#ahwuu

What’s happening, he wants to type, but there’s a sudden sound of shattering glass coming from Ray’s room, jolting him to his feet. Out of instinct he snatches the nearest gun he can get his hands on, jumps over the island in his kitchen and crouches, pressing his back to it as bullets fly by overhead. 

There’s another message in his inbox. This time it’s from Jack.

Someone put a hit on you, it says. Ray gives Jack a thousand points for being more informative than Geoff and a solid zero for specificity. 

Any idea who, he types back as a vase on a corner table explodes from a stray gunshot.

He expected, at most, a cryptic hint—an initial if he’s lucky—and most certainly did not expect the clear, concise answer displayed on his cellphone screen right now. 

Ryan did.

There’s a sound of something large hitting the floor and more glass breaking, which means one of the intruders has knocked his TV over. God damn it. It’s 42-inch, it’s new like the rest of this apartment is, and Halo looks fucking good on it. God fucking damn it. 

“I don’t need this,” he declares to no one, aims over the counter and starts shooting.

+

The thing is, Ray can’t think of a single instance that would drive Ryan to put a hit on him.

Ray gets along with Ryan, fuck you very much. They get along swimmingly. Ray might be Geoff’s first recruit and Ryan last, but they play the same PC games and hate the same reality shows and possess the same offbeat, dark humor. This one time during a heist, they pulled a prank on Geoff by pretending to dramatically die and playing My Heart Will Go On as soon as Geoff arrived at the scene. Geoff’s expression was priceless. 

Sure, there was that one time he accidentally got one of Ryan’s bank accounts traced and frozen by the police because he hacked it to buy a game at GameStop (in Ray’s defense, it was Bioshock Infinite and he has no regrets). Or that one time he played Call of Duty at two a.m. on Ryan’s TV with the volume set too loud (Ryan ended up shooting his own TV after mistaking an in-game gunshot for a real-life one). Or that one time with the puppies and the party hats (Ray still doesn’t want to think about it). Or that one time with the lobster. Or the Ferrari. Or the one— 

Actually, scratch that. Ray’s fucking dead.

+

“Would Ryan kill me over a lobster?” 

Ray leans back to rest against the wall of the riverbank, not daring to climb out of hiding to dry land yet. His vacation is ruined, his new apartment is on fire, he is soaked to the bone, and he’s running out of bullets. Wonderful.

“You know,” Michael says over the phone, voice tiny and muffled by the river current breaking around the riverbank, “Ryan has killed people over less.”

That is, sadly, true. Ryan once shot a mafia leader for accidentally knocking his ice cream over. Granted, the mafia leader was, well, a mafia leader, and he was their target for an assassination job, but they weren’t supposed to kill him until Gavin and Geoff were ready with the extraction plan. It was pretty hilarious, the way Ryan got so personally offended over a scoop of strawberry ice cream, but now that he’s the one at the proverbial barrel end of Ryan’s gun, the joke fell kind of flat. 

“What lobster, anyways?” Michael asks when Ray doesn’t say anything, snapping him from his thoughts. 

Ray makes a strangled noise from the back of his throat. “Uh. Um. You know Ryan used to own that pet lobster, right?”

“The one that died because he forgot to feed it for three days in a row, right?“ Michael says, "That was pretty fucking funny. Three days in a row! And we weren’t even on the job. I can’t believe Ryan forgot to—no,” Michael starts as everything clicks into place. “Oh, no. Fuck, Ray, you did not.”

“I did.” Ray says solemnly. “I hid all the food right after he put it inside the cage.”

“You fucking did not.”

“Starved that motherfucker.” 

“God damn it—Ray—”

“The lobster was blue!” Ray retorts, indignant. He’s not stupid; he’s watched National Geographic, like,  three times. “Aren’t animals with the bright colors poisonous?”

“I think that only applies to snakes and frogs,” Michael says, and well, fuck.

“I was trying to do all of us a favor. Nobody wants to have lobster written under their cause of death,” Ray presses, but with much less conviction, “Anyways, I don’t think he knows about the lobster yet.” He kicks a random pebble at the bottom of the river. “This conversation is moot.” 

He can hear Michael sigh. Ray can almost see it, the way Michael would pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. It’s pretty messed up, how the first conversation he’s had with his childhood friend in a month involves way too much sighing, and not even the fond kind. “Okay, I’m not buying that because this is Ryan we’re talking about and he knows everything, but fine—is there anything else you can think of? Something other than the lobster thing?”

There’s gunshot noise in the distance, which means whoever wants him dead has found a trail to his current location. Ray thinks of the GameStop, of a game of CoD in the early dawn of the day, of the puppies and party hats and Ferraris. “You know what, I don’t even know where to begin.”

There’s a pause at the end of the line.

“All right,” Michael finally declares, “You’re fucked.” 

“Thanks a lot, champ,” Ray deadpans, “Ever consider switching career paths to become a motivational speaker?” 

“Every single day,” Michael shoots back.

"Very funny,” Ray says, aiming for sarcasm, but okay, fine, it was a pretty good comeback.

There’s a lull in the conversation as they try to process the sheer absurdity of this situation, and Ray is about to end the call and swim across when Michael suggests, “Maybe you should talk to Ryan about this.”

Ray  swallows down a growl. There’s something ugly roaring in the pit of his stomach at the idea of talking amicably to Ryan, and Ray resists the urge to throw his cellphone into the water. “I’m not talking to someone who clearly doesn’t even want me alive.”

“It’s not like there’s any other choice,” Michael points out, and fuck, why must he be so rational? “I don’t know, okay, sorry, man—but this is pretty weird even for Ryan, and nobody really gets Ryan in the first place.”

Nobody really gets Ryan.

This isn’t the first time someone’s said that.

Ryan hasn’t been with the Crew for as long as everyone else—a year, at most, ever since Geoff dragged a guy with a scary mask into his apartment and told them he wasn’t leaving—and while he is nowhere near shy, Ryan is well-versed in a very specific type of verbal gymnastics that allows him to deflect questions about himself without the asker noticing the digression until the conversation ends and they’re halfway across the country or, in some cases, six-feet-under. Asking Ryan to talk about himself requires efforts comparable to torturing a CIA agent to reveal the White House’s Nuclear Activation Code.

He’s cool, they would say, but nobody really gets Ryan. 

The sentence used to be longer, once upon a time, before Ray went off the grid. Nobody really gets Ryan—except Ray. But Ray isn’t sure about that part anymore.

There’s another sound of gunshot, and it sounds much closer this time.

“I gotta bail now,” he tells Michael.

“Be careful,” Michael says, and Ray is seconds away to pressing the 'end call’ button when Michael suddenly adds, “You know, Ray, I thought you were close with him.”

All right.

That’s.

Well.

“Your mom’s close with him,” Ray replies lamely, but Michael has ended the call long before that, and the dial tone echoes in Ray’s head like a fucked up soundtrack to the sinking feeling in his stomach.

+

There’s this one time, a couple of heists before Ray took his unannounced vacation a month ago, when he and Ryan had to lay low together in a safe house after a job went pear-shaped.

Ryan prides himself on his flexible moral standards and Ray doesn’t really let himself  be troubled by questions like “is stealing Netflix from the old lady across the street ethically wrong?” so an hour into hiding Ray was already scrolling through episodes of Friends as Ryan handed him a bowl of homemade popcorn.

Ryan, it turned out, had never watched Friends (“Not a single episode? Blasphemy.” “That is an overreaction and you know it.” “Blasphemy.”) and Ray, in turn, had never watched SMASH (“Not a single episode? Blas—“ “Okay, you win this round.”), and they ended up marathoning both shows for the entire week they had to stay hidden.

Ryan, apparently, has the nicest laugh.

Ray was fucking close with Ryan, Michael’s accusations be damned. If you look at it in exactly the right ways, you could even say that they’re best friends.

+

Ray is halfway through a monologue on Jack’s wonderful virtues (“Has anyone ever told you how majestic your beard is?” is what Ray started the call with, before employing adjectives that would make SAT examiners weep with joy) when the man himself cuts him off with a, “What do you want, Ray.”

Ray’s lips twitch into an unwitting smile.

Jack is capable of tolerating approximately zero amount of shit, and Ray loves him a little for that. He just narrowly escaped a bunch of assassins after climbing out of the river—a messy affair involving guns, explosives, three kinds of combat knives, at least five different languages and far too much inappropriate yelling about Ray’s mother—and Jack’s no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase attitude is something he can appreciate right now.

Speaking of—

“Do you know the identities of the assassins?” Ray asks.

“Of course,” Jack answers with the confidence and finality of someone who knows exactly what time you go to sleep every night and what side of the bed you’re sleeping in. Jack has his sources. “Which one do you want to know?”

“All of them,” Ray says, and can’t resist adding, “didn’t exactly have time to serve tea and chat them up on their names, did I,” under his breath.

If Jack hears the remark, he’s thankfully ignoring it. "Well, there’s Paolo Turner,” Jack says, and Ray kind of wants to cry when Jack adds, “also known as the Massachusetts Murderer.”

“Fantastic,” he deadpans. “Love the name.”

“There’s also Randall Jones. Ex-CIA, dishonorably discharged for murdering his teammates to use their bodies as a decoy.”

“Aspiring background and work experience.”

“Mikaila Aryanova, codename Killer of Kasimov. They say she killed five people with a bag of flour once—no, wait, four. One is still alive. I heard he could blink again last week.”

“You know, Jack, at this point I’m going to be so disappointed if you don’t say Hitler .”

“Oh, actually, speaking of, the Chinese Mafia Sheng Di, also known as the Chinese Hitler—”

“Please disregard everything I ever said,” Ray cuts in and clears his throat to mask his shaky voice, which is totally justified, okay. There’s escaping nameless, faceless assassins, and then there’s running away from people with terrifying reputations.

Ray looks around, scouting his surroundings. He’s only a few blocks away from his safe house, but something tells him it’s going to be far from safe in the near future.

He switches his phone to his left hand as his right pulls out his handgun.

“Hey, Jack, uh—” he clears his throat, spits out, “is it possible for you to, I don’t know, drop by and give me a hand in bailing out?” and immediately feels stupid for even asking the question. Jack’s the planner, the guy behind the scenes. Jack doesn’t do extractions. That’s more—

“That’s more of Gavin’s job,” Jack replies, as if finishing Ray’s train of thoughts. “Sorry, man. I can call Ryan for you if you want.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Ray says as he scans the street and, deeming it clear for now, starts walking briskly towards the safe house in the least suspicious way possible.

+

The day before Ray went on his impromptu vacation, they went on a road trip.

They as in, Ryan and Ray. Haywood and Narvaez. The R & R Connection.

(“It’s a dumb name, I know, but it’s not gonna stick, trust me,” Ray said the first time he came up with it, and the team name—like every other dumb thing that ever comes out of his mouth, in some form of a cruel, running cosmic joke—sticks.)

Nobody even batted an eyelash.The first time they went, Geoff had half-jokingly told Ryan that he wanted their best sniper to come home breathing and not stuffed inside the trunk, you hear me? Ryan? Buddy?—but these days, no eyelash-batting, what-do-you-even-do, are-you-fucking-mental questions involved. The road trip is his and Ryan’s thing.

Ray’s a good enough driver—good as in, enough experience behind the wheels to avoid arrest from various law enforcement vehicles good, but Ryan is on a whole different level. Ryan’s, like, a driving god. He drives like the car is just another extension of his body, like he has a Transformer somewhere in his family tree and physics-defying driving skills are just something the Haywood family passes down through the generations. Mere mortals like Ray drive, but Ryan makes cars swerve, turn and skid with quick, terrifying precision. Ryan makes cars fly.

They parked their car at the edge of a hill overlooking the city.

“That was fun,” Ryan said, grinning widely. Sunset streamed through the windshield, painting the car interior orange, and Ray’s eyes were drawn to Ryan, to his unguarded smile and to his body, slightly angled towards Ray, elbow casually placed at the back of his seat, stretching the green shirt underneath his leather jacket across his sun-kissed collarbones. Ray was attuned to every part of Ryan, who beamed brighter than the sun in the windows, and Ray thought, oh. “We should do this again.”

The car had come to a stop, but Ray was still flying.

+

Ray’s only five minutes into this Skype call and he already wants to threaten Gavin with bodily harm.

“That map of a tunnel you sent me,” Gavin asks, “is that your escape route?”

“Nah, Gavin,” Ray says with all the fake nonchalance he can muster, “I just pointed that out because I thought it looked wonderful to the overall atmosphere of the city. Of course it’s a fucking escape route, why else would I send you a map of a tunnel?”

Gavin shrugs all too-innocently.

Serious bodily harm, Ray thinks to himself. Like, eating-through-a-straw kind of bodily harm.

“Can I talk to Geoff instead?” he decides to say instead. He’s been biding his time, hoping that if he avoids talking to Geoff long enough he wouldn’t have to at all, but who is he kidding. Gavin devises some surprisingly great plans, but without Geoff’s supervision, they are the kind of plan even Michael Bay would look perplexed at and go, “I think there are too many explosions here.”

