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Ryland’s fantails flicked in the warm water, their pale yellow tips shimmering in the sunlight that streamed down from the water’s surface. It was soft and soothing, basking in the filtered light that shone down on the reef. He hummed a happy series of chirps and clicks, tilting his head to the side as he listened to the echoes of his vocalizations bounce back to him from the coral rocks.
He reached up to fiddle with his spectacles, these thin pieces of glass set in their frames, meant to be hooked around his ear-fins and tied around the back of his head. In reality, he spent more time with those spectacles dangling off of one side of his face—even hooked underneath the slope of his chin—than he did with them correctly placed upon his nose.
The reef was pretty silent today, beyond the gentle thrumming of the currents and the soft shifting of sediment sand that laid on the bottom of the basin. There was never really true silence in the shallows, but the peace of the moment was clear as day. He let out a happy sound and basked in the quiet of it all.
It was almost... too quiet.
“Mr. Grace, Mr. Grace!”
Ryland closed his eyes against the light of the water and a sigh escaped his lips with a cloud of bubbles. He loved sun-bathing, yes, but he didn’t love it as much as he loved teaching the litters of guppies that were dumped into his classroom, year after year.
“Mr Grace, Kevin keeps touching my tail! Mr. Grace!”
Even if they kids could be a handful sometimes.
“I’m coming!” He called out, pushing himself off of the boulder he was curled up on. “Kevin, quit trying to—Emily, what did I tell to about trying to drink the water?”
“But Mr. Grace, Lily gets to do it all the time…”
“Well, Lily is a filter-feeder, and her gills are designed to swallow gallons of water. When you force your gills to open up like that, it is very, very dangerous. Y'know, you could even get sick or injured. Now—”
“Kevin, stop it, that’s my fin, let go!”
“I just wanna see if it bends like mine—”
“But Mr. Grace, that’s not fair! I wanna eat the k-r-i-l-l too. Lily shouldn’t be the only one who gets to—”
“Mr. Grace! Help!”
“Stay still, I wanna touch your fins—”
“Guys, c’mon, stop it—”
“Wait, I wanna eat krill too. Lemme try!”
“Mr. Grace!”
Although sometimes, Ryland wished that he wasn’t the only primary school teacher of their reef as well.
Off the coastal shores of every major landmass in the world, laid an ocean teeming with life and color. Merfolk of different species, sizes, shapes and colors congregated within the waters, adapting to different habitats and learning to live near one another in communes, or even cities.
One such city was located in the shallows lining California, one with a relatively small population as opposed to it’s sister city further down the shore. This was where Colt and Ryland were born and raised, learning to swim within the confines of their reef.
Although they were two identical twins from their upper halves, and they were both Goldfish Merfolk, they had drastic differences between the two of them.
For example, where as Ryland's tail was thinner with longer, flowing fins, Colt had a thicker tail with wider dorsal fins lining his tail. And their colors differed too—Ryland had a gentler orange-yellow scaling pattern where Colt’s was a deep orange-gold, one that shimmered even in the darkness of the shadows cast by the coral.
Colt’s shinier coloring made him a very, very popular mating candidate when the twins came of age. The golden scales burrowed in the sides of his tail made almost every single suitable mate within a ten kilometer radius to perk up.
So Colt had no problems finding a mate. After a while, he finally chose to court Jody, who was a Tiger Oscar Mer with dark black and orange coloring. They had their shaky patches—like the time when Colt went with her to the big city for work, and he came back with a back-splint and a nasty attitude, and noticeably no Jody—but after all was said and done, they were a happy couple. Maybe even looking to settle down, lay some eggs, and hatch some children.
Ryland had not had the same experience within his own love life.
He had a smaller pool of suitors than Colt did when he had come of age, but he found that he couldn’t resonant with a single of one them. His scales were too distracting, her song was too long, their nice-guy-attitude was too fake for Ryland to handle, and the list went on.
