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Suguru’s footstep echoes loudly against the quiet, door clicking shut behind him. He has to squint, for a moment, eyes adjusting to the bright florescent lighting. Gray concrete walls, gray concrete ground, and of course, the gray concrete tank. Suguru’s gaze flicks around the room only briefly before settling on his reason for being here at all.
The mer is slumped halfway out of the tank, arms on the concrete, void-black tail swaying almost imperceptibly in the saltwater. Suguru walks over and crouches down beside him—the file said he’s male—with caution; the mer may be restrained but this is still the creature that…
There’s no response to Suguru’s approach. The mer is completely motionless, venomous spines remaining dormantly slumped down across his back, against his arms. His eyes are open, pupils constricted, iris a breath-taking shade of blue that almost makes Suguru halt. He thinks, for a moment, that the mer is asleep, but those eyes are moving, slowly tracking Suguru’s motion.
Oh. It’s worse than Suguru thought. He knew the situation was bad—he wouldn’t have been called if it weren’t dire—but even still, this level of lethargy…
Suguru swallows.
“Hey,” he says, and he knows the other won’t understand him, but hopefully the softness of his tone should provide some reassurance— “I’m Getō Suguru. I’m an aquatic veterinarian and have a PhD in marine biology. I’ve been called in to make sure you don’t die.” Before the lawsuit settles, at least. “I heard you haven’t eaten anything at all, hm? We’re gonna try to fix that. I’d love to jump right into it, but today, you’ll just be getting used to my presence.”
No response. That’s okay. Suguru wasn’t expecting one.
He settles fully onto the damp concrete, legs crossed. Studies the mer so much as he can without actually touching him or coming within easy range of those vivid blue spines. The white light washes out his colors. Deep-black scales that run up his sides, form patterns over his torso. Albino-white skin, snowy hair.
This stage—acclimating the other to Suguru’s presence—is the most boring one. He reads emails on his phone, watching the other from the corner of his eye. Eventually, just after lunchtime, he digs fruit leather from his pocket. He’s barely ripped open the plastic when—
His eyes barely even register the movement—the bur of white and blue as his would-be lunch is ripped from his hand. Suguru’s heart jumps into his throat. His hand stings, friction burn. Fast! So fast! Suguru feels frozen in place, and he’s reminded acutely of just why this mer’s life is being debated in court. Thirty wounded. Sixteen near-fatalities. Six dead. One of which was someone rich and important whose family has influence.
(They deserved it. Really, really, what did they expect when they dragged him from the water. That he’d come quietly, not fight back at all? Every injury this mer has inflicted, he’s been fully within right to give. And it sets a certain sort of fury through Suguru’s chest, a righteous indignation, that anyone would ever think otherwise—
Not important right now!)
He watches with cold shock as the mer completely devours the dried fruit. Dried fruit. Fruit.
The realization is cold and awful and prickly with an undertone of anger. They’ve been attempting to feed him fish. No fucking wonder the mer hasn’t eaten anything if he eats fruit. They’ve been feeding him wrong. Bile edges at the back of Suguru’s throat, and he has to push down his own horror kick himself into action at all.
“I think—I have dates and a bag of grapes in my car.” he scrambles to dig the rest of the fruit leather from his pocket and toss to to the wet concrete. “I’ll be right back!”
It takes him longer than he’d like to find his way out of the aquarium’s more private, staff only area—although he’s not employed here, god no—and get the aforementioned items from his car. By the time he gets back, his lungs are burning. He’s barely set it all down before the mer is tearing into it. His mouth open wide to swallow an entire vine of grapes, and Suguru suppresses a shudder at the gleam of his razor teeth.
It must be the sugar, he thinks to himself, it must be something about the sugar content—
that train of thought is completely interrupted when the mer finishes his food and jabs a claw into his neck. Blood dribbles out from the wound, slicking over his hand, his claw which is still dug into the flesh. Fuck. Zoochosis? Already? Suguru has seen animal self-mutilate in captivity, of course—a dolphin slamming her head repeatedly against the glass of her tank, an ape chewing their tail, a parrots plucking out his feathers, etc etc—but not like this. He has to—
“More,” a voice says, and Suguru takes a moment to connect it to the mer in front of him. The once who is currently removing his claw and grimacing, clear distaste across his face. The most distinct expression Suguru’s seen from him at all. “God I hate doing that,” he grumbles, then scowls at Suguru. “Are you deaf? I’m still hungry.”