Not to mention Gavin is, conveniently, visiting Geoff’s at this very moment.

“Yo,” Geoff says, appearing from the corner of the screen, pushing Gavin away by the shoulder and ignoring his indignant squawks, “well, well. Look who’s back.”

Ray inwardly gulps.

Geoff’s tone is light, but there’s a certain edge to it, a certain sharpness to his syllables that would send lesser men scurrying away in fear. The lads are easy to read—Michael’s cheerfulness seeps into his shouts when he’s happy; Gavin only sounds deceptively calm when he’s ready to shoot you in the back—but Geoff? Geoff’s a piece of work. It’s like that science cat, but with a voice. It’s Schrodinger’s voice. Geoff speaks, and you never know if he wants to kiss you or kill you.

“Heya, Geoff,” he says, raising what he hopes to be a friendly, placating hand. “Kind of need a hand here.”

“Seems like everyone does, these days,” Geoff says vaguely, pulling a chair beside Gavin and lounges lazily on it.

“I sent Gavin the map for the extraction route,” Ray says, tentative. He pauses, and when Geoff leans further back in his chair instead of taking the conversational bait, he adds, “if you’re not, you know. Busy or anything.”

“I don’t know, man,” Geoff says, “Gotta check my schedule first. I think I have an appointment with my hairdresser at one.”

“Geoff, dude, I know you're—”

“This beauty doesn’t trim itself,” Geoff goes on, twirling his mustache for emphasis because he’s their biggest drama queen, “Ray.”

“Geoff—”

“Gavin,” Gavin adds cheerfully, seemingly oblivious to the rising tension, which is bullshit, of course—Gavin’s a firecracker with a penchant to dance around fire. Geoff reigns Gavin in as effectively as an overworked single mother in a room full of toddlers, which is to say, not at all, and every major gang war in Los Santos started with two unsuspecting people standing in close vicinity from a slightly bored Gavin.

Ray can’t afford to start another one.

“Geoff,” he says, swallowing his pride down, exchanging it with a toned down, “I’m sorry.”

Geoff is tipping his chair backwards now, crossing his arms and propping his feet on the table. “For what?”

Ray squirms under Geoff’s gaze—there’s something about Geoff that still makes Ray like he’s the one kid during pre-school who got caught red-handed stealing his friend’s pencil. “For the. You know,” he sputters, scrambling for the right words, “For the past month. Like, you know, the whole Houdini act, it’s, well, it’s pretty shitty, especially considering—” he thinks of the crew, of illegal celebratory fireworks and drinks shared on their rooftop garden, “—considering. Us,” he finishes lamely.

There’s a gunshot wound on Ray’s left thigh. He ignored it like a champ when he was running away, but now that the adrenaline is wearing off, there are bright sunbursts of pain flaring down his leg every time he tries to move it. His clothes are still wet and smell faintly of someone’s vomit. The safe house he’s hiding in is bound to be compromised in a few hours.

Ray’s sad, and tired, and alone—the whole package.

Ray Narvaez Jr.: Official Winner of Shittiest Luck in the World Award.

When he looks up, Geoff is leaning towards the camera with a familiar expression, and Ray feels like he is seventeen again, on the street and wasting his life away until Geoff offered him a second chance.

“Ray,” Geoff says, “You know what I always joke about? Nobody leaves the crew—”

“—unless it’s in a body bag,” Ray finishes, chuckling a little bit. It’s the kind of morbid, dark humor that’s right up in his alley. “Yeah, I get that.”

“Do you, though? What it really means?” Geoff says, and looks at him, “Ray, we’re family. You’re always a part of us, if you ask me.” He crosses his arms and sighs. “But are you?”

Ray stops breathing for a second.

Of course, he wants to say, like, really wants to. What a ridiculous question. Obviously. But Ray blinks and sees a memory—of gunshots, and pavement, and blood—and suddenly there’s a hot itch under Ray’s skin, a cottony rasp to the inside of his mouth.

“I don’t know,” he chokes out, “God, Geoff, fuck. I don’t know.”

They’re all silent for a moment before Gavin says, “Ray?”

Ray hesitates speaking up again after his own too-honest outburst. “What?”

“You know this would all end easily if you would just, you know,” Gavin gestures vaguely with his hands, “Talk to Ryan and straighten things up.”

“Why is everyone telling me to talk to Ryan?” He groans, putting his head in both of his hands. Michael, Jack, and now Gavin.

“Because that’s what you do, isn’t it?” Gavin says pensively, “We carry out jobs and joke around and hang, but you—” Gavin cocks his head. “You talk to Ryan.“ 

He feels something leap at the back of his throat, and he thinks it might be his heart. "I don’t know,” is all that comes out of his mouth.

“Look, here’s what I can give you,” Geoff pipes in as he flips his iPad towards the computer screen, “I came up with escape routes to both Ryan’s and Lindsay’s.” He looks up and meets Ray’s eyes. “Your call.”

Ryan’s place is much nearer, Ray knows, knows the house with the mahogany door Ryan built himself and the concrete walkway leading up to it like the back of his hands. Lindsay’s place passes through a more complicated route, and it’s much less likely that he can hide there until everything dies down considering her apartment can barely fit Michael and Gavin, who crash there more often than not.

Someone put a hit on you.

(Nobody gets Ryan, except Ray.)

Any idea who?

(We should do this again.)

Ryan did.

“So?” Geoff asks, “Where is it gonna be?”

“Get me to Lindsay’s,” he tells Geoff. I’m not going to Ryan’s, he doesn’t say, but they pretty much mean the same thing.

“Ryan is so going to murder you,” Gavin quips as he moves the cursor to disconnect the call.

“I’ll make sure Gavin wears something appropriate to your funeral,” is all Geoff says before the screen goes dark.

+

This should be the part where Ray points out that he isn’t part of the Crew anymore.

Yeah.

There are rumors on how and why it happened—including, and sadly not limited to, a convoluted story of how Ray stole Geoff’s amnesiac wife to ascend the throne of a remote Scandinavian country—but honestly? There wasn’t some grand gesture of betrayal, nothing Francis Coppola could make a trilogy out of. One day Ray went to the headquarter and did his job, and then one day he just didn’t.

(One day there was gunshot, pavement, blood—)

A vacation, he would tell anyone who asked. Not that anyone would. Not that anyone could, considering Ray burned more bridges that day than a pyromaniac would in a lifetime. Calling his old number would connect you to a geriatric old man in Indonesia, while looking up his file in a government database would result in nothing. Ray Narvaez Jr., virtually, no longer exists.

Geoff once said they should consider the Crew as something akin to a family business. Not the McDonald’s kind; the mustache-twirling, cigar-smoking, Italian Mafia family business kind.

It’s not legitimate at all and it sure as hell isn’t legal, but everyone’s mouth is fed and no one’s getting shot unless absolutely necessary. There’s much less dirty work than the Hollywood movies would have you believe, and all in all it’s pretty simple: it mostly involves your family, people’s properties, a couple of rules, some very strongly-worded, um, ‘suggestions’, and money. A lot of money. Like, can-fill-an-entire-swimming-pool, Uncle Scrooge-style lot of money.

It’s essentially just a more dangerous version of Monopoly.

Ray thinks it’s more like Jenga.

It’s tall and proud and deceptively stable, but Ray is biding his time for the one inevitable push of the wooden block before everything tumbles and crumbles to the ground the way it crumbled when Geoff’s past from the military caught up to them and left their first headquarter in a sea of fire, the way Michael’s old Jersey associates danced their way into their business and left the Crew with a mountain of debts and Ray a broken childhood friend.

Ray will pick up the pieces and stack them back up because Ray’s life only truly began when Geoff took him from the street and asked, do you want to start a business with me, but once everything starts to come back together, there’s going to be that one wrong block someone’s going to gingerly pull out and everything is going to fall apart again next year, next week, tomorrow—

Ray just wants a Game of Life. The house, the spouse, the career that doesn’t require him to wear a bulletproof vest underneath his hoodie, the retirement plan.

(Bloodless pavement and one less gunshot—)

Ray took his vacation and does not look back.

+

“Bonjour,” Lindsay says as she opens her apartment door, grinning ear to ear and way too cheerful for someone taking in a hunted criminal, ”¿Como estas?”

Ray sighs, but it’s fond. He’s barely suppressing a smile.

“Linds, only, like, half of that was Spanish,” he tells her as he walks into the familiar apartment.

“True, but i still speak more Spanish than you do and you know that.”

“Touché.”

Lindsay’s apartment—hers in name only and a shared responsibility between her, Michael and Gavin in practice—is the furniture equivalent of a mix-and-match buffet. It is as if someone closed their eyes, pointed at five different IKEA catalogues from different seasons and bought everything in them in one go. Gavin’s expensive, modern-looking camera equipment clash horribly with Michael’s collection of washed out, old-time game merchandise, which in turn are a nightmare as they are wedged between Lindsay’s cutesy-looking furniture and soft toys. There’s a pot of tea Gavin must have forgotten in the morning and left messily on the kitchen counter, right beside a row of brightly-colored glasses Michael must have neatly arranged.

It’s awful. It’s the kind of apartment interior designers have nightmares about.

It also feels a lot like home.

“I’m surprised Geoff didn’t kill you,” Lindsay says as Ray lies face down onto the sofa. Ray hums into the cushion in agreement, but they both know better—Geoff can be one intimidating son of a bitch with more tattoos on his body than paintings in a museum, but when it comes to them that appearance is wasted on his loving, papa wolf-like temperament.

The reminder opens a floodgate of memories, choking Ray with fondness and affection he knows he doesn’t deserve, and before he realizes it, he’s blurting out, “I don’t know what to do.”

Ray blinks one eye open to look at Lindsay, who has plopped down on the sofa across the table, a cup of coffee in hand.

“Here’s a crazy idea,” Lindsay says, slowly, like they’re in elementary school and Ray’s the only kid who’s still confused about simple addition when other kids have moved on to multiplications, “You can just talk to Ryan and straighten things out.”

“You don’t understand,” Ray deflects, and wishes it really were as easy as two plus two. Instead it’s this overly-convoluted analogy involving board games, and Ray’s so going to sound so weird out of context as he says, “I just want the Game of Life, Linds.”

And because Lindsay is awesome and has, like, whatever is the mafia-equivalent of a Master’s Degree in Psychology,  she doesn’t judge him and only says, "All right.”

“Geoff said it was like Monopoly,” he continues, because fuck it, if Lindsay can’t get it, no one will. “The business, I mean. Our business. The transactions, the money, the whole territory thing—but, here’s the thing—I think, I think it’s Jenga. It’s fragile and it’s in danger of falling apart all the time.” He props his his head on one hand, facing her. “You build a tall empire, but you know something’s monumentally bad is going to happen.“

Ray doesn’t know what he expected—probably just some wordless agreement, some form of validation—but it’s definitely not Lindsay, raising her eyebrow, giving Ray a considering look.

He bristles under the scrutiny. "What?”

“Is that why you ran away, Ray?” Lindsay tilts her head, almost Gavin-like.

“Well, it sounds juvenile if you put it that way, but yeah, pretty much,” he makes an open-palm, ‘what can you do?’ gesture with his free hand. “You know me, Linds. Always carrying some healthy amount of self-preservation instinct. I guess it finally won out in the end.”

It all sounds cool and convincing in Ray’s head, but Lindsay’s obviously not buying a single thing he’s selling, if the disbelieving look on her face is any indication. “You can’t possibly believe that,” she says, and actually scoffs. “You don’t want the Game of Life.”

“Of course I do,” he replies indignantly, sitting up on the sofa now, staring her down. “What do you know?”

“Ray, you love the job,” she says, surely, like she’s stating a fact, “You love the thrill and the hurdles and every single gunshot. You think it’s like a game, except it’s real and not as easy to beat and there’s nothing you love more than a challenging game.” She puts her coffee cup on the table, steady, and it doesn’t clatter. “That’s what I know.”

Ray opens his mouth to argue but nothing comes out because Lindsay is right. Lindsay is absolutely fucking right, always is when it comes to her boys in the Crew because that’s probably her secret superpower or something.

And Ray can’t accept that because she may be right but she doesn’t understand, doesn’t quite get the whole story Ray can’t bring himself to tell, and in a moment of desperation he shakes his head and yells, “It’s not Monopoly,” and, “it’s Jenga,” and, slowly, blocking a bloody pavement out of his mind, “and the tower keeps falling.”

He thinks he sounds like a lunatic now, but when he looks up Lindsay is looking at him like he’s anything but. “The tower will keep falling, Ray,” she says, a small smile on her face. “Better to be around to build it back together than to watch it crumble from afar.”

And suddenly it hits him, all at once, the way she looks at Michael when she thinks no one’s looking, the soft laugh she shares only with Gavin, and a small voice at the back of his hand tells him, she gets it. She gets more than you give her credit for.

“Lindsay—” is all he manages to say before there’s a knock on the apartment door.

The apartment falls into silence.

