seaweed wrapped roe and specially harvested freshwater crabs or whatever while he could see the other boy across the room, chewing through a flank of meat while his eyes sought Qinghua's out over and over.

"Is that," he heard his father mutter, but his mother answered: "Shh." before he could finish his sentence.

"I'm full," Shang Qinghua announced, turning bright, hopeful eyes up towards his parents.

"Best behavior," his mother replied.

If Qinghua was off like a bluefin, it was nothing compared to how fast the other boy moved. He darted like lightning around the table behind his guardians and around to the side to meet him.

"You're fast!" Shang Qinghua gasped, thrilled, his fins flaring in delight. They were still coming in but they were far longer than the other kid's. He wiggled up in the water, letting them drift a little, posturing as he'd been told they should.

"Have to be," the boy replied, sinking back into that eerie stillness from before, wide eyes fixed on Shang Qinghua. "Why are you shiny?"

"You think I'm shiny?" Oh, he'd never heard that before. He was always up against his agemates like Qi Qingqi or the Shen twins—if any small fry in their pod were shiny, it was them.

"Mn," he edged closer, a hand reaching out to tap a long, sharp claw against one of the pearls Shang Qinghua wore.

"You don't have any jewelry?" Qinhua asked. "This one's dad's, so I can't share it, but you can wear my hair pin if you like!"

"Yes," the boy answered stiffly, still glaring as much as he was staring. Shang Qinghua pulled on his hair while he unhooked the hairpiece, but even though that was usually one of his least-favorite sensations he didn't mind it so much.

 "Why are your teeth small?" the boy asked while Shang Qinghua swam around to start gathering his hair.

"My teeth are normal."

"Are not."

"Well, my fins are bigger than yours."

"Mn."

It was a little scary, when the boy reached towards his tail fin with his sharp claws, but he was careful, prodding at the delicate lace with the backs of his knuckles rather than risking tearing them.

"Pretty," he muttered, almost to himself, and Shang Qinghua preened again, all his fins expanding on instinct.

"What's your name?" Shang Qinghua asked as he slid the pin through the ornament in the other boy's hair.

"I will earn one," the boy answered, snapping his sharp teeth. "For now I am called Youth."

"Whoa! I'm Shang Qinghua, I don't know if I earned that or not…"

"Shang Qinghua."

"You can call me Qinghua! Since we're friends!"

"Yes," the boy answered, reaching up to touch the ornament in his hair. It made him look pretty in a sharp way, and Shang Qinghua made a pleased trill in the back of his throat—a vocalization the other boy didn't seem to understand, from the way he pulled back at the sound of it.

"It's nice," Shang Qinghua said. "You're pretty."

"You sound weird," the boy told him, even as he snuck a hand up to touch the decoration once more, delicate claws tracing the carved bone.

"You don't trill? How can you tell if someone's happy, then?"

The coldwater mer studied him for a moment, then flattened his ear fins, bared his sharp teeth, narrowed his eyes, and let out a low, rasping hiss.

Shang Qinghua shuddered, his whole body breaking out in a chill.

"That means you're happy?" he asked in alarm.

"It means safe," the boy answered. "That's better than happy."

"You're weird," Shang Qinghua told him, swimming in closer again. "I'm glad you're here."

"You too," the boy answered, leaning in closer as well.

The music was starting—low singing to call the mers out to the dance floor and away from the banquet tables.

"Come on," Shang Qinghua said, reaching out to catch one of the boy's clawed hands in his, towing him towards the dance floor.

The boy followed without ever glancing back to his parents, watching stone-faced and still from the sidelines.

Later, Shang Qinghua would remember the long night of dancing. He would remember how the strange boy never laughed, but how happy he'd seemed. He would remember exploring the outskirts of the gathering, poking into the planters and scavenging for fallen earrings.

He'd remember the way they grabbed each other too tight, and the boy's claws caught on his soft skin. How the boy had licked the wound, as his mother did for his injuries, then made soft hissing sounds, as if telling Shang Qinghua "you're safe, you're safe, you're safe."

He didn't remember falling asleep, he only knows that his parents told him they were all curled together, tails entwined, like otters trying not to drift apart. The deep sea mers and his parents had to untwine them to carry them home. When Qinghua woke up, it was with a long, sharp tooth held tightly in his scabbed-over hand.

He kept the tooth, and he waited for the next year's conference, and he hoped—but the Ultima pod didn't attend the next year, or the year after that, or the year after that.

Eventually, Shang Qinghua learned to stop waiting.

Chapter Text

It doesn't come easily to Shang Qinghua, connecting with his podmates. He can shadow their social cues and research what his instincts should be—he can give gifts, and think ahead to plan what would give them a good opinion, but it doesn't feel natural the way he's been told it should. It's hard to tell exactly how much of his calculated approach to social cues has been noticed by his peers, and how much his perceived awkwardness among them is actual awkwardness.

He isn't ostracized, exactly. He's made himself too useful for that. He's the best of them at writing, his fingers quick through the knots even if they look sloppy at the end, and already some of the other mers his age are bribing him to write notes for them to their friends. He's quick with numbers too, and his mother even lets him help with the pod's accounting sometimes, though only if one uses the word 'help' very loosely—she still treats him like he's going to blow bubbles at her until she coos and feeds him by hand.

Only Shen Jiu is better than him in knot writing and figures, and his abject refusal to be personable has ensured that Shang Qinghua has ended up fairly high in the hierarchy of his agemates, despite his lack of ease with social graces.

One would think that not understanding social cues might be the same as not caring about them, but he certainly hasn't found that to be the case. Which is how he found himself in this position, again .

The thing is, as unpopular as Shen Jiu is, Shen Yuan is undoubtedly the most popular of the other young mers in Cang Qiong. Getting on his good side gets you into the good graces of Yue Qingyuan, Liu Qingge—even Qi Qingqi seems to like Shen Yuan, and she doesn't like anyone.

So getting Shen Yuan good gifts is paramount to Shang Qinghua's continued standing on the upper ranks of Cang Qiong pod, and if he wants to end up a leader like his parents he needs to keep working on his standing. He doesn't have the looks to coast without exquisite social graces.

It really wouldn't be a problem, if only Shen Yuan would just like normal things like a normal mer! But no, what he really wants is—

"Hah!" Shang Qinghua cheers himself, fins flaring before he darts towards his prize. This close to the abyssal openings the water temperature is near-swealtering, as if the sea were still making up its mind whether to boil or not. But it's also where he can find things like this .

The eel's skull has been picked clean by some resident of the abyss, but it's still remarkably intact. Ever since Shen Yuan had seen the tooth Shang Qinghua kept as a little keepsake and exclaimed over it for half an hour, Shang Qinghua had gotten ahold of his uncomfortable, unusual interests. The stranger and more dangerous the artifact, the more delightful he would be at it.

And the less danger he put himself in in order to access it, the happier his podmates would be with Shang Qinghua. Apparently Shen Yuan had already gotten busted getting too close to the abyss half a dozen times or more.

Funny, how no one ever complains about Shang Qinghua doing the same thing to bring him gifts…

He secrets the skull into his woven seaweed pouch, pleased with himself but extraordinarily ready to head back towards Cang Qiong waters proper. Maybe he'll even find one of the cold-water inflows that swirl with this abyssal heat to form their tropical home. Breathing in water this hot always makes him feel like he needs to grow new gills for his gills…

The first whiff of blood hits him right as he turns his back on the cracked, steaming flats around the abyss.

There should be a clear answer ingrained in Shang Qinghua's very bones. The Cang Qiong pod are not warriors by nature (though Shen Jiu's whole existence throws that into question), and most mers he knows have a pretty exact 'I gotta get out of here' response to even the faintest whiff of violence.

But, well… Shang Qinghua's instincts are 'a little scrambled,’ as his mom once gently put it. So when he smells blood, he wonders: "who's bleeding?"

This close to the abyss, the answer could be anything from a whalefall being feasted upon by a cadre of sharks to a bloody battle for supremacy among the Abyssal Mers, taken out of their main territory to avoid being stopped before they take it to the death.

If it was that second one, he might be able to snag an exciting scale or two for Shen Yuan too, and then he'd be able to skip coming out here for his next celebration day, and hey , if he saw something he'd never seen before, that wouldn't be too bad, would it? Especially if it was a pair of those hot, creepy Abyssal Mers, clawing each other's muscular chests up like in that story he'd been working on that Shen Yuan had dared to call 'unrealistic'...

There's no one, though, even though the scent of blood is heavier in the water here. Sharks are probably coming, which means he should really go, but he still hasn't found where the smell is coming from. He tilts his head, then has to bat his hair aside when it drifts into his face with the motion. He breathes in the boiling water deep through his open mouth, leaving his gills open to taste it fully, then turns towards one of the deep gouges in the earth. Is… Is the abyss itself bleeding, heaving mer blood up from the molten cracks in the ground? Did it close on its denizens, crushing them, leaving their blood to trail up to the surface?

The thought gives him chills in spite of the heat. Oh, he should write that down. He's going to need more rope to start a new story with… And maybe some of those lessons on shorthand knots his mother's been offering him so he can start notetaking at council meetings.

