[SHINee] what has been (and what can never be) [1/2]
Title: what has been (and what can never be)
Fandom: SHINee
Rating: PG
Genre: what WOULD you call this?
Word count: 14,629
Pairing: JongTae (if you squint/want to take it that way)
Summary: [SHINee Secret Santa fic for linnhe] "Taemin is a mermaid and Jonghyun meets him and they spend time together"... kind of.
Notes: original posts
Let's play Spot The References/Influences! Trust me, there are a lot. 8|
Is this a good time to mention that I have a "sequel" of sorts planned for this? It's not necessarily a sequel sequel though... I just want to play around in this universe some more.
A HUGE thank you to my crying pillow beta, exeuntpbabear, for letting me scream and cry at her the entire time and for not letting me quit.
I'll probably add notes/trivia/what-have-you at the end of part 2. So yeah.
Taemin first met Jonghyun when Jonghyun was eight.
He had come up to the surface at a particularly rocky bit of shoreline where he knew he was unlikely to be seen. It wasn't a convenient beach spot, like the crowded stretch of sand a few miles south, but Taemin was still careful to scan the area before pulling himself up out of the water. He didn't think to look down behind the rocks, though, which is how he found himself staring directly into two startled brown eyes in a round face.
Taemin's hand slipped mid-hoist and he ended up landing on his stomach on the rock.
"Fuck-" he wheezed, rolling over to rub at his skinned elbow.
"You cussed."
He looked down at the boy, who was simply standing there and staring. He didn't look scared or disbelieving or even particularly startled, which was good because Taemin had no idea what he'd have done if the kid had panicked. He just stared at Taemin, waiting for him to answer.
"Uh, yeah. I did," Taemin said, for lack of something more intelligent to say.
"I didn't know mermaids cussed," the kid continued.
"... I'm not exactly a mermaid?" Taemin ventured, though he wasn't sure why it came out sounding like a question.
"Yes, you are," said the kid, "You have a tail."
Taemin looked where the boy was pointing.
"I'm not a mermaid, though," he said, "I'm not a girl."
"Then why do you have long hair?" the boy asked, sounding infuriatingly pleased with himself, "If you're not a mermaid, then what are you?"
"I guess I'm a merman," said Taemin.
"You don't look like a man at all," the boy persisted.
Taemin was beginning to feel more than a little irritated, now that the initial shock had worn off.
"Do your parents know where you are?" he asked testily.
The boy looked down and kicked at a pebble.
"No," he said, sounding more subdued, "I guess they don't."
Taemin paused. "They don't?" he repeated with a slight frown.
"No," said the boy, still kicking pebbles.
"Why not?"
The boy's foot stilled but he kept his eyes fixed on the ground.
"'Cause I ran out," he muttered, "Got into a fight with my sister."
Taemin now noticed the boy's hands clenched in awkward fists in his pockets and felt guilty for snapping at him.
"Hey," he said, patting the top of his head uncertainly, "I'm sure it'll be okay."
"They were pretty mad..." the boy said a little shakily, "I hit her and kicked her in the leg and they yelled at me."
Taemin was completely out of his depth now but he kept patting the boy's head.
"Why'd you kick her?" he asked.
"... 'Cause she took the bedroom I wanted," the boy admitted.
"You kicked her because she took the room you wanted?" Taemin asked incredulously.
The boy blinked furiously and Taemin started to panic.
"Crap, don't cry," he pleaded, "It's okay... You can just apologize?"
Tears were still threatening to fall, so Taemin pulled the kid closer and hugged him gingerly. After a moment the boy's arms came up to hug Taemin back and Taemin could hear him take shaky breaths as he fought to keep from crying.
"... 'm okay now," he mumbled after a minute.
He stepped back and his eyes were faintly red but his face was dry.
"I'm Jonghyun," he offered, sniffing sheepishly.
Taemin blinked in surprise.
"Hey, you really want to go telling some random stranger your name?" he asked nervously.
Jonghyun looked at him like he was crazy.
"That's what you do when you meet new people," he explained slowly, "You tell them your name and they tell you theirs."
Taemin struggled to remember what his mother had told him about humans. She had never mentioned this whole name business. He wasn't sure exactly how to explain the concept of safeguarding your name... hadn't this ki- hadn't Jonghyun's parents told him it was dangerous to just go blabbing his name to complete strangers?
"But what if I were a bad person?" he asked, "What if I were someone who was going to hurt you?"
"Then I'd run away and go back up the beach," Jonghyun said, "What do names got to do with it?"
"I-"
Taemin realized he had no easy answer to that. Clearly humans didn't keep as close a watch on their names as his people did. Maybe they didn't even work the same way.
"Jonghyun," he said experimentally. Testing the waters, as it were.
Jonghyun just looked at him. He gave no indication that he had felt anything strange. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment.
"What?" Jonghyun asked finally, still giving him a weird look.
Taemin sighed.
"Nothing," he said, "I just... never mind."
Jonghyun looked unconvinced, but simply nudged Taemin rather than pursuing the topic.
"Now you tell me your name," he prompted.
Taemin hesitated again. It was probably safe, but still...
He glanced around anxiously, scanning the area to make sure nothing else was close enough to hear.
"... Taemin," he said finally, "My name is Taemin."
"Taemin," Jonghyun repeated, trying it out.
Taemin shivered. It felt strange to hear his name from a human mouth, out in the air. He thought that maybe this was what it felt like to be a beached fish looking up at a hungry seagull, but the thought wasn't as terrifying as it should have been.
"Right. Okay," he said, trying to shake the feeling of suddenly being overexposed, "Shouldn't you be getting home soon?"
Jonghyun frowned.
"But we just met," he complained, "I never met a mermaid before."
"I told you, I'm a merman," Taemin said.
"Whatever," Jonghyun brushed off the correction, "I want to stay and talk to you."
Taemin could see that arguing was not likely to get him anywhere. He considered claiming he had somewhere else to be, but he had come up to the surface in the first place because he had been so bored down at home. It was either talk to this kid or go back to braiding kelp into his hair out of sheer boredom, and Taemin doubted his reputation could survive anyone seeing that.
"So, what do you want to talk about?" he asked with a sigh.
"I dunno," Jonghyun shrugged, "Tell me about your house. Do you have a house? Are there houses underwater?"
Taemin resigned himself to describing the carefully carved caves and buildings in his city. He told Jonghyun about the open-ceilinged halls made of carefully trained coral, shaped so that the walls looked like they were made of lace, and painstakingly covered with glowing algae so that the entire structure lit up and shone.
Jonghyun sat enthralled the entire time, and the sun was sitting on the horizon before either of them noticed.
"Oh!" Jonghyun looked at the pink and orange sky with surprise, "What time is it?"
"You should go home, huh?" Taemin nudged him.
"Yeah, but..." Jonghyun hesitated, "I wanna stay and talk. What if they're still mad? Maybe I should stay for a while."
Taemin blew his hair out of his face.
"I think they'd be madder if you stayed out too late," he said, "You should get home."
Jonghyun looked back at the shore longingly.
"I am hungry." he admitted.
"Well, go eat then," said Taemin, rolling his eyes.
"But I want to hear more stories!" Jonghyun complained, "Can I come back tomorrow?"
Taemin thought for a moment. Continuing to come up to the surface came with the risk of being seen, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to spend his days entertaining a snot-nosed kid. On the other hand, he really had nothing much to do for the foreseeable future and he remembered that his other option was the kelp braids.
"Yeah, okay," he sighed, "You can come back tomorrow. Just give me a call when you get to the beach and I'll see what I can do."
Jonghyun looked confused.
"Give you a call?" he asked, "Like on the phone?"
"The pho- no, I mean-" Taemin stopped and took a deep breath.
"I meant just come here and call me," he explained, "I'll hear it and swim up."
"How can you hear me all the way down there?" Jonghyun asked dubiously.
"You know my name. Trust me, I'll hear it," Taemin assured him.
He had to reassure Jonghyun several more times before he would leave, and Taemin watched him trudge up the shore and out of sight before slipping back into the water himself. This had certainly been an interesting development to the day. He hoped that this would continue to pleasantly occupy his time in the days to come.