Ray takes his gun from the table as he inches towards the door. He and Lindsay share a look, and with a nod from her he grabs a hold on the doorknob as she cautiously goes to her room for weaponry.

“This better be pizza,” he jokes, but the words die on his lips as soon as he swings the door open.

Ryan is standing on the porch.

Ray thinks his heart drops and clatters somewhere around his feet.

Ryan doesn’t seem to be particularly threatening—in his usual leather get up sans mask, with both hands visible and not holding onto any lethal weaponry, he’s definitely not in his trigger-happy, Mad King-Mode—but Ray’s first instinct is still to say, “fuck,” under his breath, leap back, and put as many things between Ryan and himself, things like a table, or a sofa, or 20 whole feet of air as Ray jumps out of the fucking window—

Except there’s the sound of glass shattering Ray has gotten sick of hearing as people break into the apartment through the windows—like, Jesus, has anyone ever heard of the fucking door—and between one breath and the next Ray finds himself cornered in Lindsay’s kitchen, a couple of assassins clogging the back door and Ryan looming at the entrance. Lindsay is nowhere to be seen, though judging by the sounds of flesh meeting the floor, she’s probably kicking everyone else’s asses one room over.

Ray doesn’t exactly have the luxury to worry about other people right now.

“Ray,” Ryan says, almost at the same time as one of the hitmen says, “Narvaez.”

“Ladies, please, one at a time,” he says, trying to sound like he has the situation under control. Yeah. Right. Ray is coping with the situation as well as a man drowning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is coping with water.

His eyes dart between his possible escape routes. He is stuck with two choices—run towards the back door which is, essentially, running towards his inevitable death, no big deal, or run towards the entrance and. Well. Hope that Ryan would let him pass, for one. But it also means he’s exposing Ryan to possible stray gunshots.

He takes a breath, thinks of blood and pavement, and almost laughs because the answer, to him, is as clear as a day. He releases it, and realizes, it has always been.

He takes another breath and chooses.

There’s a loud bang as he runs towards the back door.

(That was the plan, at least. It  never works. Official Winner of Shittiest Luck in the World Award, remember?)

There’s a loud bang before he can so much as angle himself towards the back door, and Ryan takes the bullet for him.

+

Ryan got shot on the day before Ray took his vacation.

He fell onto the pavement, bloody and unmoving. There were cracks on the old concrete steps, and red seeped into the gaps as Ray screamed Ryan’s name hoarse.

This is a totally unrelated, mostly tangential anecdote, mind you. Ryan was fine. Ended up fine, at least. So was Ray. Totally peachy. Business as usual. The sun continued to shine, life went on, and Ray was a hundred percent, finer-than-a-century-old-wine fine.

That’s a fucking lie.

Ryan got shot, and Ray saw a tower of wooden blocks topple to the ground and his world stopped spinning.

+

Everything after the gunshot is a blurry mess of red, on Ryan’s shirt and Lindsay’s new kitchen floor and Ray’s hands as he scrambles towards Ryan, red red red as Ray’s mind replays the images of a failed heist and pavement painted red by Ryan’s blood over and over. Somewhere at the back of his mind, the rational part of him reminds him that it’s dangerous to move so carelessly, but his ears are ringing, his breath hitches and holy fuck, Ryan is dying again and Ray thinks he’s dying too.

He kneels beside Ryan and pulls him in carefully, not entirely sure if he’s making things better or worse. Everything he does now is only out of instinct, this visceral need to have Ryan close and safe and countless other domesticated fantasies Ray wouldn’t admit even on his deathbed, and god. Ray lowers his head as he runs his fingers through Ryan’s hair, Ryan’s head on his lap. Fuck. Ryan is. Ryan is—

Alive. 

Breathing.

Quite normally, actually.

In fact, he’s…not even unconscious.

Ryan blinks up to him and Ray chokes on his own scream.

Somewhere near them, Lindsay presumably continues to be awesome as she kicks out the rest of the assassins out of her apartment. Not that they need more incentive to, considering one of them just shot the Mad King himself, and nobody wants to be around to see how that mishap turns out. 

Ryan is still blinking at Ray, and Ray’s torn between hugging him and running away screaming. 

He settles with, “Please stop doing the thing.” 

Ryan glances up, to where Ray’s hand is still unconsciously petting Ryan’s hair, like he isn’t sure that Ray is… really doing what he thinks he’s doing. “What thing?”

That makes the two of them. Ray isn’t sure either. Ryan’s hair is surprisingly soft, sue him. “The thing where you make me think you’re gonna die.”

A humorless laugh escapes Ryan’s throat, and he sounds half-broken when he says, “You’re the one who left, Ray.”

“I didn’t want a Game of Life,” Ray blurts without really thinking. “I don’t want a spouse or a mortgage or 2.4 children and a retirement plan. But,” Ray thinks of Ryan, fire-and-ice, brighter-than-the-sun Ryan, all six towering feet of power and terrifying reputation who would smile and offer Ray a cup of hot chocolate on nights when nightmares feel too real— “you deserve it. You got shot and your blood was all over the fucking pavement and that’s when I knew that you deserve the Game of Life.” His hand stops moving. “So I left.” 

Ray starts to move his hand away, inches his whole body away, but Ryan’s faster—Ryan turns his body towards Ray and grabs his wrist, stopping him. Grounding him. 

“Do you know what I thought about when I got shot that day?” He asks. 

For a lack of better words, Ray shakes his head slowly. 

“I wish I’d asked Ray out,” Ryan says, clearly, surely. “That’s what I thought, verbatim. I wish I’d asked Ray out. I was bleeding and dying all undignified and all I could think about was that I didn’t get to ask you out.”

Ray swallows hard. He thinks there’s something, stuck between his chest and his throat, burning him from the inside.

“So I made up my mind,” Ryan continues, and smiles sadly. “Only to find you disappear the next day. At first I thought you were just sick, or taking a break, or—I don’t know. It’s not the first time one of us didn’t report back in to HQ. But then you didn’t come the next day, and the day after that, and—well, you know the story better than I do.”

Ray thinks this is the part where Michael, were he here, would’ve said, you done fucked up.

"You done fucked up,” Lindsay cheerily pipes in. 

“Oh my god, Lindsay,” Ray almost yells, because she has been listening, has she? Ray’s going to fucking kill himself.

“Hey, it’s my kitchen you’re declaring your unconditional love for each other in,” Lindsay says as she walks away with a wave, “You’re welcome, by the way.” 

Ray is silently taking back all the praises he has mentally been giving Lindsay as her laughter fades into the distance. Ray loves her, but at what cost, really.

Ryan clears his throat. “Anyways.” 

Ray feels his cheeks heat up, and is that… is that a blush on Ryan’s too? “Anyways?”

Ryan rubs his forehead with his free hand, which reminds Ray that they’re still in this weird hand-holding position as they kind of hold each other’s… wrist? In this odd angle? “Your phone’s dead and your apartment is empty, so I went to Geoff to ask where you were. He refused to tell me, pretended he didn’t know where you were. As if. Tried asking Jack too, who echoed Geoff’s sentiment almost word for word. Michael, Gavin and Lindsay seemed genuinely oblivious to where you went, and considering I’ve exhausted my options, I called up some of my associates—”

“Those scary people are your associates?” 

“Because your associates are Nobel Peace Prize winners.”

“Fair point.”

“They couldn’t locate you either, at first. And I may have panicked and, uh,” Ryan starts rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand, seemingly unwittingly, in embarrassment, “questioned them a little bit—” 

Ray feels he can see where this is going, and there’s laughter bubbling in his throat. “A little bit.” 

“Or a lot,” Ryan admits. “Actually, I may have threatened them.”

“You threatened international assassins?”

“You were gone!” Ryan pulls himself up in indignation and, wow, yeah, his face is pretty close to Ray’s now and Ray can feel the warmth of Ryan’s breath as he says, “I was going to ask you out. I had a reservation made at this, this really fancy restaurant. I panicked and mostly hated myself for not asking you out sooner, so I threatened them to find you by, uh, quote unquote any means necessary, and I may have forgotten to specify that I want you, you know, alive, so I guess there might have been some… let’s just say misunderstandings…” 

Ray blinks. Warmth settles at the tips of his fingers, and he recognizes it as relief.

“Ryan,” he says, half-laughing and almost hysterical, “did you accidentally put a contract hit on me because you were trying to ask me out.” 

Ryan leans forward and drops his head onto Ray’s shoulder. Ray can’t see his face, but the tips of his ears are burning red and all right, fuck him, it’s cute. 

“Well, if you put it that way now it just sounds really bad,” Ryan mumbles into Ray’s shoulder and Ray loses it. And it feels good, feels fucking amazing to laugh with Ryan, who apparently doesn’t want Ray dead or hate him in any way. Ryan, who still has the best laugh ever. Ryan, who—wanted to ask Ray out. 

“I don’t want the Game of Life either,” Ryan says as his laughter subsides and he’s still leaning into Ray’s shoulder that Ray, now relieved and undistracted, can feel his lips moving against his skin. “I don’t need the 9-to-5 job or, uh, whatever the game actually offers. I’m good. I may fuck up sometimes, and I may get hurt again—” Ray stiffens at that and Ryan places his hand at the small of Ray’s back as a calming gesture, “but if there’s anything we can learn from all this is that I’m only, truly messed up when I’m without you.” 

Ryan looks up and their eyes finally meet and fuck, Ray is still flying.

“Ryan, god damn it, I’m going to kiss you now,” he declares and leans forward.

Ryan meets him halfway. 

+ 

“Ray, did you replace my shampoo with hair dye?”

Ryan’s voice echoes through the hallway long before the owner himself pokes his head into the living room—their living room—head first and hair blindingly, hilariously green. Ray is sprawled comfortably at their sofa, tapping at his 3DS under a warm, fuzzy blanket. He doesn’t look up when he says, “Happy third anniversary of you accidentally sending professional assassins to murder my ass.”

Ryan narrows his eyes, wears the expression of someone who swallows their first five insults before settling with, “You’ll never live this one down, will you.” 

Ray hides his smile under the blanket and watches his boyfriend retreat back to the bathroom in defeat. Ryan always remembers today as the day he fucked up so monumentally that retelling the story feels more like describing a particularly violent Three Stooges skit—a fact Ray has happily reminded him every year with various pranks—but today is their anniversary, too. The day they got together. Ray isn’t big on sappy shit, not like Michael is, but fuck it. You don’t become friends with the guy who wraps his girlfriend’s desk with pink wrapping paper on Valentine’s day without learning a thing or two. 

Soon, Ryan’s going to find the ring hidden under his favorite bathrobe, burning red and personally engraved with his and Ryan’s name. But for now—

“Jesus Christ, Ray, did you replace my toothpaste with oreo filling?”

“I spy… something blue.”

  “… You do realize I know that every single fucking time you say that… I’m going to guess the same thing.”

  “Dammit, Ray.”

  Ray laughed and back flipped off the rock edge, his red tail sending a wave of bubbles in the general direction of Gavin’s face, but missed as the stream hit Michael instead. The redhead spluttered and made a move to tackle Ray, but changed targets and brought Gavin into a headlock instead.

  “Ah! N-no- Michael, why?!”

  Ray folded his arms across his chest, tail swishing to and fro below him as he watched his two dumb merman best friends stumble over each other in the water. They were sitting in an area just off the side of the city, where other merpeople were probably off doing much more important and productive things than they were.

  They had their own quiet little corner of the huge rock that was the foundation of their town. Gavin was the one who found it, the heavily accented merman stumbling upon it while trying to find a place to quietly work out how to use some human devices that would fall into the water at that very location, because of the tall sharp rocks that surrounded their little hang-out spot, that protruded out of the water, toppling small fishing boats when the current washed the boats towards them.

  While Gavin liked to play with human devices and figure out how things worked, and Michael enjoyed playing sports with other mermen of their age, Ray’sthing was that he had a profound interest in humans.

  Ray sometimes wondered what it would be like to live among these humans. While Gavin and Michael both didn’t particularly care for human life as long as they didn’t pose any danger to the community, Ray had always been knowledgeable about the human race thanks to his father.

  His father was the Royal Herb Brewer or “chemist” as he liked to name himself. He said that it was a name bestowed onto him in the human world. That’s right, Ray’s father claimed to have lived amongst these “humans” once, and while everyone in the general merman population believed that to be a figment of the man’s imagination, the younger Narvaez had always been captivated by descriptions of humans; of how they travelled not by tail but by “feet”, the way they couldn’t breathe regularly underwater (how crazy was that?) and the various different cultures that humans embraced.

  They were just like merpeople, except without the whole living underwater part.

  When Ray had brought up to his best friends about how he wanted to live among the humans, just a few days ago, they had responded surprisingly fiercely at the notion.

  “Ray, no! Humans are horrible people. They took away my grand-uncle Steve,” Michael said, folding his arms across his chest and staring down at Ray firmly.

  “Yeah Ray, it’s gotta be really dangerous right? I don’t think it’s worth it.”

  Ray turned to look at the British merman. “But the only reason why you’re here in our community is because a group of pirates helped to transport you here.”

