Strangers Met on Summer Jobs

Denki returned home for summer 21 years old and totally miserable.

Usually this was his favorite time of year -- a chance to relax, hang out with friends, make a little bit of extra money... This time around he pulled up to his parent's house and hoped that no one had noticed his arrival.

It wasn't like he didn't want to see them or anything. It was just that he'd made the entire four hour drive home only able to think about how to tell his moms that actually, he wouldn't be going back to school once the break was over, actually he'd managed to do so badly in all of his classes that he'd been advised not to return next semester. Worse than that, he knew that his little sister was coming back from her first semester of college with a perfect GPA.

Rather than do something useful, like come up with a plan to drop the news, he'd mostly spent his time wondering if that would make it worse, or if it would be easier on his moms knowing that at least one of their kids wasn't a complete fuck up.

Denki heaved a self-deprecating sigh as he shut off the engine, making sure he didn't slam the door too hard as he walked around to the back to grab his things.

He'd been stuck with dorm-room furniture, which at least meant that all of his belongings fit nicely into the tarp-covered back of his beat up old pickup-truck. It was sort of a shitty rust-bucket, but he'd bought it himself, with only a little help. When it inevitably broke down, he'd taught himself how to fix it. It was his, and it worked, at least for the moment, so right now it was the one thing in his life that he was actually proud of.

After a moment of consideration he settled on grabbing the suitcase he'd stuffed most of his clothes into with one hand and the case for his video game console in the other. Of course, the way he'd configured his hands left him awkwardly balancing the case on top the suitcase as he got to the house fiddled with the doorknob. He probably could have just knocked, but he was hoping for at least a few moments to hide away in his room before being confronted by anyone.

Of course, he wasn't so lucky, because the moment he slid off his shoes he was assaulted with dual screams of "Denki!" as one of his youngest sisters vaulted over the back of the couch and the other appeared from the doorway to the kitchen to crash into him in something that was less a hug and more a tackle. Raltei and Raikou had both been firmly in their "too cool for physical affection" phases when Denki had seen them last, though it seemed like one had graduated to edgy goth and the other to pothead chic. Like true younger siblings they couldn't resist the opportunity to attack him; he didn't fall to the floor but it was a close thing.

"Whoa what the hell?" He said, "There's two of them?"

One of the twins tried to put him in a headlock, while the other snatched his console and danced away. Denki mimed choking to death as he pushed all of his body weight onto his younger sibling until she ducked out from under him.

"Wow, college boy has only been gone six months and he's already forgot all about us?" said Raltei from where she was standing on a couch cushion.

"Yeah, I thought school was supposed to make you smarter?" Raikou had fled behind the kitchen counter.

Denki tried not to let his smile look too brittle. "Nah, they shoved so much knowledge in me that the unimportant stuff got pushed out."

Before either of his siblings could formulate a reply he tugged his suitcase the rest of the way inside and kicked the door closed, "Where's moms?"

"Uhh…" Raikou said, "Mom's at work, Ma is picking up Yuko from the airport."

"Yeah we went out for lunch before," Said Raltei, settling down on the couch to fully claim her prize, "Coulda had some if you weren't so slow coming home."

"I was busy packing you gremlins."

"That just means you procrastinated!"

…He had been. And he'd had to pack more than he usually would have, too. He didn't refute the point, instead deciding to roll his eyes and haul his suitcase upstairs, pausing at the top to shout down, "If you delete my save I'm gonna be very upset!"

He ducked away at the yell back of, "I did that once!"

He had honestly half expected his old room to have been cleaned out -- He could vaguely remember his moms talking about renting it out to off season tourists or something -- but it looked like the opposite had happened instead. His things were still more or less where he'd left them, but shoved against the wall, at the foot of the bed, was the addition of a big wooden desk that was covered in boxes and books and bits of metal.

Ah, Ma was going for that home enchanting workshop she always talked about, Denki realized as he poked through one of the boxes, revealing a bunch of tools he was only half familiar with, Just another thing I'm gonna be costing them I guess.

He dropped the ring he had picked up back on the desk and heaved his suitcase onto the bed, pulling it open and haphazardly shoving the unsorted clothes into drawers before pushing it onto the floor and taking its place himself.

He felt guilty just being here. He could only imagine it would get worse once he’d admitted that he was staying out loud.

Denki didn't particularly have the energy left in him to get the rest of his things. In fact, he didn't feel like doing much at all -- Usually he would have planned hang-outs with his friends long before now, but the anxiety that had been roiling in his stomach hadn't let him get over himself enough to try. And it wasn't like any of them had tried to message him.

Still, if one thing was quickly becoming obvious it was that he would want to get out of the house as much as possible. He didn't feel like he really deserved to hang out with his friends, so he pulled out his phone and instead scrolled to the contact listed as ‘Boss Lady :)’ and sent a text telling her that he was back in town and would love to come back to work if she'd have him. He'd been doing his summer tour guide gig for six summers running, so chances were high that he'd be getting it back this year too. But wouldn't it just be fitting if he didn't?

When no immediate response came, Denki dropped his phone on his chest and closed his eyes with a sigh. His thoughts were still circling back and forth, trying to come up with a plan to tell his parents, but the exhaustion from stress and the drive started to creep up on him, and before he could come up with an answer, Denki had slipped into a nap.

Denki awoke to cold fingers poking at his cheek that he instinctively batted away. The fingers came back with a vengeance, along with an amused, "Now is that any way to greet your mother?"

"Mm-" Denki grunted and squinted open his eyes. The parent that had come to wake up was Moriko Kaminari, otherwise known in this house as Ma. She was probably freshly home from work because her wavy black hair was still pulled back in a loose ponytail and there were still tiny bits of metal shavings clinging to her shirt. "Uh, good morning?"

That earned him a smile and a flick to the head, "Good night, more like. I'm waking you up for dinner."

Before he could really prepare for it, Denki was picked up into a hug.

"I know you're tired, lightning-bug, but no getting out of family time. At least not today."

"Uh?" said Denki, "I wasn't planning on it?"

Now that he was awake he was a little annoyed that he hadn't been allowed to sleep through dinner, if only because he knew he was going to be awkward as hell for him to sit through. His Ma left him sitting up as she moved across the room to go digging through the boxes that Denki had been investigating earlier, saying something under her breath. He started to stretch his back only to freeze when his Ma said, "Sorry about the mess by the way. Was starting to finally put this together and I didn't know where else to put it!"

"It's fine!" Denki said a little too quickly, lowering his arms as his Ma shot him a look. He ought to just say something right now, to go ahead and get it out of the way and face the consequences, but he couldn't force his mouth back open. His Ma didn't seem convinced, because she wrinkled her brow and said, "Are you sure? We can move it while you're here."

"No, it's no problem" Denki waved a hand to dismiss the question. I'm going to be here for a while. "What's for dinner?"

Ma's face screwed up in thought.

"Sesame… Something. I wasn't really listening. Let's go find out!"

Dinner managed to be exactly as excruciating as Denki expected it to be. Not from the outside -- no, any observer would have seen a normal, happy family dinner -- but on the inside Denki was a nervous wreck. He wasn't going to announce anything in front of his siblings, but it felt like he was in danger of slipping up and revealing his fuck up at any moment. The fact that Yuko was here -- the younger sister with the perfect grades, looking exhausted and jet lagged -- wasn't making it any easier. 

The two of them had always had a weird sort of tension between them that Denki could never figure out how to resolve. Yuko was adopted, young enough that Denki honestly couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been around, but she had some insecurities about it -- namely the fact that the twins had a surrogate father but were biologically their Ma's daughters, and Denki himself was born from something their Mom had done with someone who he'd never heard about before their parents had met. It seemed like a perfectly fair insecurity to have, and would probably never go away no matter how much everyone insisted that she was as much a part of the family as everyone else because brains didn't really work like that. Denki especially didn't know how to approach it because he sort of had the opposite worry, about how all of his siblings were clearly wanted and prepared for, while for all he knew he was a mistake. He sure felt like one. 

But that was exactly the kind of drama he would keep to himself and never, ever share out loud, because he was perfectly happy being the goofy older brother who didn't get upset at things like that. At least on the upside he'd inherited a faint aptitude for magic from his Mom, so it wasn't all bad.

(If she was to be believed, one of her great-grandparents shacked up with an elemental and the natural magic had been passed through their bloodline to this very day. It was maybe, possibly true -- Denki didn't have a lightning bolt in his hair for nothing after all -- but it was always safest to be dubious with stories that old. Humans didn't always have the best relationships with magical creatures, especially not back then).

He tuned back into the conversation right around the time Yuko said, "Denki?"

"Huh?" He replied, "What was the question?"

She scrunched up her chin in a frown that was mostly annoyed and said, "We were talking about classes. I asked what you were taking next semester?"

Denki blinked dumbly, panic bubbling into his throat. He wasn't taking any classes next semester because there wasn't a next semester. When he said, "I haven't decided yet." It didn't come out sounding nearly as casually as he would have liked, and he especially didn't like how both of his moms shot him worried glances.

"That's weird." Yuko said, either not noticing the tension or not caring, "My advisors made me sign up for everything before the year was over."

All Denki could offer was a shrug, because the rest of his focus was on making sure his expression didn't look too miserable. He was saved from further questioning, thank god, by the buzz of his phone. His moms didn't like it when they texted at the table, but there wasn't a hard rule against it and Denki would take any out he could get right now.

"Oh, it's my boss!" He said in mock surprise, "Looks like I'm going to be starting work tomorrow."

Clownfish Seaside Tours was not the biggest or most popular tour-boat company in Mustafu, but it had a few things going for it. For one, it was the place that had hired Denki as a pimple-faced 16 year old, and that wasn't because the standards were low. No, as far as Denki was aware his boss Emi Fukukado was one of the most knowledgeable people in town when it came to the merfolk who lived off the coast -- legend had it the reason they were allowed to pull their boats so close to their colony was because she had befriended it's siren protectors. When it was brought up she would laugh -- she laughed at most things -- but would never confirm or deny.

When Denki was a sophomore in high school and trying to save for his car, he'd also been majorly fixated on merfolk. He'd also thought "Well, I like talking to people, being a tour guide is about that, right?" and so he’d walked to every tour company in town only to be turned down for lack of experience. Fukukado hadn't, instead she'd leaned over the counter, fixed him with a grin, and grilled him about what he knew about merfolk for two and a half hours before declaring that he 'wasn't bad' and 'could shadow her on the next tour and see how he did'. She had apparently been a big fan of the fact that he understood that mer were not animals, that they had cultures just as rich and varied as human ones, and that was a point that they tried to drive home to every tourist who went out with them. There was a lot he didn't know, of course, but he'd been eager to learn, and now, six years later, he could proudly say that he was a pretty decent tour guide. And he knew how to drive a boat.

Shame that it wasn't a job that could really support him, or that he could do year round, but still, he liked it a lot. He'd have to make an extra effort to save money this year, though.

Once he'd graduated to being allowed to handle tours on his own, the routine had become him hanging around the boardwalk taking walk-ons while his boss handled the private tours that people scheduled in advance. It wasn't like he was the only other worker, but they ran a pretty tight ship. Denki maybe should have been a little less surprised when he opened the door and his boss said "Oh, thank god."

"Hey boss lady." He paused in the doorway and shot her a pair of finger guns. He really was feeling better now that he was out of the house, "What cruel fate am I saving you from today?"

Fukukado heaved a dramatic sigh and draped herself over the counter, "Your traitorous co-worker had her flight home delayed, so if you could cover the walk-ons today that would be wonderful."

"Can I take it that means I'm hired again this year?" Denki hesitated for a moment, "I haven't really had time to review anything…"

His boss just laughed, "Denki I don't even take you out of the system anymore. And I think you'll be okay."

That affirmation warmed his heart more than Denki cared to admit, "If you say so! But don't get mad at me if I start telling people that there are merfolk in the Amazon!"

Fukukado snorted into her hand and waved him out the door.

And so, Denki's summer job began. He wasn't even sure why she'd been so desperate to find someone to fill the shift today, because while it was tourist season, it was also a Wednesday, and that meant that by the time he had to launch the boat it was only a little over half filled. The roar of the engine as he pulled away from the dock and out into the bay made it hard to actually talk to the tourists, but Denki usually gave it a try, spending the trip out to ask anyone if they had any questions. Today, there was a quiet middle aged woman who asked if he was sure this was safe, because wouldn't the mer try and eat them? Which… was a whole thing, the merfolk around here weren't known for attacking humans, but it wasn't unheard of -- they ate fish without issue, after all, and some had no issue with treating the creatures that matched their top half as prey, too. Not these ones, though, at least not in a way that had ever been in the news.

"Actually!" He shouted over the wind, "The merfolk around here are agricultural! They farm fish and kelp, so they should be pretty well fed. Friendly, too!"

He got the chance to prove that point almost immediately upon getting to the colony and stopping the engines. The tourists started to crowd around the window in the middle of the boat, peering down into what was a place that was as alien as it was beautiful. Normally, this was where he'd go on a spiel about the city below them, about how the main building in the center was grown out of living coral, or how the houses (lairs? dens? territories? even after all this time he really wasn't sure of the proper word to use) were carved out of volcanic basalt, but he had only just gotten started when he heard a splash of water to one side. Denki let a grin creep onto his face

"Now hold on, I think we might have a visitor!"

He leaned over the side of the boat, and was met with an enormous pair of green eyes staring back up at him.

Izuku was a very excitable, very talkative merfolk who liked to come up to the boats and greet the tourists. He seemed to know an awful lot about humans, and his Japanese was pretty much flawless. Denki had theories but this was not the time or the place to be calling them out. Instead he waved the tourists over and said, "Hey everyone, this is Izuku. He's a local."

A murmur of surprise passed through the boat as everyone gathered by the edges to peer out nervously. Izuku smiled up at them with teeth that were a little too sharp to be comforting.

"Hi!" Izuku chirped, "It's really cool that you guys came out to see us!"

"Are you-- really…?" A teenage boy muttered, and Denki tried not to snort with laughter. Really, he should be making sure that no one did anything stupid, but the tourists seemed more surprised than scared and he knew the only danger Izuku posed was maybe accidentally saying something weird.

Even though the green scales of his tail were clearly visible beneath the water, at the dubious look of the crowd he lifted it out of the water and splashed the surface with it, causing a few people to step back.

"Sure am!" Said Izuku, "I know you've got a tour to go on and everything, but do you guys mind telling me about where you're from?"

Tentatively, the crowd started to speak up, and every time one of them said they were from somewhere further inland Izuku would launch into a series of questions about it. To be honest, Denki should probably put a stop to it, but he was of the opinion that for most people actually talking to a merfolk would do more to convince them of their intelligence than any fact he could tell them. Hell, in just the few minutes since Izuku had shown up the tourists had started to relax and crowd around the edge of the boat in earnest, and before too long one of them had gotten brave enough confidence to ask Izuku a question of their own. He'd probably have to clear up a few more questions and misconceptions on the way back -- namely 'no, they're not all like that, Izuku is just especially friendly and curious' -- but the chance to talk to a merfolk in person was probably going to be a vacation highlight for most of these people, so he wasn't going to put an early stop to it.

