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I.
Who in the Seven Seas said that a hundred years are enough to get used to the summer heat?
Zeal pushed back the rising tide of his thoughts and searched for his boyfriend who would normally cling to his waist, refusing to get up. Weird, he thought, then he sniffed under his armpit, or did I sweat too much? He found him sitting at the edge of the bed, back and neck bent forward and drooping. He hugged his boyfriend from behind and leant his chin over his shoulder. "What are you doin’ so early on your own, Lou?”
Lou jumped, not expecting Zeal to touch him so suddenly, and Zeal noted how he locked his phone and hid it under the pillow as if he was hiding something.
“What're you lookin’ at? You’re not cheatin’ on me, are you? Y’know what happens to cheaters?”
While he was rumbling, Lou had finally turned, greeting Zeal with a smile that he could barely conceal, but playing along nonetheless—unlike Zeal, who was deadbeat serious.
“Since you forgot, I’ll repeat it for you. Love rivals get drowned and the cheater gets locked in a cage.”
"Aw… I can’t even watch porn anymore? Are you gonna drown all those actors now?” Lou kissed Zeal’s pouty lips with a smile blooming on his own. “Good morning love, so… what are you gonna do to this sinner, huh?”
With a deep furrow, Zeal stared at the little human whose nose almost brushed against his. He pondered for a moment and then dragged his boyfriend back to the bed. “I’ll do him, because if he watches porn in the morning with me right here, I haven’t done him enough.”
Lou emitted a high-pitched squeak, and when his back hit the mattress, he looped arms and legs around Zeal’s neck and waist. “Mh… I can’t wait.”
II.
Lou nuzzled a few more moments in Zeal’s embrace before getting up to get ready for the day, while Zeal propped his chin on one hand. He was still lying lazily on the bed, drinking in the sight of his lover’s naked, lean body and savoring the faint scent of sage lingering on the sheets. When Lou emerged from the bathroom, Zeal caught a glimpse of unwillingness on his young face.
With a towel, Lou dried his brown hair that had grown a little too long. He stood in front of the mirror and touched the lock that almost covered his eyes as if it were poisonous.
“My parents… my parents are gonna hate this…” He murmured.
Zeal got on his feet too. Despite everything, he understood that fear very well. Even now, he struggled to keep that same fear from eating him whole. Once again, he hugged Lou from behind and watched his downcast expression through the mirror. Then he ruffled his own green natural hair. "Say, would they kick my ass if they saw mine?” His words wiped the sour expression from Lou’s face, and he added, with a more serious tone: “want me to accompany you?”
Lou shook his head and smiled. “It’s okay, I avoided it for so long, but now I feel like I have to face them myself.” As he spoke, his voice trembled, yet he still held Zeal’s hand and caressed it. “I’d hate it if they hurt you in any way…”
They couldn’t even if they wanted to, Zeal scoffed, only muttering a “fine” out loud. Maybe he wanted Lou to need him, or maybe he was looking for a noble excuse not to attend his own problematic family gathering… even if in the end there was no way out. And if Lou had the courage, he had to be brave too—whatever his choice would be. The salty sea breeze twirled in his memories and his chest heaved with a feeling he couldn't quite name. Sadness? Regret? Nostalgia?
It must have shown on his face because Lou’s hand tightened around his and brought it to his lips to give it a chaste kiss. “Why don’t we go somewhere nice tonight?” Lou asked, and Zeal couldn't help but nod.
After Lou left to visit his parents, Zeal also started to get ready: he brushed his long, green hair without paying it any mind—his mind was somewhere else—then wore some simple white linen clothes to fight the summer heat. When he went out, the sun was already high and shining, but his appointment was at dusk. It was still early, so he decided to use the chance to stroll the center of the city of F.
III.
When he was first exiled, he found human creations ugly—akin to abominations. They had nothing of the beauty of the sea, not its colors, nor its quiet, absolutely nothing. Yet after one hundred years, he came to enjoy the culture as he slowly meshed with it: the food, the emotions, the contradictions, and even the languages rolling so graciously on Lou’s tongue. And his boyfriend, of course—Lou was his most favorite human.
“Zeazzy!!!” The caffè owner yelled in his direction. “No breakfast today?”
Zeal rolled his eyes at the silly—and usual—nickname and answered: “Comin’ later for a drink with Lou, maybe.” During his stroll, more people he barely knew greeted him loudly but also affectionately.
Is this a human thing?
The city center was scorching, despite the sun lowering behind the ancient buildings. It was almost time and he had reached the place: the well of Square R.—a normal-looking well that had been there for centuries, unassuming and overlooked—and for centuries, like any other well in the City of F., it connected to the sea.
