Chapter Text
Shining blue pectoral fins dragged against the smooth wall of the tank as he swam near the bottom, close to the sand, in the same circle he always did, unable to sit still or rest until the pain forced him back into the false safety of the little cavern in one corner. But today, despite the way the wounds across his back burned, worse with each sweep of his tail, he continued forward.
His pool was outside so that the sun warmed the water and his scales when he surfaced, but there was also a constant, quiet but unmistakable buzz from a machine that warmed the water, turned on due to the unseasonably cold weather. The pool was part of a small series of outdoor enclosures that had been set into the ground, each meant to contain large marine life in a decent-sized space that would allow them to heal and recover safely without atrophying muscle. The upper, main walkway was surface-level, and led to the gate that the humans used to enter and leave his enclosure. Beneath that, in what looked like an indoor walkway of some kind, was a viewing area, and the only place that glass could be found on his tank. A few places to rest and sit were scattered around the space, though it seemed to be used most often in the evenings. Another tank was connected to either side of his own, though only currently held anything: a group of injured or weakened sea turtles. He could see them swimming sluggishly past through the small grate that connected the tanks together.
The other tank sat empty.
But even if another animal had been on the other side of him, it wouldn’t have helped the mer in the center tank, just as it didn’t help that the humans came by so frequently. On the above-ground walkways, they brought him food once in the morning and once at night. Each afternoon, they gave him treats so that they could examine his wounds and cover them in the thick, foul-smelling salve they were so fond of. They came and they went, chattering at him in their strange, choppy language as though he were one of them, and though he was beginning to understand their words well, he couldn’t replicate it with his own voice. Between those visits, it wasn’t uncommon for any number of them to make an appearance in the walkway below the surface, peering at him through the curved glass with curiosity. Some would wave or gesture, making strange dances or motions that he sometimes mimicked. This always seemed to delight them, and the distraction was, for the most part, appreciated.
But even when the humans were there in front of him, Johnny was alone, and the longer he was there, the harder it became to ignore the hollow ache in his chest.
Worst of all, there was the fullness, the ache, low in his belly, the buzz down his spine, the twitch in his tail and in his slit. His season was approaching, and rapidly, and the realization filled him with a longing far beyond any suffering wrought by the healing wounds in his back. They’d talked about it, him and Simon. They had even begun constructing a proper nest in a shallow, safe place: a space for pups, for a family.
Leaving his mate sleeping comfortably in their den, Johnny had gone out early that morning to gather sponges to line their nest. A brightly colored piece of human debris caught his eye at the surface, and he had gone to look at it with a quick flick of his tail. But as it so often was with human things, it had turned out to be nothing useful; it was just another bit of plastic, and he had ducked his head down further under the water to check his surroundings.
It had likely saved his life. The boat had been cruising around as was common for them, not even stopping to put their hooks in the water, and he had gotten so used to the sound that he had paid it little mind when its direction turned, and the noisy hum of the engine suddenly increased. By the time his lateral line caught the change in the water, and he realized what was about to happen, it was far too late to dart down. Its propeller had torn through his flesh like dull claws through the belly of a fish, only narrowly missing his spine as it sliced into his back, glanced across his shoulder blades, and scraped across his ribs before it was gone.
The boat had never even slowed down.
He wasn’t sure when or how the humans had found him, or how they had before the sharks did, but he knew that he had been only barely awake when a net looped across his torn blue scales and pulled him from the water. There had been a lot of noise after that, and a lot of touching that earned weak growls and lackluster snaps of his teeth. The humans had only crooned at him in their strange language and pressed white dressings across his wounds. When he tried to twist away from them, small hands quickly held him down, and he was too tired, too weak from blood loss and pain. By the time they were lifting him enough to wrap something around his chest, the world had already faded to black. When he had woken again, he was in the pool. His back was heavy with wrap and salves that tingled, and a group of humans stood on the platform in front of the pool and stared at him in wonder.
In his prison, Johnny scowled at the memory, dragging his claws against the thick glass—and cringing at the sound it caused, which rattled in his ears and skittered all the way down his lateral lines. It would have the same effect on the humans doing water testing nearby though, and for now, that was enough to make him do it again, and again.