He tried not to, but as the conversation turned into Izuku explaining that he had both gills and lungs, Denki started to tune out. He'd done this plenty of times, after all, and while he was doing better today, he still wasn't doing great. He wasn't sure if Izuku showing up to cover for his unprepared self was more of a blessing or a curse -- Denki sort of wished he was the one talking right now because he knew it would be a good distraction for himself, but he also knew that whatever tour he gave right now wouldn't be the most amazing. He just huffed a quiet sigh and hung back to keep an eye on them. Though that didn't keep his focus for long, either, his gaze starting to wander as the conversation moved on to the topic of "What do you do about sharks?" to which Denki already knew the answer to would be, basically, "Chase them off, or eat them like anything else."

That was when it caught his eye, through the glass at the bottom of the boat: the shimmer of sunlight over brilliant purple scales -- there was a mer floating in the space between the boat and the colony.

No, not a mer, Denki realized as he stepped closer to the window, a siren. For all he knew about mer, sirens were mostly a mystery to him. He knew that they were incredibly powerful, magically speaking.  Knew that around here they acted as protectors of the colony. Knew that with them the line between fish and person was a lot less distinct -- that much was obvious just by looking at them -- Izuku, for example, had a pretty human-looking upper half, even if it did have gills and fins. Whoever that was, they were purple all over, scales covering their arms and face, catching the light again as they shifted their tail -- holy shit that was a long tail -- to continue drifting lazily in their spot. Were they… Watching the boat?

He'd seen a siren, once before, a bright yellow and black one named Hizashi was sort of the representative of the colony, and had come up to greet Emi when he was still new at the job. He'd been totally starstruck at the time. This was definitely also a siren, but…

Even if Denki didn't know most of the mer who lived below by name, he was at least able to recognize some familiar faces. He had never seen this siren before; Denki certainly would have remembered if he had. They were beautiful. Most people thought mer were beautiful, and he agreed, but this was on a totally different level. It was like Denki couldn't pull his eyes away, and, wait, wasn't that a thing sirens did ? The realization was what finally got him to tear his gaze away. No one on the boat seemed aware of his predicament, which meant that not much time had passed, but what was scary was that he couldn't be sure.

Who was that?

He crept back over to the group and leaned over the side of the boat enough to catch Izuku's eye. Usually, this was him trying to indicate that time was running out, though it still Btook a long moment for Izuku to notice him and finish his long winded explanation on how some, but not all mer were immune to things like puffer-fish and anemone toxins. It took a moment after that for Izuku to catch the slightly more serious expression on Denki's face and for him to swim close enough for Denki to speak low enough that most of the tourists wouldn't be able to hear.

"So uh… I dunno if you know this, but there's this big purple siren right below us --"

Denki didn't know what he was expecting, but it wasn't for Izuku to squawk in embarrassment and cover his face.

"Oh no that’s -- I'm sorry that's my friend and I totally got excited and left him when I saw the boats show up, I can't believe he hasn't left yet --"

"Dude, it's fine, I was just wondering if --"

"I'm so sorry!" Izuku turned to address the crowd on the boat, "I forgot something, so I have to go, but it was really nice meeting all of you!"

A few of the tourists gave him shocked goodbyes, and Izuku waved back at them before diving under the water. By the time Denki had everyone gathered back at the window to look below, he could just see a flash purple and green scales disappearing out of sight into a cave. If he spent a little longer than normal on the tour talking about the difference between sirens and merfolk, well, no one noticed enough to complain.

Denki already had a lot on his mind these days. He wasn't sure if it was good or bad that now added to that list was a long, purple tail.

Denki was… He'd say, pleasantly distracted on the way home from work. He hadn't gotten the chance to run into his boss: her own tour had run long, as they tended to do when she constantly had to circle back and clarify that whatever joke she had just made wasn't actually true. That meant he hadn't gotten a chance to ask her if she knew anything about the purple siren. Did she know about them? They must have been around before for Izuku to have called them his friend, and there weren't very many sirens in the colony as far as Denki knew, so they were kind of unique in that sense…

Basically, if Denki had the chance to talk to them, and assuming the siren spoke Japanese, he probably would have said something horribly corny like 'where you have been all my life ?' He'd only seen the siren once, and there was no guarantee he'd ever see them again, but it was fun to think about.

Those pleasant thoughts petered out around the time he reached home. He wanted to be able to enjoy time with his family, but as he stared at the house guilt and anxiety swirled around in his chest until he felt sick to his stomach. A very bad feeling to have when he opened the front door and was immediately assaulted with the smell of pizza and popcorn, and the sound of the twins arguing over if they should watch an animated movie or not.

Family movie night, then. Damn it, he liked family movie night! And he was going to ruin it for himself!

Mom -- that is, Hikari Kaminari -- was the one in charge of wrangling everyone today, though Denki figured that Ma would probably be showing up sooner rather than later. She was leaning on the counter watching the microwave, and offered him a smile as he slipped into the kitchen,.

"Hey lightning bug, how was work?"

Work. Something Denki totally could talk about without breaking into a cold sweat. A thin smile crept onto his face as he remembered the tour.

"Interesting." He said, "We saw a siren."

His Mom's eyebrows shot up and Denki was reminded just how lucky he was to have his job. Sure, the rest of his family lived by the ocean too, but they didn't tend to see merfolk unless they went out of their way to do so (like when he was in middle school and had begged and begged to go on one of the very tours that he now ran). None of them had probably ever seen a siren, though to be fair today had only been Denki's second time.

"Oh wow." She said, before stopping the microwave as the popping inside started to slow, "It wasn't because there was trouble, was there?"

A fair assumption, since trouble was usually the only time the colony's protectors showed up to talk to humans.

"Nah, we just got lucky," Or Izuku had just been too excited, "And it was from a distance. Pretty cool though."

"Well take a picture next time, would you? Unless… You can’t? Do sirens break cameras?" Mom popped open the microwave door, picking up the bag of popcorn by the edge and emptying it into a waiting bowl. "You know come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a photo of one."

Denki shrugged. He didn't know for sure either, but sometimes magical creatures just tended to be like that.

In the background, his siblings had settled on a movie that Denki wasn't going to admit he liked, because they would no doubt unite against him in picking another option. Denki himself got a slice of pizza and crushed himself into the corner of the couch, just near enough to the center to reach across and grab for popcorn if he wanted to.

He didn't end up wanting to. Ma got home about 5 minutes into the start of the movie and ruffled everyone's hair in a show of parental affection and pride that immediately started a downward spiral, because he really didn't deserve it. He must have had some kind of look on his face, because she pinched her eyebrows together, opening her mouth like she was going to say something only to be interrupted by Mom pulling her onto the couch. Denki nibbled on his lukewarm pizza and pretended to watch the movie.

She wouldn't let it go, though, and because Denki wasn't really able to pay attention himself, he was fully aware of all of the sidelong glances she kept sending him. Finally about an hour in he couldn't take it anymore and pulled himself to his feet, grabbing the now mostly empty bowl  of popcorn as an excuse. He didn't turn the kitchen light on, instead opting to fumble around in the dark for another pack of popcorn. He hated how dramatic he was being, eyes stinging with tears even though nothing had even happened . How was he supposed to get through the rest of the night like this?

How was he supposed to get through the rest of his life?

He came to a standstill, staring at the plastic-wrapped package of popcorn like it would give him some kind of answer. It didn't, of course, but it left him distracted enough to be surprised when a shadow appeared in the doorway and his Ma said, "Denki?"

"…Ma?" It took a moment to see her expression, framed by the light of the TV as it was, but it was the same pinched, sort of worried one from before. He already didn't like where this was going, so he made an attempt to seem nonchalant by continuing what he'd supposedly gone in here to do, folding open the bag of popcorn and sticking it in the microwave. She didn't buy it, folding her arms and coming to stand across from him in the dark kitchen.

"Are you okay? You seem like you've been pretty down since… Well since you got home I guess." Denki suppressed a wince, but his jaw suddenly felt too tight to open and respond. She was right . "Everything going okay at school?"

He watched the bag spin in the microwave, the first kernels starting to pop as his heart picked up. He should just spill everything now that she'd asked. At least if he owned up to it he'd only be living with one source of guilt instead of two. Still, he couldn't open his mouth.

"Are you having problems with one of your professors or something?" She hesitated, "Thinking of changing your major again?"

And -- fuck, it was no wonder she thought that, because he'd changed majors at least once for every semester he'd gone, usually more. The classes he'd failed so badly at were the easy ones that everyone had to take.

"No." He finally managed to croak. He cleared his throat and tried again, "No, I -- I failed out."

There. He'd said it. He'd said it, and it didn't alleviate any of his anxiety at all. He was stupid to think that it would.

Ma said, "Oh." and Denki kept his eyes locked on the spinning bag of popcorn. If he looked over at her he'd see either disappointment or pity and he couldn't bear either of those things right now. Then she said, "Well, what are you going to do?"

"…I don't know." He knew that wasn't the answer she wanted to hear. He stopped the microwave, probably too soon. The bag would be filled with un-popped kernels but he didn't trust himself enough to pay enough attention to not let it burn. He poured it over into the bowl and pushed it towards Moriko. "I think I'm just gonna go ahead and go to bed."

He didn't dare try and guess the look on her face through the dark, but she didn't try to stop him as he left her in the kitchen and crept up the stairs and curled up in the middle of his bed.

Unfortunately he didn't manage to fall asleep any time soon, his thoughts racing to worse and worse conclusions. Ma would tell Mom, of course. They probably wouldn't tell his siblings until later -- if they were feeling nice they'd tell the twins he was taking time off instead of what had really happened. There was a chance they would make him start paying rent or something; he'd be able to handle that until the summer was over, at least. There was also a chance, however slim, that they'd just kick him out and make him figure things out on his own. He had no idea what he would do if it came to that.

At some point the movie must have ended, because he heard the door open, but he remained resolutely facing the far wall until they went away. Hopefully whoever that was could wait until he didn't look like he'd been crying.

Denki had no idea when he finally did fall asleep, but it must have been late, because keeping his eyes open the next morning was a struggle. He was almost late for work, which was a feat, considering just how badly he wanted to be out of the house. He went in later than both of his parents, so at least he didn't risk running into either of them, but Mom was the one who made coffee in the morning and he was really missing it by the time he dragged himself through the doors at work. Waiting for him was his boss and his so-called betrayer coworker, Tatami Nakagame, both looking much peppier than he felt. For all that Denki had learned about mer, Nakagame was equally obsessed with marine biology and preferred to run wildlife tours. In fact for her first day back, it looked like she had gone all out wearing sea-turtle themed everything . Even socks, which finally cracked Denki's sour mood enough for him to smile that morning, even if it was small.

Both women smiled up at him as he entered, though on seeing his face Fukukado's grin tightened into something smaller.

"Hey kid." She said, "Rough night?"

Denki raised a hand to rub his eyes, which were, now that she mentioned it, feeling awfully dry.

"Uh, sort of. I'm good, though."

Fukukado stared at him for a moment before she snickered, "You ought to be. Holiday weekend coming up, so no slacking!"

"I would never!" Despite saying that, Denki doubted he would be doing his finest work today.

Nakagame waved at him, "Hi again, by the way. Get a vending machine coffee on the way to the boardwalk or something, you look like death."

Denki took the advice. It was only once he was at their company's little kiosk and leaning on the ticket desk, clutching a can of iced coffee in his hand that he realized he forgot to ask about the siren. He let his head hit the counter with a groan. Nakagame snickered at him.

"I always thought you were a party guy, but on a Thursday? Really?"

Her tone was joking, but it just made Denki want to somehow burrow his face further into the wood.

"Wasn't that, I really did just sleep like shit."

"Hm. Well you'd better perk up soon, we've got tourists incoming." Honestly, Nakagame was a pretty good co-worker. She was pretty laid back, and while she liked to push Denki's buttons she also knew when to lay off. He almost considered telling her about why his sleep had been so bad, before remembering that she'd also flown back from school and was no doubt doing just fine getting her marine biology degree. Denki just rolled his face over and forced his head up so that he didn't look too unprofessional for the customers.

Thursday was a little more busy, even for the morning tour, probably owing to people taking extra days off to enjoy the aforementioned holiday weekend. Denki's boat was almost full, and Nakagame only had a few less than him. He donned a pair of sunglasses to hide what he had by now realized were bloodshot eyes and gave them the normal safety spiel about keeping their arms and legs on the vehicle, and not to toss anything overboard, not even if a merfolk asked them to. It earned a few laughs, but it also turned out to be the exact right warning to give, because they were visited by another merfolk.

Denki was pretty sure this one was named Mina, though he wasn't one-hundred percent sure because her grasp on Japanese was very spotty. She was bubblegum pink, including her top half, which was unusual as far as Denki knew, and her hobbies included swimming right up to the boat, pointing to whatever shiny accessories its occupants were wearing, and trying to get them to give them to her. She didn't often succeed, mostly because Denki didn't let her, but he had once borne witness to a young man tossing an expensive wrist watch overboard for her to snatch. He didn't get that one back.

(Denki had, at one point, given her a hair clip, though he had to imagine it was long rusted by now)

Still, she was a fun visitor to have, because she tried very hard to impress the people on the boat by doing all sorts of acrobatic displays and flaring out her fins like an oversized beta-fish. Everything she said was in fast, glottal, mermish though, and while Denki could generally understand the tone , he had no idea what she was actually trying to say . That left him doing his best to explain what she was doing to everyone on board, and that explanation was showing off . It might not have been as informative as one of Izuku's visits, but everyone left happy enough, and none the wiser that he hadn't told them half of what he'd meant to. He probably would have gotten a disappointed lecture from his boss had she heard him.

She hadn't, though, and kindly even let him take a nap over his lunch break, waking him up with just enough time to scarf down a combini sandwich and a soda. Three bites in and he finally remembered that he had a question.

"Oh yeah!" He started, and Fukukado snickered, no doubt because he was talking with his mouth full, "I meant to ask you, but I saw this siren yesterday who I'd never seen around before. They were um -- Purple. Long tail. You know anything about them?"

Fukukado eyes lit up, "No way? I've been trying to meet him for years. Lucky."

Well that just raised more questions than it answered.  Before Denki could pick one to ask, his boss checked her phone and pushed herself to her feet, "I'm going to grill you more on that later, we both gotta get going, yeah?"

Shoving the last bit of sandwich in his mouth, Denki nodded and made the short walk back to the boardwalk. Getting some food in him had made him feel a little better, at least. As long as he kept his mind on work and not what might happen after.

The afternoon tour was completely filled, and Denki tried a little harder this time.

"Yeah --" He explained to a 10 year old boy who reminded Denki entirely too much of himself at that age, "-- As a general rule merfolk tend to be more sensitive to magic than we are. I'm pretty sure the top theory is because the ocean has got so much magic in it, so it's just more accessible to them--"

He was cut off by a gasp as they got close enough to the colony for buildings to come into sight. Everyone who was comfortable enough to stand on a moving boat gathered by the window to look down. If he craned his neck, Denki could see flashes of color beneath them. It looked like there were a few mer out sunning today. He stopped the boat and made his way over to the window himself, ready to start explaining how mer were cold-blooded, but he came up short once he got a good look.

If seeing the siren once had been lucky, seeing him again should have been a miracle. But there he was. He was closer this time -- halfway up to the boat in fact, with Izuku at his side. The siren appeared to be arguing with him, refusing to budge as the smaller mer fluttered his fins and gestured up at them. The siren looked up at them, lazy gaze roving over the boat’s occupants through the window. Denki's heart picked up involuntarily as those bright purple eyes passed over him. Whatever he saw, the siren wasn't impressed, pulling away from Izuku and gesturing for him to go on before swimming away himself.