He only realizes he's been swimming closer when a trail of red flows up from the crevice right before him, and is followed by a strange hissing sound. Magma? Is this an open vent?! If it is, he needs to go , this sort of shit is how islands form and mers die .

He thinks so even as he leans in, his tail going still so he can just crawl his way forward on his hands, floating just above the hot, sandy seafloor. He peers down into the crevice, and blinks the spots from his eyes at the ensuing dark.

Except the spots in his eyes are weirdly stubborn, for how dim it is outside? And they move a little, swimming in a twisting motion, as if jamming deeper into the crevice, and—

And they have teeth, those lights. Teeth that bare and snap at him, followed by a fierce-sounding hollow-voiced hiss .

Shang Qinghua claws his fingers in the side of the crack in the ground, leans over the edge, and hisses back .

It's a dumb thing to do, almost instinctual, except that he doesn't really have instincts except for the ones he taught himself. The problem is, he did teach himself this one, for years on end, preparing for a second-meeting that would never come, hissing to himself in his bedroom while polishing the tooth a nameless boy gave him.

The teeth in the crevice vanish behind a mouth, below dark, wide eyes, and the confusing vision below him resolves itself into a face—a body—a tail. A mer. Not Abyssal or Cang Qiong, but it's hard for Qinghua to focus on exactly what he's looking at, because oh . Oh. That's where the blood is coming from. The mer has been clawed up—not just superficial pod-battle scratches, but deep gashes at the edge of his gills, like someone had tried to tear them open.

"Holy shit," Shang Qinghua breathes. "Are you okay?"

The mer hisses at him once more, and Shang Qinghua hisses back again, pinning his fanned ears and watching the mer below him pin his too and shrink into himself. Where he presses into the craggy wall of the heated crack, his skin goes pink, and a distinctly not-mer hissing sound lifts from it.

"Hey, settle!" he scolds the ridiculous stranger, then struggles for a better hiss, baring his teeth and hissing again and again as the hiding mer slowly unwinds, drifting off the burning stone, and blinks huge, dark eyes at him.

"Settle," Shang Qinghua repeats as the stranger gives another tiny hiss, this time only barely baring his teeth at all before his dark eyes drift closed.

He floats there a moment, eerily still, while Qinghua's heart thunders in his chest and he pants past the minimal effort of hissing.

Experimentally he reaches down again and delicately pokes the mer in his forehead, expecting at any moment for those flashing teeth to slam shut over his poor first finger. He yanks his hand back, but there was no need for concern. The mer drifts, still and silent, his only motion the slow flex of his gills, gasping for breath, and the wave of dark hair rippling up around his face.

Even he isn't sure if it's curiosity or hope that makes him prod the mer's lip back to show the row of sharp teeth in his mouth. There are none missing—no gaps where a child passed a tooth to his friend as though it were a normal treasure to share.

Of course not, though. He might not have earned his name yet, but that Ultima mer had been high-ranking for sure. There had only been four representatives from their pod—they wouldn't have brought some random youth along.

The mer in front of him wears no jewelry—no decoration. Whatever part of the cold waters he's from, he wouldn't have come this far towards the vents if he was looking for backup from his own people.

Shang Qinghua puts all this together as he tugs the stranger up out of the crack on the ground, teasing his surprisingly long tail out while trying to avoid giving him any more scale damage than he'd already given himself shoving up against the overheated rock.

Maybe it would have been the normal move to swim back to the pod and ask someone with more experience what, exactly, he was supposed to do here. There were precedents to be upheld, probably, but that precedent probably had something to do with returning fugitives to foreign pods. There was probably a reason this stranger had struck out for the burning hot empty expanse of the Abyss rather than keeping to the more temperate waters bordering Cang Qiong.

Or maybe the stranger was just an idiot and Shang Qinghua was giving him too much credit. Always a possibility!

If so, lucky for him he'd been found by Shang Qinghua. He was used to doing the thinking for everyone around him.

His parents were away again, travelling far with the other representatives of their coral peaks to secure new trade deals, which meant Shang Qinghua had all the space he could need to hide a fellow teenager. He'd planned to use the privacy to throw a party for his age mates—he had a stockpile of the sort of fermented sea fruit that the grown mers liked to share after the really boring meetings, and he knew without a doubt that sharing it would increase his social standing by a long shot, especially if he managed to avoid imbibing any himself, to ensure he kept a level head.

He was halfway home with the unconscious mer in his arms before he thought to wonder why he was putting himself out like this for a stranger with nothing to offer. No social standing, certainly, given his situation, but not even any jewelry on him, it looked like! He looked strong, though—and cold water mers tended to be fierce allies. Maybe Shang Qinghua could content himself with being owed a favor in the future. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a surprise ally in his pocket for the future.

Yeah, Shang Qinghua thinks with a smug smile tilting his lips. He's making a good choice here.

"I'm a fucking idiot," Shang Qinghua mutters to himself a day and a half later.

"Keep fanning," growls the stranger currently huddled in his bed, eyes wild and his claws buried in Shang Qinghua's nice powder-sand bed.

It turns out that it's one thing to fantasize about having a vicious killer owe you a favor, and another to actually be in a room with a vicious killer? Ugh, unconscious mers were way easier to deal with than ones who were aware enough to make dumb decisions…

"Right, yes, sure!" Shang Qinghua chirps, giving a little 'Take it easy, buster' trill at the end. The wide, woven kelp fan he's been using to tamp down on the warm water of his home for his guest is starting to feel really heavy, but hey! He's not the one with sharp claws and horrifying teeth here!

"Stop that," the stranger hisses, pinning his fins and baring his teeth again.

"Stop what?" Shang Qinghua complains in a huff. "You told me to keep fanning you!"

"Yes!" the mer barks, then gives a grunting, chuffing sound that Shang Qinghua can't begin to decipher. "That—those noises."

"Fine!" Qinghua snaps his dull teeth at the stranger instead of trilling at him appeasingly like he does when Shen Jiu's feeling snappish.

Weirdly, that makes the stranger settle, uncurling his tail into a less tense position and letting his fins flare. The paste Shang Qinghua had applied to the tears on his gills is starting to flake, but he just stopped chomping at Shang Qinghua—he's not eager to get into another awkward conversation with him.

"Would you at least tell me your name?" Shang Qinghua asks. "Or, like, if you need to send a letter somewhere I could knot it for you? I have my own messenger eel, so you could send it to anyone."

"Stop talking."

The stranger's eyes are dark. He'd been coldly beautiful while asleep, but awake it's at a whole new level. There's a sort of wild frost to him that reminds Qinghua of the stories his father told of back when he was a young man, the first and only time someone from Cang Qiong had ventured into the far South and seen the walls of ice jutting up out of the ocean.

His father had said it was so cold his gills nearly froze—the sort of cold that steals your breath, and the sort of beauty that tempts you to let it happen.

At least for him it was just his gills. Shang Qinghua's arms are going to fall off if he doesn't get to stop fanning his surprise house guest soon!

"...You're sure you're not hungry?" suggests Shang Qinghua. "I'm pretty sure I have some roe around here, even if you don't eat vegetation—"

The mer bares his teeth around a bubbling growl, and Shang Qinghua cries in his heart, even as he swiftly backtracks with an awkward laugh. Arms falling off it is, then!

Ugh. To think he was actually worried about this jerk for a minute. He must not be too badly hurt if he can be this bad a patient.

He knows that isn't true, in his heart. He'd been the one to spread medicine over the clawmarks on the other's ribs and throat. Whoever had attacked him—and it had been a who , no orca or seal left lines like these—they had meant for him to bleed and drown, gills split and flaring, devoured in his death like a whale fall would be. The nurses Shang Qinghua knows from his parent's work with Qian Cao peak would be churring comfort to themselves and their patient, but when Shang Qinghua had given that a try the stranger had covered his ears and scowled at him even more fiercely.

Instead, he says: "Is anyone coming after you?"

"I clawed his face open," snarls—ugh, Shang Qinghua would really love to have a name for this guy. He's just going to call him 'Ice Boy' until something better occurs to him.

It's not an answer, but at the same time it is. Shang Qinghua had meant 'to help.' Ice Boy clearly wasn't expecting a rescue.

"We could use more warriors," he notes to the stranger. "If you need a new place to be."

"Do not dare condescend to me!" Ice Boy flares his fins and his wounded gills, then jolts back in on himself at the spike of pain. Once, Shang Qinghua saw eels diving into toxic water in search of prey. They'd spasmed like that, poisoning themselves for the sake of a meal.

Shen Yuan had been absolutely fascinated, and Shang Qinghua had successfully kept him from going in the toxic water, so the excursion had won him points from the grumpy half of the Shen twins too.

"Begging your pardon, my lord!" Shang Qinghua drawls, rocking his head side to side as he tries to stretch out the tightness in his shoulders while still fanning. If the sarcasm registers, Ice Boy doesn't deign to react to it, just floating there eerily above Shang Qinghua's bed, glowing in the dark like the night pearls he used to keep in his room when he was a child.