By the time he made it to the end of his first mating season, he realized that there was no Mer around him that he felt comfortable enough with to have a conversation with, let alone court and settle down. And as the years passed, Ryland made his peace with that fact.
Sure, there were always going to be these young Merfolk who would come out and try to serenade him with their songs, or they would flash their colorful scales towards him in hopes of inciting a mating dance, but Ryland found that he had no interest in any of the people who approached him and expected to immediately begin courting.
Ryland was satisfied with his job, happy to watch guppies tumble about the brain coral and the shallow basins, happy to call them all back for lessons on hydro-thermal vents, current geography, and bioluminescence, and he was more than happy to greet his class every morning—standing still with his arms extended as they swam circles around him, fluffing his hair, chirping small sounds of happiness and hello.
Even if Colt teased him about being a homebody, he could handle it. Jody’s blunt type of concern and care made him twitch, but he could handle that too. He could even handle the random students swimming up to him and innocently asking whether or not he had a mate, their eyes round and curious.
He knew he could handle most of what life threw at him, no matter the circumstances.
That is, until he met Tom Ryder.
It had started when Colt’s job required him to come in more and more, difficult stunts and water-acrobatics that needed Colt’s expertise to be performed on those stages. Colt was an actor for the troupes of entertainment, the ones that traveled along the coastline and everything. They drew big crowds of fans wherever they went, and there was even a group of dedicated Merfolk who traveled wherever the troupe went
It was how he met Jody, back when he was trying to get his first job. Colt proudly claimed that they had hit it off immediately, but Jody had quietly told Ryland that the actuality of their courting was much slower and sweeter than Colt made it seem.
Honestly, it warmed Ryland’s heart to hear about how his twin was so loved and cherished by his mate, even if it also sent a pang of longing through him. He adored being present in Jody and Colt’s den, just sitting off to the side as they both fussed over dinner in the other room.
So Colt had been working on his stunts before a show when Tom Ryder’s assistant had approached him.
“Frankly, she was kind of a… what’s the word?”
“A prude? Stuck-up?” Josie’s accented popped up from where she was filleting a piece of tuna in the kitchen. “Maybe a bit of a nincompoop?”
Ryland covered his mouth with his hand and let out a laugh as Colt whirled around and pointed at his mate with joy.
“Yes! Exactly, she was a bloody nincompoop—”
“Good god, I don’t sound like that!”
“What! It was good, I promise.” Colt turned to where Ryland was perched on one of the smooth stone chairs. “Right, Ry?”
Jody turned to Ryland and pointed her knife towards him, the serious look in her eyes undermined by the way her fins wiggled happily. “Don’t you dare feed his ego, that accent was atrocious.”
Ryland paused, eyes darting between Colt’s pleading—if a little pathetic—gaze, and Jody’s jokingly-serious stare. A small, smug grin formed on his face and he lifted his arms to shrug helplessly.
Hey, he had a knife pointed at him, so there was really only one option to agree with.
“Sorry, Colt. It was pretty bad.”
“No, what? I was practicing and everything—”
“Yes! I told you, baby, you gotta stop trying to impress me with it,” Jody turned back to her tuna, but not before flashing a sweet smile towards her mate. “You do know I wanted to court you before I even heard your voice, right?”
“But that’s different,” Colt whined, swimming over to her and wrapping an arm around her. “You got lured in by my beautiful, stunning looks, so I gotta remind you of my equally stunning personality!”
Ryland raised an eyebrow above the frame of his glasses. “What personality? Being an idiot?”
“No, the one I stole from my nerd brother when we were in the womb, dork.”
If Colt wasn’t so far away from him, Ryland might’ve smacked him with his tail. Thankfully, Jody was close enough to do it for him.
“Ow, what the heck?”
“Be nice to your brother, you know we don’t get to see him that often.”
Ryland chirped a melodic note and smiled at her. “Thank you, Jody.”