So as per the ritual commanded, at dusk, Zeal bit the tip of his thumb, his canine tooth, sharpened like a knife, tore the skin apart with a prick. A tiny drop of black blood fell into the well and, before it was even fully diluted in the water below, the portal opened. Clouds that looked heavy with rain hovered above the City of F., and Zeal glanced at the crimson and purple shades of the sky.
After taking a large breath, he dove into the bottomless darkness of the passage.
While traversing it, he took his sweet time: his family members and peers had always been chronic latecomers, so there was no reason why they would make an exception today.
The lightless and boringly infinite tunnel made it easy to slip into places of the past hidden in forgotten recesses of the mind. Recesses where his memories of one hundred years ago rested.
Just as humans had always felt the fascination of the sea depths, Zeal, too, had always felt attracted to the surface. Instead of thriving in the abyss, he used to find himself flapping his fin a few meters from the surface, gazing upwards to savor the dazzling sunshine filtered by the clear water. Every time he would swim a little higher up, a little closer to shore, "to find his perfect targets," he would tell his peers. And they would mockingly laugh and reply: "you always say that", "have you ever actually drowned someone, little mermaid?", "he just doesn't have it in him."
At every sneer, at every scorn, at every word that stung his ego like a jellyfish, Zeal would clench his fist and flap his fin away. That he was the only sea creature left without the status of sea demon, yet was the harsh truth. Laughingstock of the Sea of T. was his second name.
Zeal emerged from the turbid current of not very pleasant memories when he noticed that he had arrived at his destination. The smell of algae and the salty taste in his mouth both made him nostalgic and nauseous. He extended a timid finger, and it only took a slight brush over the cold, musky surface to be pulled into the vortex of water. The next second, he was swimming in the abyss. He raised his gaze, and his jaw dropped.
IV.
In a large circle, his whole family and all of his peers surrounded him.
Zeal, speechless, lifted a hand, and his mouth stiffened in the fakest smile that had ever appeared on his face. "'Sup…?"
"…"
The embarrassing silence told him that the Sea of T. dwellers did not know human slang.
He laughed nervously, noticing the serious faces and heavy mood. "So… what's everyone doin' here?"
"It is the first time the Sea Real has witnessed such a case. It was so weird and complex that the Rulers of the Seven Seas had to gather to discuss how today's process would play out, and you dare show up late?!" Zeal's father and Ruler of the Sea of T. thundered.
"So, what do I have to do?"
"You little ingrate pest! Have you forgotten how to talk to your father?!"
Zeal didn't reply and just lowered his head, showing all of his fake remorse. He could feel the gazes of the audience shift from him; in fact, the Rulers turned to his father to give him permission to speak on behalf of everyone and enunciate the trial.
"My naive and juvenile son, you will be judged with me, the Rulers of the Seven Seas, and your brothers as witnesses. The trial is lenient, and it is as follows: do what you didn't do one hundred years ago."
"I refuse!"
The two simple words echoed in the depths. In the crowd of sea demons, eyes widened, and jaws dropped, and the shocked murmuring soon broke the silence. Even the Rulers themselves were stunned into silence. Only Zeal's father seemed about to burst in a fit of rage, but before he did, Zeal repeated, his voice even more crystalline than before: "I refuse." A defiant smirk twisted his lips, but it slowly died down as his father took a breather to calm down, shooting a knowing glance to the Rulers at his side. His gaze carried the shame of a father whose son's life was doomed to fail, and also a tinge of regret.
"In the extreme case that the sea creature fails or refuses to complete the trial to obtain the power associated with the title of sea demon, the Rulers and I agree that it shall be stripped of all the power and benefit that come from being a sea creature and degraded to the status of human."
The sentence arrived swift and cold, but Zeal expected it… after all, to not want to drown—to kill—a human child sounded like a very human thing to do.
"Okay," Zeal accepted it without batting an eye, and it enraged his father even more.
The Triton form he assumed during rites and ceremonies slowly deformed into that of an ugly green monster with countless fins, five mouths, and many sharp teeth. In this form, he roared: "Scram! And quickly, before I eat you alive! Ten minutes! You have ten minutes before you become human flesh forever and die—"
Zeal didn't even let him finish his cursing that he was already frantically flapping his fin towards the portal. He ignored the chorus of scorn and mocking that accompanied him until the vortex pulled him to the other side of the portal.
Silence drowned him.
And time was ticking.
He had less than ten minutes to retrace the passage that took him thirty minutes and reach the other side. To go home and not be trapped in the depths forever. Soon, water would invade his lungs, and the pressure would crush his brain.