It's a little nice. As the sun sets overhead the darkness in his home can be oppressive, but like this…

"What pod is this?" Ice Boy demands a short while later. He looks like he's struggling to keep his eyes open, their dark expanse shielded behind full lashes in his cold, sharp face.

"You're in Cang Qiong," Shang Qinghua tells him. "You're lucky I was out by the abyss, or you'd be roasted eel by now. What were you trying to do, swim into the volcano?"

"I was seeking allies," Ice Boy hisses, even as he gives a long, slow blink, his head drooping forward in the home-made current Shang Qinghua is putting on for him.

"Well," Shang Qinghua huffs, "you found me."

"Mn." Ice Boy makes a face like he swallowed something—which he probably should , he'll need food to heal up from his wounds, but hey! Shang Qinghua isn't his mom! Then, slowly, the deep sea mer settles, his eyes falling closed and his tightly coiled body loosening again.

For a few long heartbeats more Shang Qinghua keeps up his fanning, very eager to avoid being snapped at or scratched, but he starts slowing down…bit…by…bit…

…Yeah, Ice Boy is out. He drops the coral fan and throws himself down onto the soft sand of his floor, wriggling against it with a stifled groan to cool himself off after that ridiculous stunt. Ugh , he should go fetch one of the grownups now. His scales are finally more golden than grey, but he's still comfortably stationed in the upper echelon of teenagers in their pod, not yet holding any real responsibility other than the social chores he gives himself to maintain and increase his standing.

On the other hand, though, he realizes with dawning horror, he's already brought a strange mer back home to his parents house. To loop an adult in now… Their judgement of his judgement would inevitably suffer, and if that led to him falling back in his standing among the adults … he just finally got his parents to stop treating him like a fry, he can't let the others see him lose credibility! It would absolutely wreck his 'the only reason I don't fit in with all of you is because I'm working hard on becoming a leader in this community' plan!

No. No, he's got to keep Ice Boy a secret for his own sake too—he's in too deep now.

…Maybe he could 'accidentally' break the coral fan before the jerk wakes up again.

He doesn't break the coral fan, but he does abandon it in spite of Ice Boy's grumping. It's been almost a full day, which means Shen Yuan's party is soon and he is out of time for coddling idiots. If he wants to keep up his standing in the pod he needs to be there with bells on, and he has worked too hard to let his position slip now.

Sometimes, it feels like he's swimming as hard as he can, but the current is keeping him in exactly the same place…

"What are you doing." Ice Boy says, and it should sound like a question because it should be a question, but he says it like an accusation and Shang Qinghua bristles in response.

"I am getting fancy," he spits in reply, neatly folding a braid into his hair so it won't get caught in his nicely spiked earfins. "Because some of us have things to do other than lay in bed."

"This is a bed?" sneers Ice Boy, pulling up a clawful of Shang Qinghua's perfectly curated powder-soft sand.

"Don't toss it around," Shang Qinghua groans. "You'll infect your stupid gills!"

"I am not so weak," Ice Boy throws the handful of soft sand at him.

Shang Qinghua quickly flares his fins to back up, and gasps as the sharp motion tangles the pearl necklace his father had gifted him on his last birthday, straining it dangerously against the display branch where it rests. He frees it with a flick of the wrist then clutches his treasure close in response to the brief threat to its welfare. It was the same necklace he'd worn all those years ago, when… But of course that hardly mattered. That wasn't why dad had given it to him. It was just the first piece of jewelry he'd loved, and for a mer so out of touch with society, any interest he showed in finery or socialization, his parents seemed eager to jump on.

Surprisingly, instead of snarling more or snapping at him again, Ice Boy goes still too. He's looking at the necklace, dark eyes fixed, and Shang Qinghua scowls at him, shoving it over his head before Ice Boy can even think about taking it.

"Impractical," his wounded house guest spits. "It will hardly make fanning easier."

"It's pretty ," Shang Qinghua huffs, turning his back on Ice Boy rather than acknowledging that he really is going to spend a lot of his day in here wafting water around. "Everything's better when you're pretty."

"That's ridiculous."

"You're ridiculous!" Throwing his hands in the air, Shang Qinghua turns on him before picking out what other accessories to wear, pointing at him sharply. "I know your pods are nomadic, but don't your parents teach you manners down South?!"

Ice Boy's mouth opens in the shape of a snarl, but he doesn't speak. Just bares his teeth, and pins his fins back, and floats there, still and silent. So silent that Shang Qinghua slowly retracts his pointing hand, awkward and embarrassed at the quiet that's followed his yelling rather than satisfied by it as he should be.

He's smart enough to know when he's swimming in dark water.

"...I'm sorry," he says. "I shouldn't have said that."

"They're dead," Ice Boy says, his face completely void of expression, and his dark eyes unfocused.

Shang Qinghua nods. He hesitates, rubbing his thumb over the string of pearls he wears. Then he takes them off and offers them out. Ice Boy traces the motion with his gaze without seeming to understand it, and Qinghua shakes the string of pearls at him.

"Take this," he says. "Take this and hold onto it."

"Why?" mutters Ice Boy, even as he delicately wraps his claws into the thread of pearls.

"Because it's nice, and not everything is," Shang Qinghua grumbles, moving his items around to pull out his other favored necklace.

Rainbow coral beads strung on a cord circle around a long-ago gifted tooth. Maybe it's gauche or threatening to wear a cold-water mer's tooth in front of another cold-water mer, but it's decorated enough at this point to barely look different from shark's tooth jewelry.

"You make no sense," mutters Ice Boy, curling around the pearl necklace anyway.

"Yeah, well, it's mutual," Shang Qinghua huffs, tossing his hair and checking his reflection in the polished volcanic glass at his bedside. In its dark reflection, Ice Boy looks nearly invisible—just the points of glowing blue along his side and tail, and the distant pale gleam of his skin.

"I have to run some errands today," he says into the silence, pretending he's not paying intense attention to Ice Boy's fingers rubbing at the pearls on his necklace, touching all the same divots and curls that he does when he needs to fidget and wants it to look like he's preening. "I'll try to bring you some tuna jerky or something."

"I don't need it," Ice Boy growls. 

"Need is just the beginning," quotes Shang Qinghua. It's written in Cang Qiong's founding documents, after all.

When he swims out of his house and towards Shen Yuan's birthday party (Shen Jiu was born from the same mermaid's purse, but if you tried to throw him a party he'd bite you), it should feel like escaping.

No reasonable explanation comes to him for why he hesitates in the doorway, fins flared as though he had some great treasure to guard behind him. It's an instinct he's never felt before—he doesn't tend to get instincts, aside from 'gosh I'm hungry' and 'if I don't go to sleep I'm going to bite someone.' But there, in the doorway to his parent's house, with nothing behind him that's his except a pearl necklace he's given on impulse to a stranger, his elegant fins flare in an aggression display, and he bares his dull teeth and claws to no one.

Ugh. He's been right all this time, instincts are ridiculous. What a dumb impulse. He shakes it off, and hurries up towards Qing Jing and the gathering of friends he's about to stunt on by presenting what's sure to be the oddball mer's favorite gift of the afternoon.

(Gods of the salt and sea help him when Liu Qingge figures out that a good hunt will thrill Shen Yuan more than a new fan, he's never going to be able to compete with a freak like that! He's just got to get in now while the getting's good.)

By the time he gets back home, the sun has long since set and left the coral bathed in pale moonlight and the distant glow of bioluminescence. He bundled up a whole extra plate of everything from the party for Ice Boy to pick at, since he refuses to eat any of Shang Qinghua's food. Picky eater…

He's undeniably eager to show off his prize. "See?" he'll say. "THIS is why you get fancy, because connections are everything. " He'll watch Ice Boy eat the interesting collection of meats and greens and fruits he's brought, and—whoa. That's a weird reaction to that thought, he notes as he gives a little trilling sound that he hadn't even tried to reach for.

No trill answers him, but that's hardly a surprise. Ice Boy is bigger on hissing than chirping or chirring. It's not until he swims into his empty bedroom that he understands the utter silence that had answered him.

His pearl necklace is on his soft bed of sand, and Ice Boy is nowhere to be seen.

Shen Yuan wears the eel skull Shang Qinghua had given him at his hip. He'd customized it with Wei Qingwei's help into the mouth of his pouch, with pearls for its eyes—it even opens and closes on the hinge of its jaw. His acceptance and pride at the gift had without a doubt been what cemented Shang Qinghua's place among his peers, in spite of his odd nature.

"You look ridiculous," Shen Jiu often told his brother, but he never criticized Shang Qinghua for the gift. And if Shen Jiu chose not to criticise something, it was worth more than any of Yue Qi's glowing praise.

"Qi-ge's been ridiculous ever since," Shen Yuan is telling him now, swimming ahead of him with his back to the direction he's going. "I don't think he'll sleep until he gives Jiu-di a gift he likes as much."

"To be clear, not a courting gift from me." Shang Qinghua tells him with a snicker.

"Huh?" Shen Yuan tilts his head. "Of course not? We're boys."

Wow , Shang Qinghua thinks, gazing out at the ocean behind his friend. Guess I'm not the only one struggling with social cues.