~
Simon wasn't sure how long he had been stranded in the warm, bright sunlight of the beach, but he knew that it had been far, far too long long; had known the moment the tide began to recede from his resting place after collapsing from exhaustion on the sandy seabed, that there was no chance of hauling himself back into the ocean.
Dry as his gills and lungs were, it stung fiercely to take even shallow breaths, and his skin was little better, burning where his scales didn't protect him, but it was almost a relief for the distraction it offered from the ache of his heart beating against his ribs like a physical, stabbing thing. That pain hadn’t eased, not even for an instant, since he had first gone searching for his mate, and found Johnny’s blood, instead; so much blood, but no body, not even a scrap, as one might expect from the attack of an animal. His search had turned from a mer looking for his easily distracted, forgetful mate, to a frantic bolt of terror in a matter of moments, but one day had turned into two, then into a week, then a month, then more. Eventually, he had simply given up on counting the days since his mate had disappeared. No proof, no explanation, no closure. He hadn’t even gotten a chance to say goodbye when Johnny had left that morning, still fast asleep in their nest.
And then, as if to insult him further, that familiar, desperate emptiness had begun to settle low in his abdomen, as if even his own body ached for its other half and sought to remind him just how long he had been searching.
Small, warm hands across dragged across his body, unpleasant against his flushed skin, but he hardly had the energy to open his aching eyes, let alone ward them away. Mumbling and chattering sounded around him, distant and nonsensical. Then something cool and blessedly wet poured over his burning gills, and he took a small, grateful breath even as his mind half-raged against it. He just wanted to rest. He wanted quiet, stillness, wanted to sleep and to find Johnny again, even if only in his dreams, if only for a little while. But then something big and plastic was at his side, and even more hands were all over him again, pressing against him and shoving at him. Whatever this was, it certainly wasn’t a dream.
He gave a weak flex of the thick spines on his back and let out a low, warbling hiss, but he was so tired, and the humans weren’t impressed by his display. They only shifted their grips away from the spines with short shouts of alert to one another, and then pushed him onto the tarp. Someone placed something cool, wet, and dark over his face, soothing the ache in his overheated skin and softening the discomfort in his eyes. It drove the last of the fight from his exhausted bones, and by the time they hauled him into the air, the shadows had already come to claim him.
~
“Soap’s not doing well,” Kyle said, frowning at the clipboard he held in one hand. The silly name was from the utter inability of anyone to catch the slippery, clever creature in order to place him into one of the larger recovery tanks. They’d had to tangle him in a net, which the mer had not appreciated, in order to get him from the critical care pool to his current enclosure. “In the past week, his food intake has been up drastically, but now it’s back down, and he’s been more restless. Today he only ate half his breakfast, refused wound check in the morning, and in the afternoon—even ignored the fresh, live lobsters we offered him.”
John Price frowned at that, leaning back in his desk chair as he listened. If anything could get their resident mer’s attention, it was a lobster or crab; he seemed downright addicted to the pinchy bastards. “Think he’s just having a bad pain day?” It had happened before, especially in the first few weeks they’d had the incredible creature recovering at their facility.
“I’m not so sure,” Kyle shook his head, grimacing. “He’s started clawing at the glass, too. Hisses and snaps his teeth when we come too close to the tank, even just through the viewing glass.”
That… was very bad, especially given the suddenness of it all. “Has there been an incident? Some trespass we’ve not been made aware of?” Price couldn’t imagine any of his people doing something so blatantly against protocol, but for some the chance to see a mer alive in the flesh might have been enough to risk both life and limb, and a firing and blacklist from their field as a whole.
“Not as far as I can tell. No unauthorized entrances into the enclosure, no new people, no signs that one did anything at all to offend him.”
John frowned, tapping his pen on a forgotten piece of paperwork. “I don’t want any of the non-senior keepers going near his enclosure, until I say otherwise.”
“Already done,” Kyle said with a nod, and if the situation weren’t so dire, John might’ve smiled at him in thanks. As it was, there was no time for such niceties.