"Uh." Said Denki, realizing that everyone else was looking at him, "So, the big purple mer was a siren--" that led to a round of gasps, some excited and some fearful, "And the little green one is named Izuku. It--uh, it looks like he's gonna come visit us…"

Izuku did swim up to the side of the boat, though not without a backward glance or two to wherever his friend had gone.  Denki didn't even have to give him a proper introduction, as soon as he smiled at the crowd and said "Hi!" he was swarmed with questions.

"Are you really a mer?" was met with "Yes!"

"Was that really a siren?" got a more tentative "Well… Yes."

Denki took the opportunity to lean over the side of the boat in exactly the way he warned his customers not to do.

"That was your friend, right? You should totally bring him to visit next time."

Izuku made a little rumbling sound in the back of his throat that Denki figured was something close to resigned.

"I've been trying to convince him. He's… stubborn." Izuku heaved a sigh, and then shook his head and looked up at the crowd, "So do you guys mind telling me where you're from?"

Denki leaned back, letting the conversation continue without him. His eyes wandered back to the window but the siren was long gone. He hoped Izuku managed to convince him. That, at least, would be something worth looking forward to.

Denki found himself in a rather tense equilibrium over the next few days. Work was frantically busy over the weekend -- every boat he took out was full of curious tourists, and the higher number of boats from other companies meant that he didn't see Mina, Izuku, or his siren friend again, leaving him actually have to do his job and explain things. Of course, it was just his luck that the kind of people with the with the worst kind of misconceptions were the ones that showed up on those days. He was supposed to educate them to be better, he knew that, but Denki felt like if he had to explain that no, eating a mermaid won’t give you magical powers one more time, he was going to snap.

Though at least him being tired was the perfect excuse for why he was heading to bed so early every night. Denki couldn't tell if the tension at home was real, or if he was just imagining it. His moms weren't acting any different. Neither of them had said anything, and neither had his siblings, so he was left wondering if Ma had told anyone, after all. Of course, there was no way in hell he was going to bring it up, even if the uncertainty of what was going to happen was just as torturous as it always had been. He was pretty sure that Yuko had started to pick up on the fact that he was acting weird, but it was in her nature to not actually say anything, and to instead keep shooting him suspicious looks where she knew he could see them.

Denki had at least gotten into a groove at work; he finally felt okay about the tours he was giving, and in his efforts to avoid having someone at home see him and remember they needed to have a conversation with him had even started to volunteer to do after-hours things like wash down the boats. His boss had accused him of sucking up to her and he hadn't denied it.

It was Wednesday again before anything really happened. The group was a smaller one,  two couples and two small families, one with a little girl, maybe seven or eight, who looked so excited that she seemed like she might burst into tears at any moment. It took Denki longer than he'd like to admit to realize that every time he said something, the girl's mother would turn to her and do something with her hands. Sign language! Which was not something he really knew, but he could finger-spell okay, and he knew some words related to his job. Fukukado had suggested they learn it not long after he had started working for her, and Denki had gone all in trying to learn it to try and impress her. He hadn't kept it up, but some of the knowledge stuck, and he found himself excited to make an attempt at using it. Denki at least knew the signs for merfolk and siren, so he felt especially lucky that it was today of all days that Izuku and his friend made their reappearance.

It seemed, at first, much like the same situation as last time -- Izuku was halfway to the boats, with the siren lagging behind, looking like he would rather be anywhere else in the world than where he was right now. The people on the boat gasped, but Denki recovered more quickly this time and clapped his hands together to get their attention, making sure he caught the eye of the little girl as he did.

"The little green guy is a friend of mine named Izuku." He talked slowly, doing his very best to sign along as he did. He mostly only got the main nouns and adjectives, but he seemed at least to be getting his point across, because her face broke into a wide smile. "The big one is his siren friend."

She signed back at him, something thankfully simple enough for him to understand: Are they nice ?

And, well, he knew Izuku was, so he nodded an affirmative. She pulled on her mom's hand and signed something too complicated and fast for Denki to figure out, but he understood it well enough when the older woman mouthed "Thank you ." at him. Denki smiled. Somewhere to the side there was a splash, and Denki opened his mouth to give Izuku a proper introduction, only to glance back down for a moment and find himself frozen in place.

The siren hadn't left. He had, in fact, moved closer. Close enough for Denki to finally get a good look at him -- he was well muscled, certainly -- wild purple hair, scales slightly opalescent,  long flowing fins ran down either side of this tail, and bright piercing eyes were fixed directly on him, expression totally unreadable. Denki's stomach did a flip. 

Distantly, he was aware of Izuku saying something, of the crowd on the boat going to investigate, most of them not paying any real attention to his plight. To them, a merfolk they could talk to was even more exciting than seeing a siren up close. Then again, none of them were having their souls judged by the siren in question.

Denki had no idea what to do in a situation like this. Had he done something? Was the siren offended or just curious? Why would he be curious now when he'd been so disinterested before? Maybe it was just best to try and be friendly? The siren was close enough now that, if there weren't glass in the way he might be able to reach out and touch a fin. Denki forced himself to blink, which was harder than it had any right to be, and then, with no other option really presenting itself, raised his hand in a tentative wave.

The siren didn't react negatively, thank goodness. He tilted his head, hands coming up not to wave back, but to sign something. Oh, Denki realized as the siren circled a hand from his mouth to the side of his head. And then he thought oh no, because the siren was trying to talk to him and Denki didn't recognize a single one of the signs he'd just used.

His eyes flicked up to where the little girl and her mom were standing, watching the exchange with equally wide eyes. The kid signed something to him that he also couldn't understand, though he knew it started with 'What.' There likely was not a single version of whatever she'd asked that Denki knew how to answer, so he signed back a phrase that he knew very well, "I don't know."

The siren appeared to be watching the exchange with interest, eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them.

Izuku said something and the crowd laughed. Denki should really go deal with that.

He didn't. Instead he raised his hands and signed a phrase that he'd drilled himself on, knowing that if he was going to learn another language he'd be using it often.

"Sorry, Not good at sign. Don't know much."

There wasn't an immediate reaction, but the siren made an expression that, after a moment, Denki realized was confused. Like he didn't understand Denki, either.

And well yeah, duh. Merfolk had their own language, of course they would have their own sign language, too. Denki's heart fell as he realized that they wouldn't be able to talk after all, the siren would probably lose interest and Denki would lose his chance at seeing him again. He watched, waiting for him to come to the same realization that Denki just had. But the siren, still full of surprises, didn't leave. Not yet. Instead he did something beautiful and terrifying.

The siren glowed. It was subtle at first, but within seconds there were lines of pinkish-purple light, starting in his chest and radiating further out in heart-beat like pulses to fill in lines of dappled spots that had previously been invisible. Denki's breath caught in his throat a thrill of fear running down his spine. This was amazing, yes , but it was also definitely magic, and sirens sort of had a reputation for their magic leading to things like shipwrecks and drownings. Shit. Shit! Were they about to die?

But there was no siren song, just the sound of Izuku chattering away about fish farming. No one but him and the two women looking through the window had any idea of what was happening right below them.  Slowly, the siren raised his hands again, making the same signs he had before in a way that was so exaggerated it was almost comical.

Denki still didn't understand any of them.

He raised his hands to sign another shaky Sorry, but before he could the siren startled, light blinking out as he snapped around to look at something below him. A smudge of yellow snaked its way out of one of the larger structures on the seafloor. Another siren, Denki's brain supplied, Hizashi. The leader. Because this day couldn’t be insane enough. Whatever was going on down there was enough to have the purple siren pulling away from the boat, though not without a long glance backwards, expression betraying that he was considering something. What, Denki didn't know.

Seeing as his hands were still raised, Denki offered another wave. The siren blinked, lingering for another moment, then made to swim away in earnest, disappearing out of sight of the window in a matter of moments, as though he had never even been there.

Behind him, someone had asked Izuku how merfolk cast magic.

Magic. Ha.

His knees hit the deck of the boat with a dull thunk, and Denki finally registered just how hard his heart had been pounding. That had been simultaneously amazing and terrifying, though Denki still wasn't entirely sure what had happened.

"Um." He said, looking up and the mother and daughter who were still standing with him. They looked back at him with wide eyes. Thankfully they seemed more confused than panicked. "Do you guys want to… Talk to a merfolk?"

They did, unsurprisingly, the girl's mother taking over translating Izuku's rambling about magic to her daughter.

"You guys have to write it down and stuff, right?" He was saying, "We can't really do that the paper just kind of dissolves --"

Really, it was interesting; magic wasn't a topic that Izuku often talked about. Denki should be listening, or trying to do his job, or something. He should probably ask Izuku about what the fuck had just happened, only Denki didn't really know how to begin with that. Oh, hey, your friend maybe just tried to use magic on me? Was he trying to kill me, or--? He couldn't just ask a question like that and risk freaking out everyone else. These tours weren't supposed to be dangerous!

Maybe they weren't? Maybe the siren had really just been trying to communicate? Though that didn't change the fact that if he wanted to drown everyone on board he probably could have. Was it crazy that he still wanted to see the siren again after that? It wasn't like things had gone that badly…

To be honest he let Izuku go on for too long, not knowing how to step in, and still trying to calm himself down, besides. He could only force himself to do it once he realized the time was already several minutes after they should have been leaving already.

"Sorry to cut this short, everyone, but we've got to head back!" The only person here who might know him well enough to realize that he was shaken up was Izuku, who shot him an odd look but didn't call him out, "If you've got any other questions I'll do my best to answer them!"

They did, of course, and Denki's answers ranged from 'their magic is mostly spoken word, though they carve enchantments onto rocks and coral'  to a very annoyed ' no, eating them won't give you magic powers. No, really, that's just a legend.'

He felt very lucky that no one complained after the fact, considering that he hadn't actually done very much at all. Though if someone had, he had a pretty decent excuse this time around. He excused himself from the boat as soon as the crowd had dispersed, not quite running back to the tour office, but certainly not walking either. When he slammed open the door Nakagame startled from where she was hunched over the counter, no doubt writing down guest counts for her own tours. She opened her mouth, probably to say something smart, only to snap it shut once she saw his expression, eyebrows flying up.

"You're late." She said instead.

"Yeah," said Denki breathlessly, "Is Fukukado here?"

"Sure am!" A voice called out from a back room, a head of mint-green hair appearing through the doorway a moment after, "Did something happen?"

Oh, where to even start?

"Yeah, um… You might want to check and see if the boat is cursed or something? Or if I'm cursed?" He paused. Now that he was a little calmer he remembered that he was sensitive to magic, and probably would have noticed if it had been used on him. Probably. "Well -- I'm fine, I think. But you remember how I was asking about the purple siren before?"

He then did his best to relay what had happened, his boss slowly circling the counter with a chair and taking a seat across from him as he told his story. She, at least, didn't seem nearly as concerned as Denki felt. In fact, when he ran out of things to say, she covered her mouth to hide a creeping grin that he was all-too familiar with. Was she really going to laugh at him over this ?

"That's cute! He must have been curious about human sign language or something." Then her expression softened, "You should be fine, but I'll ask what that was about, just in case."

He shared a commiserating look with Nakagame; both of them well aware, at this point that asking who she was going to ask would lead to a non-committal answer like 'oh, just a friend.' Though that did remind him of something else that he'd been thinking about.

"Do you know anything about merfolk sign language, though? Today was the first time I really thought about it."

Fukukado hummed and leaned back in her chair, "I know about it, but I don't know it. Sorry kid."

"That's okay." He sighed, "I'll just have to do some research then."

That earned him another wide smile from his boss, because she loved nothing more than people trying to educate themselves on something. And, well… If he wanted to see the siren again, and Denki was pretty sure that he did, it would only make sense to be able to communicate with him, right?

These days being at home meant a lot of time moping around, holed up in his room and idly browsing social media until it was late enough for him to justify going to bed. So, in a sense his routine today didn't differ that much from normal: Quietly eat dinner, pretend nothing was wrong, avoid the gaze of his parents and siblings, go to his room and pull out his laptop. This time, though, he started with a search about merfolk sign language.

The results were, unfortunately, not very helpful. Sign language was as regional as, you know, language , and merfolk language was already pretty poorly documented to begin with. He found a website that had a collection of sound bytes of merfolk words and attempted translations, and was delighted to discover that it had a sizeable amount of what he was pretty sure was the dialect that the merfolk around here spoke; or at least he hoped that's what the page labeled Sea of Japan Costal Merfolk meant. It wasn't what he was looking for, though, and before too long he ended up into the dreaded realm of scholarly articles and research journals. One of the sites was one he'd used before, for some biology class, and the information to login had autofilled -- he clicked Grant me Access before realizing that it probably wasn't going to work.

Then it did work and Denki choked on a bitter laugh. The college would probably take away his access to stuff like this before the new semester started, but he might as well use it while he had it, right?

The papers were not much better, however. Most of them were just assertions that merfolk did, indeed, have and use their own sign language. There was one interesting paper that documented, in detail, a sort-of semaphore that mer who lived in the arctic circle used to communicate over long distances without making noise, and while that was cool, it was also definitely not what the siren had been doing.

Which left him only with unconfirmed forum posts and probably fictional anecdotes. That was where he finally started to find information that might have been useful, assuming it was true. 

Someone had made a long post, with gifs, of their attempts at translating merfolk sign -- said person, and presumably said mer, was in Greece, so the information probably wasn't all that relevant, and Denki had to copy the text into a translator himself, but he went to dig out an old sketchbook and write it down, anyways.

By the end of it all, he'd ended up buying a book. A digital copy of some self published, supposedly auto-biographical story of a man who had been castaway at sea, and who had claimed to have been saved by a giant squid mer, of all things. It was short, un-reviewed, and mostly unbelievable, but it did involve a lot of very detailed descriptions of how the two learned to communicate through signing. Detailed enough that Denki was inclined to believe that the information came from somewhere, even if the story itself wasn't true. He wrote those down, too, drawing out the signs as best as he could interpret them from the text and writing his guesses at definitions under them. He grimaced down at the sketchbook, it'd been a while since he'd drawn anything seriously. Why did sign language have to be done with hands?

By the time he'd finished reading the book and writing down everything he could, the clock in the lower right screen read a taunting 3:44 AM. He shut his laptop with a groan, only now registering that he was thirsty, tired, and had an ache in his neck from hunching over the computer. Time would only tell if this had been worth it, but at least if the siren showed up again he would be as prepared as he could be.

Izuku didn't show up the next day, or the day after that, which meant that there was no sign of the siren, either. Denki tried not to get too disappointed. To be honest, he was probably hyping everything up too much. Even if the siren did show up again, he'd have to come up to the boat, and even though Denki had tried to do more research he'd come up with nothing much. Whatever conversation they were going to have would be limited to the twelve words he'd found, if they were even real words at all. Chances were, he was just going to make a fool of himself, but the fantasy of Denki getting to be close to the beautiful mer was much more appealing to think about than the alternative. Or anything else, for that matter.

He still hadn't called up any of his friends, his parents still hadn't sat him down and told him what was going to happen to him. Even the twins were starting to get suspicious, which meant that it was only a matter of time until --

"Denki!"

There was a knock on his bedroom door before it opened a moment later as Yuko let herself in. He glowered up at her from where he was stretched out on his bed, phone held above his head so he would watch a video. One would think that after growing up together his sisters would have learned their lesson to not just barge into his room with so little warning, but that was something not even higher education could teach, apparently.

