When Tesla thinks of shark attacks, he thinks of unfortunate solo divers and very stupid tourists. He doesn't think that a shark might get curious or hungry and swim right up to his tiny fishing boat while he's all alone out on the ocean.

He definitely never considers that one might try to take a chunk out of the boat itself.

The day is overcast but clear and the water is a little choppy, but Tesla hasn't been bothered by the dip and swell of the ocean in years.

It's the tail end of tourist season, so locals like Tesla have to go far, far out to see much in the way of actual fish that haven't been scared off - and today he's gone further from the shore than is probably advisable. He - well. He still knows where the shore is. So he's fine.

The fish are biting, at least. That's good. Fishing is how Tesla supplements his income these days - since the accident that cost him his eye (Tesla always did like getting too close to things that might hurt him, honestly) he's only willing to take so many shifts at the factory a week. His budget's kind of tight. He... eats a lot of fish, honestly.

It all seems more or less fine right up until he sees a shadow swelling beneath the water. He squints. It seems big, but it's indistinct and distorted by the pattern of the waves.

Then it swims closer to the surface. It's not just big - it's huge. It's bigger than Tesla's boat. And it's sleek and silent and gliding darkly through the ocean.

Tesla leans over a little, and his heart is beating a little faster but he knows he really has no reason to be concerned about whatever is down there - it's not like any animal should reasonably hurt him out here.

The sleek predatory shape rises closer to the air. Suddenly Tesla can see that telltale dorsal fin slicing right through the water, gleaming wetly in the light of the overcast sky.

This is when he realises it's a shark - one with a cone-shaped nose and a distinctive silhouette.

It passes beneath the boat. For the first time Tesla is very aware of how small the boat is. The shark is as big as three of him stacked lengthways - which means that even on a scale of sharks it's... big.

There's not a lot he can actually do about a great dirty shark showing up to scare away all his fish. After a still, tense moment, Tesla fishes his phone out from its pocket. There's no reception this far out, but the camera works.

Tesla always was a little too interested in things that could rip him apart. He licks his lips.

The shark circles around and makes another pass - probably, he thinks, drawn by the scent of the bait fish he's been using. He leans out a little, warily, gripping the boat tightly just in case, and with a slightly shaky hand he snaps a photo. The digital image doesn't really do justice to the sheer size of the shark, but-

The boat rocks. Tesla clutches his phone reflexively and throws his weight back. The very last thing he needs is to get thrown overboard and into the water with that thing.

There's another big, violent rock - accompanied this time by a thud that makes him flinch.

That's.

Okay, that's the shark smacking itself against his boat.

He thinks about that for a moment.

Well.

Tesla might be in a little more trouble than he initially suspected.

...Shit.

The huge muscled shadow of the shark circles again. Tesla's thundering heart leaps into his throat when he sees its head break the surface and, amid a froth of water churned up by its movements, he can see its teeth. They are long and wicked looking, and they're lined up in rows. They gleam.

"Shit," says Tesla faintly. There's nobody who can hear him.

Then the shark tries to take a chunk out of his boat. With its teeth.

It just... lunges forward and its huge white teeth bury themselves in the fibreglass of the boat's frame and the whole thing jerks violently.

Tesla looks into its small black eye. He could, if he was stupid, reach out and touch the shark's rough side. He can see the bumps of its gills.

Tesla's pulse is trying to hammer through his skin and escape and flee the country. He can't breathe. There's nothing he's ever known or done that could prepare him for this.

The boat gives an awful shudder.

There's a huge, violent swell of water, a froth of foam, a thrashing and shaking and Tesla screams and staggers, clutching the side of his boat and -

The reek of blood is so intense, suddenly, that even Tesla can smell it. He can smell it over the fish in his boat, over the salt and the sea. It's thick enough to drown in and for a second he thinks it's him, but -

It's not.

When he gets back, unsteadily, to his feet, the shark's thrashing wildly in the water and it's bleeding. It takes Tesla a moment to realise that something has ripped half its tail clean off - it's thrashing now because it can't swim properly. It can't get away.

He swallows. How strong do you have to be to rip the tail from a shark?

There's definitely something else down there. Something meaner, and probably bigger, than the shark.

Now, he thinks, now would be a great time to leave, because they're both distracted and he can get away - but he can't tear his gaze from the spectacle. The water darkens with blood, but he sees pale flashes of something else in it, and finally he catches a glimpse in the open air when it gives way to something new.

It's... long and pale, and Tesla immediately thinks squid. A huge one. The tentacle is slick and shining, heavily muscled but soft-looking, and it stretches out - and out, and out - and slices through the bloodied water until it wraps smoothly around the head of the shark.

It rolls the whole beast over easily and with a tremendous splash, then slips up past its jagged teeth - which made fast work of Tesla's boat but seem to slide off this thing's skin - and presses against the small dark eye.

Tesla can't hear the sound the eye makes when it bursts, but he watches in slightly queasy fascination.

The tentacle tunnels right into the place where the eye used to be, and twists violently. The shark seizes, sharp and hideous, and then stills - and another tentacle comes from below, wraps around its body and -

Oh.

That's what happened to the tail.

The water goes dark with carnage.

Tesla watches, mesmerised.

It's not a squid. The next thing Tesla sees is a broad, pale hand - exactly the same colour as the tentacles, actually - breach the surface and dig around amid the floating viscera. It is an elegant hand, with long fingers and clean claws of a uniform length.