~~
Not only did Jonghyun come back to the shore and call him bright and early the next day, but he continued to do so over the next few days. Taemin learned that he and his family were staying there for the entire summer. He also learned that the fight with his sister that had sent Jonghyun down to hide near the ocean had been somewhat out of the ordinary. Jonghyun seemed to nearly idolize his older sister and told Taemin gleefully about their various exploits. Whenever Jonghyun wasn’t telling long and involved stories of his own, he demanded to hear all about Taemin’s life and where he lived. He laughed when Taemin told him about the beds of tall kelp that many people liked to keep around their homes and tended carefully.
“It’s like my dad worrying about the grass in our yard,” he said, “That’s really funny.”
“Well, it’s also a good way to keep people from looking in your doors and windows,” Taemin explained, “It’s nice to have privacy like that.”
“I guess it’s more like having a big hedge or something, then,” Jonghyun said, “There’s this old lady on our street and she has these really big bushes all around her house and her yard is really dark and creepy looking. All the other kids think she’s scary, but she gives out awesome candy on Halloween.”
Jonghyun then had to thoroughly explain the concept of Halloween to Taemin, along with a complete list of all the costumes he’d had so far and descriptions of all the best pumpkin carvings he’d seen.
Taemin listened with interest and came back the next day with stories of the festival the merpeople had in midwinter where they made elaborate masks, usually out of skulls (shark being particularly sought after), to scare away any malevolent spirits in the area. The children always hid in the kelp beds around pathways and competed to see who could scare the most passersby.
Jonghyun was incredibly pleased with the idea and spent a week trying to make his own mask out of the driftwood and horseshoe crab shells he found on the beaches. He came back one day and told the story of how he and his sister (with her own mask) had hidden around the corner at the top of the stairs and scared their father so badly that he had dropped the cup of coffee he had been holding over the railing.
Taemin had been grinning so widely when he returned home that night that his friend Jinki had stopped and asked him what on earth was so funny. Taemin could only laugh and shake his head. He wasn’t quite ready to tell anyone that he was spending all his time up on the shore with a human child, but Jonghyun was quickly endearing himself to Taemin. He genuinely looked forward to seeing the boy and enjoyed talking to him and had long since stopped thinking of him as a useful distraction.
He was disappointed when the end of summer came all too soon and Jonghyun had to leave with his family to return home to the city. Jonghyun seemed even more distraught and was close to tears when Taemin hugged him the day before they were due to leave.
“Hey, maybe you can come back next summer?” Taemin suggested.
Jonghyun sniffed and nodded into Taemin’s shoulder.
“I hope so,” he mumbled, “I’m gonna ask my dad and if he doesn’t say yes I’m gonna ask my mom and I’m gonna get my sister to ask too and they’ll have to say yes, right?”
“Of course,” Taemin assured him, “And if you can’t come back next year, then maybe you can come back the year after that? You just have to remember all the stuff you want to tell me, and I’ll probably have a ton more stories to tell you then too. Just remember to call my name when you get back and I’ll come right up, okay?”
Jonghyun hugged him tighter and Taemin patted his hair comfortingly.
“You should hurry back,” he said gently, “It’s getting late and they’ll be looking for you soon.”
He watched Jonghyun leave as usual, and just as Jonghyun reached the top of the ridge he turned back.
“I’ll see you next summer, I promise!” he yelled, “Don’t forget to come back and tell me all about... everything!”
Taemin waved in response and Jonghyun turned back towards home. As soon as he got back to his own cave, Taemin started planning out exactly what kind of stories he’d have ready when Jonghyun came back.
~~
The winter eventually passed and as soon as the weather started to warm up, Taemin found himself coming up to the surface more and more often. He knew it was far too early to expect Jonghyun back yet, but the city under the water was starting to bore him to tears again and the air and sky was surprisingly refreshing. He had never particularly liked spending time above the surface before, but it seemed more pleasant now than it ever had before. He spent entire afternoons now happily watching birds flying overhead or picking around in the thin strip of sand between the rocks here. He could easily spend hours watching clouds breeze by overhead as he hummed to himself. Soon enough though, Jonghyun came running down the ridge and gave a delighted shout when he saw Taemin already waiting there on the rocks where they’d met. Taemin grinned and waved him over excitedly to show him the colony of clams he’d discovered.
As the summer wore on, Taemin learned that Jonghyun had convinced his parents that this was the best place to spend their summers and that they would indeed be continuing to come back to visit for as long as they could.
“When I grow up, I’m gonna buy a house here,” Jonghyun proudly announced, “Then we can hang out all the time. Not just in the summer like we do now.”
“That’ll be fun,” laughed Taemin, “Be sure to pick a nice house, though, so you don’t get bored and move away again.”
“If there aren’t any good houses here, I’ll build my own,” said Jonghyun, “I’ll make it the coolest house anyone’s ever seen and it’ll be really close to here too.”
They spent most of that summer exploring all the animals and other creatures that lived on the beach. Jonghyun would bring anything he found to Taemin and Taemin would explain everything he knew about it. His own mother had told him many stories about the animals too, so he sprinkled all the facts he knew into the stories to make it more interesting. Jonghyun listened carefully and when he came back the next summer he proudly told Taemin that now he knew the most about animals in his entire class at school.
Several summers passed in this way and Taemin came to think of Jonghyun as a permanent fixture in his life. He looked forward to the end of the cold season each year with anticipation, thinking eagerly of the next time he could climb out onto the sun-warmed rocks and see Jonghyun racing down the hill with his latest tale.
~~
"Am I weird?" Jonghyun asked one day out of the blue.
Taemin wanted to point out that anyone who chose to spend his free time with a theoretically mythological creature rather than with his own species was probably pretty weird by most people's standards, but something told him that this would not be the full-credit answer.
"Why do you ask?" he replied instead.
"I dunno, a couple kids at school said it was girly to read about fairies and mermaids and stuff all the time."
Jonghyun scratched at his neck and Taemin could see that he was bothered.
"... Is that it?" he pressed.
"Well..." Jonghyun avoided his eyes, "I kinda heard my mom on the phone the other day. She was asking if it was normal for a twelve year old kid to still have an imaginary friend."
Jonghyun took a deep breath and looked steadily at the water.
"It sounded like she was talking to a doctor or something."
Taemin looked out at the water too.
"Oh."
They sat side by side on the rock in silence for a while until Taemin turned to Jonghyun again.
"They think I'm your imaginary friend?" he asked, "What did you even tell them?"
Jonghyun shrugged.
"I dunno," he said, "They used to want to know where I went all day so I told them I met a friend. They got nervous that I was meeting some creepy person so I said it was a mermaid and then they just thought I was pretending."
"Merman," Taemin corrected absentmindedly.
"Anyway," Jonghyun continued, "I guess they got used to the idea of me hanging out on my own all day, but me having an imaginary friend or whatever still weirds them out. It's stupid."
They sat and stared at the water for a while longer until Taemin again decided to speak up.
"Are they mean about it, though?" he asked, "I mean, I know they're teasing you, but are they giving you trouble about it?"
"Not really," said Jonghyun, "I stopped taking the books to school so I think they'll forget about it. But it's just so stupid. I can only read at home now."
Taemin considered this.
"Why don't you bring them here and read them to me instead?" he suggested, "I'm running out of stuff to tell you, so you could tell me all your stories."
Jonghyun bumped shoulders with Taemin.
"I could do that," he said.
Jonghyun brought back a couple books the next day and settled down next to Taemin to read. Together they pulled apart the various stories, with Jonghyun asking questions about various parts and Taemin pointing out the writers who got it right or (more often) wrong.
"So this one has a guy who sits by a lake and sees a woman coming out of the water," Jonghyun said, considering one of the books, "... Do mermaids live in lakes? I thought you all lived in the ocean."
"I guess we could live in lakes too," Taemin shrugged, "It's not like I'd run into them here, would I? As long as the lake was deep enough, we could probably live in lakes."
"Huh, I guess so," said Jonghyun, "Anyway, he offers her some of the hard bread he was eating and she basically says 'no way' and dives back into the water."
"Makes sense to me," said Taemin, "I wouldn't want rock-hard bread either."
