#ojtw2021

Dick took him toward the surface, close enough that the moonlight illuminated the water, tinting it into a rich shade of azure.

Jason had never been courted by an octomer.

He’d never been courted by a regular mer, either, but he’d seen them do it. He’d seen his parents before Willis was caught in a web and Catherine died from the grief. He knew how it was done.

But this, this was uncharted territory.

Jason looked at Dick. The moonlight shone on his face, lighting it. His skin was a golden copper, his hair jet black. His eyes the most gorgeous shade of sapphire Jason had seen.

Dick’s body beneath the neck was pitch black, aside from a v-shaped blue stripe on his chest that extended all the way to his middle and ring fingers on each of his human arms. Jason could feel the bulge of Dick’s muscles when he ran his hand over them, and sense the long, changing, unseen tendrils spreading like a web in the vast abyss of the sea from the current of the water.

Dick smiled. As he pulled Jason close, the skin around his eyes began to change. Rings of black and blue expanded like magic, taking over his eyelids and cheekbones until it looked like he was wearing a mask that magically shifted from blue to black and back again. Like sprinkles of lapis embedded in a layer of obsidian, or drops of obsidian lost in a sea of lapis lazuli.

Dick held Jason close as he performed the alpha courting dance of his subspecies, entangling their bodies as they twirled under the surface. Circling water currents caressed Jason’s face.

Jason couldn’t help but cough out a laugh when one of Dick’s tentacles braced him from behind. Then another. They were slippery and cool; the underside made of blue suction cups that hung to Jason’s body. One wrapped itself around Jason’s red-scaled tail, one spiralling onto his arm. Another gently climbed up and touched Jason’s cheek, the feeling not unlike a lover’s caress and very much was.

It was strange, this feeling. This sensation of being touched and loved by boneless tendrils that knew better than any mer on how to treat a mate. Jason found himself falling into the dance, his eyes heavy lidded and his lips parted, the translucent fins of his tail relaxing into the current and this journey that Dick took him on.

“Jason, open your eyes.”

Jason hadn’t realized he’d closed them before Dick said this. He did as he was told, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Dick’s eyes shone in the dark, his mask now a beautiful shade of cerulean blue. And the color of his tendrils was changing as well. The same blue rings popped up here and there, lighting up in the dark and catching the moonlight in the most intoxicating way, expanding, contracting, like a mating dance in and of itself. 

“Jason, I want to be your mate. Will you let me?”

All eight of Dick’s tendrils were now wrapped around him. It felt safe, safe, like he’d never felt since he’d lost his old pack.

Jason threw his head back and sighed in delight and relaxation, grumpily mumbling a “yes” before he allowed himself to sink deeper into that embrace.