There were times when he came awfully close, though.
On one of those occasions, Michael was thinking calm, easy thoughts and enjoying his alone time basking in the few rays of sun that filtered down to the bottom when Ryan kicked up a gust of sand in his face.
"Dude," he said, voice quivering with excitement. It was the tone he always used before he whipped up a giant shitstorm that Michael would have to make right. "Get up, grumpy gills, you gotta come check this out with me!"
"What is 'this' and what would make you think I want to 'check it out' with you?" Michael asked deadpan, not even cracking an eye open. Maybe if he refused to move long enough, Ryan would go find Cullen or Conor or Missy and leave him in blessed peaceful solitude for just one day out of his long-suffering life.
"I can't tell you anything except it's fucking awesome, now come on before I have to drag your sorry tail fin all the way there. You know I will."
"I'd rather not."
Ryan was shaking his head, Michael knew without having to see it. Years and years of being best friends with a fish imprinted their mannerisms into you until the image of them in every possible situation sank right in to settle in your bones.
"If you don't, I'll go into your cave and I'll mess all your shit up." His voice was smug and Michael snapped up immediately. Only Ryan knew about his tidy hidey-hole where he obsessively stored the shiny gold objects he'd found and bartered for and even stolen over the years.
To have them disturbed, by Ryan no less, was equivalent to breathing air for an hour. He couldn't do it, couldn't have it happen. It was an impossibility. Michael screwed his lips up, puffed his cheeks. Finally, as Ryan waited in bated silence, a sigh ripped from Michael's throat.
"Awesome." Ryan fist-pumped to himself, taking Michael by the wrist and leading him off towards who-knew-where to a fate he didn't feel particularly great about.
What was terribly off-putting about him and Ryan, Michael was thinking one day, was that-
Was that there was a him and Ryan at all.
Because lack of choice in the matter aside, Ryan was his total opposite. Michael had laser focus. He didn't spend hours weaving pearls into his hair or obsess over the shininess of each individual butt scale. He wanted to be the greatest swimmer in the ocean and Ryan messed him up and he didn't care and that was scary. But it wasn't new.
Ryan blew bubbles at pretty young mermaids and played with the fin on his left forearm when he was nervous and had an irresistibly smooth, perfect ripple up and down his body when he was intent on swimming.
When they realized they had been fumbling along the line of friends and more-than-friends for years, Ryan had just leaned in and kissed him like he meant it, solid and warm, tail wrapping around Michael's like it was custom-made just for him.
Maybe it was, and in their clueless eggy wisdom, as unborn guppy babies Michael and Ryan had known that. Had known that they would always be together, somehow.
Yeah. It was scary, how Michael didn't care, it always would be. But when Ryan kissed him, it felt like the sun was hitting him just right, like he'd found the greatest golden treasure, like he'd won the longest, hardest race and could just relax and bask in the glory of first place.
The thing was, that whatever Ryan thought was 'fucking awesome' was what among the general population of fish-people was considered a Very Bad Thing.
Scuba divers.
They had oily black seal skins and dull metal tanks strapped to their backs and masks on their faces, and the two tails. These people had fins, though, but in bright unnatural neon yellow and green and pink. When Michael caught sight of them, he yanked Ryan back behind a rock lightning-quick and cautiously peered out at the humans only after taking a moment to recover from his momentary heart attack.
"Did you eat a bad eel this morning, dumbass? It's people."
Despite the forced venom in Michael's tone, Ryan had the shit-eating grin on his face that always dropped a rock into Michael's stomach, because it meant he had some sort of stupid plan to make trouble and generally cause massive headaches for everyone who wasn't him.
"Yeah, but man, you know how they usually have those weird flash-boxes? These don't. I watched them for, like, twenty minutes."
"That doesn't mean-"
"It means we can have totally have fun with them!"
Michael tried to fix Ryan with the stare he used to get from his own mother when he suggested taking a swim out in open water. Are-you-a-complete-dumbass mixed with I'm-not-willing-to-watch-you-die-so-no.
He had gotten good at it over the years, considering how often he received it himself, though recently he'd discovered that grabbing Ryan and otherwise distracting him worked twice as well.
Right now, though, the thought of doing anything he could possible file under the category of 'distraction' with the risk of humans stumbling upon them made Michael feel a little violated. He was fiercely private as it was.
Well. He tried to be. With Ryan, everything was a kind of challenge, to win and get his way. The fact that Ryan got a cheap thrill out of public sex wasn't one of the things Michael appreciated about him and it was a constant point of contention.