"Right," Jonghyun grinned, "So he goes home and his mom tells him to take some unbaked bread the next day, but she doesn't like that either. What did he expect? That sounds gross. But he shows up on the third day with some soft bread and she... agrees to marry him? Am I missing something here?"
Taemin shrugged again.
"I dunno," he said, "It sure sounds like it. No one I know would marry someone just 'cause they brought them some squishy bread."
"Yeah, I thought it sounded a little..."
"Implausible?"
"Yeah, that."
Jonghyun cleared his throat and continued.
"So yeah, he has to pass a test where there are three women who all look the same and he picks the right one because she tied her shoes differently or something. They get married and she says that if he ever... strikes her three times without reason? She'll leave and go back to the lake. So one day they're gonna go out riding and she sends him back into the house to get her gloves and he smacks her on the arm with them, so that's strike one. Then they're at a wedding a few years later and she won't stop crying, so he claps her on the back and tells her to cheer up and that's strike two. Then when they're both much older they go to a funeral and she keeps laughing. He puts a hand on her shoulder and asks her what she's laughing about... and that counts as the third strike? So she goes back into the lake and takes all the cows and sheep with her."
Jonghyun frowned.
"That doesn't sound fair at all," he complained, "How was that hitting her a third time? And why did she have to take the animals with her? That's kind of a jerk thing to do."
"It is," Taemin agreed, "It sounds like at that point she was just looking for an excuse to get out of there, if you ask me. She probably missed the lake a lot. I don't know if I could stand being away from the ocean for that long."
"It's kind of like The Little Mermaid," said Jonghyun, "Except no sea witch. How did she get legs if there was no spell on her? They didn't explain that part."
"Well, we actually can go on land for a while," Taemin said reluctantly, "We just don't really like to much."
"Wait, really?" Jonghyun looked gobsmacked, "You can get legs and go out of the water?"
"I'm out of the water right now," Taemin pointed out.
"You know what I mean!" said Jonghyun, "With, like... legs and stuff!"
"With legs and stuff," Taemin agreed, "We can kind of shed our skin and take human shape for a while, but it doesn't happen all that often as far as I know."
"... You mean you could do it now?" Jonghyun asked, eyeing Taemin's tail with interest.
"I could," said Taemin cautiously, "But it's not like I have clothes or anything."
"I could bring you some!" Jonghyun offered, "If I brought you clothes some time, could you come see the town here with me? I could show you all my favorite places! It would be so much fun... could you?"
The idea made Taemin nervous just to think about, but Jonghyun was so excited that he reluctantly agreed. Jonghyun sent the next week and a half planning furiously about how he would find the clothes, where he would take Taemin, and all the things they would do together. The summer actually ended before they managed to put the plans into motion, much to Jonghyun's disappointment, but Taemin sighed and promised to join Jonghyun in exploring the town next summer.
~~
Jonghyun showed up on the very first day back the next year with a bag of clothes in his hand and a huge smile on his face.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked, positively shaking with excitement.
Taemin eyed the clothes balefully.
“I guess so,” he said.
Jonghyun practically gurgled and Taemin looked at him oddly.
“Sorry,” said Jonghyun, “I just really want to show you everything.”
“Well, turn around,” Taemin demanded, “I’m going to take my skin off.”
“That sounds really really creepy, by the way,” said Jonghyun as he turned around, “I just thought you should know.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” said Taemin as he slipped out of his skin and considered his somewhat shaky legs.
This was actually the first time he’d ever tried this, but he got the hang of the whole leg thing a lot faster than he thought he would. He supposed that his people wouldn’t be able to do this if there wasn’t some instinctive knowledge of what to do, but he still experimented with the new muscle movement for a couple minutes before Jonghyun’s voice behind him called him back to reality.
“Are you done yet?” Jonghyun complained.
“Oh, sorry, not yet,” said Taemin, turning the clothes around and trying to figure out how pants worked.
“Hurry up,” Jonghyun whined.
Taemin just rolled his eyes.
“Okay,” he said finally, “I think I’ve got it.”
Jonghyun turned around and looked him over appraisingly.
“You’ve got the shirt on inside-out,” he commented.
“What?” Taemin tried to look over his own shoulder at the shirt, “I turned this thing around a million times though!”
Jonghyun laughed and helped him get the shirt on the right way before grabbing his hand and pulling him away from the rocks, towards the high grass-topped ridge at the edge of the sand. It took Taemin several tries to get over this ridge, but by the time he got to the top he thought he had a pretty good feel for his new legs.
Jonghyun handed him something.
“Here,” he said, “It’s a hair tie. If your hair gets in the way, you can pull it back.”
Taemin awkwardly tried to fit it around his hair and ended up with a messy tail at the back of his head that he was sure was tangling even as they walked, but at least Jonghyun looked pleased.
Taemin took his skin and folded it up as they walked.
"What's that?" Jonghyun asked, looking at it with interest.
"It's my scaleskin," Taemin explained, "I'm not a shapeshifter or anything, so I have to carry a skin around if I'm not wearing it like I normally do."
"Like a selkie," Jonghyun pointed out, "If you don't have your skin, you can't go back to the sea, right?"
"Right," Taemin agreed.
"What happens if someone burns it?" Jonghyun asked, "That happened in some of the stories."
Taemin shuddered.
"That would be horrible," he said, clutching the scaleskin to his chest, "I don't know what I would do... It would be the worst possible thing."
Jonghyun patted him on the arm.
"I'll make sure nothing happens to it," he promised.
They ended up walking all over town that day. Jonghyun laughed when he realized that the bottom hems of Taemin's jeans stayed wet no matter how long they were out of the water.
"Just like the... was it the nixies?" Jonghyun asked.
"I don't remember," said Taemin, "But I guess whatever story it was got it right."
Jonghyun seemed far too pleased to prove another one of his books right.
As they walked, Jonghyun pointed out all the best places to eat and the arcade with the fantastic racing game and the brightly-lit movie theater with the old fashioned marquee outside announcing all the movies playing there, most of which neither of them had ever heard of. Not that Taemin had heard of many movies to begin with, but still. As he saw the last movie title on the list though, Jonghyun’s eyes lit up.
“Come on,” he said, pulling Taemin into the building, “You have to see this one.”
Taemin took the ticket for The Little Mermaid that Jonghyun handed him and sighed.
"What the hell did I just watch?" Taemin asked about two hours later as they walked out of the theater, "Had they never met a mermaid before?"
"Probably not," Jonghyun laughed, skipping alongside him, "But it was still awesome, right?"
"The songs were pretty good," Taemin admitted, "But the rest was so... so inaccurate!"
"Well, I don't think they had many people to ask while they were making it," said Jonghyun, "They just had to go off the fairy tale."
"Do you have that in any of your books?"
"I think so... I'll have to check."
Taemin flipped through the story when Jonghyun brought it to him.
"I take it back," he said as he set it down, "The movie's better. Everything isn't horrible by the end in the movie."
"Everything isn't horrible at the end of the story though!" Jonghyun argued, "She gets a chance to earn a soul and go to heaven."
"Why do the stories want to make us more human?" he asked with disgust as they walked back up the beach idly, "We're perfectly fine the way we are."
"I dunno," said Jonghyun, "It'd be a little bit weird to marry someone that different. I guess a lot of people think it's too scary."
He picked up shells as they walked and handed the perfectly whole ones to Taemin to hold.
"They made a bunch of sequels to the movie too and I guess they couldn't do that if it ended like the story. She has a daughter or something later on and some stuff happens. I dunno, it was boring."
He dug half of a conch shell out of the sand and contemplated it.
"If I ever have a kid, I think I'd want to name them Sora," he said, "Shells are one of my favorite things about the beach."
"Boy or girl?" Taemin asked, picking up a black shell with an iridescent sheen to it.
"Does it matter?" Jonghyun asked back, "Would it work for both?"
"I guess," Taemin agreed.
Before Jonghyun headed home that night, he left Taemin with three carefully picked-out shells. One of them was the black shell that Taemin had found and he smiled as he took them back down to his home.
~~
One day when Taemin was struggling with the hairtie Jonghyun always offered him, he snapped it in half in his frustration.
