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“Come on, Luca!” Alberto shouts, glancing behind him at his companion, who appears to be fiddling with one of the human trinkets he’s carrying. Earlier, after Luca had finished taking care of the goatfish, he’d been told he could spend the rest of the day in Alberto’s company—and they’d both wasted no time before deciding they’d be spending their time collecting whatever lost, water-damaged human items scattered around the seabed they could find before bringing them to the tower on Isola Del Mare to use to improve their homemade Vespa. “These aren’t gonna carry themselves up hill.”
Luca looks to him, surprised he even noticed Luca’s distraction. “I know, sorry! I’m coming.” He swims ahead to his friend, flashing him a smile. “We found a lot today.”
“Yeah, we did. Our Vespa’s gonna look just like the real thing this time.”
Alberto swims up to the shallows until he finds himself standing on his feet and tosses the now much heavier human items down onto the sand to empty them of any water. Shaking off the many droplets of water on him until scales turn to freckled, sun-kissed skin, Alberto takes a moment to breathe in deep and look up to the blue sky littered with fluffy clouds, finding himself appreciative of the warm weather.
He turns to look behind him, watching with a grin as Luca follows—until the teal-green boy pauses halfway out of the water.
“Uh—hold on, can you take these?” Luca asks, gesturing to the few items still in his arms. Alberto gives him a quick look of questioning but doesn’t think much of it.
“Yeah, sure. You good?” He asks, reaching down to take the items from his friends slightly shaking arms. He chooses not to comment on the shaking.
“Yeah, fine! Just… give me a second,” Luca says, dipping back under the surface of the water.
Alberto places down the small collection of items with the others and looks back to his friend, hand on his hip as the other hangs at his side. Luca is barely visible beneath the calm but ever-moving tide and frankly, Alberto has never really been one for patience. He lets out a purposefully exaggerated sigh, readying himself to ask what the hold-up is, and quickly dips himself back into the water until he is fully submerged, sun-kissed skin returning to lilac and periwinkle scales and fins again.
He looks towards Luca and sees a strange look on his face—one that appears to be a mix of concentration and concern, deep blue brows knit closely together. The scene itself is… curious. Luca is holding one arm up, patting the gills on the same side using his other hand. Alberto has an eyebrow cocked upwards and doesn’t think to worry until he hears the quietest ‘ oh no ’ leave the mouth of his friend, just barely above a whisper.
That takes Alberto from impatient to slightly concerned.
“Luca?” Alberto swims closer, eyebrows furrowed this time, the sudden call earning a startled yelp from Luca.
“You have to stop scaring me like that!” Luca complains, arms quickly lowering back down.
Unfortunately for Luca, Alberto has always been perceptive. It’s hard to miss how the hand Luca was using to fiddle with his gill is now gently clutching it, despite Luca’s casual attempt to hide it.
“I’m literally just floating here—are you okay?” His eyes are looking straight to the other boys’ hidden gill, not even trying to disguise his interest, and Luca immediately stiffens when he realises where his friends obvious gaze is aimed. His tail swishes gently in an attempt to put distance between the two. An obvious and not at all subtle retreat, if you ask Alberto.
“Oh—I—yeah, no, I’m fine! All good, totally fine. I, um—have to go, though.” He looks like he’s trying to give a reassuring smile but it’s probably the most unconvincing attempt Alberto has ever seen from him. And he’s seen a lot of attempts. “I just remembered, uh. My mom needed me for something! So—”
Luca is a god-awful liar. Alberto swims closer, trying to close the gap between them, only for Luca to continue swimming further away.
“Luca, I think you’re forgetting the part where I was there . Your mom said you could stay out until sundown and that’s not for hours. ” He swims ahead, blocking Luca’s path, his fins allowing him to quickly outmaneuver Luca’s attempts to flee, all the while trying to catch a glimpse of whatever he’s hiding. “What’s wrong with your gills? Are you hurt?”
“My gills? Who—who says there’s something wrong with my gill—” Luca all but trips over his own tongue while purposefully angling himself to keep the bothersome side the furthest from Alberto’s prying eyes.
“Luca, you’re bad at lying, just show me! I can help!” Alberto is pleading at this point, patience already gone with the tide. The more Luca dodges the question, the more Alberto worries. He’s practically swimming circles around him to figure out what the problem is but the smaller boy just turns away every time, determined to keep the issue to himself.
Luca pulls his legs to his chest, looking like he’s curling into himself, his free hand outstretched to keep Alberto at a distance.