  “Yeah well… but they’re not all nice, Ray! My family just got lucky when we met with the Ramsey fleet. Sorry, lad,” Gavin said, placing a hand on Ray’s shoulder and squeezing it briefly.

  Ray waved his hand away, trying to brush off the disappointment he felt over their responses. So much for his dreams of adventuring with them on land, climbing “mountains” and running around on “feet” and so on, he thought, shrugging and acting nonchalant.

  “Yeah, it’s whatever. I can live with it.”

  “Yeah you definitely can. What do you need up there when you have everything you want down here?”

  ***

  “Mermaids are just myth, Joel.”

  “You can’t- you can’t say for certain, right? It’s like… Bigfoot, right? Even if there is no evidence… doesn’t mean that-“

  Adam let out a loud sigh of exasperation, waving the older man away. He loved Joel, he really did, but spending nearly a month at sea with the most neurotic pirate in the world, who somehow didn’t believe in ghosts, but believed in mermaids however, made him go a little bit stir crazy.

  Anyway, (current) Adam really regretted letting past-Adam volunteer to take the night shift with Joel, because even though as mentioned above, Joel was one of his best friends on the goddamn pirate ship, it also meant that he had spent nearly a month’s worth of nights listening to him talk about gold and trades and the existence of all fantasy.

  “I’m pretty sure that mermaids don’t exist.”

  Joel waved his hands about, then placed his hands on Adam’s shoulders, as if to act more intimidating to get his point across. “But the- remember the Ramsey fleet, Adam! Remember Geoff telling us about the family of mermaids he travelled with?”

  Adam pried Joel’s hands off his shoulders gently, standing up and brushing the dust off his maroon colored pants. “Yes, I do remember. But Geoff was drunk as shit when he told us that story. And he was probably still as drunk when he told us he ‘met’ the mermaids. Plus he has no proof!”

  “You’re the worst, Adam.”

  Adam shook his head, grinning to himself, because he knew he had at least managed to make Joel shut up for a few seconds while the older man tried to come up with a good enough comeback. He walked to the side of the boat, stretching his arms over his head and taking in a deep breath. He could hear Joel resuming his rant about mermaids behind him, but only bits and pieces of speech that weren’t covered up by the roaring ocean waves carrying the ship.

  Adam ran his fingers through his beard and walked over back to where they were supposed to be stationed again, and put his hands on the steer, making slight adjustments so that they could steer away from the rocks ahead.

  “… And you know what? I think mermaids would know where all the gold is too.”

  Adam let out another sigh, locking the steer and sitting down next to Joel, leaning his back against the barrel that Joel had brought out from storage to act as their backrest.

  At least it was only 1 more week (estimatedly) till they were to reach the dock, anyway. They had been travelling with the Burns fleet for about a month now, and after their successful pillage at a beautiful island they had chanced upon in a previous voyage, Adam was sure he would be well rewarded when they reached the docks. Maybe then he could abandon Joel at some bar and run off into the sunset… or something like that.

  And then return to his life at sea, of course.

  Adam closed his eyes and leaned his head back, breathing in the cold air. Joel was still rambling on about mermaids and gold, but he stopped after a while after he realized that Adam was no longer listening to him.

  Good. Silence.

  ***

  Merpeople are born in large egg sacs pumped with oxygen. Their bottom halves are biologically fish, so… fish stuff happened. That was the only part of biology class that Ray was interested in anyway. He didn’t care about most of school work (math was okay, but science not so much), but he did care for the fact that he didn’t remember his existence in an egg sac.

  It was a bit worrying, actually, because when their teacher, Sir Haywood was explaining the process to the rest of the students, the teacher had asked them to try and recall as much of the birthing process as they could. While Michael and Gavin and Barbara had no problems remembering the warmth of the egg sac, the feeling of complete and utter peace and safety, all Ray could remember was spending most of his waking moments in the Red Door Bedroom, up till the age of about 3.

  The Red Door Bedroom was a section of the small cave that Ray and his dad lived in, that was sectioned off and bolted shut by his father. Ray assumed it was because the room reminded his dad a lot about Ray’s mother.

  That was the second funny thing about it all; that Ray couldn’t even remember a mother being there for him during birth. Sir Haywood explained during that one biology lesson that the reason why most merpeople remember their time in the egg sac so fondly was because of hormones mothers would release when they cared for the unborn child. Huh, Ray thought, tail digging further into the ground, well that information meant his mother must have left him and his father before birth.

  Ray tried asking his father once about the whereabouts of his birth mother. He was sitting at the dining table, opposite his father and picking at some meat when he popped the question. He tried to let it come out as casually as possible, making it sound like it was a mere fleeting thought than something that had been bugging him for the past few months or so. The question was met with an unnerving silence, and Ray tilted his head up slightly to peek at his father’s reaction. It was like all the light had died out in his father’s eyes, and the bright and sparkling gaze turned sad and cold. But it wasn’t anger that schooled his features; it was resignation and regret that was written all over his face.

  “She’s here… just not among us,” his father said quietly, the knuckles on his hands white from gripping the stone table too hard.

  Ray didn’t push his father for any further information after that.

  See, that could have meant that she was either taken by humans, or had left them on her own accord.

  Ray didn’t know which was worse.

  He kind of knew that if there was anything to hide about his mother, his father had probably kept it buried in the Red Door Bedroom. So one day when his father was out on one of his herb picking trips (his father was one of the master brewers for the royal family), he invited Michael over to his abode and they used all their strength to pry the door open.

  They were hit by a gust of bubbles upon opening the door, a gust so strong that it made the two boys stumble back, and made Michael yell and curse so loudly that Ray was cringing. When the onslaught of bubbles subsided, Ray saw the room glow- the bubbles were glowing. Ray thought it was some weird voodoo magic, but then he realized that the bubbles were coming from the rare flowers that lined the ceiling of the room, enclosed in a casing of some sort. There were two tubes leading from the casing on the ceiling to the floor, and the bubbles were floating out of the tube, providing oxygen to the room.

  Michael was hit with a sudden wave of nausea due to the excessive oxygen provided by the plants, so he had to pull himself out of the house and rest for a while. Ray on the other hand, was completely fine. He didn’t feel the least bit giddy, even though when he stuck out his tongue, he could tell that the water tasted funny.

  It made Ray even more curious as to what the room held, so he swam further into the room, looking at the various knickknacks on the shelves on the sides.

There were small collections of baubles, the kind that some of the explorer merpeople would collect from shipwrecks, a few heavy etched stone plagues with recipes to herbs. Ray’s father had been using the room as a storage unit, apparently, because he also managed to find several herbs he had never heard of. Rows and rows of jars filled with various types of plants and liquids lined the floor of the far left side of the room.

There was a small shelf in the back of the room, which had two things on it; a picture frame, and a pink jar.

Ray swam over quickly to pick up the photo frame when he caught sight of it. He could hear Michael enter the room, cursing as he did, and Ray turned his head slightly to acknowledge him.

“Damn dude, this sucks,” Michael said, hand pinching his nose, and breathing in and out slowly. “Why aren’t you like, affected by this at all? Doesn’t this stuff make you feel sick?”

Ray shrugged, turning his attention back to the photo frame. “The stuff is oxygen, I’m pretty sure it can’t kill you? And nah, I grew up in this room, man,” he said, a small smile on his face.

Michael moved quickly next to Ray and shook his head. “It still makes me dizzy as fuck dude. I guess that explains your lack of brain space,” he said cheekily, lightly knocking on Ray’s head with his knuckles.

Ray was too focused on the photograph in his hands to pay attention to what Michael was saying. He had photos on the shelves in his living room, but most of them were photographs of flowers that only existed in the world above. The only photographs that had anyone in it was his father, and he had made it a point to only have his photo taken waist up.

But the photo that was in his hands was different; in the photograph was his father, a much younger version of his father at least, sitting on a rock by an ocean, his feet dipping into the water, and a young woman – a human --  by his side, with a small baby wrapped up in her arms.

He let out a small gasp, grip loosening on the photo frame, sending it tumbling downwards. Luckily, Michael had quick reflexes and caught it from beside him. “Whoa there. Wait, is that your father?!” he exclaimed, pulling the photograph closer to his eyes, as he squinted to inspect it. “Is that you?!”

Ray slumped down onto the floor, tail curling around him. “Well… uh…”

“Your dad has legs!”

Ray’s head shot up and he fixed a look of annoyance at Michael. “Well yeah, I didn’t lie to you when I said he lived amongst the humans once!”

Michael shrugged, letting himself fall to the floor next to Ray. “To be fair… nobody thought your father was telling the truth, but shit dude… this is amazing! But… but he has a tail now?”

Ray had his head in his hands, tail fully curled up around him, making him look like a mollusk at this point. “I don’t know…” came his muffled voice.

Michael patted him on the shoulder. “Well, let’s get Gavin here, and take your mind off things. We can play some sand games?”

Ray made a small noise of agreement and the older boy could only sigh as he placed the photo frame down next to the curled up merman. Michael swam up and out of the room quickly, leaving Ray on his own.

He didn’t really know what to think of it all, but it was sure going to be an interesting dinner conversation when his father returned.

***

“Alright idiots, here’s what we’re going to do.”

“Well, I can tell this is surely going to end well…” Adam whispered such that only Joel, who was standing beside him, could hear his snide remark. The older man snorted, nodding in agreement. Usually when the Captain requested the audience of every single man (and woman) on deck, it was to make a radical decision. And half of the time, it didn’t end up well.

All of the pirates on the fleet were gathered on the deck, listening raptly to Captain Burns as he gave instructions. Apparently there was about to be a change in course and they would be delayed at least a week. A lot of the pirates were disgruntled about this of course, because they had all wanted a break from the sea. A few of them, like Pattillo, had a lady to return home to.

Captain Burns cleared his throat, eyes sweeping over his crew. “Tomorrow we will change courses to move due west instead. A passing fisherman has warned that the Ramsey Fleet has met with some trouble from the Sorola Fleet.”

“So we’re changing courses to avoid them?” one of the inexperienced deckhands asked timidly.

Burns gave him a smirk and a raised eyebrow. “Hahahaha, no, silly. We’re pirates! We’re going to get revenge for our fellows. We’re changing courses to meet them head-on.”

As the rest of the crew cheered at the announcement, hollering excitedly at the idea of getting more loot, or even just to savor the thrill of the steal, Joel had only one thought in mind:

I hope there’s gold on that ship.

***

Four whole days had passed and there was still no word from Ray’s father. Ray frowned every morning when he woke up and didn’t hear his father fussing around in the kitchen with his ingredients and cutlery to make the daily stew for Ray to have for breakfast, before the young merman swam to school.

Every day after coming home from school to an empty house, Ray would find solace in the Red Bedroom, sitting down in the middle of the room and cradling the photograph in his hands. It was a little silly, he thought, to be doing so, because it was hard to tell if the baby in the photograph was even him. And if the lovely woman pictured was his mother.

A human mother. That made Ray’s head spin. Did that mean he was half human?

Aren’t humans just twice of half-mermaids? Gavin’s dumb question echoed in his head and Ray grinned and shook his head to himself.

He really wanted some answers, and the wait was becoming almost too unbearable.

He managed to get some reprieve when Gavin suggested the three of them and Barbara hang out at their usual spot, in the sharp rock formation. They were playing a game of checkers that Ray’s father had taught them, and they had added their own twist to it by incorporating the game with dares for every successful move.

After a few rounds involving dashing into a school of pufferfish, tapping the shoulder of the grumpiest old mermaid in town and running away, as well as throwing seashells at the door of Sir Haywood’s house, they had managed to remain surprisingly unscathed.

Then it was Ray’s turn to complete a dare, and Gavin made the stupidest suggestion ever.

“I dare you to swim to the surface.”

***

There was a tug. Then two tugs. Then a whole lot of thrashing that sent the net nearly slipping out of his hands.

“I’ve got something! Denecour, help me!” Jon shouted as he struggled with all his might keep the net in his grasp, the other deckhands quickly scrambling to help him hoist up his catch.

Whatever he had managed to catch was heavy, and it would surely be able to feed the whole Sorola fleet, especially after that disappointing attack on the Ramsey fleet that only allowed them to secure more fishing gear and no actual food or drink. The fleet had tried to mug from passing fishermen, but was disappointed when they came up to a bare minimum. Apparently it was a bad fishing season, worst they had seen in a few years.

Who would’ve thought that a photographer by trade who chanced upon an opportunity to be part of a pirate crew would be useful in such an important way? Jon thought to himself, mentally patting himself on the back. His life was about to be secured for at least another few more days.

Jon turned to catch the look on Caleb’s face, continuing to grin impishly. But his smile faded when he heard sharp gasps coming from all of the crew members behind him, and the stunned silence that followed. He turned back to see what everyone was so shocked at, and his jaw dropped involuntarily at what he saw.

There was a man- a fish- a mermaid? Merman? And a very beautiful one at that, the face of a young boy with impossibly long eyelashes and thick brunette hair, arms crossed over his bare chest, and from waist down where the boy’s legs should be was a tail; A tail flaked with red scales that shone gold from where it caught the sunlight.