He's in the middle of mentally clasping his hands in honor of Liu Qingge's fruitless efforts when he sees it. The dark streak of motion through the water between them and his home. He jolts forward, catching Shen Yuan's wrist—or at least catching the polished-coral bracelet he's currently wearing.

He catches the smell of blood on the water just as Shen Yuan turns to look, blinking away surprise at being suddenly towed behind Shang Qinghua. The excited expression on his face must be reflex at this point—people are always dragging him away from dangerous things he thinks are exciting.

The carcass in front of Shang Qinghua's home isn't dangerous, probably, on account of it definitely being dead. The head being separate from the body makes that pretty clear. Shang Qinghua is still processing what he's seeing when Shen Yuan lets loose an absolute squeal of a trill, delight brimming off him so fiercely it makes his fins shake.

"That's a Greater Moon Sea Serpent!" he cries. "Qinghua! That's a Greater Moon Sea Serpent!"

"Was one," Shang Qinghua agrees numbly, staring down at the body in the water before his gaze traces west, towards the break in the cliffs that marks the only other approach to his home. Dark eyes meet his.

What the fuck? Shang Qinghua would like to ask Ice Boy. Followed, perhaps, by Is this a threat? and maybe What am I supposed to do with this? Because that was the main problem. His parents were not out of town anymore, he was going to have to come up with a good excuse for the slaughtered sea beast on their doorstep ASAP.

But deep down, further down than his thoughts usually live—housed in the cage of his ribs rather than the racing excess of his mind—he wants to ask: Why did you come back after rejecting me?

Pearls from his father, given in honor and memory of Ice Boy's lost family, then rejected and left behind while their new owner vanished into the salt and brine. Qinghua can't bring himself to even wear the pearls anymore, and that's a shame, because his parents think it means he likes the bright colors of his other necklace better, and now everything he owns is a rainbow.

(The problem with faking instinctual responses is he's only ever practiced the polite ones, which means he has no idea how to tell his mom that he doesn't particularly need to be swimming around looking like a parrot fish.)

"LOOK at that thing!" Shen Yuan is yelling, swimming so hard against Shang Qinghua's hold that he's towing him through the water. "We have got to call Qingge over to see it—do you think he killed it for you? You did tie him that nice harness for his stone knife and help him with the letter home—"

"He absolutely didn't kill it for me," Shang Qinghua says. "Oh, man, it does not smell good."

"Must have been dead for a while," Shen Yuan agrees. "They don't live close by. If they did we'd have to worry about small fries getting eaten constantly , they're really stealthy and they love eating mers if they can. Look at those teeth! Wow!"

"Gosh there was really no need for anyone to fight one!" Shang Qinghua yells, casting a glare at the gap in the cliff where Ice Boy is still watching. "That sounds super dangerous and pointless!"

A distant hiss answers him, but it could be mistaken for one of the abyssal vents letting loose a little steam.

"Oh, I don't know," Shen Yuan chatters, "their teeth are big enough to make good knives, and the scales are pretty good looking! All shiny and black and white—"

"Yes yes, you want to kiss monsters, we know," Shang Qinghua sighs, finally releasing Shen Yuan to start poking at the rotting corpse. "Just help me get it off my doorstep before my parents start worrying more about what I do with my free time."

"You should let them find this," Shen Yuan notes, turning a mean grin on him. "It's better than your novels."

Sometimes, Shen Yuan shows that he really is Shen Jiu's brother. Shang Qinghua spits a jet of water at his face in retaliation, and Shen Yuan cackles at him. It would sting more if the jerk wasn't the only person actually excited to read Shang Qinghua's works in progress, even if he did return them with knots of red thread commenting endless edits and complaints attached.

By the time he looks for Ice Boy again, the cold water mer has vanished again.

"Oh dear," sighs Guo Haiwan, watching his son and Shen Yuan start bundling up the courting gift that cold-water mer had worked so hard to deliver to him. "I suppose this doesn't come naturally to him either."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Shang Dachao chirrs, her fins plowing little trenches in the soft sand where they'd bedded down to watch when they'd seen the stranger sneaking in to make his delivery to their pride and joy (and worry, and stress, and concern).

She'd been the one to find the fleck of blood on the pearl necklace—sharp and strangely scented as their whole home had been when they returned from the West to a far-too-innocent son, who had all the coral holes open and had been fanning the water through to try to shake the blood scent.

The pearl necklace that Shang Qinghua never wore anymore, as if it wasn't his at all.

Chapter Text

Shang Qinghua's teenage years pass in lurching uncertainty from one day to the next. From his reading, that's more or less how teenage years are supposed to go, but he can't say he enjoys it. He's pretty sure he handled it if not gracefully, at least efficiently. He'd taken on more responsibilities step by step until he was basically working admin in the head offices of Cang Qiong, eyes on all the trade deals of the pod, and his clever fingers knotting answers to missives unsupervised, though he's certain someone was reading back over his work.

As his age of majority approaches, his parents have permitted him more and more freedom from their hovering, and not a moment too soon. His dad's started giving him courting guides, for goodness sake! Shang Qinghua tends to unravel them and use the threads to work on his novels instead. It keeps his prices down.

His own place to live also means he had a little more leeway to deal with his most persistent problem.

"You have got to give its pelt to A-Jiu," Shen Yuan says, poking at the soon-to-rot leopard seal that had been dumped eviscerated by the opening of Shang Qinghua's new home. "Qi-ge gave him some hideous fur the other day and he's been mad about it for weeks, but he would love this!"

Shen Yuan has not figured out yet why, exactly, Yue Qi might want to be the one to gift Shen Jiu fine things. The older Shang Qinghua gets, the more he recognizes that his awareness of his blind spots has put him significantly ahead of his other agemates, who have never considered that they might not know everything.

"How about you give it to him?" he suggests to the guy who probably counts as his friend at this point, even if only on a technicality. "Just as soon as you skin it."

"Ugh," his prissy green fins flare in disgust, their elegant curls wafting up to cover his disgusted expression.

Shang Qinghua flares back, just because he can. After all, if Shen Yuan is so obsessed with everyone's gender he might as well play into the 'we're both boys' thing and get a little agro now and then! He is feeling pretty pissed off, even if not at Shen Yuan.

He knows who he's going to find in his nice soft sand when he gets inside.

"Settle down, sunbeam," clucks Shen Yuan, patting his own fins back into elegance and straightening out the fall of his hair, casting it all to one side to float out of his way while he assesses the kill.

"You want the spoils, you deal with the mess," Shang Qinghua pokes at his bicep, where he wears a chain of silver-bright fangs. "Besides, I handled the last one, even though you got its teeth!"

"Yeah yeah," mutters Shen Yuan, swimming closer to prod at the dead beast. "I'll drag it off somewhere then. But you know we can't keep covering this up forever, right? Your power mongering has been paying off. You're getting important. And you know Jiu-di's already suspicious about where we keep finding such cool stuff."

"I thought you 'Had your didi under control'. Wasn't that what you told me last time?"

"Yeah, well, he's slippery," Shen Yuan mutters, unwinding some cord from his eel-mouthed pouch. It's the same red color he uses for editing Shang Qinghua's stories, so it's no wonder he has a lot of it on hand—before they found the seal carcass they'd been planning to get some 'work' done.

"Fine," sighs Shen Yuan. "I'll save you one of its teeth."

"I'm good," Shang Qinghua insists, already swimming past his friend, trussing up their most recent problem. The last thing he needs is to fuel the rumors about the two of them and the number of matching trinkets they have.

It's a ridiculous problem, and it's all the fault of—

"Are you kidding me?" Shang Qinghua demands, gesturing broadly at his bedroom. "A leopard seal? Are you trying to get killed?!"

"They are very nutritious," Ice Boy notes, floating a few inches above the nice soft sand of Shang Qinghua's bed without even looking at him. He's playing with the pearl necklace again. He always does that, and Qinghua hates it. He never takes it with him when he fucks off for another month, but each time he's in Cang Qiong, there he is on Shang Qinghua's bed, playing with his father's necklace like it belongs to him, and every time it makes something in Qinghua feel…

Well, anyhow, it's annoying!

"Did you get hurt?" Shang Qinghua demands. "If you came back injured again and expect me to—"

"I am unharmed. Qinghua may inspect."

Shang Qinghua huffs, then snaps his teeth and hisses—it's the only thing he knows how to say to Ice Boy that he's certain they're both understanding! In reply, Ice Boy settles, hissing contentedly in reply with his earfins pointed back.

He's grown, though not as much as Shang Qinghua has. Where Qinghua's scales came in bright as a sunrise seen through shallow waves, and he grew large and sturdy, his fanning fins untorn and glorious, Ice Boy is all sharp angles and cold beauty. His dark eyes are still large in his haunting face, and the points of glowing blue that distinguish him from shadow have brightened and grown. Sometimes little fish duck in through Qinghua's open windows to peck at the shine of him. Half the time they end up in his stomach.

Grumbling to himself, Qinghua does swim over to inspect him. He pokes and prods at Ice Boy's creepy floating routine until he has to shift his whip-strong tail to keep from bonking against the low ceiling.