“Think he may be going into heat or rut?” John asked, grimacing. Merfolk frequently became highly territorial during their breeding cycles, and it was about time for that sort of thing to start happening. Though true confrontations were rare, merfolk and humans had seen many negative interactions over the years, especially during this time of the year. It had led to wide-spread fear and uncertainty around the incredible creatures, much like sharks. Soap was a large, tropical, shallow-water species, though his species wasn’t known to be native to their area, which meant that he either marked the discovery of a new population of what was thought to be a very rare species, or that he had traveled hundreds, even thousands of miles, to reach the coral reefs that he had been rescued from.
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Kyle murmured, and even before he spoke, John knew what he was going to say. “And you’ve seen his shoulder. He’s mated.”
John hissed out a long, slow breath. “He’s not ready for release,” he groaned.
“He’ll be miserable, John, if he’s already showing self-destructive behavior. We might have to release him, at this rate.” Kyle sighed, setting the clipboard atop the paper-covered desk. “And he’s so-“ he rubbed his face, sighing. “His species is so rare. It just feels wrong to have him here, injured or not.”
“We don’t know if his mate is even still around, or alive, Kyle,” John murmured. “We didn’t see any signs of them when we found him.” The alert for dead or dying merfolk was incredibly uncommon. On the way there, no one on the rescue boat had really believed it until they’d seen him, and the realization of just what had caused his injuries still made his blood boil. It had taken weeks before Soap could do more than lay in the small hospital tank, with divers approaching slowly to offer food, check his wounds, and change his dressings. “And he’s still not fit to return to the wild, Kyle, you know that-“
The door to his office flew open with a slam, startling Kyle so badly that he actually yelped. A haggard-looking young man rasped to catch his breath, his freckled cheeks bright red and puffed out as he wheezed, his chest sounding as though something was rattling around inside of it.
Kyle darted to his side, patting at the man’s pockets before he found what he was after and practically shoved the bright orange inhaler into the red-head’s mouth. “Jesus, Gary, slow down!”
Once the medicine had washed over his scarred lungs, it took less than a minute for him to gasp out, “They found another mer.”
John stared, wide-eyed, as he reached for his phone. “What? Where?”
“They’ve already got him-“ Gary took another pull from his inhaler, holding his breath for several agonizing seconds before letting it out again. “They’re bringing him here.”
”What?” John nearly snarled, leaping to his feet so suddenly that it shoved his desk chair back into the filing cabinets behind him.
“Yeah, it’s a big one, too; one of the deeper ocean ones, they think: dark scales, spiny. He’s wearing a bone mask on his face.” The redhead had to pause for another breath, lungs still over-taxed from the apparent mad dash he’d made to get to John’s office. “Laswell said that he’s too big for the quarantine pools, so they’re gonna put him next to Soap.”
“Like fucking hell they are,” Kyle hissed, both he and John immediately heading for the door, with Price already dialing a number on his phone. “What’s their ETA, Gary?”
Gary panted as he followed after them, struggling to keep pace with the two taller, more fit, and much more frantic marine biologists. “Thirty minutes, Laswell said- they found him 8 miles south of- here.”
“Fuck, that’s it?” Kyle groaned, already doing the calculations in his head. Even for a small mer, that was not nearly enough to properly set up an enclosure. A mer larger than Soap—who had only barely fit in the hospital pool himself—that big enough to mean they were willing to risk ignoring quarantine protocol.
“Of course Kate isn’t answering her damn phone,” John muttered, shoving the offending cellphone back into his pocket. “You said deep sea?”
Gary nodded. “That’s what Laswell said, and Mallory confirmed it, though she wasn’t sure the species from the photos. She’s setting up transport now, so they can bring him right to the tank.”
While John Price was the head of the keepers and researchers at the rehab portion of the facility, with a specialty in marine megafauna, Mallory was the lead veterinarian, and her specialty was merfolk. Laswell, though, was chief of operations of the entire aquarium, and her word was law, even over John, and her wife’s… technically. He had never seen her not listen to Mallory’s advice regarding the care or treatment of one of their many charges, be it from the guest side, or the hospital side, but this, apparently, was to be the exception.
“Another boat strike?” Kyle asked, looking a little pale as he shared a look with John.
“No, but- Mallory will know more.”
Bringing an unknown, potentially sick or contaminated mer into a system connected to the same water as Soap’s was a nightmare, both logistically and in safety-wise, and if the result hurt either of them, there would be hell to pay.