Some of the pirates began to raise their guns and swords, pointing their weapons warily at the strange creature. All of them looked at Ray with looks of incredulity, and even Jon rubbed his own eyes to make sure he wasn’t suffering from some sort of fever dream.

And then it spoke.

“Uh,” came the small voice from the creature, “would you guys let me down?”

***

Okay, so this fucking sucked.

“Fuckin’ Gavin,” Ray muttered as he turned around slowly in the shallow water and pressed his back against the glass tank that his captors had decided to keep him in.

This was probably what happened to Michael’s grand-uncle. And Michael’s grand-uncle never made it home.

“Well… I’m dead,” he groaned, using his tail to flick water out of the tank in annoyance. He turned his head to the side and looked around the room they had kept him in. It looked like the human equivalent of a royal palace room. So was he in the human equivalent of a castle? But the last he remembered, castles don’t move on water…

Then he recalled all the weapons that his captors had pointed at him, and-

Oh Poseidon, I’m on a pirate ship.

“Well, now I’m officially dead,” he said quietly.

He thought about everything he lost due to his stupidity. How he would no longer see his father anymore, or his friends, or be able to go to school, swim around freely, explore the seven seas like he had ambitioned to- all because he was stupid enough to decide to swim laps around the surface instead of diving straight back down to his friends.

He wondered if his friends had noticed his disappearance. He wondered if they told anyone about it, if the town was worried and panicking, and sending out search and rescue parties for him. He wondered if they would decide he was a lost cause and leave him in the hands of the pirates, without putting up a fight. He wondered if his father was possibly home already, waiting for his son that would never show. It would be so painful for his father as well, having lost both Ray and Ray’s mother…

Ray could feel a pang in his heart at the mere thought of his parents. He could feel tears well up behind his eyes and he covered his mouth with his hand to stifle any sobs that threatened to escape. He knew once he let the floodgates open, he would not be easily consoled. Who knew what the humans planned to do to him? Cut him up and gut him like a fish? Sell him to other humans as a piece of decoration? Make him an entertainment centerpiece?

Oh Poseidon, I take it all back. I take it back; I don’t want to become a human, I don’t want to live amongst them. This was a mistake please take me back.

Ray was useless like this, trapped in a glass tank. Even if he were to topple it so that he could wriggle his way out of the contraption, there was no guarantee he could fully wiggle his way out to the deck and into the water without being spotted.

Maybe he could try to walk on his hands? He looked down at his arms and decided that, yeah, there was no way he had enough strength to let alone support his whole body weight on his two stick thin arms.

His dense, bulky tail was too heavy on its own anyway. Having a tail was obviously completely useless on land, and he really wished at that moment that he had proper legs.

The door to the room opened suddenly with a bang, and Ray jumped, tail sloshing the water out such that it created a wide puddle around the tank. Two humans had arrived to study him, and Ray felt almost violated by their intense gaze, flushing red and wrapping his arms around his upper body in a protective stance.

One of the humans, a short and stocky male with ridiculously large headgear sitting on top of his head, was rubbing his hands together with glee at the sight of Ray, moving closely to the tank, causing Ray to scoot uncomfortably backwards till he hit the other end of the tank. The other, a young human with an innocent face and wary eyes with a childlike gleam in them, moved more hesitantly towards the tank.

“Risinger caught this one?” the man with the huge headpiece asked.

“Yes sir, it’s a… it’s a… some type of sea monster we’ve never encountered before.”

Ray cleared his throat and shot the younger human an indignant look. “Excuse me, I’m not a monster. I’m a merman, for Poseidon’s sake. And- hey! Get your hands off me!” Ray yelled, moving his tail away from the Hat Man’s curiously prodding fingers and angrily flicking water towards the two humans.

He felt a strange sense of satisfaction at seeing them splutter and curse, but he shrank back again when the Hat Man pulled out a gun on him, placing the nozzle on his neck. He had only seen that in museums back home, declaring it to be some kind of weapon. It looked like twisted metal stick to him, but he knew it probably held some incredibly deadly force, especially since it was the thing this Hat Man was using to threaten him.

“Captain Sorola, with all due respect, we shouldn’t kill the creature- uh, merman. He would sell for much higher value alive than dead,” the younger pirate said, eyes darting between Ray and Hat Man nervously.

The older pirate made a grunting sound before slowly placing the gun back in his holster. “You’re right. We can deal with this little monster anyway. It can’t do much harm to us.”

So the pirates were planning on selling him. That still sounded terrifying to him, because who knows if he would end up with humans that knew how to take proper care of mermen, or humans that would do cruel things to him, the kind of violence that was only spoken about in horror stories told during sleepovers.

There was a rapping on the door, and a sound of gunfire in the distance. The younger pirate jumped at the sound and rushed to receive whoever was at the door, while Hat Man groaned even louder, turning to talk to whoever was at the door as well. Ray took the opportunity to flick his tail and splash the human, giggling as he did so.

But the humans were too preoccupied with some commotion that was going on outside. Ray watched as they rushed out of the room, drawing their guns and/or swords, yelling some incoherent noises.

Ray took the time to savor his (probably) last few moments as a merman. There was always the chance that some sick humans found joy in killing merpeople, just like some sharks liked to pick off schools of fish.

There was a loud boom, and the boat shook, and Ray gripped the edges of the tank tightly, praying that the tank wouldn’t collapse.

He took several deep breaths, and placed a hand over his chest, feeling his heart rate slow back down.

Just what the hell was going on out there?

***

The original plan was to go in sneakily.

This made their whole entrance kind of ridiculous, because apparently one of the less experienced deckhands thought “sneaky” was yelling out to their captain that the enemy fleet was approaching from the fog, and that had created commotion among the crew members. Their boisterous yells and loud curses and cheers had created quite the ruckus, and the crew on the Sorola fleet must have contracted some disease at sea causing them to be deaf if they couldn’t hear the approach of the Burns fleet from the mere sounds of human voices.

Joel unsheathed his knife and grabbed one of the ropes with his other hand, jumping nimbly up the edge of the ship. It would seem strange given someone as neurotic as he was usually would be so daring in the face of a fight, but he was conditioned to this life already, and a simple smash and grab was something that he could definitely handle.

As long as there were no surprises.

“Alright crew, we’re aiming to claim back any chests or barrels that you see with the Ramsey’s crew symbol stamped on them. Anything else we can grab that is Sorola’s is just the cherry on top of that pie,” Captain Burns shouted, pulling out his gun and pointing it to the sky. He waited till the ships were pulled right next to each other before pulling the trigger, signaling for his crew to begin their onslaught.

Joel usually paired up with Adam for raids like this, and they usually aimed to knock the opposing pirates unconscious rather than kill. Killing usually brought on the wrath of other pirates and possible gang members back on land, and the more seasoned pirates knew to avoid that if they valued their own lives. It was kind of like a code of honor shared among the pirates in a way.

“Let’s just achieve our objective and get the hell out of here,” Adam mumbled, ducking a swing from a rival pirate and retaliating by smoothly knocking the pirate down with an elbow to the head. Joel nodded, eyes quickly spotting the gold flashes of the Ramsey logo on some barrels along the far side of the ship.

“Cover me!” he yelled to Adam as he weaved between dueling pirates, reluctant but unhesitant in slashing the leg of one of the opposing pirates who wanted to put up a fight. He picked up the barrel quickly, and found it to be quite heavy, so he signaled to Matt and Jeremy to pick it up, before returning to Adam to help him ward off two of the men from Sorola’s fleet.

Usually, Adam could hold his own when fighting with others, but Joel could see that his partner was being pushed backwards and was beginning to get flustered, so he quickly moved to plaster himself to Adam’s left side.

Adam shot him a grin and they begin to move in synchronization with one another, Joel attacking enemies at waist down to hinder their movement while Adam worked to knock them out. One of the pair of pirates they were fighting was easily knocked down this way, and they were left to face a much younger pirate.

He put up quite a good fight, managing to slice a rather deep gash on Adam’s leg, causing the man’s knees to buckle in pain and retreat from the fight, leaving Joel to fight on his own. But Joel found it easy to tackle the younger man and knock his weapon out of his hands, Joel kicking it away such that it slid across the deck, sending the enemy scrambling.

“Caleb! Don’t let them get to the Captain’s room!”

Captain’s room huh? Joel turned to Adam and smirked, tilting his head in the direction of the Captain’s quarters, and Adam grinned back at him, gleefully making his way quickly to the room in question. They encountered a young deckhand guarding the door, and Adam swiftly drew his sword to ward off the guard, while Joel easily kicked open the door to enter the room.

His mouth involuntarily hung open in shock, and he could hear his own heartbeat in his ears at the sight of the mermaid staring right back at him.

The mermaid was sitting in a small tank, a young innocent face with a mop of the darkest hair, arms dangling over both sides of the tank. Joel’s eyes trailed down the creature’s human body, to the smooth transition down to the slim tail, covered with glittery red scales. He couldn’t even tell where the human part of the mermaid ended and where the tail started. This was a real life mermaid, not a human dressed up as one, like those in costumed taverns.

He must have stood there just staring at the beautiful creature for the longest time, hand loosening its grip on his sword as he tried to fathom if what he was seeing was merely a hallucination of some sort.

“Um,” the mermaid said, clearing his throat nervously, interrupting Joel’s thoughts, “are you going to stare at me all day or…? I mean u-unless you’re going to kill me. Please don’t do that.”

Joel clamped his mouth shut as he was suddenly hyper-aware that he was definitely leaving a very awkward first impression on the creature… not that that was important. He began to feel incredibly flustered in the presence of such a beautiful creature, trying to place his sword back into his belt but fumbling with it a little. He walked closer to the tank and placed his hands on the tank cautiously, keeping eye contact with the mermaid.

“I- I’m not going to hurt you. But uh… how did you get here?!”

The mermaid remained tense, eyes darting to and fro from Joel’s eyes to the sword that was still tucked in his belt.

“I was playing a really really stupid game with my friends and they told me to swim to the top and I… found myself in one of your evil human contraptions -- a fishing net,” the mermaid recounted, frowning. Joel could see the regret in his gaze and it was also evident in his voice.

Joel moved closer to the tank, trying to think of a way to tell the mermaid what he was going to do without being too creepy.

“Uh… I’m going to need to… carry you.”

***

Ray crossed his arms with an irritated huff, but found himself leaning closer to the human to make sure he didn’t just… slip out of the human’s arms.

The human fumbled for a moment once he lifted Ray fully out of the tank and Ray let out a yelp, unfolding his arms quickly and gripping onto the man’s bicep, the rest of the man’s arms cradled under Ray, carrying him bridal style.

It was incredibly embarrassing, and he would have never lived it down if any of his friends saw him like this. Even Barbara would tease him mercilessly. Heck, especially Barbara. But the man who was carrying him was surprisingly strong, and Ray found himself giving the man’s bicep a squeeze in awe, and then blushing and letting go when he realized that he was being borderline creepy. But hey, if humans could stare at mermaids unabashedly, he should be allowed to as well, right?

He had no choice but to trust this human to bring him to safety because… well, it wasn’t much of a choice he could make. He was practically immobile out of the water, and humans had that darn advantage over him. He had a crazy enough day already, what with being captured, then ogled at and placed in a tank like a piece of decoration, then being abducted into another pirate ship… Humans were crazy.

Anyway, this guy looked pretty trustworthy. Definitely much kinder than the other pirates he met and Ray was a pretty good judge of character from first impressions. It didn’t hurt that the human was pretty good looking too.

“Adam! Come help me with this!” the human yelled, and a bearded pirate rushed into the room, sword waving in the air, eyes filled with alarm.

“What did we get-“

Adam stared at Ray with the same fascinated stare as all the humans had so far, and Ray was kind of getting sick of it, so he stuck out his tongue childishly at the pirate.

“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU GET?! WHAT IS THAT?!” Adam shouted, rushing over and just staring at his friend with comically wide eyes. Ray watched as the bearded man kept his sword, and heaved a small sigh of relief. As least he wasn’t going to be turned into human food. The thought made him shudder.

“Adam! Don’t be rude!” the man snapped, moving his body sideways such that Adam had no choice but to help carry Ray as well. “He’s obviously a mermaid.”

“Yeah, as if that makes sense.”

“He’s right in front of you. See, evidence! I don’t understand why you don’t-“

Ray coughed. “Uh… do you guys want to get a move on or...?”

“HE CAN TALK!”

The not-Adam-human groaned in exasperation, and that made Ray grin in amusement from their exchange. Humans were so silly.

“Yes, yes he can talk. I’ve established that with him already,” the man said, letting out a noise of frustration.

“Mermaids don’t exist. They can’t fucking exist.”

“Well apparently they do, alright. Now, if you could just help me…”

The pair began to walk slowly out of the room, mermaid laid across both their arms, and Ray leaned further into the unnamed human’s chest, relaxing for a while. They navigated easily through the other pirates, most of whom were either back on their own boat with the rest of the loot, or fighting the remaining pirates from the Sorola fleet that were still putting up quite a fight.