The head comes next.

For a second Tesla thinks it's a completely separate thing, some insane person riding a giant squid or something - a very striking person, with long dark hair that spills over the left side of their face and smooth pale limbs, rising serenely from the carnage in the water.

It takes him a second to recognise that he's looking at one animal.

It picks leisurely through the dismembered shark, ignoring the viscera and shredding bits of the flesh with its claws to deposit into its mouth.

Tesla stares. He doesn't want to leave even though it would probably be a good idea to go while the thing in the water is still distracted by its kill. But fascination casts a spell and he can't look away.

It's beautiful.

...It's a neat eater, although from the way its nose wrinkles it's not actually thrilled with giant shark as a meal.

There's - it has bangles, Tesla can see them. They click softly and sometimes it shakes them back exactly like a human would shake away a long sleeve.

It wears jewellery.

Tesla swears softly, which draws its attention.

The eye he can see is large and violet, and it blinks once, slowly, looking at Tesla. It is a speculative, predatory look.

It moves fast. Before Tesla can blink it's got one tentacle looped casually over the edge of his boat. It levers itself up using the side - the boat rocks, and Tesla sways with it - and peers in.

"...Well. Hello," says Tesla stupidly. But of course it can't answer. Even if it is somehow smart, it's not likely to have a passing knowledge of human languages, is it?

The thing - the creature, the... monster, he guesses - tilts its head. It has a face just like a human's, with wide lips and high sharp cheeks and a long nose. Its mouth is tugged down, frowning, if such a movement is a frown in a monster.

Tesla isn't sure what to do. He doesn't want to take his eyes off the monster, but he can only stare in silence for so long.

Awkwardly, he offers it a hand, like it's a friendly dog or something, even though he has no indication that it's a friendly anything. The monster looks at it curiously, and then shifts its weight - the boat rocks again - and sticks its own hand out next to Tesla's.

Well, that's...

It has nice hands, bafflingly. They're broad with long deft fingers and terribly strong - obviously - and they're also very human looking. From his vantage, it's almost impossible to tell that the monster isn't just another person.

Carefully, moving slowly so it can see what he's doing, Tesla touches its hand with his - just a press of fingers to its palm.

It makes a startled hiss and yanks its hand back. Tesla can tell why: its skin is very rough and icy cold. Tesla's skin, even slightly wind-bitten, must feel shockingly hot.

"Sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to."

It glares back at him with its one visible eye. The iris is, even this close up, an unearthly shade of purple. It blinks, and a second eyelid flicks shut over its eye, not quite in time with the outer one. Maybe not so human looking, after all that.

"Here," says Tesla. He ducks down - he can tell by the shift of the boat that the monster is following the movement, leaning up to see further in - and grabs one of his freshly caught fish. Then he holds it out.

The monster eyes it. Then it glances over its shoulder at the dispersing blood in the water.

It takes the fish from Tesla. With the claw of one hand it slits it down the belly from its chin to its anal fin and yanks the guts out with a twist and sort of casually discards them into the water.

The rest of the fish disappears, whole, down the monster's throat. He licks the blood off his teeth.

It takes less than ten seconds.

"That takes me about fifteen times as long," Tesla admits to the monster, "and I have a knife."

He also doesn't eat the heads or the spinal cord or the bones, usually, but there's no accounting for taste. He's kind of surprised that the monster disdains the innards, honestly.

The monster says something back. It's a lot like hhhruglotra.

Tesla shakes his head. He has no idea. It is equally incomprehensible to Tesla as Tesla must be to it.

The monster heaves a huge, annoyed sigh. Then, leaning forward, it points impetuously to the bucket.

Ah.

It looks like Tesla's going to lose his dinner.

He finds he doesn't mind going hungry so much. The monster gurgles at him and seems kind of bad-tempered, if its tone is anything to go by, but it's very beautiful. And very, very dangerous.

And Tesla always was too attracted to things that could rip him apart.

He glances at the water. It's still dark with blood and thicker things in places. He thinks about the shark, its huge muscled body reduced to so much chum in seconds.

And then... picked at, disinterestedly, and ignored. If the monster didn't want to eat the shark, why kill it? The question occurs to him, but -

Tesla knows. Sport.

The monster in the water killed it for fun.

He leans closer and holds out another fish with his own bare hand.

The monster could reach out and rip his arm off without blinking. It regards him with a lazy, proprietary air as though contemplating it.

In the end it reaches out one of those broad strong hands and, very delicately, snaps this fish, too, from his fingers.

Tesla watches it gut it.

It's very efficient.

In the end the monster leaves him a single silvery fish, eyeing him up and down before shoving it back toward him with an irritable grunt.

Tesla catches the slimy thing two handed, startled, and nearly drops it.

The monster disappears without so much as a splash.

A second later, a huge swell pushes Tesla's boat in the direction of the shore.

"So... this is just... normal behaviour for a shark?"

"Of course it is," Szayel says, condescendingly, as is his way.

It is much later, after a hot shower and two hours reading complete shit about mermaids on the internet. Tesla meets Szayel inside a touristy bar with sticky wooden tables and lights dim enough to prevent too close an examination of the state of the floors. There are big fishing trophies mounted on the walls and a fishing net draped over the wooden beams above to sag atmospherically above. It is, unfortunately, the only bar in town open on Monday nights.

