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[Day 5: "Flowers"]

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Ocean Kiss: Part II

Arthur believed he finally understood what it meant to be "heartbroken" and "lovesick."

And yet, he didn't think what he felt could be described even with those words. They were too shallow, too generic . . . they were adjectives that could be applied to any person in any mundane situation. A lost cat, for example. Or an elementary-school crush. Ordinary, simplistic, unimportant things that were worlds away from charismatic, capricious mermen with melodious voices and spectrums of colorful emotion.

For four days, he woke with that horrible empty feeling. For four days, he tried to disregard it and walked faithfully to the rocks when afternoon trickled in. For four days, he sat at the shore until night turned the roiling, bottomless sea as dark as pitch—unable to accept that Alfred hadn't shown up yet again, that his world was once more reduced to black and white, that he was alone. He slept fitfully, in sporadic bouts, and ate even less than he slept. At the end of the fourth day, he could barely drag himself away from their meeting place. His knees nearly gave out from under him when he made to walk away, and it was through sheer will that he managed to reach his house on legs that he couldn't even feel anymore.

On the fifth morning, Arthur jerked awake to the strangest sensation. It was as if someone had unleashed a jar of bees in his stomach—the buzzing was so intense, his vision shivered. His mind whirled with half-blurred dreams about the ocean.

He didn't need time to figure out what any of it meant. He was out the door in two minutes.

His rush garnered a lot of odd looks from the other Palonea residents—"What, is that Arthur? Eileen's boy? Where's he hurrying off to so early?"—but he brushed past them without a sideways glance or greeting. Thankfully, no one followed him. He had to get to the rocks, and he couldn't afford to have another pair of inquisitive eyes tailing him . . .

He scraped up his bare feet in his scramble over the ragged ground without feeling a thing except a mounting excitement. Once he'd made it over the last obstacle in his way, he headed to the place where he'd been waiting for the past four days.

And there he was. Alfred.

Arthur knew immediately that something was wrong. Instead of lounging on his back, soaking up the sunshine, with his tail waving languidly to some music in nature that Arthur's human ears couldn't detect, the merman was draped across the rocks as if flung there by the ocean. His beautiful tail laid lifelessly at his side; when Arthur got closer, he saw that the scales, once polished to a glossy radiance by the water, were scratched and dull in ragged patterns all the way down to the caudal fin.

"Alfred?" Arthur said, throat quivering.

Alfred didn't acknowledge him.

Crouching down, Arthur reached out a tentative hand. Alfred's body was cool to the touch, so different from his usual rosy warmth, and still covered with droplets . . . Arthur placed two fingers on the damp, tender skin at Alfred's neck and nearly went weak with relief when he felt a pulse. His touch seemed to rouse Alfred; the merman shifted as his tail rose and fell with a weak smack against the rock.

"Nngh" was the sound he made.

"A-are you all right . . . ?" Arthur was already running through a mental list of possible steps he could take to help Alfred. A doctor was out of the question, obviously. Maybe an emergency first aid kit? Did merpeople heal the same way that humans did? Would they respond to the same types of medication? "Er—where does it hurt?"

With visible effort and another groan, Alfred rolled himself over onto his back. There were some wicked-looking lacerations along his shoulder, the upper part of his chest, and down one arm, but they were curiously bloodless. Even under Arthur's concerned inspection, they appeared to knit themselves together, the skin joining and smoothing over to make Alfred seamlessly perfect once more.

"Not injured," Alfred said through gritted teeth. He sucked in a breath of air, then let it back out in a strained huff. "Painful, though. Got caught up in a riptide on the other side. Coral reef got in the way while I was riding it out." His eyes fluttered open for a second, and he gave Arthur a wry little smile before closing them again.

Palonea was indeed surrounded on two sides with coral reefs, which was why swimmers weren't allowed to go into the water at a beach unless there were lifeguards and special signs that allowed them to do so. "Um . . . I suppose I should have warned you. I'm really sorry."

Alfred shook his head. "Nah, it was all me. I should've known. I was being stupid." He passed a hand over his abdomen to rest at the place where his human body ended and his aquatic features began.

Fearing that Alfred was suffering from internal hemorrhage or something equally serious that his magic (was it magic?) couldn't cure, Arthur fumbled for what to do. "Where are you hurt? Is it somewhere inside? What can I do to heal you?"

To Arthur's surprise, Alfred actually chuckled, and winced immediately after.

"What?" Arthur demanded anxiously.

"It's . . . not exactly a 'hurt.' Just didn't find a mate this year. Kills me to have to go without—saps my strength, actually. Makes my immune system . . . not so hot."

Suddenly, Arthur didn't quite know what to say.

Alfred eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, then grinned. In a blink, his tail swept across the rock to curl about Arthur's ankles intimately, and Arthur found himself off-balance . . . with his hands on Alfred's chest to support himself. He sputtered, embarrassed, and started to pull his hands away, but Alfred's hands closed around his wrists to keep them there. The gleam in his eyes had turned from cheerful to coy; he looked up at Arthur, earnest, flirtatious, confident, his mouth quirked expectantly. "I've never had a human mate before. You can be my first."

"Wh-what? You want me to be your mate?" Arthur tried to backpedal. Things were happening too fast. "But . . . I don't . . . how would it even work? You don't have a . . ." And that was when the memory of their first encounter flashed through his mind and he remembered that yes, Alfred did indeed have one. The thought made him blush up to the roots of his hair. "Oh, God."

"It's okay. We can do it any way you want." Alfred's hand darted to his own hip and made a small unhooking movement, then another and another, as it slowly worked down the scratched-up scales. Arthur settled back on his heels and watched with fascination and confusion as a layer of scales seemed to slide right off the top part of Alfred's tail. When Alfred had gotten about a third of the way down, he stopped, and lifted away an entire sheet of the tiny, sparkling blue-green plates, which appeared to have been wrapped all the way around his tail, and set it to the side. Glancing up, he seemed to catch on to Arthur's bewilderment.