Ray cleared his throat again. He felt unwell when he didn’t have proper water around him. His body just couldn’t adjust. “So, this Captain of yours… You say he won’t kill me?”

“Well, maybe,” Adam replied immediately.

Ray jolted in their arms, hands gripping tightly onto the other human’s shoulders in fear. “What?! You said-“

“Don’t worry, Burnie will be nice, and Adam will stop making mermaids scared because he’s a huge meanie,” the man reassured, looking pointedly at Adam.

Ray let go of the man’s shoulders and folded his arms again, leaning back once again into the human. “Well, I sure hope so. Else I hope Poseidon or someone will smite all of you.”

***

Joel had to undergo the whole process of explaining a) how he found a mermaid and b) that yes, mermaids were real apparently, for at least 10 times to different people around the ship. Adam was enjoying the utter annoyance that manifested itself on Joel’s face and in his tone of voice and would stand amusedly by Joel’s side as the older man repeated his story again and again to wide-eyed pirates.

Burnie was no less fascinated than the rest of them. Joel had known the man for a while now, and he was the reason why Joel had decided to try out and eventually join this life at sea, and Burnie probably had the most experience at sea out of any pirate on the boat.

But in his many years of seafaring adventures, he had never seen a mythical creature, like the mermaid that Joel found on the Sorola fleet.

Burnie had been surprisingly nice about letting the mermaid stay on their boat till they got somewhere closer to where Ray had been picked up from. Their journey there was delayed because of the fog that settled over the sea, and the part of sea they were venturing to was notorious for its many humongous rocks that often damaged and even sank passing ships. Burnie didn’t want to take the risk of losing everything he had on the ship and possibly also his life, so it would be at least a week till they could drop Ray off at his community and then the crew could resume their course back home.

The mermaid (Merman? Joel had to check with him soon to clarify.) had been ecstatic at Burnie’s willingness to help him get back home, delivering a chaste kiss on both cheeks, that made Joel’s stomach twist a little in jealousy.

“I’m the one who carried his ass all the way to the boat and he doesn’t even thank me like that,” Joel mumbled under his breath as he relaxed in one of the hammocks on the ship, and thought about the events of the day. He didn’t know why it mattered to him that much. Must be some sort of charming powers mermaids have on humans, he considered.

Adam had abandoned him and chosen to head to the bottom of the ship to talk to the mermaid, who was resting on a small wooden lifeboat attached to the ship. It was Adam’s idea to have the mermaid rest there, so that he could be closer to the water and not dehydrate. Ray also had better vision since he was adapted to the water, so he offered to help the crew look out for any signs of danger in the dark waters.

Joel dozed off for at least an hour before he was shaken awake. He opened his eyes and winced at the harsh sunlight, turning his face to meet his “assailant”.

“What do you want?” he grumbled at Adam, who was grinning widely down at him.

“Ray wants to talk to you. Okay fine, he only asked where you are, but you should go talk to him! It’s really fascinating all this stuff I’m learning about mermaids.”

“Who’s Ray?”

“The merman, remember? The one you saved?”

So he even tells Adam of all people what his name was before he tells me what it is. Great. “Well well well, how the tables have turned, huh Adam? Suddenly mermaids are ‘real’ and ‘fascinating’, huh?”

Adam rolled his eyes and pulled Joel off the hammock, forcing the older man to get on his feet. “Yeah, you were right. That’s what you wanted to hear right?”

“Damn right it was. I’m right, you’re wrong, and I’m happy we’re establishing this.”

The pair made their way quickly to the lowest level of the ship, their boots sloshing through the puddles of water sprung from some small leaks in the boat. Nothing that Matt and Jeremy, the two assigned handymen of the ship, couldn’t fix.

They found Ray lying on his back across the small wooden boat, a thick rope tied around it pulling it gently along with the current. The mermaid’s tail was dipped into the water, moving in small circles and forming small ripples in the water. He sat up once he heard their footsteps, and greeted them with a grin.

“So I should thank both of you for saving my life…” the mermaid said slowly, a slight flush in his cheeks. “I’m really glad I decided to trust both of you to help me out back there. Who knows what those mean pirates would have done to me.”

“Hey, we’re pirates too,” Adam teased.

“Uh- uh oops! I meant… you guys are good people! And the ones that captured me were bad. I- geez, Adam, stop making my life difficult,” the mermaid replied, grinning at Adam.

“Sorry man, couldn’t help it!”

The pair continued to engage in lively chatter, and Joel found himself unable to keep up with their conversation that had started way before Joel had joined them. He wondered why Adam even bothered asking him to join their conversation.

Well great. Not only is this mermaid incredibly beautiful and charming, he’s going to steal my best friend away from me. No can do, fish boy.

 “… so I’m going to leave you two alone. You guys have fun!”

Joel balked and stood up quickly, taking quick steps to catch up to Adam. “W-what? Why are you leaving me alone with him?”

Adam gave Joel a smirk and leaned in closer so that no one, especially Ray, could overhear their conversation. “He told me he thought you were handsome. And you’re so fascinated with mermaids… it’s like a match-made in heaven. Now go and at least try to keep up a conversation with him.”

“I uh- what?! No! He’s a mermaid, and I’m just a human. And me? Keep up a conversation with someone I just met?! I’m not even smooth when picking up girls on land, how are you expecting me to do it at sea? To a mermaid-merman! I-“

Adam placed his hands on Joel’s shoulders and squeezed them firmly. “Joel, calm down, man!” he said, waiting for Joel’s breathing to go back to normal. “You can totally do this. I was kidding about the whole flirting thing, but it seems you have a thing for him so… who am I to judge. Go for it!” He let go of Joel’s shoulders and walked away, leaving a stunned Joel in his wake.

Before he ascended the ladder up to the main deck, he turned around to talk to give Joel a thumbs up for good luck.

“And hey, Joel? You can pick up mermaids, or merman, by fishing for them, get it?” he said, adding a wink for good measure.

Joel actually didn’t quite understand it, but went back to talk to Ray anyway.

***

“So you actually have a mermaid community?!”

“Well, yeah,” Ray said nonchalantly, shifting his body a bit more so that Joel could sit down next to him in the small boat. Any sudden movement and they could easily cause the small boat to capsize, but lucky for both of them, they could swim, and Ray was of course an exceptionally good swimmer. “Why, is it surprising that us merpeople have communities just like humans do?”

He turned his head to the side, one hand dipping idly into the water and feeling it flow beneath his fingertips, the other arm curled behind his head.  He watched as Joel shrugged, looking into the distance and sighing.

“Just a few days ago I was arguing with Adam about the existence of mermaids and suddenly you appear, and I begin to doubt everything I come to know about the sea.”

“Were you for or against the existence of mermaids?”

Joel let out a laugh. “I swear on my cut of the bounty that I was trying to convince Adam that mermaids existed. That you existed. Adam was being a little shit who refused to believe in mermaids.”

Ray furrowed his brows, letting out a small huff. “Huh. So much for my budding friendship with Adam then.” He was joking of course, but Joel didn’t know that, so the human turned his head sharply to give him an alarmed look. Ray grinned and stuck out his tongue at the human, and Joel let out a small sigh of relief.

“Yeah I wouldn’t recommend being friends with Adam. He’s terrible,” Joel said, catching onto the joke.

“But he is your best friend.”

Joel waved his hands around in random patterns that made Ray a little bit dizzy. “Yeah, yeah… that’s… not untrue. But I like to convince myself that it’s because we found each other under unfortunate circumstances… and now I’m stuck with him. Or he’s stuck with me. ‘Stuck’ is the correct verb to describe it.”

Ray laughed and nodded. “Wow, how romantic.”

“Please, Adam is definitely not my type,” the human replied quietly.

“What’s your type? Are there types of humans? What are your mating rituals like?” Ray asked, sitting up, placing his hands by his side. That opened a can of worms, because Joel started spluttering nervously in reply.

“Well- uh, uh… I don’t really know how to describe human ‘mating rituals’” Joel said, waving around his hands again, “because it’s not really clearly defined? I don’t know how your mermaids find your partners, but we just… well, flirt, woo and date? I guess? And um- never mind.”

“Never mind what?”

The human turned to look Ray in the eyes. “Well, males don’t conventionally go with males, you know? And neither do females and females,” he said slowly.

Ray understood immediately. “And you like males then?”

“…I- I uh, yes.”

The merman shrugged and lay back down on the boat. There was a rather tense silence for a few moments, and Joel looked like he wanted to take off immediately.

“Well, that’s strange actually, because we don’t care about that in the mermaid community.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, well, in order to breed we need a male and female, but the reason why there’s so few of us is because we don’t force that upon ourselves, see.”

“Huh.” The human looked contemplative, but still rather tense, so Ray reached out his hand to cover Joel’s, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Joel jumped a little at first at the contact, but slowly warmed up to it and visibly relaxed, his shoulders dropping.

“Anyway, as I was going to say, mermaids have pretty much the same mating rituals as humans. We’re not that complicated.”

“I guess we’re pretty similar huh?”

“Hey, can I remind you of the fact that… I have a tail. But yeah, I get what you’re driving at.”

***

The next day, Joel found himself busy with several cleaning up duties after the attack on the Sorola fleet left the ship slightly bruised and leaking more than they’d like. He helped to supervise the patching up of the side of the ship, and found himself unconsciously peeking over the barrier every now and then to check on how Ray was doing.

He wouldn’t have noticed that he was doing that, if Adam hadn’t pointed it out.

And the bastard sure was smug about it.

“Joel has a crush on a mermaid~” he sing-songed into the older man’s ear.

Joel clapped a hand over Adam’s mouth to shush him up, face burning up with what surely was a very telling blush. “Adam, please, we’re not five.”

Adam tried to reply to that statement, but his mouth was still muffled by Joel’s hand. Joel jerked his hand away when he felt something wet and slobbery cross his palm, and stared at it in disgust.

“Did you lick my hand?! Gross!” he whined, wiping his palm on Adam’s sleeve, glaring at the bearded man, who merely laughed in response.

“You look at him and have this dopey smile on your face,” Adam said, moving back quickly to their previous topic of conversation, “don’t lie to me and tell me you don’t have an absolute crush on him, Heyman.”

“Adam, you’re-“

Two strong hands clapped them both on the shoulders and steered them towards a hole in the floor of the top deck. “I don’t pay you to chit chat, men,” Burnie said, the grin on his face telling them that he wasn’t actually angry at them about it.

“What the fuck were you paying us for the past month then?” Joel retorted, grinning back at him before kneeling down to survey the damage.

Burnie laughed, pulling out a flask from his belt to take a sip from and watching Joel and Adam work.

“So what were you guys arguing about?”

“Ray-“

Joel clapped his hand over Adam’s mouth again. “Ray-sing prices in alcohol! Yup, that’s what we’re talking about,” he said, glaring at Adam again, pulling his hand away quickly to avoid being slobbered on again.

There was a smirk on Burnie’s face, and Joel knew he was found out. “What’s this about Ray? He’s the little mermaid we found right?”

“Let’s just say that Joel is definitely looking to get some tail, if you know what I mean.”

Joel tried to ignore their chattering, pulling all of his attention to the hole that needed to be fixed. His ears felt hot as he caught bits and pieces of their conversation, and he tried to will his blush away by shaking his head.

By the time Burnie left to supervise some of the other crew members in their reparation works, Joel was nearly done with fixing the gaping hole. Adam patted Joel on the shoulder, motioning for him to move aside so that Adam could do the finishing touches. Joel used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead, and sat next to Adam, sighing as he rested from all the physical labor he had done.

“Honestly though, do you have a crush on Ray?” Adam asked quietly.

Joel shrugged. “Does it matter? I mean he’s cute and all… but in a few days he’ll be back home and in a few weeks I’ll be back to my own.”

Adam nodded, brushing his hands against each other as he surveyed their patching up work. “Yeah, I guess so. What a pity for you huh? He looks like your type; imagine if he was a human.”

***

“Joel!” Ray greeted excitedly when he caught sight of the man. He flashed a bright smile at him and shifted closer to the actual ship so that Joel could hang about in the small gangway that lead to the small rescue boat. “Were you and Adam busy yesterday?”

Joel scratched the back of his neck, and stuttered out a reply. “Well… yeah, we were uh, we were fixing some holes on the ship, you know after that last scuffle and all…”

Ray nodded, tail flicking water upwards idly. “You have time off today then?”

The pirate nodded, seeming hesitant to engage in conversation, avoiding eye contact with him, which made Ray nervous because he wasn’t sure if he had done something to rub Joel the wrong way. He watched Joel take a deep breath in before recounting the previous day to Ray, and Ray listened on intently. Every now and then, Ray would ask questions about sea life, and Joel would answer them easily. He must’ve spent many years at sea then, Ray mused as he listened to a story about how Joel was once at a gathering and he had eaten a whole bowl of bacon bits by mistake.

“That totally explains why your hair is so crazy, sticking out in all directions like that,” Ray teased, reaching over to card his fingers through Joel’s hair once. Joel stuttered and his face turned an interesting shade of red.