"I should just cut it all off like you do," he groused, sucking on his finger where the elastic had hit him.
"You could just leave it down like it is now," Jonghyun suggested, "I just thought it might get in your way."
"No, you're right," Taemin sighed, "It's fine when we're just sitting here, but walking all over the place it gets all over the place. I think I'm going to choke on it if it gets in my mouth one more time. If I'm going to keep spending so much time up here, I should probably cut it."
"If you're sure," said Jonghyun dubiously.
"I'm sure," Taemin emphatically replied.
So Jonghyun took him into town to a nearby barber shop and Taemin flipped through some magazines there before he found a haircut he liked. He sat stiff as a board in the chair the entire time and actually jumped when the barber touched the clippers to the back of his neck. Jonghyun surreptitiously held his hand under the apron and Taemin managed to make it through the rest of the haircut without cutting off all the circulation to Jonghyun's fingers.
As they sat on the grass afterwards and Taemin rubbed at the bristly hair on his neck, he told Jonghyun about the forges his people had where they made iron and steel into tools and weapons, but also where the master smiths shaped silver into intricate decorations for noble families. Jonghyun was astonished to hear that the merpeople were so involved in metalworking.
"I thought you needed air to heat metal up that much though," he said, "You can't go deep enough to reach volcanos or anything like that, can you?"
"No," said Taemin, "And it would be dangerous to even try. Messing with something like that would be stupid. No work is worth that. We have caves with air pockets that we can set up the forges in. They're deep enough and well-hidden enough that no humans have ever found any, though I think a few have come close. It's hot and cramped and the air goes bad after a while if you don't clear it, but it's amazing too. To be able to twist metal into whatever shape you want, with only the flickering light from the furnaces and the glowing algae that they coat the waterline with... I think it's a kind of magic."
"I wish I could see it," Jonghyun said, leaning closer, "Is there any way...?"
Taemin shook his head, feeling strange when no hair brushed his shoulders.
"It's too deep for you to make it," he said, "Maybe if you had really expensive equipment, but even then it'd be difficult."
Jonghyun looked disappointed, but not surprised.
"You'll just have to tell me more about it then," he said, flopping across Taemin's lap obnoxiously.
Taemin laughed and flicked his forehead.
"I guess I could do that," he agreed.
Jinki gave him a strange look when he returned home that night with his new short hair, but when Taemin asked him about it, he simply smiled his usual kind smile.
"Be careful," he said, leaving Taemin to wonder what he was supposed to be careful of.
~~
One day Jonghyun came with his most recent book and read to Taemin excitedly about "huge sponges of millennial growth and height" and "unnumbered and enormous polypi" and the fantastic and surreal world the old poets described on the ocean's floor, far beneath in the abysmal sea.
Taemin told him stories of the things that lived in deep crevices miles below the surface too. He told him about squirming worms reveling in the warm vents and the intense pressure, and about strange ferns that swayed in slow currents like trees in a breeze. And then he told him about things left to sleep for generations after generations and about those parts of the sea his people still never ventured into, either out of respect or fear or some measure of both.
"But there can't be anything like that down there," Jonghyun protested, "We explored pretty much everything down there and we'd know if some sort of weird monster or creature or whatever was down there."
Taemin shrugged and drew spirals in the water almost idly.
"The ocean is bigger than you think."
Jonghyun laughed and waved an arm.
"The sky is even bigger," he said, "We've been out into the stars and they go on forever. You make it sound like we can't even map our tiny planet, but we've seen so much further out there than the bottom of the ocean could ever be."
"The ocean is very big," said Taemin solemnly.
Jonghyun let the matter drop after that.
Jonghyun was starting to study literature in a much more serious way now at school, and he was constantly finding new books and stories to bring down to the beach. They did less exploring now, but every so often Jonghyun would stand up, stretch his legs, and declare that they needed a break from reading and would drag Taemin away from the water to go buy ice cream or watch a movie or just run down the streets, shrieking like banshees. Jonghyun would also demand that they find more comfortable places to read than down on the rocks. He had a bag with towels and cushions to lay out, but more and more often he nagged Taemin out of his scaleskin to go read in the grass closer to his family’s house or to find a tree to perch in. Taemin thought that the tree was even more uncomfortable than the rocks, but he never argued the point. If Jonghyun wanted to sit in a knobbly tree while he poured over his books, then far be it from Taemin to spoil his fun. He did wish they could spend more time near the shore, since being on land for so long made him antsy and nervous, but at least he could usually distract Jonghyun before too long with a joke or a water balloon and they would go racing back down to the beach so that Jonghyun could wreak watery vengeance on Taemin.
One day they were stalking each other through the town with water guns, and Jonghyun had just managed to surprise Taemin from an upper balcony and was mercilessly spraying away, when an older couple came passing by and the woman admonished Jonghyun to “be nicer to his little sister.” Jonghyun was incoherent with laughter when he saw Taemin’s face and actually collapsed to the grass howling. Taemin frowned and kicked him irritably.
“Stop laughing, you hyena,” he grouched, “I’m not sure which part of that was more insulting actually... the idea that she thought I was a girl, or that you were older.”
“Well, you are very pretty,” Jonghyun said, earning another kick from Taemin, “And if you think about it, I do look older now.”
“No way,” scoffed Taemin, “How old are you now?”
“I turned seventeen in the spring,” said Jonghyun, sitting up in the grass, “You don’t look that much younger maybe, but come on. It’s not that unbelievable. How old are you actually?”
“Eighty-five,” said Taemin peevishly, “I’m way older than you.”
“No way,” Jonghyun gaped, “No way are you eighty-five. You look like you’re like my age or a little younger.”
“Well, I am, so get used to it,” said Taemin as he flopped down next to him.
Jonghyun sprayed him in the side of the head with his water gun.
“Hey,” he said, grinning widely, “You should call me hyung now.”
Taemin pummeled him with his fists and the water fight broke out again not long after.
~~
As Jonghyun pressured him to spend longer and longer periods out of the water, Taemin started to pull back more and more. He would find excuses to limit the time they spent to sitting on the rocks and simply talking, but Jonghyun was restless and wouldn’t settle there for long before pulling Taemin back into town to find amusement there. There was a drive-in movie theater that they would bring chairs to and set them up between the cars to watch movie after movie. Taemin enjoyed it, but Jonghyun wanted to spend entire days away from the water and even got Taemin to stay overnight a few times by sneaking him into the house where Jonghyun’s family was staying. Each time Taemin woke up there though, he spent several long minutes panicked and disoriented before realizing where he was. Waking up in the air on shore made him nervous and he always slipped back out to the water before Jonghyun ever opened his eyes. When Jonghyun asked about this, Taemin said truthfully that he didn’t get much sleep while he was away from the ocean. He was always too inexplicably nervous to sleep for long.
They spent the entire summer trying to find a balance between the ocean and the land, but Taemin suspected that Jonghyun was getting his way more often than not, and the idea worried him slightly. He hadn’t expressed his fears to Jonghyun because they seemed somewhat foolish, but every time Jonghyun invited him on a trip further away from the ocean than the time before, Taemin’s uneasy feeling grew and he knew that sooner or later he’d have to speak up. But how was he supposed to explain that being away from the water was an inherently nerve-wracking experience for his people? Almost all of the stories the humans had about merpeople involved the mermaid or man leaving the water willingly and eagerly to be with the one they loved, but it never ended well. Merpeople just weren’t meant to remain abovewater for that long, and he didn’t know how to explain this without giving voice to the thing that scared him most. Once out of water for long enough, the mermaid or merman would have to choose one life or the other. Taemin’s mother had always explained that at that point, if the landed mermaid ever returned to the sea then they would have chosen that life for good. There would be no going back to the land ever again. Taemin knew that eventually the call of the sea would be too strong to resist, and the idea of never following Jonghyun down the back alleys of the town to find a stray cat or never climbing to a rooftop to see who could spot the most shooting stars scared him more than he could say. How could he explain something like that? So instead he kept silent and reluctantly followed Jonghyun’s plans as much as he could.