Admittedly, Ice Boy managed not to get stabbed or bleed everywhere this time, so that's… Something. Progress? He's still dumping corpses outside his door, but at least it's really his door and not his mom and dad's door anymore. For a while there he was pretty sure they thought Liu Qingge was after him!

"Showing up randomly after months," Shang Qinghua mutters, snatching up the shells he keeps by his bedside and starting work on Ice Boy's long, dark hair. It's always in disarray, floating around him like a kelp forest, as un-adorned as the rest of him. It itches at something in Qinghua's chest to see it unbound. He braids shells in swiftly, but doesn't bother himself making it perfect.

He knows where the shells will end up.

"Only a fool holds still forever," Ice Boy grumbles, an old argument. "How long will you refuse to come?"

"Stop calling me stupid," scolds Qinghua, tugging on the braid he's working on. "I'm not leaving Cang Qiong, and I'm certainly not leaving Cang Qiong to swim around in frozen water and fight seals!"

"I will fight the seals," Ice Boy hisses jealously, and Shang Qinghua ties off the end of his braid with a disgruntled huff.

"Sit there and sleep in my nice bed while I get some actual work done," he grumbles, swimming back to his desk. His chest feels better, with the memory of Ice Boy's new braids fresh in his hands. Stupid instincts. He only has, like, two of them, and they're both ridiculous.

"Hn," Ice Boy mutters, dark eyes fixed on Shang Qinghua as he settles in to tie a new series of notes on their trade agreement with the notoriously weird Tianlang-jun. He's only gotten weirder as his son grows, by all accounts, and has started asking for random things like 'myriad beauties' to attend his little Binghe's birthdays.

Qinghua has gotten very fast and efficient at gracefully saying 'absolutely not.'

He would rather be working on his stories, sure, but he's still not certain whether or not Ice Boy can read, and if he can, he'd much rather the cold water weirdo glean a little trade deal arguing than catch onto the sort of thing Shang Qinghua likes writing in his rare, precious free time.

They don't talk. There's not much to say. For all that Ice Boy shows up at random, multiple times every year, Shang Qinghua never really knows why. Maybe without his parents Ice Boy is really alone—nomadic like the Ultima, but without even podmates to return to. Maybe he's got a home out there, and just likes hunting far from it and bothering Shang Qinghua. Maybe he's planning to kill him one day, and gift his pretty pelt to some other mer in the wide waters.

He's never asked. He'll work up the nerve, and then turn around and see Mobei Jun's fingers tracing the shape of the pearl necklace, and remember his silence and stillness and injury that first night. The loss of his parents that Qinghua had trampled on thoughtlessly. 

…It's fine, he doesn't need to know more than he already does! The whole world is one big mess of people acting in weird, bewildering ways and Shang Qinghua swimming as hard as he can against the current to keep up. Bad enough keeping abreast of the other Cang Qiong mers, he doesn't need another society cluttering up his instincts.

Bad enough that he hisses at Shen Yuan sometimes these days, when he forgets himself or the editing run has been particularly brutal.

That night, he works by the glow of his night pearls until his fingers get too tired to tie anymore messages and his eyes won't focus through the lukewarm water—always colder when Ice Boy is there, as though his scales carried some of the Southern chill with him.

He beds down in the regular sand instead of the good stuff, because Ice Boy is still there, floating over his bed, pearls tangled in his fingers along with the braids and shells Shang Qinghua left there, fast asleep for all Shang Qinghua can tell.

In the morning he's gone again, like he always is. In his place are piled all the shells Shang Qinghua set in his hair and the pearl necklace. It doesn't even hurt anymore. It's just stupid, and annoying, and the tightness in Shang Qinghua's chest must be from not getting enough sleep. He likes his soft sand bed, damn it.

He knows, he knows, he knows that if he'd tried to give Ice Boy anything else, it would have been piled on the bed with all the others. He scoops these shells and the necklace up, and adds them to the Ice Boy pouch he keeps tucked away by his deskside, full of all his rejected gifts.

"Here's a puzzle for you," his father says over their accounting work the next morning.

He does this sometimes—little tests of Shang Qinghua's judgement. It used to be more fun than it is now, because they used to be outlandish. These days he just wants Shang Qinghua to do work out loud so all his coworkers can see how smart his kid is. It's so transparent even Qinghua sees the motivation.

"Alright," he says, setting down his netting. He's happy enough for a break in eloquently telling Tianlang-jun that he has no idea what 'beautiful phantom butcher' his son is talking about crossing into their borders.

"A royal lineage pod," his father says, "so not like us. Leadership passes—"

"I know what lineage is, dad, I'm almost twenty."

"Seventeen, but fine. The prince is the problem, or more specifically, has the problem. The reigning king and queen of the pod died some years ago. In the time since, pod leadership has been handled by his uncle. This uncle is driven, focused, ambitious, and clever. He has won the loyalty of most high-ranking pod members. As the prince grows older and his time to take command comes close, this uncle has been growing more erratic in his actions. Some suspect he has already tried to kill the prince once, and is likely to try again. What are your thoughts?"

"My thoughts," mutters Shang Qinghua, shaking his head. "What would anyone's be? If the prince isn't an idiot, he has to see that even if he's stronger than the uncle, it won't be enough. Royal lineages are dangerous for many reasons, one of which is that royalty isn't actually a physical trait. The people pick who's royal and who isn't without even knowing they're doing it. If they think the uncle's royal, if they think he should be king, then anyone who takes that from him is the usurper, no matter who they thought they were."

"So the prince should abdicate?"

"What? No!" Qinghua scoffs. "He'll get eaten alive. Who would trust an abdication like that?! It would clearly read as him biding his time. No, if he's going to survive the power transfer, he has to be where his uncle wants him, and that's out of the pod."

"Most mers can't survive alone," his father notes, a look like sorrow or disappointment twisting his face.

"I never said alone," scoffs Shang Qinghua. "Alone is worse than just abdication! A lone wolf mer coming back to steal the throne—that's a better play if he wants to try to be king, actually, because people would respect it. But it's stupid, and like you said, he probably wouldn't survive it. It'd make a good story, though…"

"So if he doesn't leave, and he doesn't abdicate, what does he do?"

"Well, he marries, obviously." He bats down a drifting line of his own letter, then gestures to his father. "You married mom for access to her political position—"

"And because I love her."

"Yes, that, but also politics. So, that's what he should do. If he can find a pod willing, someone his uncle wants better relationships with anyway, someone with good trade routes or that's looking to shore up their defenses, he should court an eligible mer there. All the better if it looks from the outside like a love match to cover for him agreeing to marry down, out of being a full-blooded royal and into being a leader's spouse."

"Hm," his father says, a smile on his face far too wide for the simplicity of Shang Qinghua's solution. "What a fascinating mind our Qinghua has."

"Very promising," agrees another of those watching.

"Patience and wisdom," notes a third with a nod that makes her coils of hair curl about her face in the water.

"I'm going to send this," Shang Qinghua says, lifting the letter he's been working on and swimming for the exit before their vague praise can turn into chirping and cooing over him like it used to when he was still a small fry with chubby cheeks being shown off at the workplace.

Honestly, it was simpler than most of the puzzles his dad threw at him, why was everyone acting like he'd performed some kind of magic trick?

He's not technically supposed to read the official edicts ahead. He's supposed to relax with all the other mers until someone disseminates the news. But he's allowed into the workspace whenever he wants, and Shen Yuan has been avoiding him for some reason since the leopard seal incident, and Shang Qinghua is bored.

He's not technically supposed to read them, so when he sees his own name tied in golden cords, he can't run off to demand an explanation. He has to just start again from the beginning and read it once more.

Regent Linguang-Jun,

The Cang Qiong pod also desires better trade between our peoples as we have written in the past. To cement the connection between our peoples, we agree to the finalized version of the suggested marriage between our most promising youths—for your Prince Mobei to become First and Only to our Shang Qinghua, first in line to assume leadership of our prosperous pod.

Of course such a prestigious marriage between our most promising next generation would benefit both our peoples greatly, but you will find attached the exact details of this illustrious offer.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.

Those courting books. His mother's side-eyes during the dances his agemates love so much. His father's little puzzles, putting him on display. Leadership would be enough, but—

First and Only.

He doesn't even register that he's swimming, at first. He plows through the curtains, leaving the golden letter floating slowly back to its place on the pile. He cuts through the water, cursing his luxurious fins for the first time for the way they drag at him, holding him back from the racing speed he wants— needs. He needs to be—he needs— The bag of trinkets by his bed, and, and—

He swims into his home so fast he plows straight into the mer waiting there, sending them both into a tumble of fins and arms and hair on his pillowy pile of soft sand. Before Shang Qinghua can gather his breath to scream at whoever's interrupted his breakdown, an arm like a band of stone wraps around him, switching their positions so the other mer is atop him, snarling out at the doorway.

"What's coming?" demands the familiar voice of Ice Boy, the claws of his free hand lifting, his teeth bared at the doorway, as though Shang Qinghua had been chased by a shark and not by the specter of marriage.

He flings himself up without thought, wrapping his arms tight around Ice Boy's neck and shoulders. He holds on tight, even as Ice Boy hisses at him and wiggles, trying to get his claws pointing towards the door and Shang Qinghua behind him.