"We are not bothering humans, Ryan." Michael had to hiss between clenched teeth, grabbing Ryan's arm with enough force to bruise when the stare obviously failed to reach him. "We are not bothering humans, we are going to swim away slowly-"
The fact that Ryan didn't make a move to bolt out of Michael's grasp immediately was alarming from the start. The hairs on Michael's arms stood up and he felt a nasty something wake up in his gut- the same cold nasty something that alerted him to the presence of sharks and whales and boats with their silent, deadly nets.
The nasty something was never wrong. Evolution had given merpeople good working gills and streamlined fins and an extraordinary sixth sense for trouble.
It was the exact same sense that Ryan goddamn Lochte liked to ignore, to raise and then dash for the adrenaline, for the thrill of it. By the time Michael realized Ryan was waiting for the humans to float over towards them of their own volition, which they were doing quickly, Ryan spotted it and was off like a minnow scared by a barracuda towards open water, cackling all the way.
"Oh, fuck you, fuck you!" Michael bit out as he flashed away from the rock just as fast, quickly overtaking and tackling Ryan. They erupted in an impromptu wrestling match, a flipping and tumbling mess of fish and flesh. They went at each other for all of ten seconds before Michael pulled sharply away, knowing well that if Ryan succeeded in landing a kiss between bursts of laughter then it'd be all over for him, he wouldn't be able to get properly angry. Which he wanted to.
"You just- you know what'll happen if humans discover us, right?"
Ryan fixed him with the look, that don't-lecture-me-mister look he'd had down pat since he'd hatched. The look that was especially infuriating on him, considering he was as dense as whale's blubber and probably needed to listen to the stern words nearly every time.
"Yeah, mom, they'll find us and take us to their, like, weird air caves and cut us open and look at our fishy insides. I know. We all know. Sheesh, lighten up, will you?"
Michael paused for a moment, then felt the nasty something fall away, white-hot anger flashing and burning in its place. He wanted to say something cutting, to let Ryan know that he could go mess around with humans to his heart's desire even if it meant he could be taken away. Yeah, it'd serve him right; Michael didn't care one lousy bit. But Ryan had at least some foresight, the same bone-deep knowledge of Michael that Michael had of him, and with a low laugh and dumb lopsided grin, kissed and sucked the rant right out of Michael's mouth.
His hands were warm and gentle on the sensitive scales on the sides of Michael's hips, where the splash of navy blue tumbled down. His voice was nothing but a rumble, and despite how badly he wanted to roll his eyes at Ryan's next words, Michael was too overwhelmed by something like desire to do anything more than snort incredulously.
"Don't worry, Mikey, I got this. I know how to swim fast. They couldn't get me if they tried, just like they can't get you, jeah? Reezy's a little smarter than he looks."
So Ryan red-tailed Lochte was beautiful and stupid and absolutely, positively irresistible. So he liked to bother humans and try to squeeze himself in spaces that were obviously too tiny for his double-wide shoulders and stare at his reflection in the shiny silver objects Michael sometimes recovered. So he could beat Michael in the occasional race.
It didn't matter. He was always in motion, just like Michael. They both liked to bang on clams to bother them and catch rides on migrating turtles and make trouble for their sisters. They bothered each other equally and defended the other when inevitable scrapes happened with the other merpeople.
They weren't alike in personality, really, but that was what made it sorta perfect. The knocking, the trembling against one another that had started in their egg lives and never stopped, that was what they both needed. To be bought down to reality, to be sparked to excitement, to be challenged, to be pushed, to be raced, to be loved.
When Michael was with Ryan it was like swimming, it was like breathing and combing through the sun-warmed sandy bottom for lost trinkets. It was natural. It was his constant. It just was. It never hadn't been, and it never wouldn't be.
---
author's note! the title was taken from Neruda's poem, Brown and Agile Child. Sorry this part took so long to come out, the journal kept marking it as spam!
Sorry I didn't comment earlier, I didn't know you'd finished!!
So Ryan red-tailed Lochte was beautiful and stupid and absolutely, positively irresistible.
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
When Michael was with Ryan it was like swimming, it was like breathing and combing through the sun-warmed sandy bottom for lost trinkets. It was natural. It was his constant. It just was. It never hadn't been, and it never wouldn't be.
YES YES YES! YES FOREVER
ohmygosh, my heart basically skipped a beat, I was like :DDDDDDD
To express how much awesome all of this is, I would have to quote everything. All the little nuisances their relationship were just so perfect. Love how you built all those mermaid mannerisms so subtly into the dialogue and just into the way you described settings and other mermaids (looking at you Matt and Nathan) and also the amazingness of Ryan winning, that moment was flawless.
