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The coast isn’t always the sunny spot with crystal water and yellow sand that is promoted to foreigners.
Actually, if people aren’t correctly advised prior to their visits, they will experience constant rains in Uzushio during their stay. And not all the beaches around the island are the dreamy beaches that look like everything is calm and fun like in those travel agency brochures. In fact, after a short walk toward the south, everything transforms into rugged coastlines, some with steep cliffs carved by the crashing waves of an ocean that could become too harsh every five or six hours during winter.
And, as required to be listed in those brochures and flyers, Uzushio is famous for its whirlpools. That can’t be forgotten—such sightseeing to admire from a boat.
Sasuke knows all this because, despite the rain and the restless waves warnings the island might have, his family loves it as their vacation spot. According to his mother, it's a hidden gem not yet popularized, cheaper than other destinations and offering more privacy.
Sure, every other few years they had traveled to other destinations, mostly at Sasuke’s insistence and curiosity about what some of his classmates talk about too, but it has been more years of circling back here than making other plans, even on some chilly weekends when locals hold festivals to thank the ocean. Perhaps his father is too soft for his wife’s wishes, and Itachi prefers not complaining at all.
So, after reaching thirteen, they had let him to his own devices when Sasuke asked back then, bored of the girls that wanted to take photos of him or the noise in the most touristic spots, making a statement that he knew the island well. That he knows how capricious the sea could be.
But, most importantly, Sasuke knows how to respect it.
He’s now fourteen, and in some of his walks he gathers a few gifts from the sea, but only to give them back. It’s something that locals like to warn kindly: do not collect shells and take them away from their home, because it disrupts the environment, and little animals depend on empty shells. Not even small stones or, as the grannies and some fishermen here say, the bad energy of those lost at sea is absorbed by them.
So, it’s like a friendship hardened over the years. He and the sea. Like discovering more and more of its secrets, enriched by the many local myths and fairytales:
Should someone end the life of a black-footed albatross, no matter if intentionally or not, then they won’t get safe voyages nor abundant catches.
Should someone end their own life from one of the cliffs, then it would summon harsh winds and dangerous storms for days and days.
Should a lover present themselves with a shell adorned with a gleaming pearl they hunted themselves to their beloved, then their love would be as enduring as time itself.
And then, in his opinion, the most silly one—but secretly Sasuke’s favorite. A tale of a mermaid who fell in love with a fisherman who gifted her cherished objects (golden coins, mirrors, and shiny jewels), so she descended to the bottom to collect other treasures, gleaming pearls and forgotten objects, to convince the human to go down with her for more, as though she could grant him those beautiful sea treasures that humans cherished the most. But what if she only swam close to the beaches looking for fishermen to capture and drown in the sea waters? To eat them? Maybe just a terrifying yokai instead of a centuries-old romantic tale.
A monster, after all, shouldn’t grant the most cherished wishes.
Also, merpeople don’t exist. Heh.
.
The next day, the sun not yet disappearing, Sasuke sits on flat stone with one knee up while his other leg rests on the hard surface, looking at a broken shell. It’s a careful examination, holding it between his thumb and index. Calcium carbonate layered in iridescence. Cute. His mind starts to wander. Maybe he could study to become an oceanographer instead of pursuing a political career as his father had done; perhaps they pay well to researchers in a marine center, living a kind of isolated life that he wouldn't mind.
It’s an unexplored world but calmer than the complex dynamics of human society. Like a distant cosmos under their daily lives with paths never explored before that he could help to map even from a desk, and he likes the idea.
And here is when life decided to mock him.
In front of him, between sharper rocks that come up from beneath the current slow waves, a splash is heard, like a door being opened to the unknown, instantly capturing Sasuke’s attention, who quickly shifts his gaze to the horizon, only to drag his eyes back to a spot a few meters in front of him.
And there’s a boy of his same age, blond, blue-eyed, with half his head under the water while approaching.
