OCTO!AZUL X HANDLER!READER
Summary : The rescue center gains a new hybrid on a very short notice, and they have no choice but to put him with eel jerks. You’re tasked with helping him adjust to life in the center while the tweels make your life ten times harder.
Contains : reader doesn’t have a set placeholder name and is just called shrimpy , possibly ooc? , twins are as described in the summary , azul wants everyone dead including himself , azul being in dire need of saving and reader doesn’t how , azul’s kind of dramatic if you can’t tell
A/N : WOO 1K WORDS im sorry if this one reads a little weirdly, i have not proofread + it is 2 am + i want to go to bed. hybrid au again. hope you like it somehow
“Is it really a good idea to be doing this so early? It’s already hard enough with the two eel hybrids,”
Sat across from you was the founder of the center (it was new enough that he’s still alive), and he seemed just as much at odds with the situation as yourself.
“It’s the only choice we have. With the condition we found him in, who knows what else could happen if we left him out there?”
You consider yourself decent at your job and knowledgeable about hybrids. So, yeah: this won’t be too hard… is what you would say if the new hybrid didn’t need to share a tank with Floyd and Jade.
They had to take the twins out of their main enclosure for a little while.
“Azul, please, we literally have to put them back, we’re broke right now—“
“If you put them back, I’m strangling them first and then going for you after! I’m begging you, do not!”
Somehow, without dragging you into the water, Azul clutched onto you with all ten limbs—tentacles and arms alike—and has been pleading with you for about two minutes. You’d like to abide by his wishes, but the temporary tanks are exactly as named. They’re made to only house hybrids for a short period of time, like for travel, and cannot be used for long-term living no matter what.
From the moment your fellow staff dropped Azul into the tank, the twins somehow amped up their menace behavior more than usual. They were either all up in his space while circling around him, or on the other side of the tank exaggeratingly talking about how much they love takoyaki or… whatever Jade just said. Have they ever even eaten these dishes? You sincerely doubt they even cooked the food they ate before the center took them in.
“Let me make a deal with you! Never put them in here again, I’ll get you a billion thaumarks!” At this point, Azul has started pulling things out of his octo-ass in desperation.
“The closest billion thaumarks is with that dumb chandelier across the island in NRC! You know damn well you don’t have that kind of money with you!”
He’s surely about to get his wish soon, because the twins were probably 30 minutes away from suffocating in that travel tank at that point
You may find the two annoying, but you do not need them dying on you. Soon enough, you actually started screaming for help, and currently your coworkers (a grand total of three) are attempting to wrench you from his unfortunately firm grasp.
They deem it a lost cause. They go to retrieve the twins, leaving you stuck to the same octopus that threatened to kill you if you let them back in. The utter look of betrayal on his face is comical.
“Hey, look! I’m not the one who went to get them, so technically it’s not my fault, right?”
He’s so distraught, all that he does is let go of you and sink to the bottom of the tank in an attempt to somehow hide himself. Only now have you realized how badly they need to decorate this tank: maybe he’d actually have some chance at escaping the boys.
Around a week later, and the twins are still at it, although with a little less brutality. They’ve stopped chasing him around the tank, pretending they’ll eat him (even chomping at him to really sell the act), talking about the taste of octopus, talking about what side dishes would go nicely with octopus… thank the Sevens they’ve only been sticking to light teasing recently.
You had dealt with a similar treatment when you first met the twins upon their arrival at the rescue, but it was less targeted due to how scarcely they saw humans before then. Time spent with them really made you forget how ruthless they could be, even if you do sometimes experience moments where it comes back.
Try as you might to get the three to bond, it was barely working. Sure, the twins had some interest in Azul, but it was entirely one-sided. Every interaction he had with them was reluctant and unwilling, always making an attempt to run off only to remember there’s nowhere for him to hide. There were even a few times they got inked, which they found incredibly funny.
You had told your boss recently to get Azul some sort of hiding spot in the tank, as it seems he’s been stressed without one. The man wholeheartedly agrees, but has been struggling to find something decent that wouldn’t drain the company’s entire thaumark supply. So, for now, Azul’s kind of stuck fending for himself.
The twins were whispering to eachother as if they were two gossiping middle schoolers, looking suspiciously giddy about the topic. Floyd gestured to Azul, and Jade nodded, already snickering to himself.
Ever so slowly, Floyd crept closer and closer to where Azul had curled himself up in the corner of the tank. He had himself pressed flat against the floor, as if that would somehow camouflage him better in spite of the clash between the tank’s grey floor and his teal coloring.
You, who has been watching closely from the moment they started plotting, immediately knocked on the glass of the tank to get his attention. Floyd’s grin was wiped off his face almost instantly, recognizing what you meant to communicate without even needing to look at you. He grumbled to himself in annoyance, words you couldn’t hear from outside the tank but knew it was something akin to “you’re no fun, Shrimpy.”
Jade chuckled from the sidelines with his hand to his mouth, only stopping with a humored smile when you glared at him in warning. You really hoped your expression was accurately protraying your throughts: “You’re not any better.”
He made sure his own did. Even from outside the tank, you could see it on his face: “And you can’t do anything about it.”