Time was ticking, but he wasn't counting.
He was just swimming towards the surface, ignoring the ache in his whole body, as he felt his black magic blood slowly burning out.
Faster. It's possible, it's possible, I can do it, and even if I can't, I'll make it.
His heart beat out of his chest, he felt it in his throat as if he was about to throw it up from his mouth. He'd make it because he made a promise with Lou, and they would go somewhere nice tonight.
The surface… it's close, it must be, it has to be.
Zeal reached out a hand in hopes of feeling the air, to touch his salvation. As his gills closed, he took the deepest breath. While his fin dissolved into the pair of human legs he grew to love, he gave the strongest push. With his legs moving and his lungs full of oxygen, he gave it his all. The final straw. In this life and death moment, the only thing that popped into his mind was the picture Zeal saw that same morning while Lou was scrolling his phone.
Lou crossed his arms at Zeal's rejection. Zeal had lost count of how many times Lou asked him the same thing, and the reply Zeal gave him every time was always the same. "No, I won't go to the beach, so stop asking." His words were a little too assertive, perhaps his face a little too scary, because after that time, Lou stopped asking him. But Lou didn't forget, he… When it stopped being a joke between them, Zeal knew he would never ask again. And… and Zeal used that to close his eyes to the inevitable truth because to see the truth meant to accept a home he couldn't return to, and he couldn't bear to sink his human feet into the sand, to let his ears fill with the sound of crushing waves. It would be akin to offering a mere glass of water to quench the thirst of a man lost in the desert.
But Zeal had nothing to call family anymore. In his life and in his heart, there was only one person: the guy slouched at the side of the bed, scrolling pictures of the sea with a sad smile.
It was his hand that first stretched out of the water, and after a second, he emerged too, gasping for air. It's over, he thought as he climbed out of the ancient well of Square R. The sun had long set, and the moonless night was bright with countless stars. He breathed in the extraneous and familiar salty breeze.
As he gazed up, a hearty laugh that came from his soul helped him release all the tension and fear. And he started running again, his legs bringing him home.
V.
He called the elevator in the building and tapped his foot. Too slow, dammit! He swore internally before giving up and rushing up the ramp of stairs like a madman. The air, which was so warm even at night, had almost dried his light clothes. And he managed to drench them again with sweat.
Lou seemed to have forgotten the front door open, and Zeal launched at it like a ram.
This dummy will never change.
A pair of elegant shoes tossed at the side of the corridor and silence veiling the room were what greeted him. Zeal wanted to shout at his boyfriend to close the door next time because it wasn't safe, but the scolding died in his throat. Lou stood in front of the sink, propping his hands over the counter, head lowered and body shaking. "Lou?" Zeal called, and his boyfriend's shoulders jumped, as if he wasn't expecting him to come home so early. "Lou, what's wrong?" he repeated, locking the door and finally closing the distance between them.
Lou's silence and his miserable look made Zeal's heart both flutter and ache. Only after Zeal wrapped him in his arms did he finally speak. And the words came out like an overflowing tide.
"I couldn't tell them… our relationship is still in the dark, and I'm scared that they'll think I'm weird. Wrong. I'm scared they'll abandon me for good if I tell them. But being scared for this reason is dumb, isn't it? Because I'm an adult, right? I shouldn't be a goody-to-shoes hypocrite and I should assume my responsibilities. I'm just a coward and—"
Zeal listened to his never-ending rant until it didn't register anymore. He grabbed Lou's chin and shushed him with a kiss.
"I'm sorry…" Lou mumbled against his lips, turning in Zeal's arms to face him.
"Tsk tsk, we'll deal with your parents another time, and together. But now, aren't you forgettin' about somethin'?"
"…"
Zeal scowled, and his frowning face awakened the memory of the little conversation they had had in the morning. "Of course I remember, love. Where do you want to go? I'll take you anywhere." Lou's face lit up with a small smile.
"Then take me to the sea."
And the smile that Lou had painstakingly mustered thaws into tears—the same tears that he had forced to a halt were flowing again from his red and puffy eyes. "Why today that I failed so hard? With all the times I asked you before…"
"Especially now." Zeal caressed the wet cheeks and wiped the tears away with his thumbs. "Can't a man be dumb? I've been dumb for a whole year, and you still fell in love with me."
Lou sniffled, his trembling easing: "you're right."
"So? Are we goin'?"
Lou brushed his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose, seemingly deep in thought. "To be honest, there's only a place where I'd rather go with you right now…"
"Where??"
"The bed <3"