But it isn’t those fixed eyes on him that make Sasuke push his heels against the ground after a second, suddenly moving backwards on instinct. It’s the other boy’s disappearance, diving back to the sea with such force and ability but leaving behind the blurred image of scales and a tail. A shiny orange tail shimmering in flashes of gold instead of feet.
“What the—” He drops the small shell, greatly astonished, digging his palms against his eyes until the black turns into a grainy buzz in his optic nerves, next blinking only to see the other boy’s complete face, elbows propped on the stone in which Sasuke is while, apparently, offering a bigger iridescent shell piece. A similar bright object being pushed by a hand with webbing membranes emerging between the spaces of the fingers and larger nails than those of a human.
Sasuke only gives one glance to the object, feeling slight fear for moving one single muscle, staring back at the creature—a ‘half-person, half-fish creature,' a male marine humanoid, a merman—as blue eyes look back. Not quite looking menacing. Then chirp-like sounds leave the creature’s mouth and cut through the air, mixed with phonemes that sound totally foreign and totally unintelligible no matter how big those blue eyes get, gaze shifting between the new shell and Sasuke’s face, one finger giving light pushes to move the shell closer to Sasuke.
But, like, what the actual fuck?
Sasuke feels so seen, logically paralyzed for the next few seconds, and maybe as a form that his mind conjures for survival, he grabs the piece of shell.
That earned him a grin, and more… words? Whatever vocalizations the young merman is trying to convey.
But then, in another sudden motion, Sasuke stares in awe once more as the other dives again, a glowing tail of a fish rising up before the whole thing plunges into water. Not slapping against the water, not making a sound at all this time.
So, what the actual fuck?
“Wait!” Sasuke says, reacting in such an unexpected way. He moves himself closer to the edge, looking down at the water, his palms firmly placed where the other’s elbows were resting before.
It must have passed a minute when Sasuke realized his stomach is flipping with clear anxiety, so he starts to think that maybe this is just a big hallucination, unprecedented, a figment of drug-induced imagination. Maybe someone added something to his water, and until now it's been making an effect. Maybe he should head to the hotel and run fast before his knees feel weak and he starts to crawl.
Maybe he shouldn't wait for another minute, but Sasuke did, blond head ascending from the water again, hands reaching out with two empty whelk shells this time, both beautifully spiraled. Somehow mesmerized and still processing what his senses are experiencing, Sasuke let strange hands take his, placing in them the two sea treasures. Whatever the young merman says, Sasuke knows it’s said with high enthusiasm. He knows only by how the intonation of those noises sound.
“Um, thanks." It spills out without his permission.
He couldn’t say another word before the blond creature smiled, looking both as dangerous as adorable, even gorgeous, a shade of blue in his eyes the same as the most sunny sky, with some of his teeth looking like they could literally slice anything, and a flush on his cheeks—marked with three lines of rougher skin on each side.
But Sasuke couldn’t say another word as he saw the blond hair submerging again, only to not come up after an hour.
.
The previous night, Itachi—when doesn’t he?—knew right away that something happened to him. Sasuke only rolled his eyes at his older brother’s soft smirk and refused to say that there was this unknown probability that he was having hallucinations. He didn’t tell Itachi that his eyes may have deceived him.
He ignored Itachi when he asked him if he knew he should get those shells back to where they belong. And he ignored the spike-up rhythm of his own heart when he brought each item to his eye level and inspected them intensively.
Nevertheless, he’s here again in the same spot with the hope of seeing the miracle happen again, soothed by the rustle of the waves—not raging winds or the threat of a storm coming. And it’s hours later, with three different shells, a small starfish he didn’t take, and two pearls after—those two hidden in his pocket—that Sasuke apologizes and promises his parents that he’s okay; he just lost track of time, being almost midnight by the time he comes back.
The next morning Sasuke buys a necklace with a fake golden stone from one of the many souvenir shops, feeling embarrassed as his parents exchange matching curious looks and he feels the unasked questions from his brother.