He said, "It's made of the scales we shed a couple times a year. The edge bits are bent into little hooks, see? Those are what keep the whole thing from falling off when we move—they latch onto the scales on our tails. We wear them for modesty."

That explained why Arthur had somehow managed to get under Alfred's scales when Alfred had allowed him to touch him for the first time. But then, that also meant . . . Arthur's eyes were drawn to Alfred's tail again.

What he saw made his cheeks burn even more.

Down the center was a vertical slit maybe three inches long, peeking out from between the overlapping chips. From just inside the top end of the slit rose what was unmistakably Alfred's male member, which didn't look that different from a human one save for the lack of visible testicles and the way it curved strongly backward towards Alfred's stomach. The head of it was an interesting shape—more pointed than rounded—but Arthur had to snatch his eyes away, face aflame, unable to bring himself to study it.

"You don't find me appealing?" Alfred asked, sounding dejected.

"No! I mean—no, that's not it. I . . . I do find you . . . appealing . . ." Arthur's mouth had gone dry, and he licked his lips, trying to find the words. "M-much more than I should, actually. It's just . . . I don't know if . . ."

"If we do mate, you can be the one to put it in me."

Arthur was fairly sure that there was steam coming out of his ears at that point. "Er . . ." His eyes wandered back down to Alfred's tail and exposed genitals. He couldn't help it. He was curious; he'd never seen another human's private areas, much less a merman's.

Alfred laughed lightly. "I keep forgetting. Human males and females have really different parts, huh? It's not like that with my kind. I'm male, but you can still enter me. Here, see?" With a couple of fingers, he spread the lower part of the slit wide, revealing a small, glistening hole. It shuttered a few times under Arthur's gaze, slow and rhythmic like the lense of a camera. A quick glance up showed Arthur the honest flush of desire evident in the merman's upper body, but somehow, Arthur could also sense his patience, his willingness to wait until a comfortable decision could be reached.

There was no question now; Arthur was utterly captivated. His hand rose of its own accord, came to a rest on Alfred's tail, hesitated as insecurity overwhelmed him. Alfred seemed to understand. Instead of pressuring Arthur, or giving up on him, he took Arthur's hand with his free one and gently guided it towards his slit.

It was hard to clearly detail everything that happened next—the feel of Alfred's entrance, pulsing and fluttering around his fingers; the leisurely removal of Arthur's shirt and shorts; the whispers of sensation that Alfred's hands stirred up in him through touch alone—because the moments they shared were a series of snapshots in Arthur's mind. Impressions upon impressions, separate yet connected in a way that Arthur was at a loss to describe. Alfred on his back, body open, breathing unsteady, a longing sort of look overcoming his usual lighthearted expression. The sigh that passed his lips when Arthur slid in. The ripples of his beautiful muscles as they moved together, and the gasps and moans as pleasure, newfound for Arthur and an old friend to Alfred, overcame them both.

Afterwards, Arthur laid his cheek on Alfred's chest and listened to his strong, content heartbeat. "I couldn't have gotten you pregnant, could I?" he mused out loud, too worn out to let any real worry concerning the matter get to him.

"Nah. Mermaids have kids, not mermen." Alfred stroked his hair, half playfully, half affectionately. "I mean, only mermaids carry them."

". . . Do you have any children?"

Alfred shook his head. "I usually mate with other mermen, or with mermaids who are more mature. Only the very young mermaids get preggers a lot during mating cycles. The ones over a hundred . . . not so much."

Arthur looked up to gape at him. "Just how old are you, then, exactly?"

The merman broke into laughter, delicious peals that warmed Arthur and made his skin tingle. "I'm still pretty young." With that, he entwined his tail with Arthur's legs, and they basked in each other's presence until they dozed off.

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From that day on, they met faithfully at the rocks, and whenever it came time for Alfred's mating season to begin, he would no longer disappear for days on end unannounced; instead, he'd let Arthur know (or Arthur would figure it out himself, which wasn't all that hard—it seemed mermen hormones attracted humans as well), and they'd make love with the company of the sea-salty air and the ever-shining sun. And sometimes, when they were done, Arthur could get Alfred to sing for him in that ethereal voice of his, and then he'd listen as Alfred's song traveled across the water. His own siren call, but only for Arthur, a melody both bewitching and haunting, intended not to lure in prey but to express contentment. And that was the most beautiful kind of song there was.

Over time, they gave each other little tokens: coins, buttons, and beads from Arthur, and various pieces of coral, sea glass, and mermaid's purses from Alfred. They each took a piece of their own world and brought them back to share, and it was like the objects they exchanged—while of little value themselves—had coalesced into a miniature, precious universe with just the two of them, one that wasn't entirely a part of the land or the sea, but one that transcended both.

Arthur could wake up in the morning now with that flutter in his midriff and know for certain that Alfred was waiting for him, and feel pride that a beautiful merman with such a quirky, lovable personality had chosen him as a lover. He could look at the shelves of coral, sea flowers, and colorful anemone in his room, all preserved by Alfred's touch, and know that future he saw in his mind's eye and the future that was laid out before him dovetailed to make a perfect whole. And then he would know, in those moments, that he would be with his sea angel. Always.

A/N: And that concludes the sequel. It has virtually nothing to do with the actual prompt, haha. I was thinking that you could see the "tokens" they gave each other as substitutes (or equivalents) for "flowers," though. :)

I got unexpectedly busy this week and, in the end, decided to finish the remaining Sweethearts Week prompts in my own time. So, yeah. Thank you to those who've expressed interest and reviewed!