Chapter Text
“Have you ever had a pet before?”
Bakugou isn’t sure why he’s here.
That’s a lie. He knows exactly why. Kirishima, dopey dumbfuck that he is, dragged him kicking and screaming to the local rescue. Why he tells the nosy bastard anything, never mind the inner-workings of his therapy sessions, is beyond him.
“No,” he grits out as Kirishima jabs him pointedly between the ribs. “I haven’t.”
The blonde woman manning the front desk clasps her hands together with entirely too much vigor. She has a puppy themed name tag clipped to her tight button-up shirt that Bakugou can’t be bothered to finish reading. Utsushi-sushi-something.
“There’s nothing quite like your first pet y’know,” she coos. Her smile is sort of dopey. “I’ll let you have a look around back — we got a whole party goin’ on.”
As she contentedly fiddles with a keyring Kirishima leans against his shoulder. “You’re gonna scare off all the rescues with that sour snarl.”
“If they’re scared by my fuckin’ face, they shouldn’t be coming home with me.”
Kirishima softens. He’s a gaudy looking guy, what with his sharky chompers and spiky bottle-dye-red hair, but he still somehow manages to look leagues friendlier than Bakugou could ever hope to be. “Don’t be like that. I really think this’ll be good for you.”
“Thinking? From you?” Bakugou can’t help but snort. “That’s a new one.”
She finally manages to unlock the door behind her, beckoning them in before Kirishima can retort. Countless cages line the vinyl-tiled hall, a frenzy of barks and yowls rising from the furred occupants as they enter. Even for him it’s headache inducing — Bakugou can't help but curl his hands into tense claws, squeezing his eyes shut for a few moments. Kirishima’s rough fingers press gently against his lumbar, coaxing him forward. The grounding sensation isn’t terrible.
“We got like, a whole bunch of breeds that end up showing up at our doorstep, since we’re a no-kill shelter,” the woman elucidates. She seems particularly proud of this. “Are you gunning for something specific, like a certain breed of cat or dog?”
Bakugou casts his gaze around, pausing on an evil-eyed tri-color shiba curled in a far cage corner. “Not really.”
“You guys carry more than cats and dogs, though, right?” Kirishima sounds sort of excited, eyes sparkling anticipatorily. Bakugou by now knows better than to ask. “I heard you hold other kinds of animals, like, rarer kinds?”
“Oh, our other … ?” The rescue worker, in contrast, suddenly looks apprehensive. “Well ... we do have a small selection of exotic rescues. They tend to require a lot more care and attention than your average pet, so for a first time pet owner ... ”
Sounded like more trouble than it was worth. Bakugou opens his mouth to say as much, but Kirishima beats him to the punch.
“My buddy here loves a good challenge!” His grin is sharp, infectious — and oh-so-fucking punchable. He thumps his palm against the small of Bakugou’s back. “Right Bakugou?”
Bakugou works his jaw furiously. “S’fine.”
She bobs her head after a moment of thought. “If you say so.”
They end up following her down a darkened hallway, glancing briefly into a set of warm rooms populated with birds and lizards respectively, before stepping into what looks suspiciously like a retooled garage. Pipes hissing at intervals snake through the floor, interconnected with three medium-sized water tanks. Only the middle tank appears to be in use, awash with dense clumps of kelp and fern floating just beneath the surface. Piles of mossy rocks litter the sandy bottom, populated by the odd snappy-clawed crustacean, but it’s the tank’s largest occupant that arrests their attention.
A pale green tail fin flutters idly from side to side, catching the weak light of the room in flashes of golden iridescence as it stirs the dark sand. The skin is ripped and ragged like the edges of a broken beer bottle. Bakugou follows the curve of its slick, scaly tail to the uncannily humanoid upper half seamlessly attached, propped up on a slimy rock by finned forearms. Its ribs protrude in stark lines, sides expanding and contracting ever so slightly in time with its gills. It’s clearly resting, yet its shoulders bunch as if prepped to flee.
At the sound of their footsteps the creature seems to startle — its head whips around to take in its new audience with wide, distrustful eyes as the woman gestures for them to stop. Bakugou’s gaze is drawn to the flared gills along the sides of its neck, glimmering faintly aurous as its stare darts between the three of them. Even its expression is disconcertingly human.
“A mermaid!” Kirishima exclaims in a gleeful boom, eyes wide with wonder. The ‘mermaid’ immediately winces, snarling its lip ever so slightly before disappearing into a thick clump of lurid fern.
“Good job,” Bakugou snips.
The rescuer worker presses a finger to her plush mouth in a shushing motion. “He can like, hear you through the glass you know,” she says in a chastising drawl, and Kirishima wilts. “Mer are real sensitive about sounds. Especially this one.”