John would see to it personally.
~
The commotion was… dramatic, Johnny thought, more than a bit bitterly, as the humans rushed back and forth, loud and stomping and running across the main upper walkway in their strange, clumsy gaits. It was far more of them than he was used to, and the change in routine unsettled him more than he cared to admit. In the ocean, there a joy in change, in spontaneity, but here? Here it felt strange, dangerous, consuming. He swam to the surface, poking his head up to peer over the edge of his tank’s walls to peer at the humans darting by. Several were in their black swimming skins with their masks and breathing tubes hanging about their necks, and two of them were people he recognized well: one was the pretty, lean male that fed him and assisted in checking over his back each day, Kyle, and the other was the dark-haired female that looked at his back each afternoon and evening, Mallory. She also wore the thing she called a stethoscope about her neck, and seemed to be occasionally barking orders into one of the black talking-boxes Kyle had explained was called a “Walkie” once.
She chewed on her bottom lip, swaying from one leg to the other as she waited, scanning over one of their silly little word-boards. Around her, supplies were sat down by other humans, including the big, gruff, strange-talking male that sometimes tossed him extra fish when he came by while doing maintenance tasks. He smelled of acrid smoke like always, but he wasn’t nearly as carefree as usual, and Johnny wasn’t sure that he had ever seen the broad male move so quickly before.
All of this, thankfully, wasn’t directed around his own tank, but rather the empty one beside it, fully blocked off by smooth stone save for the small square cut into it, where it was barred only via the grate mesh under the water. Above the surface was an equally flimsy barrier in a wall of chain-length fencing, though it wasn’t enough to have stopped him, if he really wanted to get through it, around it, or over it.
He trilled, splashing water hard at Kyle as he passed in a bid for an explanation, and the man nearly fell flat on his face in surprise at the sheer volume of water that Johnny managed to smack into him. Any other time, he might have found it funny, but right now all he cared about was the sheer mess of humans flocked around everything. And even though he’d summoned the human, he still had to bite back an instinctive hiss as he stopped and came over to the fence separating them. “Hey big guy,” Kyle said, breathless but smiling like usual. “Sorry, I know there’s a lot of noise, but we’ve uh. Got a surprise for you, I guess?”
Johnny scowled and chittered for the man to get on with it, but even though the male clearly didn’t understand, he continued.
“There’s a new neighbor coming in real soon.”
Johnny’s scowl deepened. Though he wasn’t entirely sure what ‘neighbor’ meant, it was easy enough to guess. Another creature was coming to take up the place beside him. He felt the fins across his lower back and tail pin in displeasure.
“I know, I know, but he’s sick. Hurt, like you were, yeah?”
The scowl lessened, if only slightly.
“A big mer, too. Bigger’n you, even! So be nice, alright? Please?” The last bit took on the same crooning tone that he’d used to try to coax Johnny up to the surface to be examined that afternoon, but it was ignored.
A new mer? And a large one? The idea sent a wave of panic, however brief, down his spine, and it sent the gills across his ribs flaring, his dorsal and caudal fins flashing out, instinctively trying to make himself look larger, more threatening.
“Easy, Soap!” Gaz said, hands raised in the way they always did when he was trying to calm him down. “He’s not gonna hurt you. Honestly, he’s supposed to be in pretty bad shape. Most of the time when mer that look like him are seen around here it’s… bad. I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to warn you, they only found him about two hours ago, and it’s been a madhouse since-“ he cut off as the woman, Mallory, called Kyle’s name sharply, and he darted back to her with a sheepish, apologetic frown back at Johnny.
A mer, bigger than him, in bad shape… Maybe an injury from a boat strike, like him? Johnny frowned at the idea, a flush of shame creeping across his gills. Surely no other mer was quite that stupid… but what else was there? Some illness, maybe?
He sank, ever-so-slightly, into the water, until just his eyes sat above the surface, and watched the chaos as it continued on around him. And then, all at once, Kyle’s walkie went off, and both he, Mallory, and the other small bunch of humans rushed down the walkway and out of sight. Only one more batch of humans hurried by, this time to drop off air tanks like the ones they’d used when they needed to be under the water longer than their pitiful mammalian lungs could ever manage to hold. Once they were gone, the silence that followed was… eerie, almost, and Johnny wasn’t sure if he liked it more or less than the chaos before.