Denki stared at his sister, and she squinted back, shutting the door behind her without turning around. Denki was moments away from going back to his video (cooking hacks he'd probably never use) when she crossed her arms.

"You've been acting weird."

"I'm always acting weird." He countered. His sister couldn't actually argue with that, he was often called that both as an insult and an endearment, usually by the same people. She still tried, though, pursing her lips, tilting her head, and saying, "Yeah, but weirder than normal. And moms have been, too. Did you get in a fight with them or something?" And because Yuko was so smart and keyed onto these sorts of things, she added, "At movie night, right? You never came back and they started acting all sad right after."

Sad. Of course he'd made them sad! They'd had faith in him and he'd let them down, and now they were probably trying to figure out a nice way of telling him he was a disappointment because they loved him even though he didn't deserve it.

"…Do you at least have an idea ?" Yuko had reached down to poke at his forehead when he didn't respond. Denki forced himself to swallow around the lump in his throat.

"We didn't fight. I just… Did something embarrassing, is all."

Yuko only frowned harder, likely trying to puzzle out what could be so bad that it would lead to their parents being upset, instead of everyone making fun of him a little and moving on with their lives, "Like… Ruin the family reputation kind of embarrassing?"

Now it was Denki's turn to squint up at his sister, "Yu, we don't have a reputation. And… No? I don't think so?" Well, it was probably the sort of thing that his moms wouldn't want to share with their friends so that no one whispered behind their backs, right? "Maybe? I don't know. And I don't want to talk about it."

Just to make a point of it he flipped to the side so he was facing the wall instead of her. Yuko let out a dramatic sigh. Then there was a long pause, a smaller sigh, and, "Well if you want to talk about it, I'll listen."

Always the good sibling. Good grades, good college, good person. There was no way Denki was going to dump his feelings on Yuko. She was his little sister, and she wouldn’t understand, besides. He hummed noncommittally, Yuko took that as the no it was meant to be and left the room. Denki got the feeling that she wouldn't be dropping this until things were normal again, at least relatively.

He wasn't sure when they would be.

It finally happened on Sunday afternoon.

It had been a good, if incredibly busy, weekend. There hadn't been any merfolk visitors, which while disappointing, Denki figured was probably for the best because it forced him to focus and actually do his job.

Today his boat was mostly filled up by a single large family, which was lucky for him because that meant they were pretty good at bouncing off of each other and carrying on a conversation with themselves. In ordinary circumstances it would have been a group that he loved, but today when he stopped the boat over the colony and a familiar green mer darted up towards them he decided right away that he was going to use that fact to its full advantage and leave them alone for a little bit. Because trailing a few meters behind Izuku, looking warily up at the boat, was the siren.

When it was clear that Izuku was coming up to talk to them, Denki wasted no time in shepherding the group towards the side of the boat and giving an introduction, his excitement bleeding through into his voice. It certainly gave the impression that meeting Izuku was a huge deal, which, well it was, just not for Denki who'd been doing it at least twice a week every summer for years.

Izuku surfaced, clearly amused with how everyone was already ready and waiting for him. He greeted them, and with everyone's attention now on the mer he took a step back, and then another, and then turned away until he could lean over the railing and look through the window down below.

Contrary to the way he'd been acting before, the siren appeared to be coming closer to the boat on his own, albeit slowly and with much more hesitation than Izuku. The moment he noticed Denki was obvious, because Denki was sure that the siren's piercing gaze being directed at him would never not be obvious. He didn't swim up to the boat like last time, he was drifting closer, yes, but otherwise apparently content to just hang back a little ways away and watch. Which… Was not something Denki was sure he could stand for very long, if he was being honest. It made him feel very small.

Denki swallowed hard and fumbled for the little sketchbook he'd shoved in his pocket. One of the signs he’d found that had the most specific description was the one for a greeting -- one hand by the mouth, gesturing out and opening up towards the person you were talking to. Even if it wasn't correct, or didn't mean anything, it was clearly deliberate. It certainly must have been something , because when Denki raised one hand and did it, the siren immediately perked up, eyes widening, aural fins rising in what Denki hoped was curiosity.

There was a moment where all Denki could do was try and figure out what the siren was thinking. Was he shocked? Surprised? It seemed like it. Then the siren raised his hands and did the same sign back, and Denki couldn't help but break out into a grin.

…Then the siren continued to sign, and immediately surpassed Denki's incredibly limited vocabulary. There might have been the word for boat, in there? Maybe? The worst part was, the siren was clearly moving very slowly and carefully, likely for Denki's benefit. Unfortunately that didn't change the fact that Denki had no clue where to even begin decoding what he was saying.

He locked eyes with the siren again for another moment -- he was still curious, waiting for an answer -- before looking down to flip through the sketchbook, trying to figure out how to salvage this. He had what he hoped was the sign for small, a simple pinching of fingers, close but not touching, thumb to pinky, so he did that, and then not knowing the sign for anything like know, he just pointed at his own head and hoped that got the point across.

It certainly got some kind of point across, because the siren's face slowly broke out into a bewildered smile -- all sharp teeth and pinched eyebrows and maybe Denki was crazy to think that the siren looked sweet despite all that. Denki blushed, though he couldn't figure out what emotion had caused it. Pride? Embarrassment? It didn't matter much anyways, because the siren signed back what Denki was pretty sure was a question.

"You're small?"

And, well, whether he was referring to the amount of signs he knew or his actual size, both were certainly small compared to the siren. Denki nodded, because he knew from Izuku that the colony interacted with humans enough for the meaning of that to have cross-pollinated.

They both stared at each other for a long moment, hands raised. The siren's expression had fallen back to something more amused -- no, confused? Probably both, which made Denki realize that he probably should try and figure out how to give a better explanation, and the best one he had was in his lap, wasn't it? It was unlikely that the siren could read his messily scribbled explanations, seeing how they were in Japanese, but that was what the pictures were for. Denki flipped the book and set it down on the window, a fizzy feeling bubbling up in chest as the siren moved closer to investigate.

While the siren looked at the book, Denki did his best to  figure out what he was thinking based on expression alone. He was surprised, certainly. Wary, if the way he kept glancing back to Denki was anything to go by. To say the siren might be touched or in awe was probably putting it a little too strongly, but Denki liked to imagine he saw a little wonder cross over the siren's face as he realized what he was looking at.

Still, as much research as he had done, it wasn't as though Denki had much to show for it, and after a long minute (Izuku was talking about sharks, again) the siren turned his full focus back on Denki. For some reason, it made his mouth go dry. There wasn't much more they could say to each other when all the words Denki knew were things like 'hello', 'small', and 'boat' and it seemed that the siren was starting to get that picture as well, because he tilted his head and held up his hand in what was apparently the universal sign for 'wait .' That's what Denki interpreted it as, anyways. Then he turned and swam away -- not down, but instead to the side. Towards where Izuku was leaning on the side of the boat, in fact.

Denki only had a moment to raise his eyebrows before there was a sudden yelp and a splash and Denki was on his feet and rushing over to the side of the boat because holy shit, did the siren just pull someone in? Certainly there were quite a few people leaning over the side of the boat, though no one seemed especially panicked, and when he looked over himself the reason immediately became obvious. The siren must have grabbed Izuku and yanked him under, though whatever they were doing now wasn't exactly clear.

"They're friends, don't worry guys!" He said, trying to ease everyone's nerves, "Must have just been trying to get his attention, was all…"

The answer for what he needed Izuku's attention for, exactly, became apparent a few moments later when Izuku resurfaced, clearly flustered and confused. Bright green eyes swept across the deck until they met Denki's.

"Erm --"said the mer, sounding very unsure of himself  "Denki...? My friend wanted to meet you?" He glanced at the rest of the people on board who had started to murmur among themselves, "Um… With less people around? So after you're finished working, I guess?"

Okay. Alright. He'd take that. He'd have to figure out how to borrow a boat, but-- "Yeah!" He blurted out, probably sounding pathetically eager, "Yes! Uh -- I mean, if I can, mean. I'll try to come back out right after this tour…?"

Izuku blinked at him, then smiled and said, "Okay. I'll… Let him know?"

Denki nodded and the mer ducked back below the water, again. He only realized that everyone's attention had turned towards him when a man in a visor and fanny pack asked, "So… Does this sort of thing happen often?"

Denki blushed with embarrassment, one hand coming up to run through his hair.

"Er… No, not really." And then, remembering that he was at work, he suppressed a wince and said, "I expect you guys have questions?"

Izuku resurfaced again a minute later and joined in, though out of the corner of his eye Denki could have sworn he saw a purple shape look back at him before swimming away.

The rest of the tour felt like it took ages, and Denki had to force himself not to look at the clock so that he wouldn't make himself appear worse than he already had. It was really a very nice group, they were funny, and had thoughtful questions, and even still Denki was glad to be rid of them because he was growing anxious with anticipation. How was he going to get back out here after they were gone?

Denki didn't burst through the doors at work in quite as much of a state as he had been in the last time he'd seen the siren, but it was  a close thing. Both Fukukado and Nakagame were leaning over the computer, probably looking over the calendar for tour reservations like they tended to do on Sundays, and they both looked up as he swept into the office.

"Do either of you know where I can borrow a boat?"

He had no time for pleasantries at a time like this. There was a siren waiting to meet him! The siren!

His boss said "Why?" At the same time his co-worker said, "I know where you can rent one."

He figured addressing the former was more important than the latter.

"You remember the siren from before? The one I did all that research on sign language for?" Actually, he didn't remember if he'd told anyone at work about that or not, but his boss smiled so he continued, "He showed up today and asked to meet me after work. Or -- asked Izuku to ask me, I guess?"

Nakagame sighed and turned back to the computer with a tiny smile of her own, "How come the insane shit always happens to you?"

Denki did not shoot back any snark about how sea turtles couldn't talk back, because he had more pressing things to worry about, like his boss tapping a finger on her chin.

"Do you know why?"

Denki shrugged, because he'd been asking himself the same question. Fukukado tilted her head and hummed.

"…It might be possible for you to talk out the work boat again, if you promise to pay for the gas and wash it down after. This could be a great learning experience, kid!"

"Really? Yes! Thank you, please!" Every bit of gratitude he could think of flew from his lips, but before he could turn and make a run for it, Fukukado put up a hand.

"One more condition though--" Denki stared at her, wide eyed, "You have to fill me in on whatever happens out there. Deal?"

"Deal!" He turned and bolted back out the door, uncaring of whatever warning or goodbye was yelled out after him. He had a siren to meet.

Denki's leg bounced with excitement as he drove the boat faster than he probably should have back towards the colony. Though, his feelings quickly mixed with anxiety. What did the siren want from him? Hopefully something good but… Maybe he'd actually signed something really offensive? Or stupid? If that were the case, then hopefully the siren would only want to give him a lecture instead of drowning him.

None of those thoughts were enough to actually scare him away, though. What if he ended up with a cool new friend? A cool, new, maybe very attractive, mysterious siren friend. That's what he was hoping for, anyways.

He pulled the boat to a stop around the usual spot and waited, sitting for a minute or so before deciding to pace the deck back and forth. This was… Kind of weird, actually. He'd never been to the colony after work, and never came by without someone around to talk to. He'd always viewed what he did as the equivalent of getting a helicopter tour of a big city, but when it was just him, alone? It almost felt kind of scandalous to walk up to the window and peer down, right now. Though he probably should. What if Izuku or his friend were trying to get his attention that way?

Before he could take more than a step towards the window, there was a splash to the side and Denki immediately changed course, a smile splitting his face when he saw not only Izuku, but the siren too, just a little ways behind him. His face was only half out of the water so that the only thing visible were those vibrant purple eyes.

"Hi!" He said, a little too high pitched. 

Take a breath, Denki. Calm down. Don’t embarrass yourself.

Izuku grinned and said, "Hi to you!" Then he turned to look at his friend, who, after a moment, raised himself out of the water enough to sign the same thing he had earlier that day.

"Hello."

Izuku whipped around to look at Denki with wide eyes -- eyes that somehow only grew wider when Denki signed it back.

"You know the same kind of sign?" He blurted, and Denki's smile became a little more bashful.

"Uh -- Not really? Just a few."

Izuku stared at him for another moment before turning back to the siren and churring out what sounded like a lot of questions, or maybe just one really long one. The siren seemed mostly unaffected by the questioning, his eyes not having left Denki once since he'd surfaced. He did say something back. Quietly, low and rumbling, but he'd definitely said something because that voice was not Izuku's, and while that did cross one theory about the siren off the list, Denki didn't really pay it any mind because it sounded nice.

"S-so, uh…" Izuku was keeping an eye as his friend drifted closer to the boat. "He didn't really want to explain why he wanted to do this, but I'm guessing the signing has something to do with it?"

"Probably? Oh!" Because of the way they'd first met, Denki hadn't actually had the chance to properly introduce himself. Fukukado had walked him through it on his first time out, forcing him to stutter through giving his name to Hizashi before explaining that around here, if you were lower in status it was polite to introduce yourself first, and as human visitors they were always lower in status. He put one hand on his chest and bobbed his head, which might have been a kind of sign on it's own, come to think of it, "Denki!"

It was better to just give a given name, too. Because, at least according to his boss, telling a mer that you had a name that you preferred to be called but hadn't been letting them had the potential to lead to all kinds of misunderstandings. Denki didn't mind, he did want to be friends, after all.

Izuku blinked, chirped, and then put his hand on his chest and said, "Izuku!" even though he already knew both people here. Maybe he did it just because that was what etiquette demanded. The siren was now close enough to the boat to touch its side, close enough that Denki had to lean over to keep looking at him. If he made the hand movement, Denki couldn't see it at this angle. He was looking up with that same, unreadable gaze, and after a moment he blinked slowly and said. "Hitoshi."

Denki had no time to reflect on the name, because immediately, without warning, Hitoshi heaved himself out of the water to grab at the boat railing that was right next to where Denki was leaning, pulling himself over it and on to the deck of the boat in one movement. He twisted as he did so, landing on his back so that he was still facing Denki. Izuku made some noises of alarm, but there was nothing Denki cared to do about that right now. The siren was on the boat with him.

He'd been this close before, but the fact that there wasn't any glass between them made it a much different experience. He could reach out and touch right now, if he wanted to. And he kind of did, but that would be rude as hell.

Hitoshi was bigger than him. Much bigger. Like, you could take another Denki and stack him on his own shoulders and that still wouldn't be enough to reach the end of his tail.  Out of the water, the siren's cloud of purple hair had fallen into waves around his face, some into his eyes, which was actually great, because Denki might just straight up combust if he was still being stared at right now. Hitoshi had to take a moment to shake it out of his face, gill slits flexing open and closed for a moment before he grimaced and said something in mermish.

There was a response from the side of the boat, and then another splash and Izuku hauled himself up to attempt to do the same, arms wrapped around the bottom railing as he tried to figure out how to maneuver his own way over.

The railing that was supposed to keep this exact situation from happening. Oh well.

It took him a few seconds of struggling, but Izuku did manage to pull himself onto the boat as well, if much less gracefully than the siren had. He had another short exchange with Hitoshi before sighing and looking sheepishly at Denki.

"He said that he didn't want to have to look up at you all the time. And, uh… That he wants to see your drawings?"

"Oh, heh. Duh." Denki pulled the sketchbook out of his pocket and flipped it open, hesitating only a moment before holding it out to the siren, who carefully accepted it with one hand. Denki had to force himself not to stare as Hitoshi took a closer look; instead he looked over at Izuku, who had finally managed to right himself and was looking between the two of them like he didn't even know where to start asking questions.