“I just like it,” he says shortly, grabbing an ugly graphic tee with a mermaid in an Ukiyo-e style too. Such a tourist trap.
And so he comes back to the same spot later, promising that he won’t wander too far and too long, and after waiting for so little, he sees the boy again, and he asks him if he truly cannot speak his language, and of course the other tilts his head to the side as if trying to find the best way to reply back, so Sasuke asks him if he knows some human words, but all is in vain as those chirp-like sounds and squeals and little grumbles are still as unintelligible as they were the first day. The blond’s mouth tips down at the sides when Sasuke makes a noise of pure frustration, so Sasuke tries to say whatever at the slowest pace he can, no longer feeling his stomach flipping with anxiety but something warmer.
“Let’s stop the ‘treasure’ hunting. I don’t need any of those,” Sasuke says as if talking to a little kid.
And what the hell is he doing with someone who can’t speak like a human?
But it’s real because the young merman is in front of him, sitting on the same cold surface as him, part of his tail close to Sasuke, just the end of it swaying in the water from side to side. Something like gills hug his ribcage while little and almost transparent scales are scattered above his hips before the colors blend to those of his tail.
Fascinating, nothing less. Do locals know about him? Is he lost from his pod, perhaps? Do merpeople have one, or are all of them solitary creatures? Or were they all dead, only this boy surviving and in need of trying to make contact with a human?
…should Sasuke feed him?
No, if anything, the young merman looks healthy, all gleaming and happy.
And when Sasuke finally gives him the cheap necklace, feeling his cheeks flushing and regretting the thankful gesture immediately—Sasuke has so many new pearls now—the blond boy looks at him and the little gift as though Sasuke has just granted him the most cherished wish.
He makes a big squeal that no way someone else didn't hear.
“Idiot,” Sasuke mutters, a smile pulling both corners of his mouth. He likes the beat of his heart.
.
.
It might be difficult, but learning the way humans speak has been a matter of survival for people like Naruto. It allows the members of his pod to prevent being found or hunted by human fishermen or others alike.
But, well, still difficult. Yeah.
Unless one has spent enough time listening to it.
“Stop doing that.”
Naruto giggles, his arms around Sasuke’s neck, making both move as though they were fish swirling in the water, his tails almost wrapped around Sasuke’s middle. Maybe they end up making their own whirlpool.
“What do you mean? This?” Naruto asks while moving his tail even closer, ignoring the fact that his mate can’t exactly understand him. Not yet. Or, well, at least Sasuke can discern when Naruto is asking things or telling him something serious, and when he’s happy and when he’s bored or hurt, and many of his basic sounds.
“Doing [whatever] you’re doing. You’re such a [freak]," Sasuke lightly huffs, the slightest blush on his pale cheeks as hands remain behind Naruto’s back.
Oh! Naruto blinks at him. A word he has forgotten its meaning and a totally new other one, so Naruto laughs next, closing in forward to rest his chin on the other’s shoulder. And stops his motions, his natural balance keeping them afloat.
Seriously, he’s always learning with Sasuke, like when Sasuke had raised his hand and stuck his pinky out after Naruto had felt like crying when the beautiful human told him he would leave. ‘Leave’ was one of the many human words that Naruto could grasp around the time he first met Sasuke, and although strange, the gesture of intertwining their fingers meant a promise according to what his mother explained later.
A childhood gesture from humans to make important promises.
It had been quite the phenomenon back then, wanting to befriend the calm, teen human who collected shells and such and looked at them with such intensity only to give them back to Naruto’s home. For many changes of the moon, Naruto could see him from a distance, curious about him, watching him go and come back after many other changes of the moon.
So now, three years after that first encouraging encounter, in another long-awaited visit while feeling Sasuke’s hand reaching behind his blond head, pulling from it only to align their faces, and despite the fact that they had never shared what could be named a long, proper verbal communication between them, when they kiss like now, it doesn’t feel like one belongs to the sea and the other to the land.
Their hearts beat the same.