"Stop," Ice Boy barks in demand, shoving Qinghua off him and turning his harsh snarl on the doorway, light shining off him, his wiry form tense and ready for battle.

The string of pearls is wrapped around his right hand as it so often is, but the collision—the panic of that moment—it must have broken it. The delicate pearls are drifting off the broken line, one by one, falling silently into the sand.

"No one's following me," he said, feeling as though his gills were full of sand. "There's no one. There's nothing."

Ice Boy turns toward him in a swift lurch, his hair tousled by the motion. There are no shells braided into his long, dark, coiling hair. No decoration on his sharply muscled torso. No explanation for why the flash of his wide, dark eyes, and his loose, undecorated hair makes something inside Shang Qinghua's guts cave in and crumble. He chokes out "Nothing" again, but even he doesn't know exactly what he means.

Ice Boy floats there before him, eerily still, with the ruined pearl necklace dripping into pieces around him. He doesn't move—doesn't even seem to breathe, his gills eerily unmoving on his throat and ribs, but Qinghua can't seem to catch his breath, gasping as though the water had turned thick with heat once again. They hang there, suspended in silence, until at last Ice Boy's gills flare, and he says:

"I can no longer hunt for you."

The words fall like pearls from a broken string. Shang Qinghua doesn't know what his body's doing, much less his face. He floats, breathing hard, in silence. He watches Ice Boy's fierce expression waver like a heat mirage. His stupid eyes, adding salt water to the sea.

"Alright," his voice says without his mind attached. "Cool. Okay. Thanks for letting me know."

He wanted this anyway. He didn't want corpses at his door. He didn't want to share his powder soft bed.

Ice Boy stays still, hanging in the water like a warning, then swims away without another word, leaving pearls in his wake.

Shang Qinghua doesn't have instincts, so he must be coming down with something. Maybe he caught a cold. There's no other reason he can think of for how his breath gets caught in his body, rattling out of him in gasping trills of distress.

An engagement—especially a political one—is kind of like a job. Qinghua throws himself into the work.

The prince of the Ultima pod is called 'Mobei Jun': a tempestuous, vicious killer of a mer. If there had ever been an attempt on his life, as some of the elders have suggested, Shang Qinghua can't find any corroboration or evidence in their official records. All there is are records of Ultima hunts and kills—a record of compulsory brutality, notated with extreme detail.

It tells Qinghua absolutely nothing about what sort of courting gifts the man would want. The Ultima pod are better at weapons crafting than Cang Qiong by far, and sending a prospective mate a weapon might read badly anyway. If only it was mentioned anywhere that Mobei Jun liked anything other than battle…

The official announcement comes a week after he found the letter—a week after Ice Boy left him to pick up the pieces of his necklace and tuck them back into a bag full of shells that will never be braided into anyone's hair again. By then he's prepared, swimming up confidently, smiling where required, bowing respectfully and with pretty words ready regarding the pod's trust in him as a future leader.

He pretends not to notice Shen Yuan frowning up at him from the crowd, a work suspiciously approaching worry on his face.

"I've been a little busy," Shen Yuan hedges after, when he's followed Shang Qinghua home, looking around the entrance, as if hoping there's a new kill to inspect. "Did something change?"

"Nothing important," Shang Qinghua tells him, smiling wide and refusing to let loose the distressed, creaking trill his throat keeps trying to make.

He doesn't have those ridiculous instincts. He's not going to cry like a toddler about a podmate 'abandoning' him. Ice Boy wasn't part of his pod. He wasn't.

He keeps telling himself that, with increasing levels of desperation.

The letter he ties to his betrothed is formal, but as kind as he can sculpt himself. He wishes Mobei Jun safe travels to Cang Qiong and expresses his hope that the prince will find a comfortable home in the temperate coral mountains, so different from the chill and wilderness of wandering the South.

His mother whistle-chirps when she reads it, and nods at him in encouragement when he asks her opinion on sending strips of silver as well, to be fashioned into claw-tips when Mobei Jun arrives. It's meant as a promise—that Qinghua will not make decisions alone, that things will be made to Mobei Jun's liking, that the gift is already given, and only awaiting personalization.

The silver is returned in two days, with rough, harsh rope tied in a blunt message.

Gifts are not needed. The Prince of the South does not need to be bribed.

Qinghua catches himself rubbing despondently at the bright yellow scales on his arms, dulling their color, and immediately switches his anxious fingers for soothing oil and polish to brighten them again. He is no lovelorn fool to go dull and despondent. Like Mobei Jun, Shang Qinghua is ready to be the mer his pod needs. That's all he's been doing his whole life.

"Good for you," his mother says, supportive, looking over his work on the speech he's written to accept Mobei Jun's hand. "I'm so glad you've finally decided to reach for something, Qinghua."

He doesn't understand what she could possibly mean by that. All he's been doing this whole time is reaching. Reaching over and over, always expecting to get his hand burned again by Shen Jiu's sharp scorn, or Liu Qingge's cold indifference, or the disinterested distaste of his whole blessed pod.

"That means a lot," he says, because he's sure it does to her, and he pretends to smile in answer to her pinch on his cheek and the affectionate chuffing rumbles she's letting escape her.

The Ultima delegation arrives late at night, and enters immediately into secluded conference with the elders of Cang Qiong. Shang Qinghua hasn't been granted permission to see the full extent of their marriage proposal, but he knows generally what it entails. What he doesn't understand is why Cang Qiong is willing to offer so much to a distant pod in exchange for the marriage. Perhaps there is danger he's unaware of—perhaps the distant rumbles of trouble brewing in Jun Wu's heavenly capital are not so far-fetched as he'd assumed. Perhaps Cang Qiong is bracing for war, full of well-fed and comfortable mers who have never had to wield a blade, and the elders have realized they will need someone to guard their decorative fins.

He's a little surprised to realize he doesn't care. He reaches for where his care lives—brushes his fingertips against it—and then feels it withdraw from him.

There's an official first meeting between him and his betrothed that evening, to officially declare their intent to mate and bond as First and Only to one another. He should be spotless for it.

The smattering of decorative scales over his biceps has greyed. He's been hugging himself too much, chafing his scales as though he were cold.

He puts on coral cuffs to hide the marks, and pins his hair up with a bone pin, carved from one of the horrible monsters Ice Boy had left him.

Then he puts on the tooth necklace he's kept all this time. The distant memory hurts more than it soothes today. He remembers what it felt like, to have that hope. Someone who liked that he was a mystery. Someone who wanted him there.

For a moment, without noticing, he'd started to hope again.

What an idiot…

It feels right to be dressed in his foolishness. He doesn't really want to feel beautiful or wanted. He's here, he'll do his pod proud, but he'll always wish… something. He'll always have this fang, and the bone jewelry he'd had made from Ice Boy's ridiculousness, and the sight of Shen Jiu in the leopard seal's skin, whenever Shen Yuan decides to give it to him.

He's running through the itinerary for the evening, making sure he knows the speech he wrote himself by heart—though the actual knots of it are part of their wedding vows, ready and waiting to be bound together in golden cord on the stage where their wedding will take place in the morning, when the first distilled rays of sunlight spark life through the shallow froth of waves above Qiong Ding, their tallest peak.

Some part of Shang Qinghua still wants to shred them. Has wanted to shred them the whole time. Tied them with fingers itching for claws, with teeth wishing they were fangs, with the violence in his heart neatly plaited through every strand.

Shit. He's freaking out. He puts on the brakes and changes direction, ducking away from the brightly-lit hallway leading to the An Ding meeting room he'll be summoned to shortly, and instead darting into the dark side hallways of the coral palace, pressing up against the wall and breathing hard. It's quiet here—isolated. The many workers have been given the day off, in an attempt to ensure a lower chance of an interpod incident.

"Get it together," Shang Qinghua mutters to himself, thwacking his head into his hands over and over. "Get it together, idiot. This is everything you wanted."

He says it with frustration—with vehemence, but the ferocity curdles into despair, and he lets himself sink in the water, until the coral bites into his scaled tail.

"This is supposed to be everything you wanted."

The air tastes thick and heavy over his gills, like the heated, mineral-rich water over the abyss. His hands are clamped on his biceps again, where his scales have gone grey. He didn't even register prying the coral bracers free.

"Pull yourself together," He hisses, digging his blunt claws in. If he were Ice Boy, his nails would pierce the skin. If he were Ice Boy, he probably wouldn't have a pod to come back to.

…If Ice Boy had said 'come with me' instead of 'I'm not coming back,' Shang Qinghua realizes with a sinking sorrow, he would have gone.

Down the hall, past the corner where he's tucked himself, something clatters loudly. Shang Qinghua jolts, then scowls, his fins flaring in frustration. Can a mer not even have a breakdown in private?! There's not supposed to be anyone even in this hallway! If there's a fucking spy here, he's going to absolutely flip his shit and—Oh. OH! And maybe tear up those wedding vows, too! Spying from the Ultima pod would be a great reason to call off the wedding! 