Before Izuku could figure out what to say, Hitoshi churred something at him that had the green mer tilting his head and dragging himself over to look over the siren's arm at the sketchbook. They started a quiet back and forth conversation that involved a lot of Izuku pointing at things.

Did that mean Izuku could read Japanese as well as speak it? That's sure what it looked like. Huh.

The two mer conspired for a minute or so for so before Izuku ducked his head and cleared his throat.

"Uh so. Hitoshi says that some of these are wrong. And he was wondering where you learned them…?"

"I… Read it. In a book." That was mostly true, and easier to explain to a couple of mer than what the internet was, though he was pretty sure he remembered a time where Izuku had patiently listened to a kid try to explain what a meme was to him, so he probably had at least a vague idea, "And I tried to guess what they were supposed to be based off of the text."

There was another short back and forth that seemed to escalate into a small argument -- one that Izuku lost if the way he huffed afterwards was any indication.

"Okay and he… Wants to know why? You did?" Izuku's voice rose in pitch as he spoke, but Denki just furrowed his eyebrows. Was that some kind of trick question? Hitoshi was certainly watching him like he was interested in the answer. Or maybe that was just how he always looked. Not knowing what he was looking for, Denki figured he should just tell the truth, which was, "I wanted to try and talk to him."

Izuku must have thought it was the right answer because he turned to look at Hitoshi with the most smug expression Denki had ever seen on him, and rasped out what was presumably a translation of his answer. The siren looked back and forth between them, eyes narrowed, hissing something that led to what seemed to be another short argument. This one involved Izuku slapping Hitoshi's tail with his own, and the siren giving him a look that was completely unimpressed.

Izuku sighed.

"He wants to know if you'd still want to learn it even if he was the only one you could ever talk to with it. But what he means is that the sign he uses isn't really, um… Common. Especially not around here."

The green mer waved one hand around as he spoke, and Denki forced his lips tight so that he wouldn't laugh at how blatantly confused Izuku seemed at the whole situation. And anyways, the answer was easy.

"Learning any kind of merfolk sign language is already a really niche thing for me to learn anyways, so…" He shrugged, "Yeah I'd still want to learn it. If… I could, I mean. Everything I could find is in that sketchbook already."

If it wasn't common, he must have been really lucky to have found the signs that he had. That, or there was some crossover in dialect.

When he gestured at the sketchbook, Hitoshi blinked and focused his eyes back on Denki, gaze staying fixed there even as Izuku started murmuring to him again. Denki didn't even shiver, this time, though he'd been ignoring the way his heart had been rattling since the siren had pulled himself onto the boat. Maybe he was getting used to it? Maybe he'd have to get used to it, because the siren hummed something back and Izuku squawked out a sound that was equal parts surprise and indignation.

"Uh- um. Hitoshi says he'd be willing to teach you. Which. I have been trying to convince him to do for me for ages but okay."

If Denki hadn't been so stunned by the offer, he probably would have laughed at Izuku's tone. As it was, he stared back at the siren for a long moment. He looked… Not smug, exactly. Bored, maybe. Like there was nothing at all crazy about what he'd just offered.

"Y-yeah! Dude of course ! I’d love that!"

Izuku huffed, and then chirped the affirmative back to Hitoshi, who smiled a slow, sharp cheshire grin in response. Denki knew he’d probably be thinking a lot about that look later.

Hopefully, this would be the start of a beautiful friendship.

They wound up spending a couple of hours just going through very basic words. Denki was now proudly able to sign things like 'you' 'me ' and 'am ' in what was apparently a rare dialect of mer sign language.

The process was a little tedious. Someone would decide on a word.  Izuku would ask Hitoshi, who would sign it. Denki would usually have to see it a few times to draw the movements right, and then he'd write down what it was supposed to be, plus draw a picture for explanation. That last bit had been at Izuku's suggestion, just to make sure that as little got lost in translation as possible. Hitoshi had been surprisingly patient with him, though that may have just been a result of Izuku not translating anything rude sent his way.

The siren had definitely been focused more on him than his friend. It almost felt like he was waiting for Denki to do something that just never happened.

He couldn't imagine that he was very fun to teach, but when the afternoon stretched on, and Izuku started squirming and worrying about being somewhere else, Denki had asked if they could continue this another day and was pleasantly surprised when the answer had been a lazy blink from Hitoshi, and a nodded yes. They’d agreed that, if Denki could manage it, they’d meet up again tomorrow at the same time.

So, hose in one hand as he washed down the boat, he texted his boss:

So hey! Merfolk meeting went well and I might need to keep taking the boat out?

+ I have some notes on sign language you might want to see

It took a few minutes, but he got a thumbs up emoji and: like I said, as long as you clean and gas her feel free!

Also by fill me in I kind of meant gossip lmao but I can quiz you on that later ;)

Denki drove home that day with his heart lighter than it had been in weeks, tapping his fingers on the wheel along to the beat of a top 40 pop song. How cool was this? He had the opportunity to hang out with a siren, and what seemed like a pretty cool one, what with the way Hitoshi had just offered to teach him, like that. He just had to make sure he didn't embarrass himself too badly. JSL had never really stuck, he had to make sure that what he was learning now did.

His phone buzzed with another text pulled into the driveway. Denki took a peek and snorted. It was from his Ma.

Hey are u gonna be home for dinner

wait I just saw u pull up, nvm

He tried to focus on the fact that it was kind of funny, and not the spike of anxiety it sent right through his chest. She was just wondering if he was gonna be home, not trying to corner and talk to him. That was all.

To be honest, he'd sort of been skulking around when it came to his parents in the hopes that they'd forget that they needed to have some kind of conversation with him. Though the way he'd been acting was so out of character for him it probably only made them think about it more . He'd sure managed to get his sister's attention anyways.

When he pulled open the door and peeked around the doorway, it was to a familiar sight. On one side of the hallway, Raltei was lying in an uncomfortable position, back on the couch and legs straight up over the cushions as she played a game. Faint music echoed from somewhere upstairs, probably courtesy of the other twin. Yuko was probably up there too, no doubt reading at this hour. On the other side of the hallway his moms were in the kitchen together, Ma squinting and frowning as she stirred a saucepan of something as Mom leaned over the kitchen island, talking to her. Denki caught the tail end of whatever she was saying, "--kind of a bastard though."

Before Denki could ask for details about whatever drama his mom had run into in the world of real-estate, both of his parents looked up at him, Moriko even going so far as to lean around the steam in front of her face to get a better look at him.

"Well welcome home. Long day at work?"

"Heh, well. Sort of?" He couldn't stop the smile from creeping back onto his face as he stepped into the kitchen, "I'm uh… going to be staying after for a while. Learning merfolk sign language."

He didn't know why he didn't mention Hitoshi. Maybe because saying ' oh yeah a siren said he'd personally teach me, for some reason' sounded too close to both a brag and a lie. One mom nodded and the other raised her eyebrows, vaguely impressed, or at least he hoped that's what that expression was.

"Ooh that sounds fun." said Ma, "Your boss always did like you learning more for the job huh?"

Denki hummed in agreement, and an awkward silence immediately fell between them.

"So uh… Speaking of learning…" Hikari held a fist up to her face to hide the pained expression she was making, clearly aware of just how blunt she was being, "Do you have any plans once the summer is over?"

Denki was aware that both of his parents were looking at him, both perfect pictures of concern as he very deliberately took one breath and then another. Ridiculous. They hadn’t been setting a trap up for him, he’d set it up and walked into it all on his own.

"I've been thinking about it” He mumbled, “but I'm not really sure of anything yet."

One night, in an attempt to try and make himself feel better, he'd told himself that now that he wasn't tied down to getting a degree, he could try and shoot for one of his really wild dreams, only for the hours to wear on and him to realize just how out of reach everything was for him. He liked to draw, sure, but he was horribly out of practice and wouldn't ever be good enough to make money off of it. He'd written some songs, but none of them had gotten more than 100 listens when he'd posted them online. Fixing either of those problems took dedication that he clearly lacked, because he wouldn't be worrying about those things if he'd just been able to make up his mind and fucking study in the first place.

He spared his moms the thoughts, and instead offered them a shaky smile and "I might do some research into going to trade school or something. Maybe that would suit me better?"

Mom put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Well if you need any help, we're here for you alright?"

Denki didn't look at her, because he might burst into tears if he did. They'd already helped him plenty. He was supposed to be able to figure his own shit out by now, wasn't he? Instead he looked at Ma, who had pursed her lips and was looking thoughtfully at the beef and broccoli in the pan. She didn't say a word. 

He kind of preferred that.

After work lessons became a daily thing, and Denki was really trying his best.

The first night back he had moped around, thanks to the conversations with his mom, but at work, between tours, his search history became filled with things like 'first things to learn when learning a new language' and 'words that babies learn.'

Some of the suggestions were helpful -- Denki was reminded that he'd want to learn sorry as soon as possible -- but many weren't. It hadn't occurred to Denki how many nouns were land-specific until he really sat down to think about it. The sign language he was learning probably didn't have words for dog, or bread or even pants because those things just didn't exist in the ocean. Instead he settled on pulling out a pack of colored pencils and asking for as many adjectives and adverbs and prepositions as he could think of, in the hopes that when a breakdown in communication happened he could just sign descriptors of whatever he was talking about until someone got the picture.

That led to a day where they came up with some admittedly very childish sign names for each other. Hitoshi was Big Purple , Izuku was Little Green. Denki fully expected to be dubbed Medium Brown even though Izuku was technically bigger than him, on account of the tail. Instead he ended up with Yellow Human, after his hair. Which was fair, and it wasn't like he knew the words to argue it if it wasn't.

Sign language practice came with some unexpected benefits as well. Denki would never be able to speak mermish on account of not being physically able to make half of the sounds it required, but he was starting to be able to pick out actual words. Simple words, but real ones. 

It was honestly really nice to have something to look forward to every day. Spending late afternoons with a merfolk and a siren never got any less surreal, and he could still only hold Hitoshi's gaze as long as he didn't think about it too hard. Though to be fair to himself, he got that way with everyone he found stupidly attractive, and those people didn’t seem intent on looking at him all the time.

 It didn't help that the siren was also astonishingly patient with him. It felt like it took him more than twice as long to get a sign right when compared to Izuku, and Denki had a notebook to refer to.

If it bothered Hitoshi he didn't show it, though what he thought of Denki still wasn't quite clear. The way the siren looked at him made it feel like he was expecting something, and he always held himself very carefully, like one wrong move would hurt him or Izuku.

Well… Maybe that was true, for all Denki knew. He supposed he was thankful for the restraint if it was.

As Denki's days off rolled around (Monday and Tuesday, because the tourism industry would never allow a weekend) he found himself feeling listless. So much so that he actually looked up trade schools like he'd said on a whim. The results were not very inspiring.

Denki might not know what he wanted to do with himself, but becoming a dental assistant didn't exactly tickle his fancy. Besides that, he spent a long while scrolling social media, and it finally clicked why none of his friends had called him. No one but him was even in town. One had rented an apartment and gotten his own summer job in the city where he was going to school, another was on an extended vacation somewhere tropical. Yet another seemed to be on some kind of special fancy modeling job.

Denki knew that comparing yourself to what you saw online was bad, but yikes, was this a new low. He was going to start spiraling if he kept this up, so it was totally on a whim that he closed out of the internet and opened the text conversation with his boss.

Hey so, I know I didn't work today, but would it be okay for me to take the boat out after?

Denki didn't get a response for forty-five long minutes, no doubt because his boss was busy doing her job. He spent that time trying to find a comfortable spot in his room (there wasn't one) and making an attempt to read one of the books he'd bought but never read (he wasn't even able to pick one from the pile that sounded interesting). The ping of a text was an incredible mercy, the fact that it was a thumbs up emoji and a 'feel free!' was even better.  Him bolting out of the house without an explanation was so much closer to his normal than he'd been acting that no one even questioned it.

Getting to the office took only a matter of minutes but when he arrived, there was still a sign in the door that read On tour, be back soon! In the time it took Denki to read that and consider if maybe he should hang back so he didn't look so eager an arm was looped around his shoulders from behind and his boss was laughing at him.

"Oh you beat me here huh? Are you excited to go see your merfolk friends?"

"Uh--" Denki valiantly fought down the blush rising on his cheeks, because his boss would never let him live it down if she saw, "I mean, yes? Plus I realized that I never actually told them I wouldn't be coming and it'd be really rude to just not show up, so…"

He actually hadn't thought about that last part until just now. To be honest, Izuku probably knew his schedule anyway and there was a pretty real chance neither merfolk would show up at all. Going out on the boat still sounded more appealing than moping at home, though.

"Mm, fair enough." Fukukado removed her arm and started fiddling with the lock, "More to the point, have you picked up any drama yet? Maybe the siren talked about his family?"

She spoke in sing-song, like she thought was getting away with something. Denki choked back his own laugh in response.

"I mean, we're still at the stage where most of our conversation is me asking things like 'what's the word for water' so I'm afraid I don't have much for you in that department just yet."

"I know, I know, I was just teasing." At that, Fukukado pulled the door open and turned to face Denki, dangling the boat keys in his face with a flourish, "Have fun out there, kid!"

"You know I'll try." Or he'd just end up taking a nap on the boat. Either, or.

She waved at him, he shot her some finger guns, and he made the walk down to the pier, head still buzzing with too many thoughts.

There was something about the sound of the engine and ocean waves that helped him get his mind off of things. Denki leaned a bit over the side as he drove, though the boat was hardly able to go fast enough to kick up any spray so that there wasn't any risk of damaging the glass bottom. The wind was nice, though. 

It almost felt like he got to the colony too soon, since he expected to be alone, this time.

He was, for a few minutes. Denki picked a shaded spot on the deck and leaned back, fully prepared to try and force himself into taking a nap when there was the familiar sound of a splash and a thunk as a particular siren pulled himself aboard. Denki's eyes shot open, and he smiled, reaching his hands up to sign hello. Hitoshi took a moment to get used to the air, as he usually did, before signing it back. His hands stayed raised like he was going to continue, but his face twisted in thought. If Denki had to guess, he was trying to figure out how to sign something in a way that Denki could understand.

While he thought about it, Denki's gaze wandered to the side of the boat. He was expecting that second splash any moment now, for Izuku to pull himself up too but it didn't happen. 

Izuku wasn't here, and suddenly Denki was, again, acutely aware of the siren's eyes on him.

"Um." He said out loud. Hitoshi huffed, but Denki's thoughts must have been painfully obvious, because the siren signed, "Little Green is with--" his hands hesitated for a moment, and Denki didn't recognize the sign that came after. Considering the fact that Hitoshi was the one who taught him everything he knew when it came to this, the siren was well aware that Denki didn't know what he'd just said, so he continued on, "Means--" Hitoshi grimaced, "Make Little Green."

So Izuku was with… Whoever made him? His parents, maybe? Denki reached for his sketchbook and pencil, flipped open to a new page, only to hesitate, himself. Obviously Hitoshi's explanation hadn't been close to what he wanted, so it was probably best not to assume. He took a few seconds to sketch out what he had taken to calling 'merfolk stick figures' -- two bigger ones and a smaller one, and flipped the notebook around for Hitoshi to look at. The siren huffed and nodded, but held up one finger. So Denki circled one of the bigger figures to an affirmative sounding trill. Izuku was with a parent, singular.