The idea that Jonghyun could lure him this far out of the water to begin with was one he was also too scared to think about.
part 2
Fandom: SHINee
Rating: PG
Genre: what WOULD you call this?
Word count: 14,629
Pairing: JongTae (if you squint/want to take it that way)
Summary: [SHINee Secret Santa fic for linnhe] "Taemin is a mermaid and Jonghyun meets him and they spend time together"... kind of.
Notes: original posts
Let's play Spot The References/Influences! Trust me, there are a lot. 8|
Is this a good time to mention that I have a "sequel" of sorts planned for this? It's not necessarily a sequel sequel though... I just want to play around in this universe some more.
A HUGE thank you to my crying pillow beta, exeuntpbabear, for letting me scream and cry at her the entire time and for not letting me quit.
I'll probably add notes/trivia/what-have-you at the end of part 2. So yeah.
Taemin first met Jonghyun when Jonghyun was eight.
He had come up to the surface at a particularly rocky bit of shoreline where he knew he was unlikely to be seen. It wasn't a convenient beach spot, like the crowded stretch of sand a few miles south, but Taemin was still careful to scan the area before pulling himself up out of the water. He didn't think to look down behind the rocks, though, which is how he found himself staring directly into two startled brown eyes in a round face.
Taemin's hand slipped mid-hoist and he ended up landing on his stomach on the rock.
"Fuck-" he wheezed, rolling over to rub at his skinned elbow.
"You cussed."
He looked down at the boy, who was simply standing there and staring. He didn't look scared or disbelieving or even particularly startled, which was good because Taemin had no idea what he'd have done if the kid had panicked. He just stared at Taemin, waiting for him to answer.
"Uh, yeah. I did," Taemin said, for lack of something more intelligent to say.
"I didn't know mermaids cussed," the kid continued.
"... I'm not exactly a mermaid?" Taemin ventured, though he wasn't sure why it came out sounding like a question.
"Yes, you are," said the kid, "You have a tail."
Taemin looked where the boy was pointing.
"I'm not a mermaid, though," he said, "I'm not a girl."
"Then why do you have long hair?" the boy asked, sounding infuriatingly pleased with himself, "If you're not a mermaid, then what are you?"
"I guess I'm a merman," said Taemin.
"You don't look like a man at all," the boy persisted.
Taemin was beginning to feel more than a little irritated, now that the initial shock had worn off.
"Do your parents know where you are?" he asked testily.
The boy looked down and kicked at a pebble.
"No," he said, sounding more subdued, "I guess they don't."
Taemin paused. "They don't?" he repeated with a slight frown.
"No," said the boy, still kicking pebbles.
"Why not?"
The boy's foot stilled but he kept his eyes fixed on the ground.
"'Cause I ran out," he muttered, "Got into a fight with my sister."
Taemin now noticed the boy's hands clenched in awkward fists in his pockets and felt guilty for snapping at him.
"Hey," he said, patting the top of his head uncertainly, "I'm sure it'll be okay."
"They were pretty mad..." the boy said a little shakily, "I hit her and kicked her in the leg and they yelled at me."
Taemin was completely out of his depth now but he kept patting the boy's head.
"Why'd you kick her?" he asked.
"... 'Cause she took the bedroom I wanted," the boy admitted.
"You kicked her because she took the room you wanted?" Taemin asked incredulously.
The boy blinked furiously and Taemin started to panic.
"Crap, don't cry," he pleaded, "It's okay... You can just apologize?"
Tears were still threatening to fall, so Taemin pulled the kid closer and hugged him gingerly. After a moment the boy's arms came up to hug Taemin back and Taemin could hear him take shaky breaths as he fought to keep from crying.
"... 'm okay now," he mumbled after a minute.
He stepped back and his eyes were faintly red but his face was dry.
"I'm Jonghyun," he offered, sniffing sheepishly.
Taemin blinked in surprise.
"Hey, you really want to go telling some random stranger your name?" he asked nervously.
Jonghyun looked at him like he was crazy.
"That's what you do when you meet new people," he explained slowly, "You tell them your name and they tell you theirs."
Taemin struggled to remember what his mother had told him about humans. She had never mentioned this whole name business. He wasn't sure exactly how to explain the concept of safeguarding your name... hadn't this ki- hadn't Jonghyun's parents told him it was dangerous to just go blabbing his name to complete strangers?
"But what if I were a bad person?" he asked, "What if I were someone who was going to hurt you?"
"Then I'd run away and go back up the beach," Jonghyun said, "What do names got to do with it?"
"I-"
Taemin realized he had no easy answer to that. Clearly humans didn't keep as close a watch on their names as his people did. Maybe they didn't even work the same way.
"Jonghyun," he said experimentally. Testing the waters, as it were.
Jonghyun just looked at him. He gave no indication that he had felt anything strange. The two of them stared at each other for a long moment.
"What?" Jonghyun asked finally, still giving him a weird look.
Taemin sighed.
"Nothing," he said, "I just... never mind."
Jonghyun looked unconvinced, but simply nudged Taemin rather than pursuing the topic.
"Now you tell me your name," he prompted.
Taemin hesitated again. It was probably safe, but still...
He glanced around anxiously, scanning the area to make sure nothing else was close enough to hear.
"... Taemin," he said finally, "My name is Taemin."
"Taemin," Jonghyun repeated, trying it out.
Taemin shivered. It felt strange to hear his name from a human mouth, out in the air. He thought that maybe this was what it felt like to be a beached fish looking up at a hungry seagull, but the thought wasn't as terrifying as it should have been.
"Right. Okay," he said, trying to shake the feeling of suddenly being overexposed, "Shouldn't you be getting home soon?"
Jonghyun frowned.
"But we just met," he complained, "I never met a mermaid before."
"I told you, I'm a merman," Taemin said.
"Whatever," Jonghyun brushed off the correction, "I want to stay and talk to you."
Taemin could see that arguing was not likely to get him anywhere. He considered claiming he had somewhere else to be, but he had come up to the surface in the first place because he had been so bored down at home. It was either talk to this kid or go back to braiding kelp into his hair out of sheer boredom, and Taemin doubted his reputation could survive anyone seeing that.
"So, what do you want to talk about?" he asked with a sigh.
"I dunno," Jonghyun shrugged, "Tell me about your house. Do you have a house? Are there houses underwater?"
Taemin resigned himself to describing the carefully carved caves and buildings in his city. He told Jonghyun about the open-ceilinged halls made of carefully trained coral, shaped so that the walls looked like they were made of lace, and painstakingly covered with glowing algae so that the entire structure lit up and shone.
Jonghyun sat enthralled the entire time, and the sun was sitting on the horizon before either of them noticed.
"Oh!" Jonghyun looked at the pink and orange sky with surprise, "What time is it?"
"You should go home, huh?" Taemin nudged him.
"Yeah, but..." Jonghyun hesitated, "I wanna stay and talk. What if they're still mad? Maybe I should stay for a while."
Taemin blew his hair out of his face.
"I think they'd be madder if you stayed out too late," he said, "You should get home."
Jonghyun looked back at the shore longingly.
"I am hungry." he admitted.
"Well, go eat then," said Taemin, rolling his eyes.
"But I want to hear more stories!" Jonghyun complained, "Can I come back tomorrow?"
Taemin thought for a moment. Continuing to come up to the surface came with the risk of being seen, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to spend his days entertaining a snot-nosed kid. On the other hand, he really had nothing much to do for the foreseeable future and he remembered that his other option was the kelp braids.
"Yeah, okay," he sighed, "You can come back tomorrow. Just give me a call when you get to the beach and I'll see what I can do."
Jonghyun looked confused.
"Give you a call?" he asked, "Like on the phone?"
"The pho- no, I mean-" Taemin stopped and took a deep breath.
"I meant just come here and call me," he explained, "I'll hear it and swim up."
"How can you hear me all the way down there?" Jonghyun asked dubiously.
"You know my name. Trust me, I'll hear it," Taemin assured him.
He had to reassure Jonghyun several more times before he would leave, and Taemin watched him trudge up the shore and out of sight before slipping back into the water himself. This had certainly been an interesting development to the day. He hoped that this would continue to pleasantly occupy his time in the days to come.