Szayel is eyeing the blurry photograph on his phone with interest.

Szayel runs the aquarium, and Tesla has never really gotten his actual job title out of him. He takes care of a lot of marine animals, though, but also seems to be involved in the high level operations and research side of things.

In fact, if Tesla thinks about it, he's not sure he's actually seen anybody else working at the aquarium ever.

"Great whites bite buoys and flotsam and - anything, really, when they're trying to tell what it is. Why do you think they bite so many people?"

Tesla considers what he knows about sharks. Not much, really. "...because tourists keep feeding them and they think we all have food?"

Selectively, Tesla ignores that he has recently done exactly the same stupid thing with a creature far more dangerous. The monster is much more beautiful, and clearly cleverer, than any shark.

"Well. Mm." Szayel pauses. Swipes to the next photo. It's even worse. He scoffs and pushes the phone back across the polished wood of the bar. "Did you see what happened to it?"

Tesla wonders if the answer 'a giant squid man thing rose from the depths of the ocean and ripped it apart' would be well received. He doubts it. He has no pictures of his monster, and he isn't sure he'd share them if he did.

"I was busy running away," he says instead, which is absolutely what he should have been doing.

"Pity," says Szayel, giving his phone a wistful look. "A great white would make an excellent addition to the aquarium if we could capture it. Do you know nobody could get one to live more than ten or so days in captivity up 'til the 1980s?"

"Um," says Tesla, to whom this is, technically, news. It's just not very interesting or meaningful news.

Szayel cuts a glance at him. Then he tosses back the rest of whatever is in his drink and gives Tesla a sort of unhinged smile. "My aquarium has never had an important specimen die on us. I've a perfect record."

"Very impressive," Tesla says. He supposes it must be, anyway. He has no idea. But he can take a cue.

"Well." He glances back at Tesla's phone and pushes his chair back to get up. "I suggest artificial bait in future. It's less likely to provide a vector for disease, too."

"I'll think about it," Tesla says.

Szayel's expression implies he doesn't believe him, but he looks more amused than annoyed and he says nothing.

He does leave Tesla with the bill, though.

Tesla doesn't expect to see his monster again, exactly. He goes fishing in the same places, the same unwise distance from shore, in the same damaged boat.

He doesn't expect to see it, because what're the chances of seeing the same fish twice in an entire ocean? But... that doesn't mean he doesn't hope for it.

As it happens, he does see the monster again - but not miles out in the open water. Oh no.

He sees it on the beach.

Tesla lives right on the beach, technically, although his is a jagged and rocky bit of the coastline that's not much in demand.

The house is in a miserable state of disrepair, although it may once have been somebody's holiday house. Tesla inherited it from an estranged uncle or - some connection - long after his own parents' deaths and although he hasn't the money or the skill for its upkeep, it's pretty much just a relief to have somewhere to live.

It's miles from anything much, but somehow the monster finds him there.

It's one morning in the grey predawn light as Tesla picks his way through the moss-covered, slippery rocks and salt-reeking seaweed that he sees something very pale moving in the water.

For a second he thinks it's an especially brave swimmer risking the pull of the waves and the jagged rocks, but when he moves forward he can see it's not a human at all. There's something like a human body out there, but the rest of it is... too big.

Tesla blinks and makes his way down. One slip on the rocks could end him, or at least get him cut up badly, so of course Tesla takes them quickly and surely with bare feet in the sparse early light.

He picks out a path over the sharp rocks to where the foamy waves are lapping at them. The monster is, impossibly, right here and watching him come closer.

It has to have followed him home this far, although Tesla has no idea how it managed that. He's glad for it, though. He'd go a long way just to lay eyes on it again.

The water is clearer here, with less of it between the air and the sandy ocean floor and no blood to obscure the view.

The monster is huge. The human part of it is big even for a man - skinny, but broad in the shoulders and long through the torso. Jewellery aside, it is unabashedly naked, and Tesla can see the muscles moving, lean and ropy, right under its skin when it swims. It raises itself up from the water and Tesla finds himself watching the water drops roll inexorably down every dip and curve of muscle and soft-looking skin until they hit the vee of its hips and disperse along the long, long tentacles.

They stretch for metres beneath the water.

Tesla is too busy staring and slips on a seaweed-covered rock. He yelps and goes tumbling forward, and throws out one arm to break his fall by instinct. He never impacts the rocks.

One long writhing arm snatches him cleanly out of the air. For a second Tesla feels the enormous strength and pressure of it around his ribs, and the next it yanks him into the water.

It's a freezing shock to his body. He breathes in mouthful of biting, salty water and flails wildly.

It takes about sixty interminable, terrifying, thrashing seconds before the monster seems to realise that all the flailing is because he has no air - and then, abruptly, the arm hooked around his middle hoists Tesla out of the water again

He coughs until his eyes stream and spits out water. A second later he cramps from his guts to his throat, retches violently, and spills whatever was in his stomach too. Mostly bile and more sea water.

The monster's arm gives an experimental squeeze. It is easily - easily - strong enough to crush him. Tesla thinks he can hear his ribs creak.

Eventually, it deposits him back on the rocks nearby, half-submerged and propped against the exposed parts.

Tesla slumps into the rocks with his legs dangling down against the rough stone and who-knows-what under the surface, feeling the heavy wet fabric of his trousers float oddly around his thighs. The waves pull and push at him, but after a second he catches his breath and calms down a bit and it's okay.