It was quiet for less than thirty minutes before the sounds of the humans returned, this time an awkward scramble of many footsteps and nearly as many voices. They came into view only a moment later, and his eyes widened at the sight of the large blue tarp-thing hung between two poles being carried by more than a dozen humans, each straining under the obvious weight.
Mallory was toward the front of the group, not bearing weight with both arms but right up against the tarp and keeping pace to help steer it. She spoke sharply, her dark eyes harsh as they moved past Johnny’s tank. She seemed to pay him no mind at all, the two prongs of the stethoscope in her ears and the other pressed against whatever—whoever—was in the tarp. John Price was beside her, the big human no doubt placed there to take on part of the weight not being held by Mallory, and the loud maintenance man was across from him, cursing softly in his odd language. Toward the back, helping to ensure everyone kept pace was Kyle, straining alongside the rest under the weight of their charge. Jogging after them was a red-headed man who sometimes helped Kyle, but this time he was holding a bag of brightly colored fluid up at his head level. A line led down into the wrapped tarp, no doubt an IV like Johnny had been made to have several times.
A massive caudal fin hung from one end of the tarp, but it had been so heavily wrapped in soaked towels to keep it from drying out that it was impossible to see in any real detail. It was also, Johnny noticed with sudden unease, completely, utterly limp.
“Okay, people, on John’s mark, we’re gonna put him on Level 1 first. A Team will stay on level 1, and B Team will go onto level 2. We’ll slide him, or roll him into the water. If anyone gets stung, scratched, or stuck, report it immediately and step clear; so little venom probably won’t kill you, but it might well make you wish it had. Kyle, John, Kate, Gary, and I will go into the water with him, check his vitals again, and unwrap his spines. If he suddenly wakes up and attacks, no one is to enter the water, and no one is to try to stage a rescue, is that clear?” Mallory’s voice was clear, no-nonsense, as they came to a stop in front of the empty enclosure, and the woman moved to push the gate open. No one protested her instructions, and everyone gave quick, if rather breathless, affirmatives as they walked through the gate.
Like his own tank, there was a platform with two levels just inside of the enclosure: an area above the water level, and another that was perhaps 3 feet deep, which was where they looked over his back each day.
“One, two, three, down,” John barked, and everyone hurried to follow, no doubt eager to be rid of the enormous weight.
Johnny watched with wide, nervous eyes as the tarp was slowly lowered… only to reveal that the large mer was all but completely covered in the same soaked towels as their tail had been, and was still invisible to him. Only the smallest hint of dark scales could be seen here and there, though they appeared almost dull in the sun. His chest ached at the sight; seeing any of his kind so still and silent felt distinctly wrong, but there was something worse about seeing this one, somehow, so much so that it sent alarm bells buzzing in the back of his mind. He shifted uneasily, watching as the five humans moved into the water to stand on the second level of the platform. All but Mallory and John were wearing thick gloves, with the former two wearing slightly thinner versions that allowed for more dexterity.
“Ready everyone?”
Everyone gave their agreement, and with a final heave, the large mer slid into the shallow water with little more than a splash. Immediately, Johnny lost sight of him, and he moved quickly, mindless of the twinge his back gave. He swam to the edge of his tank on the side facing the other mer, propped his hands up on the lip, and peered over it once more.
The humans were swarming about like a school of bait fish, highly organized in their seemingly chaotic movements. The ones left out of the water were rolling the tarp back up, others checking each other and themselves for injuries, but Johnny paid little mind to them.
No, he only had eyes for the humans working around the large creature in the water. The towels began to float in the water, revealing a pale, broad chest and dark, dull scales. Mallory’s stethoscope pressed against the mer again, listening. She nodded slightly to herself. “Pulse is starting to pick up a bit. John?”
“No tremors, but I can feel his tail starting to move. We need to hurry up.” John’s voice was carefully even, but it was clear that he was tense. Any human should have been, next to a predator of this size, which utterly dwarfed them. Another bit of dark scales was revealed, revealing a thick stripe of scarring along the tail, disrupting the thick scales there.