“His fins are kinda messed up,” Kirishima comments, tilting his head to get a better look at the mer’s scar-streaked scales. It beats its flared veiltail warningly at him as if on cue. “In fact, he looks pretty torn up in general … ”
“He was just rescued from a fighting ring last week.” Her bottom lip quivers a bit as she says it. “Probably spent most of his life holed up in one of those tiny, stagnant holding pools, y’know? Lookin’ at all his scars, I’d say he’s probably been fishfighting for a real long time. Sick stuff.”
“And he’s up for fuckin’ adoption?”
“Well, he isn’t feral,” she elaborates. “And a mer reserve isn’t the ideal forever home for a former fish fighter, since like. He’s been fighting other mer all his life for his life. An environment full of ‘em would def stress him out at best, trigger something disastrous at worst.”
Bakugou finds his attention drifting away from her, vision tunneling until the mer is the focus of his field of view. The mer isn’t quite as svelte as the few others Bakugou’s seen — his upper body is coiled with corded muscle and riddled with scar tissue. Those dark pupils aren’t as dilated as before, but they’re still uncannily large in comparison to the thin ring of those viridescent irises.
He hasn’t seen many mer over the course of his lifetime, largely by choice. They were a luxury item: a status symbol for those with too much time and money on their smooth, manicured hands. Sure, they were featured in larger aquariums, but Bakugou found them incomprehensibly uncomfortable to gawk at. He was far from a mer liberationist, but there was something distinctly off about their existence as custom-bred playthings.
It all seemed sort of fucked when their deep eyes glittered with intelligence.
Kirishima’s moving his mouth. Saying something. Bakugou hates this, hates that he has to strain to catch words spoken at a respectable volume. “Kirishima,” he growls, and Kirishima straightens. “Speak up.”
“Sorry! I was just thinking that he looks kind of. Different from those aquarium mer. Real strong.”
“He’s actually much closer to what a wild mer would look like,” the rescue worker informs cheerily. “Most captive mer are selectively breed for flashiness, not ferocity. Like koi type mer, with all their pretty patterns! Breeding for fish fighting’s pretty different, for all the wrong reasons.”
Clearly. The mer’s scarring was atrocious.
Kirishima’s blabbing away now, asking the rescuer all sorts of asinine mer-related questions. Bakugou tunes out around when the conversation turns to excrement and flatulence with a shake of his head. Idiot.
Bakugou jams his hands deep into tight denim pockets, boredom bubbling in his chest. This was a goddamn waste of time. None of the rescues had jumped out to him. What a stupid, sentimental suggestion — he could handle himself just fuckin’ fine without “added support.” What the hell could an animal do for him that bomb disposal hadn’t? Nothing could be more exciting than that.
You’ve managed on your own for a very long time, Katsuki. It might help to take care of something else.
Yeah. Right.
He tilts his head up as bright scales flash across his peripheral vision. The mer has reemerged from hiding with caution, gaze fixed pointedly on Kirishima as he weaves out of the weedy kelp. Bakugou couldn’t blame it. Kirishima was every bit a boisterous eyesore, and red to boot. Bakugou wouldn’t be surprised if the color alone was triggering the creature’s ire.
“You’re no sight for sore eyes, huh?” Bakugou grumbles up at the mer as it swims closer to the acrylic, watching the hypnotic sway of its counter shaded tail. Its dark green hair billows back from its forehead, like a mess of soft seaweed. For a mer, he’s pretty boring — a monochrome green tail, with no molts or stripes. Nothing like a show fish. “What a plain looking fucker.”
And then the mer looks at him.
Those dark, knowing eyes are reflective pools, whirling with a riptide of emotions Bakugou is far too familiar with. Contempt. Distrust. Defiance. The frigidity of the mer’s gelid glare sends a single frisson rolling down the length of Bakugou’s spine. Prickles his scalp. He blinks, and the mer has already looked away, swimming up towards the top of the tank. As if nothing of note had occured.
Bakugou finds himself pressing fingertips against the clear acrylic, watching the easy glide of the mer through the clear water with a strange, furious intensity. This creature had looked at him like he was the proverbial fish out of water. The eyesore. Did this glorfied goldfish think it was above him somehow? It had the audacity to give him the stink-eye? What the fuck was so special about this swimming piece of discount sushi anyway?
“So are there any of our rescues so far that you’re interested in?” The woman pipes up from behind him, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. Bakugou can feel her and Kirishima’s expectant eyes on his back.
“Yeah man!” Kirishima chimes in. “I saw a retriever watching you with some big ol’ googly eyes back there.”
“Take your time, though. They’re all so cute, so it can be a bit tough to — ”
“This one.”