He's swimming at full-speed towards the sounds before he can second-guess the impulse, billowing fins catching against the stagnant water of the workplace. The faint scent of blood isn't enough to kick his thoughts into gear in any way that helps. He has just enough time to think: "Wait, the Ultima pod is full of warriors and I'm an unarmed, untrained, solo mer, where there aren't supposed to be any bystanders about to catch a spy in action." It's not enough time to stop himself—it's just enough for the thought "I'm fucking doomed" to cross his mind.

The door slams open under his hand.

Oh.

He was right about Ice Boy. About how his nails would pierce into his skin, if he were to grab himself as tightly as Qinghua had been squeezing his own arms. The blood makes smoke in the water, clouding the tiny closet with dull iron.

Ice Boy hisses, fangs bared, ears pinned—a vicious, rattling snarl of a sound.

Shang Qinghua hisses back, weak and faltering, his throat choked with affection and anger and a sort of despair he's been struggling to pretend wasn't there at all. He sags in the water, sinking towards the floor of the closet.

Ice Boy sinks too, his fins flaring then pinning again. His fierce expression twists and falters. He hisses, more softly, and Qinghua answers him. Again, and answer. They hiss back and forth, quieter and quieter, both sinking to the floor, puddling closer to one another by inches, as though there were a current pulling them together.

"You shouldn't be here," Ice Boy rasps.

He sounds ruined, torn apart. His voice was stronger after he'd had his gills sliced open than it is now, puddled limp in the corner of a storage closet where he's stained the cleaning supplies with his blood.

Shang Qinghua barks out a laugh despite himself, rubbing at his eyes roughly. "Me!? You shouldn't be here! Fuck, what if someone else had found you, huh? What are you even doing here? Spying for your prince?"

Ice Boy hisses at him again, but it's listless, unspirited. Shang Qinghua doesn't bother answering it, he just starts fumbling around in the cleaning supplies to see if there's anything he can bind the self-inflicted wounds on Ice Boy's arms with. It's a storage closet, not a medical suite, but surely they've got something…

"You lied to me," Ice Boy accuses. "You said there was a place for warriors in your tribe."

"I didn't lie," Qinghua scolds, rummaging. Maybe this preserved kelp? Ugh, no, it seems like it's the sort that's for polishing the walls, no good for an open wound.

"I've been sold to your people as a courtesan."

Shang Qinghua snaps his head up, startled. Ice Boy is glowering at the open doorway behind him, a set expression of displeasure on his face. His strange, dark eyes are reddened at the corners, as though he's been rubbing at his face too. He's very still—he always is—but his gills are flaring as though he can't catch his breath.

Qinghua hisses softly to him, and watches him sink another inch, his tense muscles loosening.

"We don't buy people," Shang Qinghua shakes his head.

"I'm to be married to some nameless prince," Ice Boy mutters, scowling. "Some fool with flowery words and no inclination for me to be more than a bedwarmer. I will lose my weapon, my crown…I have even lost you."

His uncanny gaze fixes on Shang Qinghua, and about a thousand connections snap together in his mind. Holy shit, he's been an idiot. Holy fucking hells.

"Mobei Jun?"

Ice Boy's eyes widen, the dark pupils at the core of his gaze slicing down into bare slits. His fins flare, and he lurches forward, close enough to grab Qinghua, though his hands pull back at the last moment, the tops of his claws still glistening faintly red with his blood.

"It's you," Shang Qinghua states in a songless tone. He's practiced for so many years, the lilting intonations of the Cang Qiong pod, but in the moment his mind has gone completely blank. He has no masks available—no place to hide. "It was you the whole time. I, hah, I should have known? I should have known. No wonder you gave back the silver, you've never, never kept my gifts you—you jerk! You jerk!"

"Qinghua?" Ice Boy— Mobei Jun says, his chin tilted down and his vast, dark eyes gazing up at him, closer than Qinghua can ever remember him being before.

"You hate the idea of marrying me this much!?" Shang Qinghua demands, pushing back from him and gesturing at his bloody arms. "I'll—I'll call it off right now! Just—You don't have to hunt for me, or do anything, you—You—!"

Clawed fingertips catch his elbows, and stroke down over the fins on his forearms, settling them down into place. Mobei Jun hisses at him, softly. Shang Qinghua closes his eyes, gills flaring with heavy breaths. He's shaking, and even he's not sure if he's angry, or upset, or—

Mobei Jun inches closer, and lets out a weird, crackly squeaking sound. Shang Qinghua snaps his eyes open to stare at him in confusion, and sees the apparent prince of the Ultima pod glancing to the side, clearly embarrassed. He works his mouth, then tries again—an attempt at a trill, or maybe a churr. It's so eerily dissonant compared to the practiced sounds of Cang Qiong it would probably make any other mer scream and run.

Shang Qinghua catches a breath and laughs softly, his fins settling and his arms loosening in Mobei Jun's careful grip.

"You can hiss," Shang Qinghua whispers. "I know it means I'm safe."

"Safe," Mobei Jun agrees. "But yours… They mean… Happy."

Shang Qinghua's throat goes tight. It feels like he swallowed a fish whole, clogging him up from inside.

"Happy," he whispers, aching in his bones.

"Mm." Mobei Jun curls in closer, the lights lining his tail slowly flaring back to life. Shang Qinghua had only barely registered how dim he'd looked before. "If you wanted to buy me… you should have said."

"I don't want to buy you," Shang Qinghua chokes, turning his hands so he can grip Mobei Jun's arms in return. "I just want you to stay."

"You don't make any sense," Ice Boy tells him, leaning in closer.

"I'm going to tie jewels in your hair so tight you'll never get them out," Qinghua threatens in return, and leans in to meet him.

At least, he thinks, it seems like both of their pods know what a kiss means.

Chapter Text

It's a complicated story, in the end, how they ended up in this situation. They work it out in fits and starts through their wedding day, between Shang Qinghua hastily re-knotting his vows and Mobei Jun carefully weaving his own into the tapestry they're making together, his claws catching on the delicate rope and fraying his words.

Once, there was a prince whose parents passed away, whose uncle wanted to lead the pod. Once, there was a prince with gills torn open, lost in unfamiliar territory, and then suddenly found. That prince fell steadily for the one he met, leaving priceless hunts for him—proof he could provide and protect. But that one he met gave away many of the gifts, and disdained many others, no matter how dangerous or beautiful. The prince despaired of having him, but kept trying.

Until the day his faithless uncle came to him with a treaty—a nameless prince of a foreign pod wanted Mobei Jun to belong to him, and was willing to spend a great deal to have him. It would benefit the pod the young prince had sworn himself to more than his attempts to usurp leadership from his uncle. He would be a kept bride, his uncle told him smugly. There would be no danger to his precious nephew, safe and sound in the bedchambers of a spoiled Cang Qiong noble son.

Perhaps the uncle intended the prince to murder his captors. Perhaps he intended him to rebel, to fight tooth and claw. He wanted to. He didn't.

"I signed the letters," Shang Qinghua objects at this point in the story, deftly writing as he listens. He's seated behind the throne, with Mobei Jun curled by him, rewriting his own portion.

"Ropes can be re-tied," Mobei Jun notes. "Or cut."

"Are we sure killing your uncle is off the table?"

Mobei's laugh is soft and rasping. Shang Qinghua likes it so much. He likes him so much…

"I was courting you too," he tells his stupid fiancee. "You kept giving back all my courting gifts."

Mobei Jun wrinkles his nose. "The baubles and ornaments? The pearls? I could not take them. They would shatter on a hunt, or worse be seen and exploited by my pod."

"You could have said that," Shang Qinghua mutters.

"And you could have kept the leopard seal skin, and the eeltooth daggers, and the skins and poisons of the sky jellies, or—"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Shang Qinghua sighs. "It must have looked like I was using your hard work to court Shen Yuan."

"I do not care about Shen Yuan," Mobei Jun scoffs. "He has other attention."

"Ominous," Qinghua notes, nudging their shoulders together. Mobei Jun tilts closer and bites at his ear, which, apparently, is affectionate? Whatever. He doesn't tear Qinghua's fins, so he's fine with it.

"So when you said you wouldn't hunt for me any more…?"

"I meant to protect you," Mobei Jun mutters. "If the nameless prince were possessive, if they knew I desired another in their pod…"

"We're both dumb," Shang Qinghua tells him, and gets a slightly sharper bite on his ear fin in reply. He pinches Mobei Jun's forearm in return.

His heart is racing, but the sinking, floating awfulness that's been stewing in his guts since that awful day has melted within him. Mobei is wearing his arm cuffs, covering the clawmarks on his arms. Shang Qinghua isn't as worried about his dull scales anymore, though Mobei had made a displeased noise upon seeing them.

"My mom and dad have some explaining to do," Shang Qinghua sighs. "Or, I guess, our mom and dad, soon. They'll be yours too, when you marry me."

"When I become your consort," Mobei answers, with a lingering hint of displeasure.

"You know what, I'm not risking another misunderstanding here. Tell me exactly what you think 'consort' means." 

Mobei Jun tells him. In detail.

Factually inaccurate on many levels, with some deeply concerning assumptions, but by the time he's done Shang Qinghua's never been so turned on in his entire life. One hand holds his wedding vows over himself and the other covers his face as he tries to focus more on the 'oh no that's horrible and must have scared the mer I really like' and less on the 'oh my god I wonder if he'd like to roleplay that when it's less recent and also I should put that in my next novel Shen Yuan would scream.'