More alarm bells began buzzing in Johnny’s skull, and suddenly the ache in his gut, his chest, increased tenfold.
“Bag’s almost done,” the redhead said quickly. “Got two out of the 8 units left.”
“Not sure we’re gonna have that much time,” Kate said wryly, holding the mer’s covered head in her hands. “May have to cut and run, boys.”
A soft, low hiss rattled through the water, heard even above the surface, and the humans quickened their pace.
Johnny, though, had frozen in place, muscles locking so suddenly that his back flared with pain. He… he knew that sound. But surely it couldn’t be…? He dropped back into the water, suddenly feeling weak as a pup, and took a deep, slow breath. The water stank of humans and stress, but beneath it all… His eyes widened, a low, trilling croon escaping his throat before he could stop it, a desperate, longing sound.
Suddenly the humans were moving much faster, and he darted back to the surface to look over the edge of the pool again. The big mer moved, ever-so-faintly, and the hissing began again, stronger.
“That bag done yet, Gary?” John asked stiffly, tension sharpening his normally gentle voice.
“Almost,” the redhead, Gary, rasped. “Just a bit more-“
The thick, powerful tail thrashed, dislodging the needle and IV line, and the towels covering it came free to reveal dark black scales, further thick scarring, and spines.
Johnny took in as much water through his gills as he could, and dove to the bottom of his tank. After so long out of practice, he would need as much time to gain momentum as he could get.
Kyle gave a shocked shout, but it was all the warning that the humans in the pool got before there was a brilliant flash of striped blue leaping clear of the water, over the fence barrier, and back into the water of the other tank with a truly incredible splash.
Johnny came out of the water snarling and shrieking like the monstrous specter of some ancient fisherman’s tale. He darted toward the platform with the long, dramatic fins across his entire body flared out and his long, gleaming fangs and claws on full, terrible display. He needed to scare them, needed to get them away.
The humans, wisely, scrambled as best they could to get out of the way—Kyle actually grabbed Gary and bodily hauled him out of the water—but they weren’t all quite fast enough. John Price was batted away by one powerful swipe of an arm, sending him crashing against the platform, and he rasped a curse as he climbed free.
Johnny hissed and spat at the humans, anxiety burning his chest as fiercely as the wounds on his back. He could feel blood trickling down his scales, knew that he had reopened at least one of them, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the enormous mer laying before him. When none of them dared to step toward them, he risked a glance down. Trembling hands pulled free the cloth wrapped loosely over his face to reveal high cheekbones, heavy brows with slightly crooked nose from an old, badly healed break in his younger years, a strong jaw… and a sharp, jagged scar across his soft lips, which permanently twisted his smirks into something just a bit crooked.
“Simon,” Johnny nearly choked on the sound, feeling like the world had suddenly been swept out from under him as he cradled the sweet, familiar face in one hand, the other resting over his heart to feel for a familiar, long-missed beat. It was slow, steady, beneath his palm, though it quickened as the large, dark mer shifted again, and another soft, rattling hiss escaping his chest. “Oh fuck, Simon,” Johnny hunched over him, trembling as he tugged his mate against his chest and swam backward, pulling both of them off the too-shallow platform, out of the reach of the humans still far, far too close.
There was a commotion on the platform: voices, a few whistles, even a few clicks in some poor mimicry of his own language, trying to get his attention, but he hardly noticed. He saw nothing but the firm, dark scales against his hands, the softer, paler flesh of his belly, his chest, his face. A few new scars littered Simon’s frame, these rougher than the others, as though they hadn’t been tended to properly. His scales were dull, nearly lifeless, but his pale flesh looked flushed, almost as though it had been burned by the sun. He was thin, too; this was a far cry from the broad, healthy male he had left what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Wake up for me, Love, come back to me,” Johnny breathed, oblivious to the splash of something being thrown into the tank in yet another bid to distract him. “Come on, Mo chridhe. Show me those pretty eyes, again.”
Pale lashes fluttered, and Johny’s breath caught as dark, amber brown eyes slowly opened, hazy and unfocused, but a soft sound drew them upward. The moment they found Johnny looking down at him, his eyes snapped wide, and his limp frame suddenly went stiff as stone. Then, quietly, rasping so harshly that it was barely audible, “…Johnny?”