Denki set down the notebook to ask "sign again? " which was probably his most commonly used phrase, and Hitoshi obliged so he could draw that too. As he sketched it out, a little thrill ran through him. He hadn't needed a translator to figure that out. He couldn't help but smile, and when he looked up, Hitoshi looked pleased, himself, if more subdued. And --

It hit him again that he was alone on the boat with Hitoshi-- with a siren -- and that maybe he wasn't feeling nervous about that for the right reasons. It… Should be hard to embarrass yourself when you don't know the words to do it, right?

Hitoshi blinked slowly at him, and Denki ducked his head. He'd been staring. That should be easy to bounce back from, considering they had to look at each other to talk, but when Denki raised his hands, his mind ran blank. What to talk about when you could talk about anything, but would sound like a three year old?

Hitoshi tilted his head to the side, before signing a single word "Give."

The next gesture was to point at Denki's lap, where the notebook was sitting. Denki picked it up, ready to hand it over, before hesitating for a moment. This would have been the perfect opportunity for Hitoshi to teach him another new sign, but then again ‘book’ was one of those things that probably just didn't exist in the ocean. And Denki did happen to know the word for textbook in JSL, which was close enough to what that sketchbook was becoming anyways. He held it out for Hitoshi to take, which he did as carefully as the first time, and with his hands free Denki pointed at it himself.

"Sign is textbook."

Hitoshi paused at that, eyebrows climbing up his face, but when he nodded it was with an air of seriousness. Then he pointed again, at the pencil that had rolled onto the deck of the ship.

"hat too."

Denki handed that over without comment, because he didn't remember the word for pencil. He was more than a little embarrassed at the way Hitoshi waited after taking it, seemingly expecting another explanation. All Denki could offer was a shaky, "Not know."

Hitoshi accepted that with another nod and immediately looked down to what he was doing instead. He'd put the sketchbook on the deck in front of him and was awkwardly holding the pencil above it, like he was going to draw, only, he didn't know how, because he'd clearly never held a pencil before. The siren's brows were furrowed in concentration from the simple act of trying to figure out how to hold the implement properly. It was… Cute. Though Denki didn't want to watch him struggle for too long so he leaned over to help him adjust his grip.

He did it without thinking. It didn't occur to him that they hadn't touched at all before then. That maybe that was on purpose, because when his fingers brushed Hitoshi's, Denki could instantly feel the hum of magic beneath his skin.

Denki had felt magic before, had cast magic before, but to him it had always been wild and uncontrollable, like a shot of straight power that used itself up as quickly as it arrived. Hitoshi's magic was nothing like that. It was more like a pool so deep that Denki couldn't feel the bottom -- an ocean, if you would -- and yet it was calm and placid. He swallowed dryly and tried not to panic, because he'd frozen when he'd realized what he was feeling and now he didn't know if the better option was to finish what he was doing or to stop. Despite the anxiety thrumming in his chest, he risked looking up at Hitoshi's face.

He looked shocked, wide eyes fixed on the point where Denki's fingers were still just barely touching his own. Denki slowly withdrew his hand, unable to tear his eyes away from the look on Hitoshi's face -- how his eyes followed Denki's hand where it curled in front of his chest. Even though it had only been moments, the absence of magic as he shrank away sent a pang of loss through him.

Shit, he didn't even know how to say sorry yet.

Hitoshi got his bearings a moment later, aural fins flaring before he dropped the pencil and signed "You good?"

Denki furrowed his eyebrows. Why wouldn't he be good? He was the one who had done something rude.

He nodded, and signed the same thing back, "You good?"

"Me?"

And now Hitoshi looked as confused as Denki felt. He nodded back, and then, to Denki's surprise, leaned a little closer.

"You… " His hands hesitated again, " …Not bad? "

"No. " Denki shook his head, and signed, again, "I'm good."

That look of shock hadn't left Hitoshi's face. It was eerily reminiscent of the not-quite-awe he'd had on the day Denki had shown him the notebook, and that had led to good things. Maybe he hadn't totally fucked things up?

" …Can I --? " Denki didn't know the last word, but the meaning became obvious when Hitoshi reached out his hand, palm up.

Touch. He was asking to touch. He'd have to make a note to include senses as something they should learn.

Denki nodded again, and in answer extended his arm and rested his hand flat on Hitoshi's, the feeling of magic settling back into the places their skin touched like a weighted blanket.

Hitoshi pulled himself even closer. He ran a thumb over the palm of Denki's knuckles, and  flipped it over to do the same to the palm. Then he did the same between his fingers, clearly curious about the lack of webbing. All of this was done so carefully, dare he even say tenderly, and every few moments Hitoshi would pause his investigation to look up at Denki with this expression of searching. Like he was making sure Denki was still okay. Denki held himself very still as Hitoshi's hand trailed up his arm, afraid any reaction would be seen as a negative one.

Had he been curious this whole time and too afraid to ask?

There was a claw gently toying with the sleeve of his shirt, and Denki almost laughed when he realized what was happening. Hitoshi had revealed his self-admittedly atrocious farmer's tan, and was looking at it like it just didn't make sense. When the siren looked up again, he wasn't just searching, but questioning. Unfortunately whatever he was wondering was probably going to have to wait until Denki knew more words.

After a few more moments, Hitoshi removed his hand. Denki opened his mouth to protest for a moment before he realized that it wouldn't get him very far, and before he could raise his hands to sign he froze. The hand had moved to his knee, touch feather-light but the tingle of magic making it obvious. Hitoshi was looking at him again, eyes wide as if to ask is this okay ?

It made sense, Denki reasoned somewhere in the back of his head, behind the immediate reaction of what the fuck. If he was going to be curious about differences there was one really big one that was kind of obvious. He sucked in a breath as quietly as he could, and then in answer uncrossed his legs so that the siren could get a better look at them. Hands roamed them just as carefully as they had his arms -- Hitoshi gently tugged them to turn and tilted his head to look behind his knees; he poked at Denki's toenails with his own claws and  made a curious noise in the back of his throat. Then the siren actually grabbed his foot, and as much self control as Denki had been trying to have, he couldn't stop himself from jumping at the sensation. Hitoshi jerked his hand away immediately and looked up at Denki who tried to look as unaffected as possible. He must not have been doing a very good job, because Hitoshi started to pull away, and fuck, Denki being ticklish was such a stupid thing to ruin the moment over so he raised his hands and signed "No. Not bad."

Hitoshi paused in his retreat. Denki nodded, tried to smile, and the unsure expression faded, just a bit. Hitoshi didn't immediately reach out again, instead the siren slowly looked him up and down, gaze thankfully more curious than anything else. Denki pressed his lips together and willed himself not to move again. It was a good thing that Hitoshi couldn't hear his heartbeat or else he would have stopped because of Denki's nerves before they'd even started.

Evidently, Hitoshi had decided that looking at his legs was a lost cause because when he reached out again it was towards Denki's chest. He stopped before he reached it though, lips turning down into a tiny frown. He wished he knew what the siren was thinking. Doubly so when he did start moving again and had apparently decided that the better option was his neck.

Hitoshi moved slowly so it wasn't like Denki didn't see it coming, but it still took everything in him not to shiver as cold fingers gently brushed his skin, up and down.

(Smooth skin, he would realize later. Hitoshi had been curious because Denki had no gills.)

From there, it was such a small thing for the siren to move his hand upward, to cup Denki's chin in one hand and holy shit, he was so close. Denki let his head be tilted to the side, at this point fully lost in Hitoshi's intense gaze. A thumb ghosted over his cheekbone, the other hand moved up to run through his hair, stopping at the end of the movement to rub the strands between two fingers.

Denki was pretty sure he'd forgotten how to breathe. The thought that had completely overtaken his brain was he's set this up perfectly to kiss me. I wouldn't be mad at all if he did. So much so that when the hand left his hair, and a thumb came to rest on his lips he was almost certain that was what was about to happen.

It wasn't- the moment was immediately lost when Hitoshi pulled down on his lip and squinted to get a better look at his flat, un-pointy teeth. The ridiculousness was enough to drown out the pang of disappointment, and Denki remembered to breathe with a snort that quickly dissolved into giggles. Hitoshi drew away again, though not so hastily this time. When he finally got a hold of himself enough to look up, the siren was staring at him, mouth slightly parted and eyebrows drawn together like he was some sort of puzzle to be solved.

"Good." Denki signed, and then he faltered. Where else could they go from here? Hitoshi had already pretty thoroughly investigated every part of him that wasn't covered in clothes, and Denki wasn't quite sure he was willing to just offer that up as an option.

 The idea that presented itself to him was bold, possibly even a little rude, but so was what Hitoshi had just done to him. He did his best to remember what he had seen earlier, sucked in a deep breath, and sloppily signed, "Can I touch you? "

The look of surprise on the siren's face was probably the most straightforward emotion Denki had even seen him show. It stayed there even as Hitoshi nodded, and as Denki slowly reached out to place a hand on his tail. Now it was his turn to marvel at their differences -- for as long as he'd been doing his job, being able to touch had never been something that had come up. Hitoshi's scales were slightly rougher than they looked, and the fins felt almost rubbery in opposition to their graceful appearance.

Denki risked a look up at Hitoshi as he moved his hand down his tail, only to find that his eyes were unmoving -- fixed on him, not where his hand was. So he risked moving even further up, to his waist, where the scales started to lighten and grow thinner and more delicate, and then even further up, fingers resting close to the gills on his chest. He could feel muscles flexing under his touch, though Denki didn't know if that was for his benefit or just a reaction -- he looked up, again to check with Hitoshi, but his expression had actually softened, a smile pulling at one side of his mouth.

Denki turned his face away to hide his rising blush. He kept getting faced with one once-in-a-lifetime opportunity after another. It wasn't every day you got the opportunity to touch a siren who was built like a classical statue, so he might as well take the chance, right?

Hitoshi didn't react at all as Denki traced one hand up his abs (actual real abs!) and pecs.  Denki didn't know if that made it better or worse. He couldn’t stand it for very long, either way, and instead diverted course to one of Hitoshi's arms, turning it this way and that; looking at his claws and the webbing between his fingers in much the same way Hitoshi had done to him.

Another glance up revealed that Hitoshi was now looking full on amused, and that lit a little fire of indignation in Denki's chest. Hitoshi had been doing the exact same thing minutes earlier and Denki wanted… Well, he wanted to make Hitoshi feel as flustered as he had been. It was with that in mind that he let go of the siren's hand and moved probably a little too quickly to take Hitoshi's face in his hands. They were both totally still for a long moment -- Hitoshi's expression had gone back to wide-eyed shock -- but Denki wasn't pushed away, and there wasn't so much as a sound of discontent. Now that he'd done it, Denki was more than a little embarrassed over his own actions, but it was a bit too late for him to back out now.

He ran a thumb over Hitoshi's cheekbone, same as had been done to him, but continued the movement to sweep a finger down the long curve of the siren's aural fin. That finally prompted a reaction -- a tiny exhale, a slow blink, and Hitoshi leaned, just a bit, into the hand that was still cupping his chin.

Oh.

There was no sudden realization, just Denki's thought process stumbling over the fact that, oh, that happened.

His fingers were almost trembling as he moved to do the last thing -- not look at his teeth, because Denki had seen Izuku smile plenty, and even Hitoshi smile a little and didn't really have any questions about them-- but to run his fingers through the siren's hair. Even wet, it had a silky quality to it, and slipped through his fingers without a tangle to be found.

Hitoshi made another tiny sound, almost like a whine, and pushed more weight into Denki's hand, eyes going half lidded as he ran his fingers through Hitoshi's hair a second time. This… Hadn't been what he was going for, but that didn't mean it wasn't just as good. Denki didn't particularly want to stop, and judging on the way Hitoshi had relaxed under his touch he didn't want to either. So he just… Didn't. Not for what must have been at least a minute, as Hitoshi looked like he was drifting dangerously close to falling asleep, an unreadable gaze still fixed right on Denki who couldn't bring himself to do anything but stare right back at them. It wasn't too long before the weight started to hurt Denki's arm, and he flexed his fingers to try and relieve some of the strain. Hitoshi seemed to finally realize what he was doing at that, blinking his back eyes fully open and jerking away.

Today was the day that Denki learned that sirens could blush: on Hitoshi it made him look a darker pinkish-purple, color blooming from his cheeks down his neck. He finally looked away, one hand going to rub at the back of his neck for a moment before tentatively signing, "Good."

Yeah, it sure seemed like it.

Denki smiled and signed "Good" right back.

He never did find out what Hitoshi was planning on drawing.

Denki, probably predictably, went back on Tuesday afternoon. Izuku didn't show up again, which he kind of expected, given that he didn’t usually work that day either, and in absence of their translator he tried to come prepared.

He didn't exactly get great (any) reception out in the middle of the water, so he had to do it in advance, but a brainstorming session on how to better communicate with Hitoshi had reminded him of the website of sound clips he'd found when searching for sign language. Assuming they had their translations right, it would be a quick way to pick up some new words -- in fact there appeared to be a whole section of phrases, and Denki kept giggling every time he remembered that there was not only profanity on the site, but a big enough difference in meaning of fuck (curse) and fuck (sex) for each to have their own recording. He probably wouldn’t be asking to learn those until he was more confident that no one would get offended, but he downloaded them anyways.

He could already imagine how he'd use the words, once he knew them, because shocking no one -- especially not himself -- Denki had a crush. He had definitely wanted Hitoshi to kiss him yesterday which, he thought only made sense. The siren was, you know, stupidly attractive, with his muscles, and his confidence and patience and the quite-probably-literal magical aura that kept dragging Denki's attention back to him. Would he taste salty? Fishy? Was it dangerous to do on account of the sharp teeth? He wanted to try and find out.

Denki had no idea if he stood an even remote chance, though he wasn't really holding out hope. Species difference aside, the language barrier had put a damper on his usual modes of self-expression: aimless rambling, shameless flirting, and horrible puns. There was every chance that once they were able to start properly communicating that Hitoshi would get annoyed with him, not like him more. Or he could end up being totally charmed. Denki would hope for the latter, and in the meantime, well, he was an expert on operating like a normal person while having a crush on account of having to do it all the time, so it wasn't even a big deal.

He couldn't say they learned much that day, though. Hitoshi seemed totally entranced by his phone -- his eyes had gone wide when, Denki had first held it up to him and turned on the screen, fins flaring as he signed, "Magic?"

Denki shook his head, smiled, and offered no explanation, because he wasn't sure if he could adequately explain everything a smart phone was in his native language. Instead he turned so that Hitoshi could watch over his shoulder as he scrolled around and did his best to show off the wonders of technology. 

There wasn't an ulterior motive to the way he chose to sit, but if Hitoshi happened to reach around his waist to prod at his phone, or rest his chin on Denki's shoulder as he watched, he certainly wasn't going to complain. In fact, for having only touched for the first time yesterday, Hitoshi was being quite casual about it now. Denki caught the siren giving little glances out of the corner of his eye, as though checking to make sure that he was still okay with it, but the only worry he had was that the feeling of magic would be distracting, and to be honest, it only really was worth mentioning if he really focused on it. After the initial moment of touch, the feeling of magic settled, and it was about as disruptive as the feeling of cloth on skin from his shirt.