Suguru startles, is still caught in shock. He’s never—he’s never heard of a mer talking in any human language. They communicate in clicks, not, not—
but then again, he thinks, no other adult mer has ever been captured. This is the only one. And it’s obviously not natural, going by how this one had to, what, tinker with his voicebox(? How?) to speak like this. And—
“Right,” he says, a beat late. “Right! Yeah, um, sure! I’ll—one second.”
It’s downright shameful, how he stumbles over his words. Completely different from his usual calm, his measured worlds, his smooth delivery. He runs back to his car, starting it up and driving down to a supermarket. Buys every kind of fruit they have, an after a moment of deliberation, a bag of brown sugar, too. It’s a heavy carry from his car back into the room, but the mer’s expression lights up when he sees everything Suguru’s brought.
Suguru leaves it within arm reach of the water before quickly backing away. His movement gets a grin, sharp-teethed and somewhat mocking. Blue eyes glinting. “Oooh, you’re backing away so fast!” A playful wiggle. “’Ya scared, Su-gu-ru?”
“You have,” Suguru reminds him, “hospitalized over thirty people since your capture and killed six.”
“Boo-hoo.” His venomous spines rise, just a bit, flexing ever-so-slightly. “How sad. They deserved it.”
“I’m not criticizing you.” Suguru presses a nail into his forehead and briefly closing his eyes. Opening them. “But there’s currently a lawsuit going on ‘cause of it. They want you killed immediately. Too dangerous to keep alive, apparently. I’m one of the key figures trying to prevent that from going through and if I join the list of people hospitalized or killed my you they’ll jump at the irony like piranhas.”
It’s the first time Suguru has worked together with his twin on anything in forever. Albeit, they have different reasons. Kenjaku wants this mer alive so that they can eventually acquire him as a live test subject. (The thought makes Suguru nauseous.)
“And they’re right! If I’m kept captive somewhere I’ll absolutely be dangerous, sorry-not-sorry!”
“We’re trying to help you.”
“Yeah and if I don’t die I’ll be some show-animal and die and be turned into your sushi, or whatever. Gimme a break.”
“Actually,” Suguru blurts, “I don’t eat fish.”
It’s a bit impulsive, saying so. It’s not that he’s lying, because he isn’t; he doesn’t eat fish, but it’s perhaps not the best thing to say. He should’ve—provided some reassurance, some plan to prevent that fate from happening. But to be accused of something like that needled against his pride.
Real startlement briefly takes the other’s face. A widening of the eyes, spines flaring up. “Wait, really?”
“It’s—it’s a philosophy thing,” Suguru says, taken by a sudden need to explain himself, “it’s not just fish, it’s all nonhuman animals. And byproducts! And whatever else. Because in absence of need things that’d be otherwise permissible aren’t. And the expanding circle! Equal consideration of interests. Sentientism—I was exposed to the concept in my early college years. Someone asked me to name a trait and—”
“Okay great so you have common decency,” the other rolls his eyes, “no need to be pretentious about it.”
This time, it’s Suguru’s turn to be completely taken aback. That’s—not the reaction he’s used to. Not at all. He was also far, far less eloquent than he usually is, bordering incoherence, but then again—he’s not used to talking with a direct victim of this particular issue. And he still hasn’t—hasn’t completely gotten over the fact that the other can talk at all.
“Oh,” Suguru says, feeling a little lost despite himself, and he doesn’t think he did anything wrong, not really, but sometimes it’s simply easier and more convenient to— “sorry.”
That gets a weird look. There’s a beat of silence, two, three. The air is cold and damp and tastes almost salty on his tongue. There’s a faint smell of sulphur and seaweed and gutted fish. The silence lingers. Suguru shifts uncomfortably on his feet. It’s an uneasy sort of quiet.
“Do you,” he eventually says, swallows, wishes he had asked earlier, “do you have a name? That I can call you?”
The other pauses, regards him, and Suguru’s skin prickles under the scrutiny. And, finally—“Satoru,” the mer says, “you can call me Satoru.”
“Okay,” Suguru says, “Satoru. Nice to meet you. I wish it could have been under better circumstances.”
Satoru, Satoru, shifts in the water. His arms are crossed on the concrete, chin on his forearm, spines still flexed. There’s another stretch of uneasy silence, heavy and stifling, plastic wrap on his skin. Suguru is getting close to forcing himself to break it again, but—
“Were there,” Satoru starts, “were there any others taken? In the area.”