There were times when he came awfully close, though.
On one of those occasions, Michael was thinking calm, easy thoughts and enjoying his alone time basking in the few rays of sun that filtered down to the bottom when Ryan kicked up a gust of sand in his face.
"Dude," he said, voice quivering with excitement. It was the tone he always used before he whipped up a giant shitstorm that Michael would have to make right. "Get up, grumpy gills, you gotta come check this out with me!"
"What is 'this' and what would make you think I want to 'check it out' with you?" Michael asked deadpan, not even cracking an eye open. Maybe if he refused to move long enough, Ryan would go find Cullen or Conor or Missy and leave him in blessed peaceful solitude for just one day out of his long-suffering life.
"I can't tell you anything except it's fucking awesome, now come on before I have to drag your sorry tail fin all the way there. You know I will."
"I'd rather not."
Ryan was shaking his head, Michael knew without having to see it. Years and years of being best friends with a fish imprinted their mannerisms into you until the image of them in every possible situation sank right in to settle in your bones.
"If you don't, I'll go into your cave and I'll mess all your shit up." His voice was smug and Michael snapped up immediately. Only Ryan knew about his tidy hidey-hole where he obsessively stored the shiny gold objects he'd found and bartered for and even stolen over the years.
To have them disturbed, by Ryan no less, was equivalent to breathing air for an hour. He couldn't do it, couldn't have it happen. It was an impossibility. Michael screwed his lips up, puffed his cheeks. Finally, as Ryan waited in bated silence, a sigh ripped from Michael's throat.
"Awesome." Ryan fist-pumped to himself, taking Michael by the wrist and leading him off towards who-knew-where to a fate he didn't feel particularly great about.
Reply
What was terribly off-putting about him and Ryan, Michael was thinking one day, was that-
Was that there was a him and Ryan at all.
Because lack of choice in the matter aside, Ryan was his total opposite. Michael had laser focus. He didn't spend hours weaving pearls into his hair or obsess over the shininess of each individual butt scale. He wanted to be the greatest swimmer in the ocean and Ryan messed him up and he didn't care and that was scary. But it wasn't new.
Ryan blew bubbles at pretty young mermaids and played with the fin on his left forearm when he was nervous and had an irresistibly smooth, perfect ripple up and down his body when he was intent on swimming.
When they realized they had been fumbling along the line of friends and more-than-friends for years, Ryan had just leaned in and kissed him like he meant it, solid and warm, tail wrapping around Michael's like it was custom-made just for him.
Maybe it was, and in their clueless eggy wisdom, as unborn guppy babies Michael and Ryan had known that. Had known that they would always be together, somehow.
Yeah. It was scary, how Michael didn't care, it always would be. But when Ryan kissed him, it felt like the sun was hitting him just right, like he'd found the greatest golden treasure, like he'd won the longest, hardest race and could just relax and bask in the glory of first place.
Reply
The thing was, that whatever Ryan thought was 'fucking awesome' was what among the general population of fish-people was considered a Very Bad Thing.
Scuba divers.
They had oily black seal skins and dull metal tanks strapped to their backs and masks on their faces, and the two tails. These people had fins, though, but in bright unnatural neon yellow and green and pink. When Michael caught sight of them, he yanked Ryan back behind a rock lightning-quick and cautiously peered out at the humans only after taking a moment to recover from his momentary heart attack.
"Did you eat a bad eel this morning, dumbass? It's people."
Despite the forced venom in Michael's tone, Ryan had the shit-eating grin on his face that always dropped a rock into Michael's stomach, because it meant he had some sort of stupid plan to make trouble and generally cause massive headaches for everyone who wasn't him.
"Yeah, but man, you know how they usually have those weird flash-boxes? These don't. I watched them for, like, twenty minutes."
"That doesn't mean-"
"It means we can have totally have fun with them!"
Michael tried to fix Ryan with the stare he used to get from his own mother when he suggested taking a swim out in open water. Are-you-a-complete-dumbass mixed with I'm-not-willing-to-watch-you-die-so-no.
He had gotten good at it over the years, considering how often he received it himself, though recently he'd discovered that grabbing Ryan and otherwise distracting him worked twice as well.
Right now, though, the thought of doing anything he could possible file under the category of 'distraction' with the risk of humans stumbling upon them made Michael feel a little violated. He was fiercely private as it was.