There's still a long, pale tentacle hooked around him. It's looser now, but still a definite weight right there. Tesla touches it with his bare hands, unable to help himself. The monster twitches but doesn't withdraw. Its skin is just as cold as the rest of the monster, but the tentacles are so soft it's almost unbearable. On the other side the suckers are... textured. Powerful. They seem to stick to things very selectively and deliberately. He swallows.

The monster clicks its tongue, clearly annoyed. It's such an incredibly human sound that it startles Tesla.

He stops marvelling at the tentacle, although he keeps one hand on it. When it shifts, he can feel how all the muscles contract, strange and circular. It's incredible.

Tesla ignores the feel of it under his hand and shoves the soaked hair out of his eye.

"Hi," he croaks. The monster is big up close, too. And... He swallows hard. There's a lot of crushing strength in the long tentacle wrapped around him, and nothing all that human in the monster's face.

He thinks of the shark, its pieces floating in the water.

He's shivering. It... might be because he's cold. Maybe.

The monster eyes him for a long, still second. The waves slosh around them.

It reaches out one hand and pokes Tesla's face.

Or, rather, his eye. The missing one, a souvenir from the last time Tesla decided that something fascinating and dangerous was worth the risk. He isn't wearing a patch - he doesn't sleep with one, and putting one on is a pain he only really bothers with when he's going into town or to work.

The claw at the end of the monster's finger pricks his skin. He twitches, but he doesn't have a lot of feeling in that part of his face.

The monster draws back, peers at a drop of blood on its claw, and seems unimpressed. It licks it away. Its tongue is long, slick and pink.

Tesla feels briefly but powerfully lightheaded.

He stays very still when it reaches back and, with its finger bent at an odd angle to avoid cutting through Tesla's face, it traces the scarring there, staring critically all the while.

"Not pretty enough for you?" Tesla wonders, when he starts to feel tense and awkward.

The monster doesn't seem to care for Tesla's sense of humour. It continues without the slightest pause.

Then it shoves back the thick hair covering its own left eye.

Oh.

Tesla's... never actually seen another person missing an eye before.

The monster's scars are a lot worse than Tesla's. At some point, the eye was gouged out completely, and the sunken shape of the socket is a real mess, not like the neat stitching along Tesla's. He guesses the abyssal depths of the ocean or wherever don't come with emergency medical care.

The face beneath all that hair has something cruel and fierce about it, but its mouth, still with a tiny smear of Tesla's blood at one corner, peels back in a smile.

Tesla smiles hesitantly back.

He reaches out to touch, but the smile drops away and the low noise the monster makes sounds like a warning. The tentacle wrapped around Tesla shifts ominously.

He drops his hand. "Have it your way," he says, trying to look harmless. It can't be that hard to look harmless - he's half its size and soaked, and the monster now knows he can't breathe underwater.

It stares at Tesla. Its strange double eyelid blinks rapidly. Then it shakes the hair back into place.

The scars aren't visible again. Tesla's curious about that. What kind of creature thinks about what can and can't be seen by others? He's not sure but it seems... well, not very animal.

The monster eyes him like it's trying to figure out if Tesla is actually paying attention. Then it makes a very human annoyed noise and, puzzlingly, turns around so its back is to Tesla.

The first thing Tesla actually notices is shoulders, pale and broad, and smooth unblemished skin with water slowly dribbling down it, channeled down the dip of its spine and detouring gently around the vertebrae.

Um.

Monster, Tesla reminds himself.

The monster twists to look over its shoulder and fixes Tesla with a glower. He snatches Tesla's hand and clumsily shoves it into his hair, which is - cold. And. Scratchy?

"Oh," says Tesla, frowning, as he finally sees what the monster is trying to show him. There is a weird bit of plastic netting caught in its hair at the back, which has knotted up in such a way as to make it almost impossible to untangle without being able to see. It's right at the base of the skull, which Tesla infers must be pretty annoying, even if it doesn't hurt.

"Just let me-"

He pries gently at the monster's hair. It's seriously tangled up.

He digs his nails in and picks at the knots strand by strand, loosening one before moving on to the next. Despite the softness of its skin, the monster's hair is actually far coarser than Tesla's. It's coarser even than horsehair. It's thick and hard to break - harder to break than the netting, as it turns out. Eventually Tesla just starts snapping the plastic bit by bit and setting the pieces on the rocks behind him.

It takes almost fifteen minutes and during that time the monster sighs or grumbles approximately every ninety seconds... although by the time Tesla has pulled free the last piece the sighing has overtaken the plaintive noises.

Tesla isn't sure if it's wise to push his luck: the monster is huge, dangerous and, in part, wrapped around Tesla's ribcage.

But he seems to react pretty positively to being touched, doesn't he? Carefully, watching for any indication that he has had enough, Tesla scrapes his fingernails gently down the monster's scalp.

He stills under Tesla's fingers. When he does it again, the monster tips his head back into the pressure with a short, curious noise. It's ...sort of sweet.

Tesla buries his hands in the spill of thick, black hair, marvelling at the coarseness and the chill of it. The monster's skull feels otherwise basically human under his fingers, but it's still much colder than Tesla is.

The monster puts up with it for a lot longer than Tesla actually expects. The waves push and pull at him, but they're not as violent as they could be and the monster's long, flexible arm remains wrapped around his middle, keeping him easily steady when a stronger wave threatens to smack him into the rocks.