“You’re welcome!” She chirped back, heedless of Colt’s grumpy look on his face. “See, look at how polite he is, how could you be mean to such a sweetheart?”
“He’s meaner than I am…” Colt grumbled and wrapped his arms around Jody’s waist, hiding his face into her shoulder. “I should’ve never introduced you two, all you do is bully me.”
“Well, you are very easy to bully, honey. Maybe try growing thicker skin?” Jody’s grin was mischievous, a sparkle in her eyes as she teased her mate. Ryland let out a loud bark of laughter as his brother groaned, throwing his hands up in the air and swimming away.
“I give up! Have fun being mean to me when I can’t even hear it!”
"Oh, don’t worry!” Jody called. “We will!”
“Y’know,” Ryland mused, watching the bubbles trailing after Colt down the hallway. “I never did get to hear the end of that story he was trying to tell us.”
“Oh, the one about meeting Tom Ryder?” Jody hummed, finished her fillet and putting it off to the side.
He blinked in surprise. “Wait, you and Colt met Tom Ryder? Like, the Tom Ryder?”
“Since when do you know famous actors?” Jody sound incredulous. “I thought that you didn’t like going to the amphitheaters because you were always too busy with your lesson planning?”
She raised an perfect eyebrow and leveled Ryland with an unimpressed look on her face. He could feel his face begin to heat and he looked down to fidget with his scales.
“Yeah, well,” He scratched at a patch of lighter scales smattered against his tail, kind of like freckles. “Some of my older students kept bringing him up, and when they found out I didn’t know who that was, they…”
Really, it was a funny memory. Ryland could still remember the shrill chirps of outrage that his students expelled when he admitted that he had no idea who they were referencing.
“They kinda sat me down and forced me to look through all their magazines about him?” He sheepishly admitted, smiling as Jody let out a loud laugh.
“Oh man, the ones selling those gland patches? The ones that smell like, what was it—”
“‘Earth, Minerals, Stone?’”
“Yes!” Jody shrieked with laughter so loud, small streams of bubbles escaped her mouth every time she exhaled. “Oh my god, those advertisements were so stupid looking, you have no idea!”
Ryland laughed softly, shaking his head. “It wasn’t that bad, I just didn’t really understand it.”
In fact, seeing those glossy pages of Tom Ryder—artistically draw against a backdrop of rocks, stones, and well, Earth,—shoved into his face by the hands of his students, Ryland found himself a tad bit… flustered.
It was definitely nothing, he mused, as Colt poked his head back into the kitchen with a distrusting look on his face.
“What’s so funny?”
That sent Jody off into another fit of giggles, clutching her sides as she gasped. Even Ryland couldn’t help himself and began to laugh at the way Colt was squinting at them distrustfully.
“What, are you guys making fun of me again?”
Definitely nothing at all.
Colt had been bugging Ryland to attend his stage practices for months, maybe even years at this point. Somehow, Ryland always managed to be incredibly busy, citing his students, his work, exhaustion, the works. And most of it wasn’t even excuses, simply poor timing.
It wasn’t because Ryland didn’t want to support his brother! In fact, it was quite the opposite. Ryland was immensely proud of the work Colt was doing in the world, and the success that his twin was having in the entertainment industry.
The fact alone that Colt got to boast about being in these big productions, with all sorts of light shows and actors, that made Ryland’s jaw drop and his pride for his brother grow.
For goodness sake, he even put up the posters of all of Colt’s shows up on the walls of his classroom!
So, yes, Ryland loved his brother and appreciated the hard work he had put into his career. It was just unfortunate that Colt’s happy place of work was the type of environment that made Ryland want to crawl out of his skin.
He winced as somebody careened out of the side of a strange, orange colored, coral-structure, landing on the soft beds of algae that lined the stage floor. He turned to Colt with fear in his eyes.
“You want me to watch while you do that?”