Well. He tried to be. With Ryan, everything was a kind of challenge, to win and get his way. The fact that Ryan got a cheap thrill out of public sex wasn't one of the things Michael appreciated about him and it was a constant point of contention.
"We are not bothering humans, Ryan." Michael had to hiss between clenched teeth, grabbing Ryan's arm with enough force to bruise when the stare obviously failed to reach him. "We are not bothering humans, we are going to swim away slowly-"
Reply
The fact that Ryan didn't make a move to bolt out of Michael's grasp immediately was alarming from the start. The hairs on Michael's arms stood up and he felt a nasty something wake up in his gut- the same cold nasty something that alerted him to the presence of sharks and whales and boats with their silent, deadly nets.
The nasty something was never wrong. Evolution had given merpeople good working gills and streamlined fins and an extraordinary sixth sense for trouble.
It was the exact same sense that Ryan goddamn Lochte liked to ignore, to raise and then dash for the adrenaline, for the thrill of it. By the time Michael realized Ryan was waiting for the humans to float over towards them of their own volition, which they were doing quickly, Ryan spotted it and was off like a minnow scared by a barracuda towards open water, cackling all the way.
"Oh, fuck you, fuck you!" Michael bit out as he flashed away from the rock just as fast, quickly overtaking and tackling Ryan. They erupted in an impromptu wrestling match, a flipping and tumbling mess of fish and flesh. They went at each other for all of ten seconds before Michael pulled sharply away, knowing well that if Ryan succeeded in landing a kiss between bursts of laughter then it'd be all over for him, he wouldn't be able to get properly angry. Which he wanted to.
"You just- you know what'll happen if humans discover us, right?"
Ryan fixed him with the look, that don't-lecture-me-mister look he'd had down pat since he'd hatched. The look that was especially infuriating on him, considering he was as dense as whale's blubber and probably needed to listen to the stern words nearly every time.
"Yeah, mom, they'll find us and take us to their, like, weird air caves and cut us open and look at our fishy insides. I know. We all know. Sheesh, lighten up, will you?"
Michael paused for a moment, then felt the nasty something fall away, white-hot anger flashing and burning in its place. He wanted to say something cutting, to let Ryan know that he could go mess around with humans to his heart's desire even if it meant he could be taken away. Yeah, it'd serve him right; Michael didn't care one lousy bit. But Ryan had at least some foresight, the same bone-deep knowledge of Michael that Michael had of him, and with a low laugh and dumb lopsided grin, kissed and sucked the rant right out of Michael's mouth.
His hands were warm and gentle on the sensitive scales on the sides of Michael's hips, where the splash of navy blue tumbled down. His voice was nothing but a rumble, and despite how badly he wanted to roll his eyes at Ryan's next words, Michael was too overwhelmed by something like desire to do anything more than snort incredulously.
"Don't worry, Mikey, I got this. I know how to swim fast. They couldn't get me if they tried, just like they can't get you, jeah? Reezy's a little smarter than he looks."
Reply
So Ryan red-tailed Lochte was beautiful and stupid and absolutely, positively irresistible. So he liked to bother humans and try to squeeze himself in spaces that were obviously too tiny for his double-wide shoulders and stare at his reflection in the shiny silver objects Michael sometimes recovered. So he could beat Michael in the occasional race.
It didn't matter. He was always in motion, just like Michael. They both liked to bang on clams to bother them and catch rides on migrating turtles and make trouble for their sisters. They bothered each other equally and defended the other when inevitable scrapes happened with the other merpeople.
They weren't alike in personality, really, but that was what made it sorta perfect. The knocking, the trembling against one another that had started in their egg lives and never stopped, that was what they both needed. To be bought down to reality, to be sparked to excitement, to be challenged, to be pushed, to be raced, to be loved.
When Michael was with Ryan it was like swimming, it was like breathing and combing through the sun-warmed sandy bottom for lost trinkets. It was natural. It was his constant. It just was. It never hadn't been, and it never wouldn't be.
---
author's note! the title was taken from Neruda's poem, Brown and Agile Child. Sorry this part took so long to come out, the journal kept marking it as spam!
Reply
Reply
So Ryan red-tailed Lochte was beautiful and stupid and absolutely, positively irresistible.
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
When Michael was with Ryan it was like swimming, it was like breathing and combing through the sun-warmed sandy bottom for lost trinkets. It was natural. It was his constant. It just was. It never hadn't been, and it never wouldn't be.
YES YES YES! YES FOREVER
ohmygosh, my heart basically skipped a beat, I was like :DDDDDDD
ILU 4EVR basically lol
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