Chapter Text
“Jason, c’mere! The water’s warm!”
Jason ignored Dick’s invitation in favour of reclining further into his beach chair sheltered from the sun’s rays. He refused to move from his spot even to dodge Dick’s absurdly well-aimed splash of water.
“Go away, Dickface,” Jason yelled tiredly.
“Come on! When do we ever get to go to the beach together? Damian’s getting huffy about being the only siren in the water.”
A head of glossy hair and green scales popped out of the water, framing a scowl. “Actually, I am perfectly content being here and away from the odour of Todd’s discontent.”
Dick responded by shoving Damian back underwater (it’s ok he’s a siren he won’t drown). “I worry for your health sometimes, baby bro. Your skin’s gonna dry out without some moisture.”
Jason flipped him off. “Are you calling me wrinkly? You know you’re the oldest, right?”
“Not what I meant!”
He hadn’t always been like… this. Once upon a time, he could walk without the feeling of scales sliding and grinding beneath soft human skin, like the latter was nothing more than a costume stitched onto his person. Once upon a time, he could stretch his limbs are not feel the pines of fins hidden away, folded into unnatural shapes. He could walk, and his feet would not threaten to dissolve away into paper.
He could shower standing up, and bathe without having to close his eyes.
“I’m going somewhere a little less noisy,” Jason muttered. He snatched the umbrella wholesale and snapped his book shut as he made to leave.
“Nooooooo,” Dick wailed. “Come baaaaack.”
“Have fun fish-sitting, Dickhead,” Jason hollered behind his back.
Whatever retort Dick had in store for him, it was quickly cut off by a bored Damian dragging him under by the trunks, at which point Dick’s indignant pleading turned to indignant screeching. As he deserved.
But Jason had only crossed the beach half-way when a soft trill reached his ears. At once his legs locked together and his head snapped to point his ear in the direction it’d come from.
Another trill. It wasn’t come from Damian, and it was too high-pitched for Damian to have made.
He moved before thinking. His legs fell into a hasty rhythm as he rounded the hill bordering the beach and arrived at another secluded strip of sand. The trills got louder, clearer, more distressed.
They were coming from an outcropping of rocks at the shoreline. There Jason’s nose began to twitch, as olfactory sensors stronger than any human’s activated from the salt spray and picked up on the scent of another person. Another siren.
A net had washed up and gotten tangled in the rocks, frayed and laden with moss and algae, and it had picked up another someone on its way. As he rounded the corner he was struck by the source of the trilling.
It was smaller than his forearm, and oh so delicate. Its tail beat madly, uselessly against the net binding its fins and grinding its soft hide. Its pudgy arms flailed around desperately, unable to grip the smooth rock. Its eyes, framed by dull scales, trembled as they met Jason’s. Its voice fell silent.
It was a siren baby.
A harsh wave crashed against the rocks and sprayed water everywhere. Already pinpricks stabbed his skin as it peeled off to expose the shimmering red underneath. His wettest parts, his feet, were already extending. The bones there grew and grew, threatening to stab through the skin binding them.
The kid whimpered. Some mechanism deep within Jason’s brain whirred into motion, bypassing reason and thought. He fought against the transformation, fought to keep his legs solid as he waded into the water. The baby hunched in on itself. It feebly tried to cover its exposed belly with its arms, but the net was far too tight. Jason’s throat moved automatically and sang a low croon. The baby – the fry – went still, though its eyes maintained that unblinking stare into him. Jason’s claws pierced through his skin of his left hand and with their edge he pulled off the skin on his right. With both claws extended he reached out.
The fry trembled, its every limb shaking as its gaze landed on each sharp point, but Jason moved slowly. He hooked one claw underneath a link in the net and plucked it. The line snapped. The he cut another, and another. With every link of its trap destroyed, the fry relaxed more and more, and naked, desperate hope bloomed in its face and on its fins. Now calmer, Jason could approach the child themselves.
Blithely, he noted it was a boy. He crooned out more comforting notes to soothe the fry. The first thing he freed was the kid’s delicate fins. He laid one hand on the boy’s tail, and –
The scales were so frail. When had he last eaten? The thought pulsed uncomfortably within him. With the kid’s tail steadied, he slid one claw beneath the rope and snapped it, freeing the kid’s left hip fin to rapidly flap back and forth as the fry chirped in exhausted relief.
After that he moved more quickly. He cut more and more lines in the net, freeing the little fry’s fins, then his arms, then he set to removing the coarse fibre from the child’s soft, sensitive face and underbelly scales, the most delicate part of a fry’s body. Finally, the net fell away. Jason tossed the ugly, ruined thing far inland where it couldn’t hurt any more sea creatures, and the kid lay panting on the rock, too weak to even lift his body above the water.
His mission was complete. The fry was saved. His more logical faculties were beginning to rear their ugly heads. The kid had to have come from somewhere. Where were his parents? Why was he alone? Why so close to land?
The kid’s eyes met his again, and again he felt that desperate pleading from the kid. The fry’s stomach rumbled, and he whimpered out a short chirp that cut into Jason’s heart.
care-taker? dad?
If he were being logical, there was no way he could be a Dad. This kid was just being lost and confused and imprinting onto the first thing that showed him kindness. Jason tried to fight against the instinctual need to snatch this kid up and make sure nobody touches him, but it was a losing battle. The fry’s ear fins wagged like a sad wet dog’s. He chirruped again, hands pawing at the ground to signal he wanted to be carried.
“Jason? Jasonnn!” someone’s voice called out, but it was hazy and Jason couldn’t make it out. All he knew was that the fry’s body stiffened with fear and apprehension at the newcomer, and all at once he gave him. He scooped the child up within his arms, feeling his soft baby scales against Jason’s warped adult ones. He pushed against the rock and into deeper water. His tail – he hadn’t even noticed it appear – beat against the water as he took the fry under and far away from the humans.
Already he began to click at a high tone and his nose took in the water, searching food to feed his fry.