Tesla remains entranced without much effort on the monster's behalf. There is a nest of long, elegant tentacles floating through the water, brushing occasionally against his legs and his toes. Their skin's smooth and silky, and there's an alien grace to their movement in the water. They're powerful - he can feel that easily in the one wrapped around him - but they don't really look like the kinds of things that could tear a man apart.

They definitely can though, and that, perversely, just makes them all the more compelling.

They float quietly there until the sun grows warm.

The monster likes being touched. Tesla wouldn't have guessed it, except that he arches into the tug and scratch of Tesla's hands on his skull. He traces one finger down the dip of the monster's spine, unable to help himself. The human skin of his neck and shoulders is almost as soft as the tentacles, and that seems strangely unfair. The monster twitches but doesn't pull away.

It's the sun that seems to make him leave - when it rises properly, its light is strong, and the monster grows uncomfortable. Tesla's a little surprised to see that his very pale skin reddens fast, even on the tentacles.

In the end, the monster looks to the sky, then makes a discontented sound and bats Tesla's hand away from his hair, then sinks into the water.

It closes over the monster's head. His hair, once dry and coarse in the sun, floats on the surface for a second.

Reluctantly, the tentacle wrapped around Tesla also uncoils, slipping silkily away.

There's a flash of white beneath the waves, and then nothing.

Tesla's hand stings. He looks down.

There's a long, thin slice from the knuckle of his thumb to the base of his wrist. Seeing the blood makes it hurt more immediately. He clenches and unclenches his hand, watching it well there for a second.

It must have happened when the monster batted his hand away. Those claws are sharp.

Tesla licks the blood off his wrist absently and stares into the water where the monster was just a moment ago. He wonders if the monster knew what it was doing, if it cut him on purpose or just didn't consider it.

He wonders what it is. It did not seem to like the bright light. Maybe it's meant to live deep in the sea.

He rises stiffly from the cold rocks and heads back up the slope and inside the cool darkness of his house, sheds his sodden clothing at the door and finds his phone. His computer is kind of derelict and he never uses it.

His hair and body still smell of salt water, but he crawls naked back onto his unmade bed and navigates to a search engine. It's still hours before the sunlight moves enough to filter through his dirty window and warm his bare skin, but by the time it does he's still no closer to understanding what the monster is.

There are a lot of studies on intelligence in animals though. People get all excited about play behaviour and problem solving skills in animals.

Tesla thinks of showing it his hand and having it recognise it and hold out its own. He thinks of long claws gutting a fish and sorting the good bits from the bad bits. He thinks of the monster considering the fish and, grudgingly, leaving him one.

He thinks of the moment the monster looked at his missing eye, recognised the specific kind of injury and showed Tesla its own.

The monster is probably... not an animal. Not the way clever dolphins and monkeys are, anyway. And it doesn't seem to have any desire to please like a domestic animal would, either. If anything, it expects Tesla to evince that particular characteristic.

He's probably going to have to start thinking of it as a 'he'.

It does like being petted, though, he thinks with a completely involuntary smile. He shoves his phone away and drops his warm face into the sheets.

And it came and found him when it needed help. Maybe it'll be back.

For the first time in a long time, Tesla feels like he has something to look forward to.

Tesla's not stupid enough to ask the aquarium about mysterious sea monsters. But there are other clever betentacled things out there.

"Squid?" Szayel says, wrinkling his nose, "Here? I suppose it's possible, but... If it's that sort of size, it probably belongs at a much greater depth. There's a reason most giant squid we find are dead - when they're at their natural depth, they're almost undetectable. Are you sure you mean metres?"

Tesla shrugs. "Bigger than my boat," he offers.

"Hmm," says Szayel. "Not an octopus?"

Tesla shrugs. "I don't know. Big, with lots of tentacles. All... long and flexible. Really... big."

"I'm getting a fascinating insight into your reading material," Szayel murmurs.

"What?" says Tesla blankly.

"What?" Szayel parrots. Then, "Never mind. No, I wouldn't expect any... wild tentacle monsters... in these waters. But if it's not at depth, and it's metres large, I'd suggest you're looking for one of the larger species of octopus - not a squid."

Instead of 'mermaid', when Tesla goes home he searches 'tentacle monster'.

It's ...not enlightening.

(Except in the part where it kind of is.

Objectively, with the buxom animated girls squealing and crying, it's not that interesting. It's a window into a weird, weird place.

If he thinks about it in terms of silky soft pale arms winding around him and long sharp claws and a fierce, cruel face and - and being held down by something about a million times stronger than he is, though -

Tesla puts his phone back down and tries to pretend he's not sweating. He completely fails, then throws one arm up to cover his eyes.

He's mortified and kind of turned on at the same time.

Tesla, he thinks, why?)

The monster does return. He catches up with Tesla every time he heads out in the boat. The first time is the worst, since it seems like the monster can't help the urge to make a nuisance of himself.

He scares away half the fish and casually kills the others.

And, yes, it is a sight to see, this monster ripping apart an enormous fish and splashing dismembered pieces of it through the water. It's beautiful and deadly and terrifying. Tesla very much wishes he had not come to certain inappropriate conclusions about those tentacles already, because he feels sort of pleasantly uncomfortable watching it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how impressive and beautiful the monster is. Tesla can't eat beauty.