“I know,” Colt grinned and ran a hand through his coiffed hair. “Isn’t it great?”
Ryland had a lot of choice words that were cycling through his head, and not a single one of them etymologically linked to the word “great.”
He watched as the Swordfish Mer who had taken the dive lifted up their hand to give a thumbs up to the crew watching, and he let out a shaky breath as the rest of the staff bustled around to set up the next stunt.
“It’s…” He turned to his brother and gestured vaguely with his hands. “It’s very, uh, thrilling.”
Colt slung a beefy arm around his neck and dragged him into a hug, shaking him so much that his glasses slipped off of his face.
“I’m so psyched that you’re actually here, man!”
Ryland gave him a smile grin. “It—it honestly looks really cool. Just, promise not to make fun of me when I freak out as you risk your life?”
“Promise. Even if you scream like a lil’ guppy.” Colt’s eyes crinkled at their corners and he knocked the Ryland’s shoulder with a fist. “Now, c’mon, I gotta introduce you to the stunt crew!”
As Colt steered him away from the stage and towards the trailers, Ryland cast one final glance behind him. He almost flipped over his own tail as his eyes caught the gaze of a Catfish Mer with big brown hair.
Her eyes narrowed at him, even as her mouth curved into a smile and her hand raised to wave at him. For some reason, the look in her eyes sent a curl of dread down his spine and to the tips of his fins. He blinked once and the moment was already over, leaving Ryland feeling vaguely unsettled as his brother dragged him away to meet the rest of his co-workers.
Other than that one, strange moment by the stage, Ryland’s day was filled with meeting Colt’s co-workers and laughing about their shared stories involving his brother. He got to meet Venti and Dan, both of whom were incredibly fun to talk to and left Ryland beaming.
The production decided to take a short break in their rehearsal and Jody had swam over to join him in the wings of the stage.
“Feeling okay?”
He nodded, flashing her a smile as she gave him a quick hug. “It’s actually been better than I thought it would be. Everyone's been so nice.”
“See! We told you it’d be fine.”
“Do you know how much longer the rehearsal is going to go?” He questioned, glancing back towards the center stage.
“Not too long now, probably only like two more hours?” She checked the sun dial over at the corner of the room, squinting against the bright light shimmering in the water. “You won’t have to stay for the entire time if you don’t want to, I think Colt’s last stunt is coming up soon.”
Ryland opened his mouth to reposed when he heard another voice interrupt him.
“Yo, fall guy! C’mere, I need a favor.”
When Ryland turned around, he saw that the voice belonged to a Mandarin Dragonet Mer, with a bright blue and orange tail that was both iridescently beautiful and strong. His eyes traveled slowly, dragging up the length of that striped and spotted tail, passing pigmented fins and landing on a—frankly, so absurdly built that it bordered on obscene—sculpted chest.
“Uh, hello? Fall guy?” The voice continued and Ryland’s gaze snapped up to meet blue, blue eyes and he felt his mouth drop open.
Holy crap, that’s Tom Ryder.
Suddenly, Ryland was immensely grateful for the meddling of his students, because if he had come onto this set and made a fool of himself in front of an incredibly influential and rich actor, he would probably curl up into a ball and hope that the Mariana Trench swallowed him up.
"What?" Tom Ryder looked at Ryland, lifting an unamused brother. Oh, right, he was supposed to respond.
“Uh, I’m sorry? I’m not—I’m not Colt, I’m his twin brother.” He smiled sheepishly, and felt his tail twitch with nerves. He reached down to fiddle with the fins lining his hipbones, delicately tracing the lining and the thin boning as he fidgeted. “My name’s Ryland, Ryland Grace.”
“Ryder, please, they don’t even look that similar.” Jody’s voice was—monotone? Or, at least, it wasn’t as warm as it had been before, and the shift honestly shocked Ryland a little bit.
Tom Ryder seemed shocked for a moment, his eyes almost comically wide. Honestly, Ryland was kind of surprised that he could even tell what the other Mer’s eye color even was, behind those darkly colored glasses.