Satoru says it like pulling teeth. It takes a moment for Suguru to understand.
“No! No there wasn’t, you were the only one.”
A tension Suguru hadn’t even noticed slides from Satoru like water. It’s a blatant sort of relief, so large and honest breath catches in Suguru’s lungs. The fabric of his turtleneck and trousers feels damp and sticky. His hair has slipped from where it’s tied up behind his head and is tickling his neck unpleasantly. He can’t imagine.
Except—his mind is already racing, theorizing, because he’s never known how to leave something alone, and—
“Young?” He guesses.
And the tension is back. Satoru’s eyes narrow at him, spines bristling, a hint of teeth. Oh. Spot on. Suguru can’t imagine, except he can; he thinks of Mimiko and Nanako who may not be his by blood but are still his in every way that matters. They’re no longer small children, teenagers already, but his heart still drops with something cold and terrible when he thinks of being torn away from them, leaving them alone and vulnerable.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Whatever.”
“...Do you have a partner to take care of them?”
“Pssh, please,” Satoru says, hint of a grin sharking across his lips. He looks up to meet Suguru’s eyes, and the entire posture of his body is arrogant. “As if. I’m totally out of everyone’s league—something you’d know about, I imagine.”
No mate, then. Suguru’s brows furrow. “What?”
A pout tugs at Satoru’s face. “No fun! You’re no fun at all!”
“Ummm...” It’s a drastic difference in behavior from before Suguru confirmed the safety—sort of—of Satoru’s young. It’s like an entire weight has been discarded. This is a completely new flippancy. Casualness?
Satoru is looking at him strangely, or—intensely? Eyeing him like he’s trying to figure something out, or imagining something. Suguru shifts his weight between his feet.
“What? You’re looking at me.”
“I’m always looking at everything,” Satoru says, then: “’Tryna figure out if you’re a guy or a girl.” Pause. “Something else?”
“Guy,” Suguru answers, after a moment.
“Oh,” and Satoru loos disappointed for a moment, before brightening just as fast. “Well, whatever! That’s fun, too!”
Fun. Suguru doesn’t understand. “Why’d you wanna know?”
“There are,” Satoru answers, eyes glinting, “all kinds of fun and interesting things you can do with wombs and unfertilized eggs.”
It takes a moment for that to compute. For the implication to compute. Suguru’s face burns right up to his ears. There’s something wrong with this conversation—Satoru is making some bad assumptions. But, Suguru suddenly recalls, mer are sequential hermaphrodites. All born female, and will change sex during adulthood, if they so choose. Which means—if Satoru grew up with that as the norm—
“I’m not a woman,” Suguru says on complete impulse, skin still burning, “but I do have a womb.”
Satoru’s face twists with confusion only a half beat before comprehension strikes. Then he laughs. Mortification crests Suguru’s mind. “Oh—right, I forgot! Humans can’t—hah! Then—” and then he’s just giggling again.
“Hey,” Suguru says, somewhat miffed, although not truly bothered.
When Satoru does, eventually, regain his breath, it’s with a miscellaneous gesture and a dramatic sigh. He slumps against the concrete edge of his holding tank, tail flexing in the water. “Unfortunately, this isn’t a good place for that fun stuff.”
It’s an immediate damper on what had been, although briefly, a brighter mood. Suguru sits on the ground. The fabric of his clothing shifts audibly. His shoe knocks against the concrete. Satoru groans. When his face shifts under the bright white lights, Suguru sees that he’s scowling.
“What’s wrong?”
“My eyes hurt because it’s too fuckin’ bright in here and I’m bored out of my mind.”
It’s said with a face-wide pout, a petulant note that’d have Suguru rolling his eyes and scoffing in another context. In this one, it makes his heart clench so tightly in his chest it’s physically painful. Feels like it’s breaking. Of course Satoru is bored because he’s been kept in captivity for, what, a month now? Longer. It’s utter isolation, complete sensory deprivation. Deprivation in general. It’s not fair, none of this is fair.
Satoru isn’t a creature meant for a place like this. Sharp with teeth, bright venomous spines, scales the color of night sky, body larger in both length and width than Suguru’s… and kept in a place like this. Shouldn’t be kept at all. It feels so innately wrong.