Tesla wouldn't mind so much if he wasn't also territorial about his kills.

"You're not even going to eat it!" Tesla points out. "You just like killing them!"

The monster gurgles right back at him, scowling thunderously.

"I don't see why I can't eat one of them if you're just going to catch them and kill them all and leave them."

There's not a lot of point trying to reason with the monster. Tesla suspects there wouldn't be a lot of point even if he could actually understand what Tesla's saying. He's not a very reasonable monster.

Tesla sighs, sags, leans on the railing of his boat with his chin propped on his fist, and resigns himself to waiting out the monster's violent, cheerful exuberance.

It's spectacular at least.

Eventually he does actually tire himself out with all that carnage, and he slinks in toward the boat and hooks a tentacle over the edge. The suckers are very strong, and once he's attached he's not going anywhere. He floats under the water, sometimes under the boat itself.

The amount of mess in the water actually attracts other fish, although it's somewhat harder to get them to stop eating the bits the monster's left floating around and take Tesla's baited hook instead. The monster watches, replete with both fish and violence, lazily floating in the water by the boat.

He takes a strange, keen interest in Tesla's fishing.

The next time he sees him, the monster brings him an anglerfish. It is dead by the time Tesla gets it. He's not actually sure if the monster kills it, because it's not actually ripped in half, or if the sudden pressure change from its natural depth does. It is stupendously ugly, mottled and toothy and with a lure protruding from its back to bounce before its huge jagged teeth.

And, yes, it hunts pretty much exactly how Tesla does.

He has never in his life had the urge to coo helplessly at something this ugly before.

Tesla is kind of stupidly in love.

"Tesla," he says, several days later, leaning over the edge of the boat and peering into the monster's mostly-submerged face.

The monster tips his head back, raising his chin about the sea. He just looks at Tesla.

Tesla repeats it, gesturing at himself. There's a temptation to explain himself, but he figures that will actually just make it harder.

The monster is manifestly clever - smarter than plenty of humans Tesla's met, at least - and he can make those weird gurgling noises. Since his mouth and face are roughly human shaped, Tesla can't see why he wouldn't be able to learn.

The monster keeps watching him, but now he narrows his eye and mouths the sounds without voicing them. He scowls.

Tesla repeats himself again.

The monster makes the same shapes with his mouth, copying but not actually saying anything.

"Tesla," Tesla says.

Then, finally -

"Tesla," the monster says, scowling fiercely.

It sounds... thick and strange, with the consonants all slurred and gurgly, but it's more or less his name.

The monster seems to know exactly how odd it sounds in comparison, though, because he's sinking lower into the water, looking furious and pissed off.

Helplessly, Tesla smiles.

His monster is a proud thing, and he dislikes being bad at something on the first attempt.

Tesla reaches a hand down to him, trying to coax him out of his sulk. It's a good attempt, he knows, for somebody who has likely never tried to make certain sounds before. Sl is a hard enough combination for a lot of people who do regularly speak human languages.

The monster won't look at him, but Tesla leaves his hand dangling, leaning dangerously, stupidly far over the edge.

Eventually, there hooks a tentacle around his hand. Its suckers fix powerfully to his skin as it climbs up his arm. The monster never even looks his way.

"What about you?" Tesla prompts "Hey, come on." He squeezes the tentacle. The suckers don't even budge with the movement of his hand. "Hey."

He waits until he finally has the sulky monster's attention, and then gestures pointedly to him.

"Nnoitra," says the monster. There's a weird gurgling dip in the middle of the first consonant, but no actual vowel there that Tesla can hear, and the second consonant combination is...

Well, he certainly wouldn't know how to spell it.

Tesla squints.

Nnoitra glares at him. The tentacle tugs on his arm. "Nnoitra," he insists.

Tesla tries. "Nnoitra?" He knows immediately he hasn't gotten... basically any part of it right.

The expression of pure affront that crosses Nnoitra's face is, for about a quarter of a second, kind of hilarious.

"Hhhck-!" Tesla yelps as a tentacle rears out of the water and whacks him over the head - with enough force that he goes tumbling over the side of the boat and makes a mighty splash.

Then he has to convince his offended sea monster to help him back into the boat. It takes until he starts shivering with the cold from the water, and then he helps and it's almost worse: Nnoitra coils one long, bendy tentacle around Tesla's waist and hoists him out of the water and into the air with effortless strength.

Tesla gets dumped on his face back on his boat, soaked and, honestly, a little overwhelmed by the careless display of power.

He shivers in the air but he feels hot in the face. He's probably going to dream about that, and he's not sure if he dreads or desperately anticipates it.

By the time he gets back, the sun has long since set and his hands are shaking so hard with cold that he can almost not get his boat in.

Perversely, he feels better than he has in years.

Teaching Nnoitra his name is somehow both the best and worst thing Tesla has ever done. He figures out how to pronounce it, more or less, and then he abuses it mercilessly.

Nnoitra can yell.

Tesla doesn't know why this surprises him, but the first time he almost puts a fish hook through his own damn finger.

Worse still, "Tesla" is now a word Nnoitra is certain Tesla will answer to and he uses it to express pretty much anything he wants to address to Tesla. It can mean 'I know you caught that fish but it looks tasty and I want it,' or it can mean 'come here' or it can mean 'I'm deeply pissed off at you'.