“It’s nothing to worry about, really! I need to—it’s just...”
He’s coming around, much to Alberto’s relief. The older boy grabs his friends outstretched hand in an attempt to comfort him, squeezing it gently, letting Luca know he’s safe telling him what’s wrong.
“‘Just’ what? What is it?” He asks.
Luca pauses for a moment, considering his options, and pulls his hand from his gills to then cover as much of his face with it as he can. There’s a darker blue colour tinting his cheeks and his audial fins are noticeably turned downwards as he lets out a groan.
“It’s… embarrassing. There’s a...”
Alberto decides if there’s ever a time to lend his undivided attention to Luca, it’s right now— and so he does . He gently rubs his webbed thumb over Luca’s knuckles in a circular motion, trying to ease his nerves.
“...a parasite. Thing.”
Luca is barely audible at this point, completely refusing to look at Alberto.
“A parasite? What do you mean?”
“I don’t really know what they’re called... but sometimes, after spending time with the goatfish, I’ll get these little… bug-looking things on me.”
He can hear the hesitation in Luca’s voice—it’s obvious this is difficult for him to talk about, and the last thing Alberto wants is to do is make Luca think he isn’t taking it seriously. He stays quiet, attentive—gives Luca room to keep talking.
“Usually they’re just on my tail or my back or something! And—and the little cleaner fish take care of them before they become a problem! But...” Luca looks down to his gills. “I dunno. I guess they missed this one and it, um. It got into my gill.”
Alberto has heard of this kind of thing in passing—it can happen to just about anything in the ocean. It’s why some fish, like sharks, have other little fish swimming alongside them—free meals for the pest control, free maintenance for the fish. It’s not uncommon. Honestly, he isn’t surprised this happened. If anything, he’s surprised it hadn’t happened sooner, considering how much time Luca spends with the goatfish in the grazing fields.
(He reminds himself to stay focused and not think about Luca surrounded by a bunch of little cleaner fish.)
“Why didn’t you just say so? You don’t have to be embarrassed around me, dude.” Alberto flashes him his usual, casual grin, and Luca finally looks at him again.
“I didn’t want you to think I was gross, I guess.” He shrugs his shoulders and fiddles with the loose seaweed at the ends of his shorts. “But anyway, I should really go try and get it out. We can work on the Vespa later, or tomorrow, or—”
“You’re not gross. Why don’t I try to get it out for you?”
Luca gives him a look of surprise, clearly not expecting him to offer. Before he even opens his mouth, Alberto knows he’s about to turn him down, though probably more for Alberto’s sake than his own.
“It might be easier if I try. Have you ever had one in your gill before?”
“I mean, no, but—”
“Then it’s settled, I’m getting it out for you. C’mon, arm up.” Alberto lets go of Luca’s hand and lifts his arm back up by his wrist before Luca even has a chance to respond with anything more coherent than another yelp. He says nothing, aware that there’s no point in fighting once Alberto sets his mind to something.
Alberto is going to help his friend if it’s the last thing he does, even if it means literally not giving said friend a choice in the matter. He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, but—how hard can it be?
All Alberto knows is that he’s going to have to be gentle . He hopes he won’t have trouble with that, given he’s the type to jump off cliffs and ride crappy, homemade Vespas held together with rusty nails and a dash of hope off ramps into the ocean. But gills are delicate—soft and sensitive beneath the protective, scaly outer layer above them—and he doesn’t want the trust Luca is giving him to go to waste.
He starts by gently feeling around the scales, hoping to feel something that would let him know exactly which gill the thing is in, given he can only guess what it might actually look like. Thankfully, he gets lucky. He can feel the smallest of bumps on the bottom gill that isn’t present on the one above, or on either on the opposite side when he opts for using them as a parasite-less example.
He inhales sharply, summoning his inner courage, and lowers himself closer to Luca’s side. Reaching his hand towards it, he hesitates—glancing up.
Luca has his eyes screwed shut, not bothering to hide how nervous he is about the situation. Alberto smiles to himself and reaches forward again, this time carefully hooking a claw beneath the scaly top-layer and lifting it upward.
Before Alberto can even think to look for the unwelcome intruder, he gets distracted—in every sense of the word—at the sight before him.
Bright pink, almost red gills dancing and fluttering in rhythm with every breath Luca takes. Alberto has never seen a sea monsters gills before, not even his own, and he gets the sneaking suspicion that this might actually be somewhat… personal. Sacred? Intimate?