They slipped into a comfortable silence, Joel dangling his hand into the water, drawing patterns while Ray watched and hummed.

“So, Joel…” Ray said after a while.

“Yeah?”

“You have a really nice name, Joel. Jooooooooel.” Ray sing-songed, watching Joel’s reaction carefully.

“Hey I was beginning to like you, don’t be annoying.” Joel said, grinning at Ray to let him know he wasn’t being serious.

“Only beginning to? Joel, please.”

Joel shook his head, playfully splashing water into Ray’s face, and laughing when the mermaid yelped and nearly fell off the boat. “You’re too smart for your own good.”

“What does that mean?”

Joel turned red again, and Ray tilted his head to the side, waiting for an answer.

“I uh… I’ll tell you next time.”

Ray frowned. “Aw, you’re leaving already?”

Joel nodded, sheepishly mumbling an apology. Ray watched him hesitate a little before reaching for Ray’s hand and giving it a light squeeze before leaving hastily.

Ray cradled his hand against his chest. Why did that contact make him feel tingly all over?

***

Ray was beautiful. Joel wasn’t sure if it was a mermaid thing, or it was just Ray. But sometimes during the day when he was supposed to be hard at work, his mind would drift to Ray, and he would wonder what the mermaid was doing at that instant.

The next few days were pretty much following the same routine. Joel would do his duties as quickly as he could, then sneak off to find Ray when Adam was not aware of it. Ray became the strangest type of motivation to get his work done quickly.

Sometimes he drew the short straw again and had to pull off an all-nighter to act as a lookout. But he would bring some beer for him and Adam and they would make their way to the bottom level of the ship so that they could find Ray, and talk about anything and everything while gazing up at the stars. Ray didn’t like the taste of beer, and called it the poison of humans. That made Joel laugh, and he found that Ray made him laugh very easily.

The fog surrounding the ship had cleared up immensely, and Burnie had estimated that it would take them about 2 days to reach the part of the ocean where Ray could return to his community, and he told Joel as much. Joel found himself wishing he had more time to talk to Ray, and just bask in his presence.

“Do mermaids have a lot of gold?” Joel mused out loud one afternoon, turning his head to the side to wait for Ray’s response. “I assumed you guys have some sort of large treasury on gold you find from sunken ships, right?”

Ray nodded, opening his mouth to reply, before a thought seemingly flashed across his mind and a smug look took over his features instead. “Do you have a boner for gold or something?”

Joel nearly choked on a mouthful of beer. “Where the hell did you learn that word from?”

“What word? Oh, that word? Adam taught me it. He said you had a boner for me,” the mermaid said, shrugging nonchalantly.

Joel nearly dropped his bottle of beer in shock at Adam’s “betrayal”. He gaped at Ray, who was still smiling at him innocently. He seemed indifferent about the information that Adam had apparently leaked, which made Joel very confused as to whether that was a good indicator or not.

Joel cleared his throat, clutching the bottle of beer more tightly. “Well, I have a bone to pick with Adam if he doesn’t shut up soon.”

Ray laughed at that, even though he probably didn’t really understand what a boner was, and it made Joel’s heart skip at how magical it sounded.

Crap. He was becoming so mushy over a stupid mermaid.

***

There wasn’t much distance left to cover by the end of the next day. Joel knew that Ray could easily swim off to his community, albeit making more effort on his part, but somehow Ray was reluctant to leave as well. Maybe he wanted to stay with the crew after all.

It was a selfish thought that Joel entertained.

“You could very easily swim off now,” he abruptly mentioned in the middle of their conversation.

They had spent the whole day together, Joel only leaving for meals or simple duties. Adam was being an incredibly helpful best friend by helping to cover Joel’s duties while he was busy hanging out with Ray. Surprisingly, the bearded man had given Joel less grief about it than he expected, which was nice. Maybe it was because Adam could see that Joel liking Ray was no longer a joking matter anymore.

Joel had become so attached to the mermaid so easily, so effortlessly captivated by Ray’s charm and wit, and so fascinated with Ray’s world and his existence. He wasn’t sure if he could ever go back to living his own boring, normal, human life now that he knew about Ray.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Ray replied, humming in contentment as Joel ran his fingers lightly across his tail. “Do you want me to go off already? Wanting to get rid of me so quickly?”

Joel let out strained laughter, and applied more pressure onto Ray’s tail. Apparently that made the merman extremely ticklish, sending Ray rolling off the boat and falling into the water. Ray re-emerged from the water, sticking his tongue at the pirate, causing the oddest case of butterflies in Joel’s stomach.

 “I would love to live inside your world for a day.” Joel admitted quietly once Ray had settled back into the boat.

“Would you swim away with me then?” Ray asked, hiding his face in his hands when he realized what that implied.

Joel could feel his heart beating in his ears as he pretended to contemplate the question. He knew that it was practical not to, but Ray posing that question had actually made him think… what if…

“Nah. Have you forgotten that very important part where human’s can’t breathe underwater as well as, I don’t know- mermaids?!”

The mermaid shrugged, letting out a loud sigh. “Well, that’s just a pity, isn’t it?”

Joel nodded, and let out a sigh of his own. If only there was a way for him to become a mermaid. Then he would be able to live life freely in the beautiful ocean, swim among the fishes, hang out with other mermaids, possibly have a shot at being together with Ray…

The gold was of course, an added bonus.

***

When the time came for Ray to leave and return back home, Joel found a deep, festering sense of longing chewing on his insides. He shouldn’t have gotten so quickly attached to the mermaid, but he did, and no he would never see the merman again, unless he passed by these very same waters again.

And with the incredibly high-risk life he led as a pirate, who knew if that would ever happen?

Adam seemed to have noticed his despair, and had been particularly sympathetic and kind to him, helping out with Joel’s duties when he could, but Adam couldn’t stop time from flying. So when 5pm rolled around, and one of the navigators announced loudly that they had reached their destination, Joel’s heart sank, and the light in his eyes completely died out.

How was he supposed to go back to a regular life when he knew that there was a much more accepting and beautiful life out there in the ocean?

Burnie was the first one to bid Ray farewell, and the young merman thanked him for his help in bringing him back to his community, and promised to help look out for Burnie’s fleets whenever he could. Adam brought the merman in for a hug next, which Ray returned with a nervous giggle.

Joel went last, because he needed time to school his feelings and his features to bid Ray a proper goodbye.

“So, uh… this is it huh? You’re finally home.”

Ray nodded, smiling up at Joel with that bright smile of his that made Joel’s heart hurt a little. “Yup. I’m going to miss you, you know.”

Joel nodded with a grimace, and hesitated moving closer to Ray. He settled for an awkward squeeze to Ray’s shoulder, and stepped back.

There was a brief flash of disappointment that passed Ray’s eyes, but the merman quickly shook it off and waved goodbye to the crew, who all waved amicably back at him. Ray threw one last look at Joel, smiling as he took a deep breath and dived into the water.

As soon as Joel heard the splashing sound and saw the last of Ray’s magnificent red tail disappearing into the water, he felt a sense of regret of words unspoken. But there was nothing he could do anymore; they just weren’t destined to live in the same world.

Joel pulled up the gangway behind him and followed Adam wordlessly up to the deck. Burnie barked an order to continue their sail back to land, which was met with a chorus of cheers from the rest of the crew. Joel leaned over the side of the ship and continued to look miserable, prompting Adam to poke at him.

“What’s up?”

Joel shrugged, continuing to look longingly at the part of the water where Ray had dove towards.

“You should’ve told him you liked him, you know.”

Joel let out a defeated sigh. “Yeah…”

There was sudden splashing below them and Joel gasped when Ray resurfaced.

“Hey Joel!” the merman yelled, red cheeked and eyes bright. “I think I’ve got a boner for you too!” He gave Joel and Adam a thumbs up before diving back into the water.

Adam roared with laughter and shook his head, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

Joel on the other hand, felt suddenly filled with adrenaline. He pulled his legs over the side of the boat, and ignoring yells from Adam, jumped into the ocean and dove after Ray.

Water rushed into his nose and he spluttered a little, but he could see a glimmer of red in the deep ocean, so he continued to swim after it, hoping to catch up with Ray.

His lungs felt like they were on fire, and his excitement caused his breathing out to be unsteady and uncontrolled, and soon enough, he was letting more air out of his mouth than he should have anticipated.

He wished he had a tail, dread beginning to sink in as he realized that he was never going to catch up to Ray, because he was obviously the more disadvantaged swimmer. Panic set in, and he let out his last breath, squeezing his eyes shut and hoping that he would somehow miraculously float back to the top in time-

Then, darkness.

***

Ray turned around one last time to watch the ship as it left, but to his surprise, he saw a body falling down to the ocean floor instead.

Gasping as he imagined the worst, he quickly swam over to the body, and nearly cried when he realized it was Joel. A nearly lifeless Joel. A stupid, dumb, reckless Joel who had decided to jump into the ocean and was now drowning.

Ray panicked and held Joel bridal style in his arms, swimming as quickly as he could to his community. It was kind of ironic that this paralleled the time when Joel had rescued him, but what Joel had done was far more dangerous this time, and his life was in even greater danger than Ray’s was.

It was pretty late in the night when Ray came bursting through the main door of his house, and instantly he was met with a crushing hug from his own father.

“Ray! Where in Poseidon’s name did you disappear off to? I came home a few days ago and they told me you were missing for a week… and that you were possibly captured by humans and I- wait, who is this?”

“Papa, we’ve got to save him, please, I can explain everything later,” Ray said, nearly choking on his own desperation. “Please, do you have anything that will help him to breathe?”

Ray’s father paced around the room, before stopping in front of the Red Bedroom.

“Bring him in here,” he gestured, opening the door to let Ray carry Joel in.

Ray laid Joel down carefully onto the floor, placing his ear over Joel’s chest to try and hear his heartbeat. It was faint, but it was present nonetheless. It was a relief to know that Joel was still (barely) alive, but he knew that if they didn’t help Joel to breathe anytime soon, he would lose Joel for good.

Ray’s father moved to Joel’s other side, a pink jar in his hands. He reached his hand in to pull out a glowing vial, and quickly tipped its contents into Joel’s mouth. Ray recognized the pink jar from when he had first snooped around the room with Michael. It was the very same jar that stood next to the photo frame of Ray’s father and his supposed mom, but he hadn’t thought to look into the jar to find out what it held.

“You’re not going to like this next part, Ray,” his father said slowly, “but I’ve… I’ve just given him a serum to turn him into a mermaid.”

The information came at Ray like a smack to the face, and he stared at his father in horror. “What…? Papa, how?”

Ray’s father scratched his head, a look of contemplation schooling his features.

“Your mom… It’s about time you should know that… your mom is not a mermaid.”

Ray sucked in a sharp breath. “Is she… a human?”

Ray’s father nodded, and he reached over Joel’s body to clasp Ray’s hand in both of his own. “I… invented this serum to turn her into a mermaid, and she did. But she missed life on dry land so much that she ran away. I tried looking for her, but I couldn’t find her, Ray.”

Ray continued to card through Joel’s hair with his free hand, digesting this new information in silence. A few moments passed before he spoke up again.

“Am I… Was I a human too?”

His father’s eyes widened in surprise, probably not knowing how Ray had arrived to the conclusion, but slowly nodded after a while, confirming the suspicions that had been buried deep in Ray’s mind ever since seeing that family photo.

“You know how I talked about those adventures I had on dry land? That was where I found your mother, and I fell in love with her. Just like how I have a secret serum to turn a human into a mermaid, I have one to turn a mermaid into a human as well.”

Ray’s head felt like it was spinning from all these information, and his heart was only just beginning to slow down from the scare that Joel had caused him. He was going to give the pirate a scolding when he woke up for sure. Speaking of which…

“When is he going to wake up, Papa? Will he be okay?” Ray asked quietly, watching Joel breathe slowly.

Ray’s father got up to return the pink jar to the shelf, and moved to stand behind Ray. “He’ll be well by the morning, but he’s going to undergo a lot of pain because of the transformation,” he replied carefully, patting Ray’s shoulder when he saw his son wince at the mention of the human undergoing pain.

“So you… you like this human?”

Ray sighed. “He saved my life, Papa. I… I owe him as much. But I do like him a lot,” he confessed, placing a hand over Joel’s heart and feeling reassured by the strong beating that he could feel under his palm.

His father gave him a sad sort of smile, and left the room quietly. Ray supposed he understood what was going on. He felt a pang of sadness after knowing that his mother had abandoned their family because she missed being a human more than anything. It was a selfish thought, but he secretly hoped Joel would stay as a mermaid as well.

Well, a boy can dream, he mused as he lay down next to Joel, intertwining his fingers with Joel’s, and slowly drifted off to sleep.

***

Joel woke up with a sharp scream. There was a sharp pain in his lower body, and he kept writhing on the floor, trying his hardest to rid of it, or to get some help from somebody. He was convinced that he was either alive, but hurt in a very bad way, or dead, but had somehow ended up in Hell. Maybe if I hadn’t joined the pirate life it wouldn’t have come to bite me in the ass in the afterlife.