"Your turn," Mobei Jun demands. "Tell me."

Shang Qinghua tells him. It's boring in comparison, but sometimes boring is good. Sometimes safe is better than happy.

"Hm," Mobei mutters, fiddling with the knots that form Shang Qinghua's name, added to his tapestry now that he finally knows who exactly he's agreed to marry. "Boring."

Shang Qinghua takes a page out of his book and bites his ear fin. Mobei Jun's delight shines out of him without any need for a trill or a churr or a song.

"There you are!" gasps a voice from the hallway's entry, and Shang Qinghua twists to look behind himself. Shen Yuan is swimming towards him, a furtive look on his face and decked out in what looks like fucking battle gear , rope tied around his hip bearing daggers, his bright green scales painted darker to camoflage against the twilight waters of Cang Qiong. "Come on, I'm here to rescue you."

"Huh?" Shang Qinghua asks dumbly, glancing to Mobei Jun.

Mobei Jun is still tucked behind the throne, unseen by his friend. He stares flatly at Shang Qinghua.

"You don't want this," Shen Yuan declares. "I know you're in love with someone else, and as your Best Friend, I'm not letting you do this! So… C'mon! I've got it all worked out. Binghe—that is—young lord Luo from the Abyss has been working really hard lately to make the Abyss livable for mers like us, so you and I can—uh—"

He peters out as Mobei Jun finally swims closer, wrapping his arms around Shang Qinghua and peering out at him. There's a low growl echoing from behind his sharp teeth, but Shang Qinghua's heard him really growl. This is more a friendly warning than anything.

"A-Yuan, hurry up," snaps a sharp voice, Shen Jiu swimming out from the entryway as well. He's dressed for battle too, and carries one of the enormous horns Mobei had supplied like a spear, his cutting eyes and teeth both flashing in fury. "The sooner you get that beast of yours out of here—"

"Yuan-ge, don't listen to him, I'm being good," complains a deep, strong voice, carrying a trace of a vicious growl. Black and red tendrils creep around the doorway, and a pale mer with dark black hair pillowing around him peers out with an eery red light in his eyes. He's wearing a leopard seal pelt. "It's that Liu Qingge who's going around yelling at people."

Shen Yuan is still staring at Mobei Jun, frozen in place, his fins half-flared and his hand resting on the dagger at his hip.

"Oh," Shang Qinghua whispers, his voice choked. "You came to help me."

"I—What? Of course I did!"

"Is that the unwanted fiancé?" snarls Shen Jiu. "Move aside, Qinghua, we'll handle him."

"Oh, hey Mobei," the abyssal monster in the doorway greets casually, giving a little wave of a tentacle.

"I am never going to understand any of you!" Shang Qinghua declares in a cry of anguish and delight, grabbing onto Mobei Jun with one hand and holding his other out to Shen Yuan. "A-Yuan, I was being an idiot , this is the someone else! But you—You came to rescue me, and everyone—Mobei, I—I'm so happy right now!"

He's not sure if the words come out laughing, or trilling, or hissing, or something that's not any of those. He's too overwhelmed to calculate the right way to sound—the right way to be . But for once, it doesn't seem to matter. Shen Yuan lets go of his knife to swim forward, and lets himself get bundled up against Shang Qinghua's side, in spite of Mobei Jun's grumbling little growls. He can't be too grumpy, though, because he's twined his tail happily with Shang Qinghua's on the other side, and he doesn't even bother snapping his teeth at Shen Yuan.

"Seriously?" Shen Jiu snaps his teeth enough for everyone. "What a waste of time. You're all hopeless."

He looks very disappointed not to be stabbing anyone, and eyes the 'Young Lord Luo' like he'd really like to stab him a few times.

"We're going to need to rework the banquet if there's another prince here," Shang Qinghua sniffles against Shen Yuan's hair. "You fucking weirdo."

"You're sure you want to marry him?" Shen Yuan asks, but he's looking at Mobei Jun, not Shang Qinghua, and his tone is informal and amused again, a lilting trill coloring the words.

"I'm sure," Mobei Jun replies, and for the first time in his life, Shang Qinghua feels a pure, bright, brilliant trill rise up out of him without any effort at all.

"Since you're here," Shang Qinghua says, pulling back to look his best friend in the eye, "there is one thing I need.”

They marry at the appointed time. The marriage is political, and in part is a cementing of Shang Qinghua's place in his pod a future leader. He'd doubted the designation at first, in spite of it being what he'd been working towards. But in the wake of Shen Yuan and what turns out to have been most of their agemates breaking into the An Ding capital to rescue him, he's feeling a little more confident about being in charge.

They clearly need someone more levelheaded in control than Shen Yuan, and it's just possible that they might all like him for more than just what he can give them.

Shen Yuan had brought Shang Qinghua's request just in time. Before Mobei Jun is to lead Shang Qinghua to the throne at the front of the hall, Shang Qinghua is able to give him a spear.

"I am not asking you to be kept by me," he promises as he passes the weapon to Mobei. "There is room in our pod for a warrior."

Mobei Jun had taken the spear from him in both hands, holding it the same way he held the pearls that first night, cradled close to his chest.

"Mate," he rasps, "my blade and strength are yours."

"Oh," Shang Qinghua shivers, a lopsided grin stretching his lips and his fins flaring, displaying his colors. "Mine too. I mean, not my blade, but… My strengths, anything I have, it's yours."

"Save it for the ceremony, you're both disgusting," Shen Jiu spits from where he's hovering nearby, keeping an eye on Shen Yuan and slapping away Luo Binghe's tentacles when the abyssal mer tries to wrap his brother up in tender embraces.

"Don't worry, A-Jiu," Shang Qinghua says, turning a mean grin on him. "Qi-ge'll figure out how to flirt with you one day."

He leaves one twin laughing and the other spluttering with fury. Mobei Jun swims at his side, through the gathered officials. The leader of the Ultima pod is smirking from the front row, looking superior and vicious. When his eyes flicker to the spear in Mobei Jun's hand, the expression falters.

Shang Qinghua's parents, though, look delighted beyond belief. Shang Qinghua would love to be mad at them for all this, but he's having a hard time feeling anything other than dizzily happy.

"Greet your people," Mobei Jun murmurs, turning with him and shifting to his side to leave him the throne.

"They'll be your people too," Shang Qinghua tells him, holding his hand rather than letting him retreat. "Greet them with me."

The Cang Qiong delegation sings in delight at the sight of their mated pair of future rulers. Shen Yuan's voice sings loudest from the back, matching Qinghua's parents in volume. The Ultima pod looks around in disturbed confusion, but some of them seem pleased, and the one who must be Mobei's uncle looks very sour.

So it's success all around, so far as Qinghua's concerned.

At the feast, new space has been cleared for the surprise delegates of the Abyss. Tianlang-jun had been invited last-minute to make the inclusion of his son less shocking. He dines on the vegetal dishes of Cang Qiong with confused fascination, alternating between watching Luo Binghe delicately interact with Shen Yuan and eyeing Mobei Jun carefully feeding Shang Qinghua bite after bite with eerie attention.

"You know," Tianlang-jun says casually to Shang QInghua when he swims up to the head table at last, his long limbs trailing behind him, "I had hope for you two all those years ago, but to have only ever loved each other all along, plotting and planning a way to be together in spite of all obstacles—why it's the sort of story a foolish old man like me could only dream of."

He grins as he speaks, nodding down to the necklace around Shang Qinghua's neck.

"Oh, that wasn't—" Shang Qinghua starts.

"Yes," Mobei Jun replies, nodding firmly to Tianlang-jun.

"Wait, that was you!?" Shang Qinghua yells. "Why didn't you tell me that in the first place!?"

"You didn't know?" Mobei Jun demands just as loudly, puffing up in offense.

Tianlang-jun laughs, and swims away, his chaos successfully sown.

There is dancing, after the feast. Shang Qinghua drags Mobei Jun out to dance with him, despite that neither of them are any better at it than they were as small fry all those years ago.

"If your teeth regrow, I want a new one," he mutters. "No fair that mine's so old."

"As many as you want," Mobei Jun promises, twining his fingers into Shang Qinghua's hair as they twine together in the soft moonlight.

"I guess they can stay where they are," Shang Qinghua mutters, curling closer to him. "So long as you stay with me, they're all mine anyway, right?"

"Mm," Mobei Jun replies, and presses a soft hiss into the corner of Shang Qinghua's gills.

"You're so weird," Shang Qinghua tells him softly. "I'm so glad you're here."

"Shang Qinghua," Mobei Jun murmurs. "You are far, far weirder."

He laughs, and Mobei laughs in return. He trills, and Mobei flashes his teeth in amusement, giving his rasping approximation of a trill. He hisses, as loud and fierce as he can, and Mobei Jun hisses back, loud and primal and perfect .

A normal mer would have never ended up in either of their positions.

Thank goodness they are both deeply, deeply strange, Shang Qinghua thinks, squeezing Mobei Jun tight.