~~
Not only did Jonghyun come back to the shore and call him bright and early the next day, but he continued to do so over the next few days. Taemin learned that he and his family were staying there for the entire summer. He also learned that the fight with his sister that had sent Jonghyun down to hide near the ocean had been somewhat out of the ordinary. Jonghyun seemed to nearly idolize his older sister and told Taemin gleefully about their various exploits. Whenever Jonghyun wasn’t telling long and involved stories of his own, he demanded to hear all about Taemin’s life and where he lived. He laughed when Taemin told him about the beds of tall kelp that many people liked to keep around their homes and tended carefully.
“It’s like my dad worrying about the grass in our yard,” he said, “That’s really funny.”
“Well, it’s also a good way to keep people from looking in your doors and windows,” Taemin explained, “It’s nice to have privacy like that.”
“I guess it’s more like having a big hedge or something, then,” Jonghyun said, “There’s this old lady on our street and she has these really big bushes all around her house and her yard is really dark and creepy looking. All the other kids think she’s scary, but she gives out awesome candy on Halloween.”
Jonghyun then had to thoroughly explain the concept of Halloween to Taemin, along with a complete list of all the costumes he’d had so far and descriptions of all the best pumpkin carvings he’d seen.
Taemin listened with interest and came back the next day with stories of the festival the merpeople had in midwinter where they made elaborate masks, usually out of skulls (shark being particularly sought after), to scare away any malevolent spirits in the area. The children always hid in the kelp beds around pathways and competed to see who could scare the most passersby.
Jonghyun was incredibly pleased with the idea and spent a week trying to make his own mask out of the driftwood and horseshoe crab shells he found on the beaches. He came back one day and told the story of how he and his sister (with her own mask) had hidden around the corner at the top of the stairs and scared their father so badly that he had dropped the cup of coffee he had been holding over the railing.
Taemin had been grinning so widely when he returned home that night that his friend Jinki had stopped and asked him what on earth was so funny. Taemin could only laugh and shake his head. He wasn’t quite ready to tell anyone that he was spending all his time up on the shore with a human child, but Jonghyun was quickly endearing himself to Taemin. He genuinely looked forward to seeing the boy and enjoyed talking to him and had long since stopped thinking of him as a useful distraction.
He was disappointed when the end of summer came all too soon and Jonghyun had to leave with his family to return home to the city. Jonghyun seemed even more distraught and was close to tears when Taemin hugged him the day before they were due to leave.
“Hey, maybe you can come back next summer?” Taemin suggested.
Jonghyun sniffed and nodded into Taemin’s shoulder.
“I hope so,” he mumbled, “I’m gonna ask my dad and if he doesn’t say yes I’m gonna ask my mom and I’m gonna get my sister to ask too and they’ll have to say yes, right?”
“Of course,” Taemin assured him, “And if you can’t come back next year, then maybe you can come back the year after that? You just have to remember all the stuff you want to tell me, and I’ll probably have a ton more stories to tell you then too. Just remember to call my name when you get back and I’ll come right up, okay?”
Jonghyun hugged him tighter and Taemin patted his hair comfortingly.
“You should hurry back,” he said gently, “It’s getting late and they’ll be looking for you soon.”
He watched Jonghyun leave as usual, and just as Jonghyun reached the top of the ridge he turned back.
“I’ll see you next summer, I promise!” he yelled, “Don’t forget to come back and tell me all about... everything!”
Taemin waved in response and Jonghyun turned back towards home. As soon as he got back to his own cave, Taemin started planning out exactly what kind of stories he’d have ready when Jonghyun came back.
~~
The winter eventually passed and as soon as the weather started to warm up, Taemin found himself coming up to the surface more and more often. He knew it was far too early to expect Jonghyun back yet, but the city under the water was starting to bore him to tears again and the air and sky was surprisingly refreshing. He had never particularly liked spending time above the surface before, but it seemed more pleasant now than it ever had before. He spent entire afternoons now happily watching birds flying overhead or picking around in the thin strip of sand between the rocks here. He could easily spend hours watching clouds breeze by overhead as he hummed to himself. Soon enough though, Jonghyun came running down the ridge and gave a delighted shout when he saw Taemin already waiting there on the rocks where they’d met. Taemin grinned and waved him over excitedly to show him the colony of clams he’d discovered.
As the summer wore on, Taemin learned that Jonghyun had convinced his parents that this was the best place to spend their summers and that they would indeed be continuing to come back to visit for as long as they could.
“When I grow up, I’m gonna buy a house here,” Jonghyun proudly announced, “Then we can hang out all the time. Not just in the summer like we do now.”
“That’ll be fun,” laughed Taemin, “Be sure to pick a nice house, though, so you don’t get bored and move away again.”
“If there aren’t any good houses here, I’ll build my own,” said Jonghyun, “I’ll make it the coolest house anyone’s ever seen and it’ll be really close to here too.”
They spent most of that summer exploring all the animals and other creatures that lived on the beach. Jonghyun would bring anything he found to Taemin and Taemin would explain everything he knew about it. His own mother had told him many stories about the animals too, so he sprinkled all the facts he knew into the stories to make it more interesting. Jonghyun listened carefully and when he came back the next summer he proudly told Taemin that now he knew the most about animals in his entire class at school.
Several summers passed in this way and Taemin came to think of Jonghyun as a permanent fixture in his life. He looked forward to the end of the cold season each year with anticipation, thinking eagerly of the next time he could climb out onto the sun-warmed rocks and see Jonghyun racing down the hill with his latest tale.
~~
"Am I weird?" Jonghyun asked one day out of the blue.
Taemin wanted to point out that anyone who chose to spend his free time with a theoretically mythological creature rather than with his own species was probably pretty weird by most people's standards, but something told him that this would not be the full-credit answer.
"Why do you ask?" he replied instead.
"I dunno, a couple kids at school said it was girly to read about fairies and mermaids and stuff all the time."
Jonghyun scratched at his neck and Taemin could see that he was bothered.
"... Is that it?" he pressed.
"Well..." Jonghyun avoided his eyes, "I kinda heard my mom on the phone the other day. She was asking if it was normal for a twelve year old kid to still have an imaginary friend."
Jonghyun took a deep breath and looked steadily at the water.
"It sounded like she was talking to a doctor or something."
Taemin looked out at the water too.
"Oh."
They sat side by side on the rock in silence for a while until Taemin turned to Jonghyun again.
"They think I'm your imaginary friend?" he asked, "What did you even tell them?"
Jonghyun shrugged.
"I dunno," he said, "They used to want to know where I went all day so I told them I met a friend. They got nervous that I was meeting some creepy person so I said it was a mermaid and then they just thought I was pretending."
"Merman," Taemin corrected absentmindedly.
"Anyway," Jonghyun continued, "I guess they got used to the idea of me hanging out on my own all day, but me having an imaginary friend or whatever still weirds them out. It's stupid."
They sat and stared at the water for a while longer until Taemin again decided to speak up.
"Are they mean about it, though?" he asked, "I mean, I know they're teasing you, but are they giving you trouble about it?"
"Not really," said Jonghyun, "I stopped taking the books to school so I think they'll forget about it. But it's just so stupid. I can only read at home now."
Taemin considered this.
"Why don't you bring them here and read them to me instead?" he suggested, "I'm running out of stuff to tell you, so you could tell me all your stories."
Jonghyun bumped shoulders with Taemin.
"I could do that," he said.
Jonghyun brought back a couple books the next day and settled down next to Taemin to read. Together they pulled apart the various stories, with Jonghyun asking questions about various parts and Taemin pointing out the writers who got it right or (more often) wrong.
"So this one has a guy who sits by a lake and sees a woman coming out of the water," Jonghyun said, considering one of the books, "... Do mermaids live in lakes? I thought you all lived in the ocean."
"I guess we could live in lakes too," Taemin shrugged, "It's not like I'd run into them here, would I? As long as the lake was deep enough, we could probably live in lakes."
"Huh, I guess so," said Jonghyun, "Anyway, he offers her some of the hard bread he was eating and she basically says 'no way' and dives back into the water."
"Makes sense to me," said Taemin, "I wouldn't want rock-hard bread either."