“I’ll turn the lights off,” Suguru says, rising to his feet, feeling a bit too light for his body, and making his way to the light switch. The room is immediately engulfed with darkness. Suguru digs for his phone and turns flashlight on, places it screen-down on the concrete so he can see anything at all. The tank now appears dark, foreboding, every one of Satoru’s movements sending silver-lined ripples over the dark surface. “Once we secure your life,” Suguru says, “me ‘n some others, we’ll try to get you out.”
Of course, it won’t be easy. Currently, Satoru legally belongs to an aquarium chain. After this lawsuit settles, presumably leaving Satoru alive, there’ll be several parties trying to acquire him. It’ll be…
Satoru clicks his tongue, sound combining with a deeper click from his throat. “I’ll kill ‘em if they try to kill me.” Referring to the lawsuit.
“It’s not,” Suguru grimaces, “it’s not fair like that. They’ll drug you from a distance.” You’re not in your home turf, Suguru almost says, but stops himself at the last moment; it’s not like Satoru has to be reminded.
“Tch! I know.”
But Satoru doesn’t want his life to rely on a fucking court battle, on a bunch of lawyers squabbling and social media teams running online campaigns. That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. And maybe this is reckless, so reckless, but—
“I may have a way to get you out,” Suguru says abruptly. His mind is racing so fast it’s dizzying. This wasn’t an option, before, not really, because of Satoru’s danger towards previous handlers, but now—“It’s a little risky, and definitely illegal, but… I don’t do them so much anymore—have refocused my efforts—but I used to do more direct action, even some sabs, and I still have a lot of connections from that time. This place is a decent bit inland precisely because of the concern about smuggling, but I could...I could gather a team and the equipment to smuggle you out. Not good equipment, definitely not anything even remotely comfortable—”
“But you can do it!”
There’s almost giddy excitement in Satoru’s voice, and Suguru feels suddenly and inexplicably fond. “I can. You’d have to cooperate though. We’d probably have to transport you in some wet tarp and transfer vehicles at least once… None of this works if you end up hospitalizing half of us.”
“I get it I get it! No pricking people, not even a little. Weak. How long will it take?”
“I can probably pull it together in a week, maybe a bit less.” Internally, Suguru thanks himself for keeping all those contacts. “Can you bear with this a little longer?”
“Sure sure,” Satoru answers, eyes bright, tail glimmering under the water’s surface. “And after that? What happens when you get me to the shoreline?”
Suguru blinks, somewhat confused. “You go on your way, I guess..?”
“Aww, so this is a once and done kinda thing, huh? I’m hurt!”
Suguru’s face furrows. What is he talking about? “I don’t understand.”
Satoru groans, sinking into the water, just a little, and his eyes reflect brightly when he rolls them. “Do you visit the sea often?”
“I live by it.”
“Oh yeah?” Satoru moves indistinctly in the water sending ripples. In the room’s darkness, illuminated on parts by the indirect light of Suguru’s phone’s flashlight, he looks like something ethereal and otherworldly. “One of those seaside villages? The ones with all those folktales about mermaids and sirens?” There’s something in his voice, edged and inhuman, the echo of a click, something like a purr. “How dangerous. What if one got you?”
(All those folktales, were, of course, mythifications of mer.)
“...I thought,” he says, because the situation is odd but even Suguru isn’t that dense, “you said that you’re out of everyone’s league.”
“As a lifelong partner, yeah,” Satoru says, easy, “but who says I don’t have a little fun sometimes?” A pout. It should not look nearly that alluring. Maybe it’s the lighting. “C’mon c’mon you’re so pretty.”
How would that even work? No, that’s not what’s important—
“Just to make sure,” Suguru says, because he can’t just ignore how awful the context surrounding all this is, “you’re not offering because—because you feel like you have to repay something, or have to exchange something, or—”
“What? Of course not. Jeez.”
“Not at all?”
“Do you take me as some sort of liar!?”
“...So,” Suguru says, and finally relaxes, chest lightening, “no I don’t. You seem like a very sincere person, Satoru-san.” And prideful, too.
“Oooo ooo is that a yes? A yes?” Satoru does this odd—wiggle, almost, in the water, resembling in demeanor something of an excited puppy. “We could have lo-ots of fun together!”
Suguru flushes, remembering Satoru’s mention of something fun and interesting. He swallows, tries to get his bearings. “You’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“That’s not a no,” Satoru says, smugly, looking every bit like a cat that’s got the cream.
“No,” Suguru admits, after a moment, “it’s not; it’s a maybe.”