When Denki pulled up a video -- the first one he'd had saved, of a friend of his trying and failing to do a keg stand at a party -- the siren jerked back, aural fins flared and quivering. Denki paused the video as fast as his fingers could manage, and after a moment Hitoshi hissed something that sounded exasperated and peered around one side to squint at his phone. Denki turned to face him a little more fully, and the siren signed --ah shit, he knew that one just not off the top of his head.

"Sorry." He said out loud as he fumbled for the sketchbook, "Sorry. Uh--"

Loud was the sign he eventually found, getting distracted along the way as Hitoshi swept his tail around to brush the back of his legs. It was loud, and for Hitoshi, who hadn't been expecting any sound at all, it must have been quite the shock. Unfortunately Denki still couldn't properly apologize, the best he could do was half the volume and sign "Less loud."

Hitoshi just gave an amused huff and returned to his spot at Denki's shoulder. Only, he kept tail against his legs, so he was practically curled around Denki, and he felt hard pressed to not just lean up against him. That would be weird, right? Too much? Maybe not so much since Hitoshi had already done most of the work to get them into this position.

…Might as well give it a shot and see how it went?

As Denki leaned into the siren's chest, he wondered if this had the same cultural implication for Hitoshi as it did for him. He hoped so, but there was still a lot he didn't know. At any rate, Hitoshi didn't pull away from him, and Denki fought off a rising blush as he returned to showing off videos.

When the time came for them to pull away and actually learn, he liked to imagine that Hitoshi was as loath to do it as he was.

Wednesday meant Denki was back to work, and it almost felt weird not to have any merfolk join him on the boat. That would certainly get tourists talking. As it was, there were no visitors from the ocean during his shift, so he wound up talking at length about what he knew of merfolk courting behavior, simply because it had been on his mind. 

Like most things, it varied from place to place. Around here, he was pretty sure the tradition was to craft a gift and offer it to the object of one's affections. In some places, merfolk would go hunt the most impressive prey they could find and share it, and in others they would straight up challenge their love interest to a fight.

A bawdy joke from an older man had Denki confirming, as innocent as he could manage, that depending on the culture, casual hookups were a thing, too, just like for humans. The man went on to ask about the urban legend of mermaids coming ashore to seduce sailors, and Denki wasn't able to fully confirm or deny it, as ridiculous as it sounded. Because it was a little far fetched, yes, but he kind of hoped --

Well, he could actually ask someone who knew now, in theory.

It was still in the back of his head, as he drove back to the colony after work. If merfolk could come ashore, then Izuku must have done it at some point, right? He knew way too much about humans to have only learned it from talking to tourists. But then, was it supposed to be a secret? It certainly wasn't common knowledge, and something that big probably would be, if it was possible, right? Stories like that usually had a kernel of truth somewhere in them, and now that he'd been reminded of the possibility Denki really wanted to know.

He was trying to figure out how he could phrase the question without it sounding like he was hitting on anyone (even if he kind of was) when Hitoshi pulled himself onto the boat. The siren trilled a greeting to him before signing one. Denki said “Sup” and did the same. 

The siren wasted no time in pulling himself closer, swinging his tail around to curl around where Denki was sitting -- not quite touching, but clearly an offer, if Denki wanted to take him up on it. Which he did, so he did. Hitoshi's tail was long enough that Denki could lean against the end and still have Hitoshi's hands in clear view, if the siren positioned himself right.

He had gotten so used to being just them after only two days that Izuku hauling himself aboard was almost a surprise. The green mer held himself on the railing, precariously leaning forward as he balanced himself and chirped out his usual "Hi!"

Then he locked eyes with Denki and went still, except for the over-wide smile that crept over his face.

"Hitoshi !" Izuku said, before launching into mermish so fast it looked like Hitoshi was having trouble keeping up. Whatever he was saying had the siren's shoulders hunching up defensively, and as Izuku pulled himself aboard, Hitoshi's tail curled tighter around him.

When the siren finally got a word in it was halting, almost sounding unsure, and most notably whatever he said definitely included his name.

Denki. Out loud. He would have time to get pathetically excited over that later, right now he had to figure out what exactly he'd done.

"Um. Hey?" He said, prompting both merfolk and siren to look at him, the former looking significantly more excited than the latter, "Can I ask what this is about, exactly?"

"Oh, yeah, it's --" Izuku started excited and trailed off, hand coming up to cradle his chin. "Well, I uh… Hm. It's… Kind of a lot?"

The mer glanced at Hitoshi, who now looked more annoyed than anything.

"I don't know how much I should tell you, but I feel like it should just be all of it since it kind of pertains to your health?" The mer offered. Which was just a baffling thing to hear.

"My health?" Denki questioned. Izuku nodded seriously.

"Yeah. I guess to start with do you feel okay? Magically speaking?"

"…Magically…?" Denki leaned back and considered it, but the only magic he could feel was Hitoshi's, and that felt more comfortable than anything else. He shrugged "I feel fine. Is that… Something I should be worried about?"

"Yeah it's… Okay, maybe I should just start at the beginning." Izuku leaned back, took a deep breath, and clapped his hands, "So. You know how merfolk are more sensitive to magic than humans. And Sirens are merfolk with a greater affinity for magic."

Denki nodded, while Hitoshi heaved a sigh and made to lay  down on the deck, head cushioned on his own arms.

Izuku went on.

"Well Hitoshi is uh. Really magical, even for a siren, and especially for a mer. To the point where for a lot of us just being near him can get kind of uncomfortable? Touching, especially."

"Oh." Denki blinked. "That's…" He glanced at Hitoshi, who wasn't looking at either of them. That sounded… Horribly sad, and it also explained why this was only coming up now.

Izuku scratched at his cheek, "It's um… Kind of a problem, yeah. So I suggested that he try and make friends with some people who aren't sensitive to magic, and, well --"

The mer gestured at Denki. It took him a moment to get it, but he huffed a small laugh when he did, "That's why you were trying to get him to come to the boats? To meet humans?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I could never get him to like the idea. He says he still doesn’t, but… For the record he said -- well, I guess it doesn't translate well -- but he said that he doesn't care that you're human, he cares that you're Denki." Izuku continued to mumble about proper translations, but Denki wasn’t paying much attention anymore because there were suddenly a thousand butterflies beating against his rib cage. It was secondhand, but that might have been the one of nicest things anyone had ever said about him.

When the green mer dropped Denki’s name, Hitoshi turned to look at him, head still pillowed on his arms. It looked like he was trying to appear bored, but the look in his eyes was almost mournful. How much of this conversation was he understanding? Denki reached out to rest a hand on the siren's tail in the hopes it was comforting and was rewarded with one corner of his mouth turning upwards. Hitoshi's eyes remained on him after that. But they tended to most of the time, anyways.

"Wait." He realized, turning back to Izuku "But I am sensitive to magic. And do you not feel uncomfortable?"

Izuku, froze for a moment, then covered his face and keened a high note of embarrassment.

"You're sensitive for a human. And I'm uh. Not all that sensitive, for a mer." Izuku curled into himself a bit, "Honestly if I had to guess I'd bet our affinity for magic is about the same. P-Point being that you should pay attention to how you're feeling, in case you start to get overwhelmed. Just keep an eye on it, okay?"

Denki couldn't make himself be all that worried about it, to be honest. Great risk, great reward, and all that.

"I mean sure. It's my feelings, right?" He glanced back at Hitoshi who was still staring, eyes half lidded, and swallowed a little harder than necessary, "Anyways, I feel fine, so maybe we should get started?"

When Denki drove home that day, his head was swirling with thoughts of magic, urban legends, and merfolk sign language. It was certainly better than his usual self depreciating spiral, and when walked through the door and pulled off his shoes, there wasn't even a hint of anxiety when his Ma called from another room.

"Denki? That you?"

"Yup!"

"Can you come in here for a second?"

Okay, there was maybe a little anxiety. He sucked in a breath and poked his head into the kitchen. Moriko was sitting at the table, reading glasses on the edge of her nose as she marked some sheets of paper covered in complicated looking tiny text with a red pen. Something was baking away in the oven that smelled like tomatoes.

"Come on, sit over here with me for a second." When Denki edged into the seat, she pushed her glasses up onto her forehead and looked up at him, "So how was work?"

Oh , he didn't like that tone of voice. She was about to start asking him life-choice questions.

"It's um… pretty hectic this year, but really good. I'm… Learning a lot?"

Work was fine. After work was what was taking up most of his attention, these days.

"Mm-hm." Ma nodded, "That's always good. I --" She tapped her chin with her pen, "Well, have you put any more thought into what comes after?"

"Um. A little. I… Don't really know what I want to do yet." He admitted. Stupid. Why did his throat feel so tight?

"Then let me just get straight to the point. How would you feel about apprenticing at my workshop?"

Denki blinked. Stared. Apprenticing at his Ma's enchanting workshop. That was so out of nowhere he didn't know how to respond. Moriko grinned sheepishly at him.

"I know you have a thing about magic --"

"I don't have a thing." Denki interrupted, as he always did when this topic came up. He groaned. "You send yourself to the hospital once and everyone thinks you have a thing."

The truth of the situation was this. In seventh year, Denki and his group of friends had come home from school after all having been in a class meant to teach kids about magic and magical safety. Being teens, they immediately decided to ignore what they'd learned and cast some spells unsupervised. None of them knew spells that were especially dangerous -- or nothing that was supposed to be, anyways, and Denki had been trying out one that was supposed to make harmless sparks shoot out of his fingers.

For a normal person, messing up the glyph that limited how much magic was pulled into their spell wouldn't have meant much, because they wouldn't have been able to channel very much of the extra magic in the first place. They might end up feeling a little sick, maybe burn themselves out of casting any magic for a while. For Denki, who could handle a lot more magic than the average person, it meant that he'd wound up electrocuting himself, and if doctors were to be believed, briefly stopping his own heart.

Everyone seemed to think that event led to him developing a fear of magic and he'd kind of played it up at the time to get out of doing some school assignments, but that wasn't really the truth. He hadn't stopped practicing magic because he found it particularly scary or dangerous (it was, that wasn't the problem) but because he'd realized that doing it took a lot of focus and precision. Being a great magician generally went hand in hand with being a great academic, and it was now more clear than ever that Denki was not .

He was not good at magic. He wouldn't survive in an enchanting workshop.

It was another once in a lifetime opportunity. He would be an absolute moron to turn it down.

"Well…" Said his Ma with a quirk to her brow that indicated she didn't quite believe him, "Just think about it? You wouldn't be doing anything until after the summer, of course, but I left some books on the desk in your room if you want to brush up before then."

It sounded like she thought he should. Shit, he probably should.

"I--" His voice cracked and he bit his lip, "I'll give them a look."

Denki was just a little bit disappointed to learn that cuddling did not, in fact, have the same cultural meaning for merfolk as it did for humans. He'd caught glimpses of it before, but apparently sitting in a big pile was just a normal way to hang out with friends, for them. Which was to say that now that he'd shown he was okay with it, Izuku had joined in, and suddenly sign-language lessons were a lot more physical. Finding a way where they could all sit and still be able to see each other's hands was a bit of a struggle, but the fact that Hitoshi's tail was so long helped things, and Denki usually ended up either leaning on it or with the end in his lap. And honestly, any sadness he might have had over the fact that what he was doing didn't count as flirting evaporated at the way Hitoshi subtly lit up every time Denki accepted the offer to do something as simple as lean on him.

Fukukado had really enjoyed hearing that he was participating in, as she put it, 'additional cultural exchange.' He'd been drip feeding her the other bits of gossip she seemed to crave so badly as they came up. Hitoshi had a family -- a pod -- of his own, and had a little sibling. He kept the whole extra-magical-makes-others-uncomfortable thing to himself though. Not that he thought she would do anything weird with the knowledge, just because it felt like a thing that was too personal to share with a stranger.

It felt like every bit of knowledge he gained just filled him with more questions. Hitoshi had a pod, yes, but were they as uncomfortable around him as Izuku said? Was he born with all that extra magic or did it build over time? Was he only putting up with Denki because he'd found someone else who didn't mind touching him?

He tried very hard to rationalize himself out of that last thought. Denki had touched Hitoshi first, and the siren had been so concerned over him after the fact. Even now, he would wait for Denki to make the first move. No, Hitoshi had been uninterested in him, and humans in general, until he'd happened to catch Denki's poor attempt at sign language, which then only raised the further question of why he'd been so willing to teach him. Why hadn't he wanted to teach Izuku?

He got an at least partial answer to that question as the days bled into weeks, and the green mer's attendance started to become more and more spotty.  It was something Denki had noticed in previous summers -- Izuku would show up a lot towards the start of the season and less as the end, but it apparently applied to this, too. He was always so apologetic “sorry, I won't be here tomorrow, someone asked me to help move their crab traps” “I won't be around for a few days, I usually go to visit a friend this time of year” “Our neighbor had a den collapse and I wanted to help fix it up…”

Hitoshi seemed both unimpressed and unsurprised by this development. Izuku certainly didn't seem like the type to flake out, but he always had something else going on. He certainly seemed incapable of denying anyone who asked him for help, if everything he was saying was true.

"He stays busy." The siren signed, one afternoon when Denki had glanced over the side to see if Izuku was going to show or not.

 Denki had risked asking, "Is that why you didn't show him signs before? " and got a so-so hand wiggle in return. It was a reason, he gathered, but not the whole reason.

Well, Denki had no intention of leaving the siren in the lurch, and he didn't mind getting more alone-time with him either. Especially since he was starting to be good enough at signing to, with a little help from the recordings and sketchbook, hold an actual, if simple, conversation. He did, however, wait until Izuku was around before trying to get an answer for one of his other questions.

It started with a simple request.

"Teach me bad words."

Izuku had sputtered and tried to object, and was completely steamrolled by Hitoshi cracking a wide smile and signing back, "That sounds fun."

Fuck (sex) and fuck (curse) were, indeed, different in mermish, but in a twist, were represented by the same sign. Shit had its own signs to specify whether it was dolphin or whale. Dick had the same double meaning, and funnily enough there was no word for ass at all, thanks to how merfolk anatomy happened to work out. Armed with this new knowledge, Denki kept his face as straight as he dared and signed, "On land, we hear that merfolk come to fuck."

Izuku shrieked and buried his face in his tail, effectively curling into a little ball of embarrassment. But Denki's attention was drawn away from the scene by the shaking and quiet sounds coming from next to him. Hitoshi was laughing, eyes squeezed shut, face hidden in one hand, wide smile, laughing. It sounded a little raspy -- no doubt it wasn't a sound he was used to making with air -- but something about it, maybe just the fact that Denki had gotten it to happen in the first place, made his heart squeeze and a smile pull at his own lips.

"That's not the only reason!" Izuku lamented out loud, only to grow even more flustered, "I mean that there's more reasons to go than just that. I--"

The green mer whined and made a sound that Denki distinctly recognized as one of the swears they'd learned earlier today. Izuku continued on in mermish, saying something that finally got Hitoshi to sniff and pull himself together. Though he looked like he'd be wiping tears from his eyes, if crying was a thing merfolk could do.

Evidently, the siren had decided to take mercy on his friend, because he turned to Denki and signed, "In the ocean, we hear that humans will fuck anything."

Denki ugly laughed, snorting even as a blush rose to his cheeks. He couldn't help it. That was a pretty common stereotype for humans and he didn't know if he could really deny it, especially not considering some of his own history.

He settled for, "Every human will fuck different things."

Hitoshi raised an eyebrow and looked like he might have been about to ask a follow up question when Izuku groaned.