He started full on sobbing, squeezing his eyes shut while he tried to curl his entire body as tightly as possible, as if that would ease some of the pain. He panicked immediately when he found out that he couldn’t feel his legs, and started screaming again, drowning out any other noises around him. He felt a hand cover his mouth to muffle his screams, and a soothing voice in his ear breaking through the sounds of agony coming out from him.

“Joel… Joel, it’s Ray. Let me help you.”

Joel shook his head, knowing that he was probably hallucinating hearing Ray, but he put his own hand over Ray’s anyway, squeezing it tightly as the voice in his ear continued to coax him into calming down. It worked after a while, Joel’s heart slowing down to a normal beating, and Ray’s hand moved away from Joel’s mouth to feed him something that felt like seaweed, and that helped to numb his pain a little.

“What’s going on?” Joel mumbled, words slurring. He refused to open his eyes in fear of what he was about to see.

There was a tense silence, but Joel knew that Ray- or whoever the figure was- was still next to him, because Joel still had his hand held tightly. There was a small sigh, not unlike the ones he heard coming out of Ray’s mouth on quiet nights that they spent together on the ship, and Joel began to gain more confidence and hope that it actually was Ray who was beside him.

“Joel, listen to me- I need you to open your eyes, and not panic. Okay?”

Joel nodded slowly, easily agreeing to the command but hesitant to follow it through. He peeked one eye open and saw the concerned face of the merman looking down at him, eyebrows furrowed together, but still looking as beautiful as Joel remembered. He opened his other eye and sighed out loud in relief as Ray started to smile back at him.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” Ray replied. “Joel, I need you to do this next part and be brave about it okay? Look… look down at your legs.”

Joel nodded, less hesitant this time, but yelped in surprise at what he saw.

Instead of a pair of legs attached to his waist that expected to see, in their place was a magnificent tail, with golden scales that were slightly dull, but still shone on their own in the dark.

Joel gaped at the sight, rubbing his eyes to make sure that he was seeing things right. How did I- Did I really- How-

“You’re a merman now, Joel!” Ray said, laughing at Joel’s shell-shocked expression. As Joel continued to stare open mouthed and wide eyed at his new tail, more in shock than excitement, Ray’s expression began to falter. “I mean, it’s temporary! My father, he uh- it’s a long story but he can help you turn back into a human if you want! You don’t have to feel obligated to stay a merman, I won’t stop-“

“No, no, I’m just shocked, is all,” Joel interrupted, stopping Ray from rambling on. “I… Ray?

“Yeah?”

“I want you to teach me how to move this thing.”

Ray grinned, relief evident in his expression. Joel was still surprisingly undecided on whether he actually wanted to remain as a merman. It was one thing to wish for something absurd to happen, and another thing to actually have that absurd something happen to him.

He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted once again. Not by Joel, but by a cacophony of noises coming from the living room.

“RAY!”

The next thing Ray heard was the door of the Red Bedroom being pushed open, and a loud, squeaking merman tackling him to the floor. Then came another crushing hug from his other side from Michael with his signature curls on his head, and  Barbara, who made her way much less agitatedly, laughing loudly at the side of the lads squishing each other in a tight hug.

“You’re a piece of shit, you know that, Ray?!”

“You damn right gave us a good scare! I thought I was going to be skewered for being the one who sent you to your doom!”

Ray wiggled his way out of the tight embrace so that he could greet Barbara as well, who gave him a much gentler hug. “Your father told us you came back, and of course that meant those two,” she said, pointing her thumb at Michael and Gavin, “dragging me out of bed without allowing me to eat breakfast, and bringing me here. I’m going to go get a snack- Whoa. Wait. Hello there, who’s this tasty morsel?”

She swam over to where Joel was leaning against a wall, having jumped backwards at the sudden intrusion. She kept a respectable distance as she looked Joel up and down. Michael and Gavin finally noticed Joel as well and swam up to him as well, looking at him curiously from behind Barbara.

“Shit, Ray,” Michael said, winking at his friend, “you go missing for a week and come back with this hunk? Was he the hero saving you from the evils above?”

“There is something fish-y about this,” Barbara said, clapping at her own pun. “Eh? Eh?”

Ray blushed and swam over to them, batting Barbara’s curious hands away from touching Joel’s stunned face, and stayed in front of Joel to act like a protective shield against his own friends. “His name is Joel and he was… never mind. He’s Joel, and he’s staying with us for at least a while.”

“I saved his ass though, you left that part out,” Joel piped up from behind him, receiving a glare from Ray in return.

Michael, Gavin and Barbara laughed at Joel’s contribution to the conversation, and Joel felt slightly relieved that he wasn’t shunned by them yet. Maybe it was a good call on Ray’s part not to reveal him as a human just yet.

“Well, I’m still starving, so I’m definitely going to raid your pantry,” Barbara said, excusing herself from the room. Gavin went over to hug Ray tightly again, muttering apologies, while Ray patted the merman’s hair to comfort him. Michael went for the classic approach of punching him in the arm first, then pulling Ray into a proper hug, which Ray returned warmly.

“I promised Joel to show him around the place, do you guys want to help me with that?” he asked the pair, who responded with matching grins.

“Hell yeah!”

***

Back on dry land, swimming was one of Joel’s favourite activities.

You’d think he would be sick of spending time in the sea, but after becoming a pirate, he learned to appreciate the ocean more, and he loved the feeling of water surrounding him, whether it was the salty smell that wafted upwards when he was standing on the top deck of the ship while it crashed through waves, or if it was water pushing against his body as he cut through the currents with his strokes.

So with this prior knowledge and skill in swimming, it wasn’t too difficult for him to grasp the basics of swimming with a tail. Still, he found himself stumbling sometimes when he forgot that he didn’t need to control both legs to kick in opposite directions, and ended up twisting his tail in an awkward fashion instead, sending him tumbling to the coral floor.

Luckily for him, Ray stayed by his side and was there to guide him around the place. Their first day out exploring the community was the day Ray’s friends had come barreling through the door to welcome Ray back home. Ray was a lot quieter around his friends than he did with Adam and himself, but there was still that same quick wit and easy going humor that made Joel smile unconsciously to himself. He gripped onto Ray’s arm tightly, allowing the smaller merman to drag him along sometimes when Joel forgot to flick his tail around the correct way, or move it at all.

Sometimes he would stumble into Ray and send them both falling to the ground, because Joel still weighed heavier than Ray underwater, which made for nervous and embarrassed laughter when they found themselves chest to chest, faces just inches apart. Joel wondered if Ray could hear his heart beating, hammering under his chest.

But then Ray would flash him a bright smile full of teeth, and pull Joel and himself up, brushing the sand off both of them and continuing to swim, with Joel in tow, and he would then allow some time for his heart to slow back down to a normal beat again.

The mermaid community was everything that Ray had promised and sold to Joel; it was a colorful community, with seashells acting as tiles on buildings, and mermaids swimming around with tails of a myriad of colors.

And there was so much gold.

Joel felt like he was a little bit in love with the place, and he told Ray as much.

“You’re ‘a little bit in love’ with the community, huh? Is that codeword for something else?” Michael mumbled next to him with a shit-eating grin, quiet enough for Ray to miss, but loud enough for Joel to hear, which sent him stumbling into a squawking Gavin, because he was suddenly distracted by the thought.

***

“Joel, keep up!”

  “You know I’m not going to be as agile as you young ‘uns.”

  “Joel, shut up. You’re not that old. Plus, your new tail means that you should be more agile than the rest of us. Now hurry up you prick.”

  “Ooh, you’re feisty today.”

  “… Shut up.”

  “Ha! I knew-“

  Michael made a sharp u-turn, his tail whipping around quickly, as he crossed his arms and glared at the two mermen in front of him. “If you two would just shut the fuck up and keep your tails untwisted-- I would really appreciate it if we make it to the parade on time so we can actually get a good view this year.”

  It had been 2 weeks since Joel had become a merman, and although he was still adjusting to his new tail and remembering that he actually had one now, he was integrating well with the other people in the community. The rest of the mermaids had taken Ray’s father’s word for it that Joel was a wandering mermaid traveler who had decided to settle in their community.

  Today the Royal family was holding a parade to celebrate their coronation, which was something Joel was certainly interested in seeing, allowing him to compare it to the ones he had witnessed back home.

  Speaking of home, Joel had hardly said a word about returning to dry land as a human for the past few days. Ray didn’t want to push it- he didn’t want Joel to leave for very selfish reasons, but he knew that he had to probably get an answer out of Joel. Even Ray’s father was getting concerned that Joel would lead Ray on only to leave him in the end, and had warned Ray about it, but it fell on deaf ears. Ray liked to be optimistic for once.

  Ray made an abrupt stop when he heard Michael’s remark, opening his mouth to retort, but behind him Joel hadn’t slowed down, causing the older man to knock into him from behind, sending both of them tumbling into some thick seaweed below. Ray found himself landing with a soft thud on top of Joel, his hands automatically finding Joel’s shoulders to grab onto, their foreheads bumping. Ray rubbed at a spot on his forehead where they collided, wincing slightly at the soreness. It was sure to leave a reddened mark the next day.

  “I wasn’t serious when I told you guys to get a room! That’s gross. Get out of there or I’m gonna swim off without you pricks.”

  Ray laughed and flipped a finger in the general direction of his loud mouthed best friend, quickly pushing himself up and off Joel’s bare chest, snorting when he took notice of the older man’s reddened cheeks.

  “Red’s not a very good color on you, especially with your golden yellow tail,” he remarked as he edged forward to pull Joel upright and brush sand off his shoulders, “it makes you look like a firecracker.”

  Joel ducked his head and swam upwards towards Michael, grinning down at Ray who was now behind him. “Yeah, but I like having red on me,” Joel teased, hand brushing over Ray’s tail. “We make a good looking pair.”

  Ray laughed at Joel’s comeback, but became flustered when he realized the implications of Joel’s words.

  We? A pair?

  He swam up quickly to the older man, tail flicking to and fro in a nervous sporadic pattern, and tugged on his arm, causing Joel to stumble backwards into Ray’s arms again.

  They laughed it off again and moved apart quickly, but Ray’s grip on his arm remained firm. “You said- You’re planning on… you’re planning on staying?”

  Joel let out a quiet sigh and nodded. “Ray, I’ve spent my entire life afloat; I’ve been on all sorts of seas, and braved through so many storms. But it feels like I’m just floating along most of the time, no aim, no direction, nothing in any place that makes me want to stay. I like life down here a lot better. I have… I have things that make me want to stay.”

  “Yeah?” Ray said, looking down at his hand on Joel’s arm, hand releasing its grip and moving slowly away.

  But Joel brought his other hand up to lay on top of Ray’s hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing his hand. When Ray lifted up his head to look into the older man’s eyes, he could see that they were full of warmth and affection, which made his heart skip a beat, and his tail swish happily left and right.

  “Well, I’ve got you, don’t I?”

  Ray smiled, moving closer to Joel and twining their tails together, his other hand coming up to rest on Joel’s chest.

  “Yes you have, you terrible human,” he teased, cheeks flushed. His tongue darted out to wet his lips, unintentionally, but Joel caught the movement and leaned down to kiss him.

  Their lips moved in sync with each other, slowly but surely. Joel nipped a little on Ray’s lower lip, which was met with more enthusiastic pressure from Ray’s lips. Joel moved his free hand up to hold Ray’s waist, pulling their bodies closer together. Ray’s hands remained on Joel’s chest, one still intertwined with Joel’s and the other sliding down from the man’s broad shoulders down to over his ribcage, and he smiled into the kiss when he found out that he could feel Joel’s heartbeat under his palm.

And then he could feel Joel gasping as he slid downwards to the coral about 3 feet below them, landing butt first onto the hard surface.

Ray’s mouth was open in shock at first, but he eventually broke out into a rambunctious laughter, arms wrapping around his waist as he let out many outbursts of giggling. Joel sighed loudly, crooked smile planted on his face as he slapped his palm onto his face, running his fingers up his face and through his hair.

“Wow I think my… m-my brain short-circuited there and forgot to make sure that my tail kept me up- why are you laughing?” Joel said, getting up from the coral and swimming up towards Ray again. Ray didn’t respond, and just kept laughing at Joel. But he reached down to hold Joel’s hand again, pulling him along slightly as he lead Joel towards the parade line-up again. They had lost sight of Michael, who seemingly decided that he had had enough of Joel and Ray and had swam off on his own. No doubt he was going to be pissed off at the two of them. Maybe Ray would hide behind Joel as a protective shield. Pirates know how to fight right?

“Gotta learn how to control these… tail things. How do you even manage to- to stay up? Is this even physically possible? They’re seriously compromising my valuable time-“

“Your valuable time for sweet makeout sessions?” Ray finished in a sing-song voice.

Joel smoothened a palm over his face again. “Well yeah, I meant other things, because-cause not everything is about you, Ray,” he replied, dragging out the younger man’s name.