Over the next few weeks Tesla hears his name whined and bellowed and purred.

Sometimes Nnoitra even uses his name like punctuation in his own strange language. Tesla has no idea what he's saying most of the time, but he's starting to pick a little up - he'll never be able to pronounce it, but there are things Nnoitra repeats often enough that he has a sense of their meaning.

He understands sounds that mean 'food' and 'there' and 'yes' or 'no'.

Tesla /definitely/ has a clear understanding of what sounds mean no in all its many variations. And Nnoitra isn't shy about enforcing boundaries - even boundaries that seem arbitrary and baffling to Tesla.

Of course, when a big betentacled monster who could rip him apart without blinking says 'no', or 'not that' or 'not today' Tesla listens even if it doesn't make much sense to him. Obviously, it makes sense to Nnoitra.

They learn more about each other over time. Nnoitra, Tesla figures out pretty fast, has an innate sense of fairness and equivalency. He absolutely knows when he's being unfair or unreasonable - and he just doesn't care. He is proud, demanding, imperious and kind of a shameless show off. He imposes upon Tesla shamelessly... not least because he's gotten to know Tesla, too, and he can tell how open Tesla is to being imposed upon. Nnoitra wants a huge proportion of his time and attention and energy, and most of the time it is Tesla's genuine pleasure to provide.

Tesla feeds him cooked food for the first time in winter - meat, because he's not sure what Nnoitra can really digest, cooked and shredded and taken down to the beach in a container. Nnoitra hates it when it's hot from cooking, but he'll devour it by the kilogram as long as they let it get cold first.

Nnoitra brings him dead animals sometimes - often perfectly edible ocean fish of exactly the kind Tesla would otherwise catch himself, but also other things: squid, crabs, a sea spider almost ten centimetre across, once an entire swordfish with its eyes gouged out.

The first anglerfish is one clue, but a lot of what Nnoitra brings him just come from very deep in the ocean indeed. Tesla's not a marine researcher, but he looks at some of the strange, blind, pallid animals Nnoitra presents him with and knows they must come from somewhere that never sees daylight.

Obviously, Nnoitra considers a horrific death from barotrauma to be a problem for lesser creatures. The diving industry would probably kill to know how he's doing it.

Tesla develops the habit of keeping several changes of clothes and a portable kettle right on his boat for accidental dunkings (accidental in that Tesla never plans them; for Nnoitra, they're usually quite deliberate). He gets used to the sight and feel of his soft-skinned tentacles with big, powerful suckers on their undersides. He never does shake the dry-mouthed, heart-pounding awe he feels when Nnoitra rips something apart right in front of him, but now his fear is a small thing. It's a safe thrill.

Nnoitra indulges this weakness of Tesla's, too, and Tesla knows it. Just because he can't understand a word he's saying doesn't mean Tesla fails to notice when Nnoitra is showing off shamelessly. He doesn't mind it. He is a wholly appreciative audience.

He still thinks, occasionally, when he's laying in bed of a morning and still half asleep with the sheets pooled softly around him, of the sheer overwhelming strength in Nnoitra's strange body. While he's still drifting between sleep and waking he daydreams of being held down, struggling but helpless, and of long sharp claws, cool hands and a familiar voice sighing 'Tesla,' against his jaw.

His breath comes heavily and Tesla blinks his eyes open, finally, to his heart thumping and sweat slick on his neck.

It is December, days before Christmas - a holiday Tesla doesn't celebrate, but which means work at the factory comes grinding to a halt and Tesla gets paid less because he can't work his regular hours - when Nnoitra finds him at the rocks nearest his house.

He waits with unusual patience for Tesla to make it down to where the waves lap foamily at the rocks.

He's just contemplating sitting down - he'll get soaked, but he'll also get to put his hands all over Nnoitra's cool soft skin - when Nnoitra takes hold of one of his own tentacles in both hands and, with a tense expression, he just -

- rips it off.

It sounds exactly like tearing a fish in half.

There's blood, bluish in the air where it coats Nnoitra's fingers, and there's the still-twitching tentacle in Nnoitra's hands.

Tesla freezes.

Then he unfreezes. "Shit," he says, leaning in to grab Nnoitra's hand. He shoves it toward the stump, hoping to stem the bleeding with pressure. "Hold it tightly, don't let it go, just - keep pressure on it, what the hell are you even doing -" he babbles, crushing Nnoitra's hand hand to the wound beneath his own.

Nnoitra ignores all of this and hands the tentacle to Tesla, sticking it out insistently until Tesla takes it mostly in self defence. It's long and thick and the muscles contract powerfully, even separated from the body, making it kind of a terrifying twitching mess.

Tesla doesn't know what he's meant to do with it. He's a lot more concerned with how Nnoitra is standing there and bleeding all over everything. He sets the tentacle gently down on the rocks and goes back to fussing over the stump where it's been ripped out.

Nnoitra makes a low, unhappy noise. He picks up the tentacle and gives it to Tesla again, even more pointedly. He is way more annoyed that Tesla put his tentacle down than that he's bleeding over everything.

Bewildered, Tesla clutches it.

What is he meant to do with a dismembered tentacle?

He holds onto it and stares at Nnoitra.

There's blood on everything but the bleeding itself is slowing rapidly. Tesla can't quite believe Nnoitra's blood is such a strange blue colour. Maybe part of that's because he's usually cold.