"Right," Jonghyun grinned, "So he goes home and his mom tells him to take some unbaked bread the next day, but she doesn't like that either. What did he expect? That sounds gross. But he shows up on the third day with some soft bread and she... agrees to marry him? Am I missing something here?"
Taemin shrugged again.
"I dunno," he said, "It sure sounds like it. No one I know would marry someone just 'cause they brought them some squishy bread."
"Yeah, I thought it sounded a little..."
"Implausible?"
"Yeah, that."
Jonghyun cleared his throat and continued.
"So yeah, he has to pass a test where there are three women who all look the same and he picks the right one because she tied her shoes differently or something. They get married and she says that if he ever... strikes her three times without reason? She'll leave and go back to the lake. So one day they're gonna go out riding and she sends him back into the house to get her gloves and he smacks her on the arm with them, so that's strike one. Then they're at a wedding a few years later and she won't stop crying, so he claps her on the back and tells her to cheer up and that's strike two. Then when they're both much older they go to a funeral and she keeps laughing. He puts a hand on her shoulder and asks her what she's laughing about... and that counts as the third strike? So she goes back into the lake and takes all the cows and sheep with her."
Jonghyun frowned.
"That doesn't sound fair at all," he complained, "How was that hitting her a third time? And why did she have to take the animals with her? That's kind of a jerk thing to do."
"It is," Taemin agreed, "It sounds like at that point she was just looking for an excuse to get out of there, if you ask me. She probably missed the lake a lot. I don't know if I could stand being away from the ocean for that long."
"It's kind of like The Little Mermaid," said Jonghyun, "Except no sea witch. How did she get legs if there was no spell on her? They didn't explain that part."
"Well, we actually can go on land for a while," Taemin said reluctantly, "We just don't really like to much."
"Wait, really?" Jonghyun looked gobsmacked, "You can get legs and go out of the water?"
"I'm out of the water right now," Taemin pointed out.
"You know what I mean!" said Jonghyun, "With, like... legs and stuff!"
"With legs and stuff," Taemin agreed, "We can kind of shed our skin and take human shape for a while, but it doesn't happen all that often as far as I know."
"... You mean you could do it now?" Jonghyun asked, eyeing Taemin's tail with interest.
"I could," said Taemin cautiously, "But it's not like I have clothes or anything."
"I could bring you some!" Jonghyun offered, "If I brought you clothes some time, could you come see the town here with me? I could show you all my favorite places! It would be so much fun... could you?"
The idea made Taemin nervous just to think about, but Jonghyun was so excited that he reluctantly agreed. Jonghyun sent the next week and a half planning furiously about how he would find the clothes, where he would take Taemin, and all the things they would do together. The summer actually ended before they managed to put the plans into motion, much to Jonghyun's disappointment, but Taemin sighed and promised to join Jonghyun in exploring the town next summer.
~~
Jonghyun showed up on the very first day back the next year with a bag of clothes in his hand and a huge smile on his face.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked, positively shaking with excitement.
Taemin eyed the clothes balefully.
“I guess so,” he said.
Jonghyun practically gurgled and Taemin looked at him oddly.
“Sorry,” said Jonghyun, “I just really want to show you everything.”
“Well, turn around,” Taemin demanded, “I’m going to take my skin off.”
“That sounds really really creepy, by the way,” said Jonghyun as he turned around, “I just thought you should know.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” said Taemin as he slipped out of his skin and considered his somewhat shaky legs.
This was actually the first time he’d ever tried this, but he got the hang of the whole leg thing a lot faster than he thought he would. He supposed that his people wouldn’t be able to do this if there wasn’t some instinctive knowledge of what to do, but he still experimented with the new muscle movement for a couple minutes before Jonghyun’s voice behind him called him back to reality.
“Are you done yet?” Jonghyun complained.
“Oh, sorry, not yet,” said Taemin, turning the clothes around and trying to figure out how pants worked.
“Hurry up,” Jonghyun whined.
Taemin just rolled his eyes.
“Okay,” he said finally, “I think I’ve got it.”
Jonghyun turned around and looked him over appraisingly.
“You’ve got the shirt on inside-out,” he commented.
“What?” Taemin tried to look over his own shoulder at the shirt, “I turned this thing around a million times though!”
Jonghyun laughed and helped him get the shirt on the right way before grabbing his hand and pulling him away from the rocks, towards the high grass-topped ridge at the edge of the sand. It took Taemin several tries to get over this ridge, but by the time he got to the top he thought he had a pretty good feel for his new legs.
Jonghyun handed him something.
“Here,” he said, “It’s a hair tie. If your hair gets in the way, you can pull it back.”
Taemin awkwardly tried to fit it around his hair and ended up with a messy tail at the back of his head that he was sure was tangling even as they walked, but at least Jonghyun looked pleased.
Taemin took his skin and folded it up as they walked.
"What's that?" Jonghyun asked, looking at it with interest.
"It's my scaleskin," Taemin explained, "I'm not a shapeshifter or anything, so I have to carry a skin around if I'm not wearing it like I normally do."
"Like a selkie," Jonghyun pointed out, "If you don't have your skin, you can't go back to the sea, right?"
"Right," Taemin agreed.
"What happens if someone burns it?" Jonghyun asked, "That happened in some of the stories."
Taemin shuddered.
"That would be horrible," he said, clutching the scaleskin to his chest, "I don't know what I would do... It would be the worst possible thing."
Jonghyun patted him on the arm.
"I'll make sure nothing happens to it," he promised.
They ended up walking all over town that day. Jonghyun laughed when he realized that the bottom hems of Taemin's jeans stayed wet no matter how long they were out of the water.
"Just like the... was it the nixies?" Jonghyun asked.
"I don't remember," said Taemin, "But I guess whatever story it was got it right."
Jonghyun seemed far too pleased to prove another one of his books right.
As they walked, Jonghyun pointed out all the best places to eat and the arcade with the fantastic racing game and the brightly-lit movie theater with the old fashioned marquee outside announcing all the movies playing there, most of which neither of them had ever heard of. Not that Taemin had heard of many movies to begin with, but still. As he saw the last movie title on the list though, Jonghyun’s eyes lit up.
“Come on,” he said, pulling Taemin into the building, “You have to see this one.”
Taemin took the ticket for The Little Mermaid that Jonghyun handed him and sighed.
"What the hell did I just watch?" Taemin asked about two hours later as they walked out of the theater, "Had they never met a mermaid before?"
"Probably not," Jonghyun laughed, skipping alongside him, "But it was still awesome, right?"
"The songs were pretty good," Taemin admitted, "But the rest was so... so inaccurate!"
"Well, I don't think they had many people to ask while they were making it," said Jonghyun, "They just had to go off the fairy tale."
"Do you have that in any of your books?"
"I think so... I'll have to check."
Taemin flipped through the story when Jonghyun brought it to him.
"I take it back," he said as he set it down, "The movie's better. Everything isn't horrible by the end in the movie."
"Everything isn't horrible at the end of the story though!" Jonghyun argued, "She gets a chance to earn a soul and go to heaven."
"Why do the stories want to make us more human?" he asked with disgust as they walked back up the beach idly, "We're perfectly fine the way we are."
"I dunno," said Jonghyun, "It'd be a little bit weird to marry someone that different. I guess a lot of people think it's too scary."
He picked up shells as they walked and handed the perfectly whole ones to Taemin to hold.
"They made a bunch of sequels to the movie too and I guess they couldn't do that if it ended like the story. She has a daughter or something later on and some stuff happens. I dunno, it was boring."
He dug half of a conch shell out of the sand and contemplated it.
"If I ever have a kid, I think I'd want to name them Sora," he said, "Shells are one of my favorite things about the beach."
"Boy or girl?" Taemin asked, picking up a black shell with an iridescent sheen to it.
"Does it matter?" Jonghyun asked back, "Would it work for both?"
"I guess," Taemin agreed.
Before Jonghyun headed home that night, he left Taemin with three carefully picked-out shells. One of them was the black shell that Taemin had found and he smiled as he took them back down to his home.
~~
One day when Taemin was struggling with the hairtie Jonghyun always offered him, he snapped it in half in his frustration.