For his own sake, he pushes the thoughts of intimacy to the very back of his mind and tries to focus on the task at hand. With any luck, the sound of his heartbeat won’t distract him. Much.
One claw gently cards between the pink-red filaments for anything that seems abnormal or out of place—not that he’d know exactly what “out of place” would be in this situation—until he spots something.
It’s small. About a centimetre and a half long. Fairly round, almost white. Not particularly offensive looking—it’s more face than it is creature, and has what Alberto considers to be more legs than is probably necessary for something that lives in water.
It didn’t look like it’d done any damage yet, much to his relief. Alberto actually feels pretty proud he’d managed to find it.
“I see it! Hold still.” He places his left hand to the other side of Luca, using the other boys hip both for a bit of leverage and to keep Luca still while he tries to fish the little fugitive out.
Luca tenses under the touch and Alberto subconsciously uses his thumb to rub reassuring circles into his hip in the same way he had on green knuckles earlier.
Pressing a claw to either side of the little creature—careful not to disturb any of the delicate, important structures beneath Luca’s scales—Alberto quickly pinches down on it before it decides to wiggle further in, ignoring the way the thing looks at him like he just walked in on it undressing. But before he even goes to remove the fiend from where it’s set up shop and announce the mission as a successful extraction , Luca lets out a sudden and high pitched sound that Alberto can only describe as… a trill.
Alberto freezes.
He has no idea what it means, but he can feel the heat it brought to his own cheeks, and the way his heart feels like it’s about to beat straight out of his chest doesn’t go unnoticed either—and when he glances up, partly out of reflex and partly out of concern of hurting his best friend, he spots an unmistakable blue flush bloom across his friends face too.
Fantastic. Nice going, Scorfano. Add that sound to the growing list of things he’ll be unpacking later. He doesn’t even want to know what part of his stupid fish brain just started sounding the alarms, or why.
That’s the problem of later-Alberto, the one who won’t be falling asleep easily tonight.
“Sorry!” Alberto blurts out, an apology as rushed as it is frantic and breathless, before looking back to Luca’s gill and, as gently as possible, plucking the pale little rascal out.
He uses his tail to quickly push himself back up to Luca’s eye level and proudly holds up what he found with a grin, feigning nonchalance as the parasite wiggles its many, unsettling little legs.
“I got it!”
Luca’s eyes slowly open one at a time—first the left, then the right, like he’s expecting the absolute worst outcome.
When he finally looks towards the hand holding the little bug, his eyes widen, his mouth just barely hanging open while he looks at the catch between Alberto’s claws.
“Try not to look too surprised, Luca.” Alberto laughs, his grin curling into more of a smirk as he watches his friends expression shift from shock to something much softer—grateful with a touch of apologetic.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean—...thank you. For getting it out.” Luca shrugs his shoulders and rubs his hand on his gill with a sheepish smile, relieved to not have had to deal with the little unwanted stowaway on his own. Or worse, with his mom’s help.
“No problem. I’m only the best friend ever, and you totally owe me.”
Pushing away the strangely intimate mental image of Luca’s gills out of his mind, as well as that trill that he definitely won’t be thinking about for the rest of the week , Alberto shrugs as casually as he can and absent-mindedly throws the little bug into his mouth, dusting off his hands as he chews.
He’s never seen Luca look so absolutely disgusted in all the time he’s known him.
Alberto swallows.
“What?” He asks.
“What!? You just put that gross thing in your mouth and ate it!”
“It’s free food!” Alberto argues. “I’ve put worse things in my mouth—”
He can’t even finish his sentence, getting cut off by their sudden, shared fit of laughter that effortlessly dissipates any of the awkward energy left lingering in the water.
“‘Beto, that’s so gross!”
Alberto can’t help but admire the look on Luca’s face as he laughs, eyes squinting, pupils blown wide, smile so bright it could double as a lantern in the dark. That ever-familiar deep blue blush paints his green-teal cheeks, and Alberto swears his heart skips a beat.
He wants to keep that smile all to himself.
“Not gross enough for you to stop being my friend though.” Alberto teases, smirk still present. He’d been worried this whole ordeal might prove too much for Luca to deal with, but now? Now he has no reason to regret offering a helping hand.
Luca’s laughter bubbles down into smaller giggles as he catches his breath, wiping away a tear that had long since become one with the sea.
Looking to Alberto, he smiles warmly.
“Never.”