“Whoa. Like—whoa!” Tom Ryder looked around, almost as if he was searching for someone pulling a prank, before he refocused on Ryland. “That’s so fucking weird, man!”
“Um. It’s not, really,” Ryland pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. “Identical twins aren’t that rare—”
“Nah, I’m not talking about that. I meant, like, now that I’m looking at you,” And here Tom Ryder swam even closer to Ryland, leaning in towards his face and staring intently. “You look totally different from that fall guy.”
“I—thank you?” Was that even a compliment?
Tom Ryder let out a loud bark of laughter, oblivious to Ryland’s internal panic and Jody’s distrusting gaze. "Wow, I'm sorry for mistaking you for your bum of a brother. Your face alone, I mean, it’s already leagues ahead of Colt’s. It so crazy that I thought you were him!”
…What?
“Like, don’t get me wrong, some Merfolk dig the rugged look. Just look at Jody! Or me, actually, you should probably look at me. I was named the hottest Mer of the Month six months in a row for a reason, y’know?”
Ryland felt like he was losing his thread on this conversation the longer it went on, his fidgeting pausing and restarting time and time again. He shifted constantly between trying to look cool and nonchalant, and trying to get rid of some of the frantic energy building up inside of him.
“But, listen, sometimes a pretty boy like you comes in and just destroys the competition, man! I bet—Jody, I gotta know, I bet he doesn’t even do any skin or scale-care, beyond the basics.”
Jody let out a small huff that could’ve been anything really; a sigh, a laugh, a chuff of anger, who knew at this point.
“As much as I hate to admit it, yeah, you’re actually right for once. Ryland just looks that good.”
“See? That type of natural beauty is a gift, bro, you gotta learn to harness it before it’s too late. What do you do for work?”
“I… I’m a science teacher?” Ryland squeaked.
Tom Ryder let out a low whistle, his brows arching comically high as he leaned in even closer. “Damn, not a model, even with those eyes? You’re just that hot, smart and good with guppies?”
He turned to Jody with a charming, crooked grin on his face. “Jodes, why the hell did you choose the uglier twin?”
Ryland felt a bit faint, like all the blood in his body had flushed to his face and neck, no doubt turning his skin a bright red. What was happening? Why was—where were all these compliments coming from?
To make this bizarre conversation even weirder, Jody actually let out a startled laugh, smiling as she shrugged helplessly.
“What can I say,” Her eyes flashing with humor. “Colt’s got a great personality.”
“What are you guys talking about?”
Right at that moment, Ryland couldn’t be happier to see his brother show up to interrupt. Finally, somebody to save him from this mess.
Tom Ryder—who at some point, had drifted so close to Ryland that their tails were almost touching and their bare shoulders were mere centimeters away from brushing—backed away with two powerful swishes of his tail, his hands raised in surrender.
“Whoops, looks like the fun-police is here. Think it’s time for me to leave.” He lowered his sunglasses and shot a wink above their frames toward Ryland’s flushed face.
"Don't be a stranger, Ryland Grace.”
And with that, he curled the end of his tail around Ryland’s, their fins softly brushing against each other in a gentle flourish that sent a shiver racing down Ryland’s arms. Colt made a strangled noise behind him and Jody let out another disbelieving laugh.
A silence fell over the trio as they all watched as Tom Ryder swam away, whistling a series of happy chirps without a care in the world.
“What. The fuck. Was that.” Colt looked faintly nauseated, like he had just swallowed a live, wriggling eel. He turned to stare at Ryland with an incredulous look on his face. “Was Ryder—was he flirting with you?”
Ryland let out a high-pitched noise of embarrassment, one akin to pressure leaking out of a vent. He buried his face into his hands, hiding his shame as Jody just laughed and laughed at his misery.
Somehow, someway, this was all Colt’s fault.