"I should just cut it all off like you do," he groused, sucking on his finger where the elastic had hit him.
"You could just leave it down like it is now," Jonghyun suggested, "I just thought it might get in your way."
"No, you're right," Taemin sighed, "It's fine when we're just sitting here, but walking all over the place it gets all over the place. I think I'm going to choke on it if it gets in my mouth one more time. If I'm going to keep spending so much time up here, I should probably cut it."
"If you're sure," said Jonghyun dubiously.
"I'm sure," Taemin emphatically replied.
So Jonghyun took him into town to a nearby barber shop and Taemin flipped through some magazines there before he found a haircut he liked. He sat stiff as a board in the chair the entire time and actually jumped when the barber touched the clippers to the back of his neck. Jonghyun surreptitiously held his hand under the apron and Taemin managed to make it through the rest of the haircut without cutting off all the circulation to Jonghyun's fingers.
As they sat on the grass afterwards and Taemin rubbed at the bristly hair on his neck, he told Jonghyun about the forges his people had where they made iron and steel into tools and weapons, but also where the master smiths shaped silver into intricate decorations for noble families. Jonghyun was astonished to hear that the merpeople were so involved in metalworking.
"I thought you needed air to heat metal up that much though," he said, "You can't go deep enough to reach volcanos or anything like that, can you?"
"No," said Taemin, "And it would be dangerous to even try. Messing with something like that would be stupid. No work is worth that. We have caves with air pockets that we can set up the forges in. They're deep enough and well-hidden enough that no humans have ever found any, though I think a few have come close. It's hot and cramped and the air goes bad after a while if you don't clear it, but it's amazing too. To be able to twist metal into whatever shape you want, with only the flickering light from the furnaces and the glowing algae that they coat the waterline with... I think it's a kind of magic."
"I wish I could see it," Jonghyun said, leaning closer, "Is there any way...?"
Taemin shook his head, feeling strange when no hair brushed his shoulders.
"It's too deep for you to make it," he said, "Maybe if you had really expensive equipment, but even then it'd be difficult."
Jonghyun looked disappointed, but not surprised.
"You'll just have to tell me more about it then," he said, flopping across Taemin's lap obnoxiously.
Taemin laughed and flicked his forehead.
"I guess I could do that," he agreed.
Jinki gave him a strange look when he returned home that night with his new short hair, but when Taemin asked him about it, he simply smiled his usual kind smile.
"Be careful," he said, leaving Taemin to wonder what he was supposed to be careful of.
~~
One day Jonghyun came with his most recent book and read to Taemin excitedly about "huge sponges of millennial growth and height" and "unnumbered and enormous polypi" and the fantastic and surreal world the old poets described on the ocean's floor, far beneath in the abysmal sea.
Taemin told him stories of the things that lived in deep crevices miles below the surface too. He told him about squirming worms reveling in the warm vents and the intense pressure, and about strange ferns that swayed in slow currents like trees in a breeze. And then he told him about things left to sleep for generations after generations and about those parts of the sea his people still never ventured into, either out of respect or fear or some measure of both.
"But there can't be anything like that down there," Jonghyun protested, "We explored pretty much everything down there and we'd know if some sort of weird monster or creature or whatever was down there."
Taemin shrugged and drew spirals in the water almost idly.
"The ocean is bigger than you think."
Jonghyun laughed and waved an arm.
"The sky is even bigger," he said, "We've been out into the stars and they go on forever. You make it sound like we can't even map our tiny planet, but we've seen so much further out there than the bottom of the ocean could ever be."
"The ocean is very big," said Taemin solemnly.
Jonghyun let the matter drop after that.
Jonghyun was starting to study literature in a much more serious way now at school, and he was constantly finding new books and stories to bring down to the beach. They did less exploring now, but every so often Jonghyun would stand up, stretch his legs, and declare that they needed a break from reading and would drag Taemin away from the water to go buy ice cream or watch a movie or just run down the streets, shrieking like banshees. Jonghyun would also demand that they find more comfortable places to read than down on the rocks. He had a bag with towels and cushions to lay out, but more and more often he nagged Taemin out of his scaleskin to go read in the grass closer to his family’s house or to find a tree to perch in. Taemin thought that the tree was even more uncomfortable than the rocks, but he never argued the point. If Jonghyun wanted to sit in a knobbly tree while he poured over his books, then far be it from Taemin to spoil his fun. He did wish they could spend more time near the shore, since being on land for so long made him antsy and nervous, but at least he could usually distract Jonghyun before too long with a joke or a water balloon and they would go racing back down to the beach so that Jonghyun could wreak watery vengeance on Taemin.
One day they were stalking each other through the town with water guns, and Jonghyun had just managed to surprise Taemin from an upper balcony and was mercilessly spraying away, when an older couple came passing by and the woman admonished Jonghyun to “be nicer to his little sister.” Jonghyun was incoherent with laughter when he saw Taemin’s face and actually collapsed to the grass howling. Taemin frowned and kicked him irritably.
“Stop laughing, you hyena,” he grouched, “I’m not sure which part of that was more insulting actually... the idea that she thought I was a girl, or that you were older.”
“Well, you are very pretty,” Jonghyun said, earning another kick from Taemin, “And if you think about it, I do look older now.”
“No way,” scoffed Taemin, “How old are you now?”
“I turned seventeen in the spring,” said Jonghyun, sitting up in the grass, “You don’t look that much younger maybe, but come on. It’s not that unbelievable. How old are you actually?”
“Eighty-five,” said Taemin peevishly, “I’m way older than you.”
“No way,” Jonghyun gaped, “No way are you eighty-five. You look like you’re like my age or a little younger.”
“Well, I am, so get used to it,” said Taemin as he flopped down next to him.
Jonghyun sprayed him in the side of the head with his water gun.
“Hey,” he said, grinning widely, “You should call me hyung now.”
Taemin pummeled him with his fists and the water fight broke out again not long after.
~~
As Jonghyun pressured him to spend longer and longer periods out of the water, Taemin started to pull back more and more. He would find excuses to limit the time they spent to sitting on the rocks and simply talking, but Jonghyun was restless and wouldn’t settle there for long before pulling Taemin back into town to find amusement there. There was a drive-in movie theater that they would bring chairs to and set them up between the cars to watch movie after movie. Taemin enjoyed it, but Jonghyun wanted to spend entire days away from the water and even got Taemin to stay overnight a few times by sneaking him into the house where Jonghyun’s family was staying. Each time Taemin woke up there though, he spent several long minutes panicked and disoriented before realizing where he was. Waking up in the air on shore made him nervous and he always slipped back out to the water before Jonghyun ever opened his eyes. When Jonghyun asked about this, Taemin said truthfully that he didn’t get much sleep while he was away from the ocean. He was always too inexplicably nervous to sleep for long.
They spent the entire summer trying to find a balance between the ocean and the land, but Taemin suspected that Jonghyun was getting his way more often than not, and the idea worried him slightly. He hadn’t expressed his fears to Jonghyun because they seemed somewhat foolish, but every time Jonghyun invited him on a trip further away from the ocean than the time before, Taemin’s uneasy feeling grew and he knew that sooner or later he’d have to speak up. But how was he supposed to explain that being away from the water was an inherently nerve-wracking experience for his people? Almost all of the stories the humans had about merpeople involved the mermaid or man leaving the water willingly and eagerly to be with the one they loved, but it never ended well. Merpeople just weren’t meant to remain abovewater for that long, and he didn’t know how to explain this without giving voice to the thing that scared him most. Once out of water for long enough, the mermaid or merman would have to choose one life or the other. Taemin’s mother had always explained that at that point, if the landed mermaid ever returned to the sea then they would have chosen that life for good. There would be no going back to the land ever again. Taemin knew that eventually the call of the sea would be too strong to resist, and the idea of never following Jonghyun down the back alleys of the town to find a stray cat or never climbing to a rooftop to see who could spot the most shooting stars scared him more than he could say. How could he explain something like that? So instead he kept silent and reluctantly followed Jonghyun’s plans as much as he could.
The idea that Jonghyun could lure him this far out of the water to begin with was one he was also too scared to think about.
part 2