What does Nnoitra think Tesla's meant to do with a dismembered tentacle?

He holds onto it, which Nnoitra seems to want, but as he does Nnoitra gets increasingly agitated. Whatever he's doing, he's doing it incorrectly.

"What," Tesla asks, hoping that his tone will get across what he means. "What do I do?"

Nnoitra makes a low gurgling noise that Tesla doesn't quite understand in translation, but which he knows to be quite rude.

"Nnoitra, I don't know what you want me to do," he says again.

The response is much more frustrated.

It only gets worse.

Eventually Nnoitra makes a noise of pure pique and slinks off into the sea. He leaves Tesla standing there clutching his dismembered arm.

Tesla doesn't see him for days. He could be sulking, he knows, but he could also be, say, dying of an infection from having his limb torn off.

Tesla puts the tentacle on his table and doesn't know what to do with it. At least it doesn't seem to be going bad at all?

He frets.

Nnoitra is nowhere to be found.

Five days after the event, Tesla is finally fed up and worried enough to take a photo of the thing down to the aquarium.

"Oh, that's not not just a tentacle, it's a hectocotylus," says Szayel immediately, enthusiastically, peering at Tesla's phone over his desk.

A hectowhat? Tesla has no idea what a hectocotylus is.

"You don't see them like this very often. Initially researchers mistook them for a kind of parasite because they'd find them broken off inside certain species of octopus..."

Okay, well, at least that implies that ripping them off is a common thing in some way? Tesla hopes Nnoitra is just sulking.

Szayel looks up from the photo. His golden eyes are shrewd and narrowed, which is exactly the problem with asking clever people for help with things Tesla doesn't want to share. "Weren't you asking me about uncommonly large octopuses a few months ago? There must be more than one in the area... Where did you say you found this?"

"I didn't."

He lets the silence stretch.

Szayel's mouth thins.

Tesla recognises that there's no way he's going to get any information about this unless he gives up some information in return.

He thinks about it. His response, when he gives it, is miles away and in the opposite direction from where he actually found Nnoitra. It's also a little vague.

"Hmm, interesting." If he notices Tesla's discomfort, Szayel doesn't say anything. He's too preoccupied with the photo itself.

Tesla shifts on his feet. "So do they, um, tear them off? That's normal?"

"Oh, yes," Szayel nods, and Tesla relaxes a little. "Usually inside a reproductive partner, although there are some species in which the male will tear them off and present them to a female as an offering of, hm, courtship."

Tesla blinks. Inside a reproductive partner?

Courtship?

He wants to rub his whole face in his hands and smack his head into a wall. No wonder Nnoitra is so upset.

"What... do they do with them? Do they serve some kind of purpose, or...?"

"More or less the same purpose they serve in humans," says Szayel, with a weird little half-smile. "They deliver sperm."

Wait. What?

"Is that an octopus dick," Tesla hears himself say from very far away.

"More or less. Here, see this part where the suckers stop and it bulges at the tip-" Szayel is pointing at the end of -

The end of...

Tesla's brain stops working every time he contemplates that he has Nnoitra's dismembered cock on his kitchen table.

Also? It's huge.

"...I know this is fascinating, but you honestly seem to be taking this more personally than I'd have expected," says Szayel, in a way that passes for delicacy from him.

"It's fascinating," Tesla says steadily. "Tell me more."

And, yes, inside he's kind of panicking.

"Are you certain? Only, you've gone quite grey. If you faint here I'll have to fill out a form."

"I'm not going to faint," Tesla says, although he does sort of feel like his entire personality is trying to flee his body by force.

There's a long, awkward pause. "Sit down then," Szayel instructs. "If you faint and injure yourself it's three forms."

Tesla sits.

Their meeting does not really get better, only more enlightening.

He goes home with Szayel's irritating voice echoing in his ears, still feeling kind of distant and... Not right.

Nnoitra's sulking because he ripped off his dick and gave it to Tesla and Tesla... didn't respond right. He isn't sure what "right" might be, but it probably isn't just getting upset and panicking about all the blood.

When he gets back it's still there, laying across Tesla's table. It's not twitching or ticking anymore, obviously, but it hasn't stiffened up or started to decay either. It's just a relaxed, large, gleaming... tentacle.

Tesla touches it, as he has for days whenever he's passed it. It's still just as soft as it ever was, and the suckers are large and a little scary looking, even if they've lost their ability to cling now.

It's almost as long as Tesla is tall. It hangs off one edge of his rickety table and dangles in the air.

Octopus dick, his brain helpfully supplies.

Tesla's still not completely sure what he's meant to do with it. In octopuses, he'd be meant to use it to have Nnoitra's babies, but Tesla doesn't have any of the correct anatomical parts for gestation and even if he did he's not convinced that he and Nnoitra would be a fertile pairing.

Octopus monster babies aside, Tesla's not sure if there's any place on his body where an octopus dick - a hectocotylus - could actually even fit

He's honest enough to recognise that if Nnoitra asked in a way he could understand, though, he'd ...probably give it a shot.

He runs his hands through his hair.

Then he gets up, grabs the hectocotylus off his table, finds his keys and heads out. Somewhere out there, a lovely, dangerous monster is sulking and Tesla has to find it and, if he's very lucky, find some way to have sex with it.

If you enjoyed this work and you feel like commenting, please let me know what you liked about it. Otherwise have a good day. :0