"I hate this." Said the mer from his ball of shame, "Can we change the subject?"

Denki pressed his lips shut and did not comment on the fact that Izuku had sort-of confirmed that merfolk could visit land, and that he himself was doing it, possibly to fuck around. He'd gotten the information he was after, at any rate. What he was going to do with that information, he didn't know yet.

He mumbled out what must have been the same request in mermish, and Hitoshi acquiesced, with a conspiratorial glance at Denki and a smile on the corner of his lips.

"Fine." He signed. "Insults, then."

Izuku flopped onto his back with a heavy sigh.

It is widely known that magic has a sort of density to it, and this is quite relevant to the setup of an enchanting workshop. At a high altitude one doesn't have to worry much about the purity of magic they are dealing with, but may struggle to find enough magic to fuel their enchantments. Conversely, a workshop that is near sea-level, or in an area where magic pools, will have no shortage of it, and indeed must take extra precaution to prevent magical accidents --

Denki groaned and let his head drop onto Ma's heavily annotated copy of A Primer on Enchanting. He must have re-read those sentences ten times by now, not because they were especially interesting, but because he just kept losing focus and having to start over. The start of the book was filled with a review of stuff he already knew, but skipping ahead left him totally lost.

Enchanting was, in theory, not all that complicated. All you had to do was carve the spell you wanted into the item you wanted enchanted and figure out a way to get magic into it so that the spell turned 'on.' Once you started to look into it any deeper, though, things quickly became a mess. Everything from the materials used to the place the item was made could affect how something turned out, and that didn't even begin to touch on the spells themselves. It was practically a whole other language from normal spell glyphs because of all the changes that had to be made to get magic to stick to an object, and Denki was already learning a new language right now already.

This had always been a part of the problem for him. Reading about theory only got him so far, and as bad as he had done in school, this situation where he was just supposed to pick out what was important for himself felt like it was going to go even worse.

His eyes trailed down to another passage, the end of which had been highlighted in bright pink and marked with a fat big question mark beside it. Same Ma. Same.

While in spontaneous spellcasting the flow of magic may be influenced by the will of the spell caster, this is doubly true for enchanting. Since the process of creating an object is often time consuming there is much more time for intention to permeate the spell, and so an enchanter's will must be pure and straightforward as much as possible. A suitably clear intent is in fact necessary to counteract the lingering will of some of the more common magical mediums used in enchanting --

Denki blinked. Frowned. Reread the last sentence. Lingering will?  Was this book trying to tell him that he was going to be making stuff that was haunted?

He dropped his head again, making an audible thunk against the desk. Only for a moment, before there was a rattling and his door slammed open to a howl of "Denkiii!"

Raikou burst through with a finger pointed at him, but instead of whatever she had been about to ask died as she took a look at her older brother.

"Holy shit, are you studying? Over the summer? Who are you, Yuko? "

Denki grimaced at the book. He was a whole two pages deep.

"Not really. What's up?"

"Eh--" Raikou waggled her hand around, "Everyone's busy. I'm bored. Come hang out with me on the roof."

Denki snorted but went to push himself to his feet. 'Hang out on the roof ' was code for 'I scored some weed, let's smoke it' so named by Denki for his own habit in high school. Nice to see that he'd been such a good influence.

"Fine, fine. Hey." He said as he turned and went to push open the window, "You didn't buy from that weird white haired guy who hangs out by the conbini near school, right?"

The silence behind him was very loud.

"I might have." His sister conceded, "Is that a problem?"

Denki tilted his head and hummed.

"Not as long as you paid for it with money. You said no when he asked for your hair, right?"

"Obviously!" Raikou scoffed, "I'm not an idiot."

"Just checking!" he called back, pulling himself out the window and onto the roof tiles over the back patio. There wasn't all that much room up here, so he had to shimmy over for his sister to fit next to him. She wordlessly pulled out a tin of supplies and started rolling a joint.

"Dude you gotta do that in advance, I have had the wind blow my shit away up here."

"Nah, this is how I get my adrenaline. Living on the edge." Raikou extended one foot to dangle off the side of the roof.

"Sure." Denki rolled his eyes, "What brought this on anyways? I can't believe you're sharing."

"Well I can't exactly sneak through your room when you're in there, now can I?" His sister sniped back. There was the click click click of a lighter, "Plus you've been all weird lately and I know you don't like to talk about your problems so I'm being a good sister and distracting you instead."

Wow, yikes. She'd picked up more than she'd let on. Every now and again he'd be reminded that his little siblings looked up to him, and it was the scariest sensation on earth. At least it didn't sound like she was planning on drilling him over it like Yuko had.

"Thanks." He said, accepting the joint between two fingers. His voice came out a little raspy once he'd finished his drag, "Really."

"Sure, sure." Raikou waved it off. For a long few minutes the only sounds were evening time crickets, distant traffic, and the rustle of fabric as they passed the joint back and forth. Denki felt himself relaxing inch by inch as the humid summer air felt like it was seeping under his skin. He closed his eyes as the weirdly-pleasant light-headedness hit. Then Raikou blurted from out of nowhere, "Do you think moms would get mad if I took a gap year after school?"

"Mm." Denki honestly didn't have to think about it all that long. They didn't even seem to be mad at him for dropping out, for some reason. "Probably not. You got something you plan on doing?"

"I dunno." His sister sighed, "I mean I want to focus on writing stuff, and the idea of some big road trip sounds really fun, but mostly I'm just like. Tired of school? Like, I've been in it my whole life, you know?"

Denki hummed in agreement. He remembered feeling the same way when he'd started applying for schools and had pushed the feeling down. Raikou really seemed to be taking after him an unfortunate amount.

"Well definitely don't go if you don't feel ready." He said honestly, "And make sure you know what you're about before you get there."

"I mean I'd go into creative writing or whatever, probably --" Well at least she had that going for her, "But is it worth it, you know? Like, do you really get to be all actually independent like they say?"

There had been a saying that advisor after advisor had told him, that had been parroted over and over at every event he'd been to as a freshman. He hadn't paid attention to it until it was too late. Maybe if Raikou heard it now, she'd actually take the advice.

"It's only as worth it as you make it. I mean -- some classes are just kinda useless and you've got to deal with them, but they really just put you in charge of yourself most of the time and you have to make the most of it."

"That doesn't sound so bad…" His sister hummed, "But I can't see myself making myself go to a class I hate or something, you know? I already skip enough as it is, and I'm required to go right now."

"Raikou!" Denki gasped in mock offense, "Playing hooky? Smoking? This isn't how you were raised!"

Raikou slapped at his leg. Denki took a full second to register it happening, unable to tell if she was moving slower or if he was thinking slower. "Oh, shut it. My grades are better than yours ever were."

Denki's expression slipped into something a little more somber. She had that going for her too -- Raikou was the kind of person who could pass a test without studying once.

"Well whatever you decide, I know Moms won't get mad at you if you want to take a break." He cleared his throat. Maybe it was the weed that had him relaxed enough to admit it, or maybe it was the fact that the twins were going to find out he was staying no matter what, since they were, too. "I'm taking a gap this year, so, uh…"

"Ooh ." Raikou hummed. "Wait, then what were you reading in there? You looked all super focused."

"Uh. Since I won't have a job after the summer, Ma offered to let me try working for her. So…" He waved a hand uselessly.

"That's pretty cool." Said his sister, before narrowing her eyes. "Wait. Don't you have a thing about magic, though?"

"I do not have a thing!"

If the evening resulted in one of them locked on the other side of the window and trapped on the roof, no one would hear about it but the two of them.

Denki had a revelation on a hot Thursday afternoon.

It had always been hot, being the summer and all, but being on the ocean made it bearable most of the time. Today that wasn't so -- they must have caught some kind of weird weather pattern because there was hardly any wind. The glassy surface of the ocean would have been pretty to look at, if Denki didn't have to squint at the way light reflected off of it.

It was just Hitoshi today, and he seemed to be of the same opinion as Denki that the heat was too oppressive to do much of anything but laze around. He was quietly pleased that instead of leaving him for what must have been the much more comfortable ocean, Hitoshi instead opted to drape his cool scales over Denki's lap. He kept his eyes on Denki, as always, but it was with slow, content blinks, like he was in danger of drifting off at any moment.

"Hey." He signed, stifling a yawn, "How long can you stay out of the water? "

Hitoshi made a rumble of consideration in the back of his throat.

"A tide cycle. Can go longer, but it gets uncomfortable ."

Denki hummed his own noise of consideration. "Is it less when it's hot?"

"Probably." The siren tilted his head and then pulled himself forward so that he was more immediately in front of him. This had the side effect of pulling his tail out of Denki's lap and leaving him pretty much surrounded on all sides by purple scales. "Why? "

Denki hesitated. He was about to sign something very embarrassing, but he didn't have the vocabulary to soften to blow. He let out a quiet breath and leaned into the scale and muscle behind him, letting the feeling of magic settle under his skin.

"I want to know more about you."

Denki really wished he could pin the emotion that passed over the siren's face. It was only there for a moment, before Hitoshi moved to curl up further, now literally trapping Denki in the bend of his tail.

"Then ask ." Signed the siren, the odd look he'd had before now replaced with an amused smirk.

So, Denki did. He learned the sign for favorite and drilled Hitoshi on as many as he could think of.

Favorite color? Red, after a moment corrected to red-orange.

Activity? Sleep.

Place? Hitoshi had to consider it for a long moment, before answering sun rocks.

Food? Well, fish, but without Izuku here asking about specific species was kind of hard to do. Whatever it was, it was big and red on the inside.

He couldn't ask for a favorite movie, or song, or anything like that, for obvious reasons, so he settled on asking "Favorite magic?"

He had really been asking for a favorite spell, but Hitoshi just looked totally baffled for a long moment, before answering "My sire's magic." He flicked his aural fins like it was a question.

His dad's. That was really cute, and Denki failed to fight back a smile. Hitoshi huffed and signed right back at him, "Well what's your favorite magic?"

That brought Denki to a pause. People who knew him didn't really ask him about that kind of stuff, and he didn't really deal with magic otherwise enough to have a favorite spell of his own. Aside from the occasional bit of work Ma brought home, the only magic he really interacted with was…

He couldn't say that, could he? It was absolutely, overbearingly cheesy. He had to.

"Yours."

Denki could see in real time the moment Hitoshi registered what he meant. Eyes went wide, and dark magenta crawled down his entire face as the siren uncoiled himself, turning away to hide in a move that was delightfully reminiscent of Izuku's ball of shame earlier that week.

Delight warred with worry in his chest. That was the reaction he'd been hoping for, more or less, just taken to an extreme. He wished, not for the first time, that he knew what Hitoshi was thinking.

And then he realized he could, kind of. Maybe. A little. One of the most common enchanted things there were, as least as his Ma told it, were sets of objects that told the wearer how the person with its match was feeling. It was something usually saved for, like, wedding rings, but in a situation like this, where he was trying to learn a new language from someone he didn't share one with, knowing if he was feeling even a simple good or bad could go a long way.

Hitoshi turned back to him, fingers jerky and tense as he signed, "You don't mean that. "

Denki frowned, "I do ."

Suddenly Denki was surrounded by tail again, scales against his back and fin in his lap. Hitoshi’s expression was oddly intense, almost challenging, as if to say see, look, aren't you uncomfortable? Denki wasn't though, except for the worry that he'd made Hitoshi feel self-conscious. If this was some kind of challenge, he was going to win it. He shifted and made himself more comfortable, reclining into the scales behind him. Hitoshi's expression had fallen to more of an open-mouthed stare, and after a moment he returned to his spot, encircling Denki again. Bright purple eyes stared up at him and -- yeah. Knowing if that look was good or bad would really make him feel a lot more secure in this situation.

Even as Hitoshi let out a long breath, as both of them started to relax again, Denki mentally started putting together what he'd have to do. If he was learning enchanting, a common thing like that would be a good place to start, right?

How hard could it be?

Denki might have, at a certain point, switched out his Ma's enchanting textbook for a copy of Enchanting for Dummies, but it was all good. Really, all he was doing was filling out a checklist.

Step one: Figure out what you wanted your enchantment to do. Easy. Already done. He was just going to copy something that already existed, insofar as you could do that without messing with 'the intent.' Denki still had yet to figure out what exactly that meant. Whatever it was had led to a lack of any straightforward tutorials for him to look at, which was a shame.

Step two: Decide what you were going to put your enchantment on. Again, easy, because Denki had no intention of mixing anything up and was just going to go for the classic 'pair of rings' setup. Except it wasn't that simple, because apparently the material it was made out of mattered a lot. Gold was the standard go-to -- something about it being neutral and not having its own ' magical will ' -- but Denki didn't exactly have any gold rings laying around and a search through the boxes of stuff that had been shoved into his room confirmed that his Ma didn't either.

She did have silver rings, which was the next best thing from what he understood, but they had started to tarnish and blacken in the coastal air. Trying to find information on if that would affect anything was surprisingly hard -- all the advice Denki could find said that you should just keep everything polished and it wouldn't be a problem. He could do that, but Denki wasn't so sure that Hitoshi would be able to, and even if he could it would be a constant uphill battle because he lived in saltwater. Copper and iron were out for the same reasons, and the metals he could think of that wouldn't tarnish or rust all looked kind of expensive.

He was about to give up his research binge when something caught his eye. Some clickbait, ad infested article based on his search history. "Five Unusual Materials for Wedding Rings." Denki clicked on it even as he grumbled about how it was probably going to tell him about silicone, which wouldn't hold an enchantment at all . It did, and it also told him about wood, which also wouldn't last in water, and meteorite, which didn't seem like a likely find for him. But scrolling past those, at the very end, black on white, was ceramic. Would that work? Ceramic was basically clay, and it didn't seem to go through too much processing, which seemed to be what made it hard for magic to stick to things.

Another search had him pulling up an outdated looking forum, where someone had posted progress pictures of their enchanting project --self cleaning tiles in their bathroom -- and according to them, it worked great.

He ordered two to be shipped to the house. Boom. Step two done. And it only took Denki… Several hours of searching into the early morning. Whoops.

 And he hadn't even gotten to the actual enchanting part yet.

The afternoon air was still heavy and stagnant, whatever warm front they were in still had yet to finish blowing through. After his late night and a long day at work (no merfolk visitors, and a couple of very curious children) Denki found himself struggling to stay focused. Hitoshi looked straight up uncomfortable, the heat beating down so hard that his hair was starting to lighten and curl up at the tips. Though that did leave Denki wondering what his hair looked like dry -- if it had ever been dry.

Denki rubbed at his eyes, Hitoshi shifted, scraping his scales on the deck of the boat. There was a half-hearted attempt from the siren to show him the sign for some kind of plant that was shorter than kelp and longer than seagrass (which really narrowed things down) but he didn't seem all that in to it either. Hell, Denki hadn't even been sure if merfolk yawned until Hitoshi cracked his jaw open wider than Denki thought physically possible. He pulled a face afterwards, so maybe he didn't know he could do that either. It broke both of their trains of thought, anyways, making it easy for Denki to interject with, "Lets go swimming."

It would be nice, he thought. They’d both be a little less hot, and Denki himself would probably wake up a little.

Hitoshi froze at the suggestion, aural fins flaring up in… Alarm? Was he taken aback? Denki wasn’t sure -- all the more reason to finish his project. Hitoshi tentatively signed back,eyes wide, "...Humans die in water."

Denki opened his mouth. Closed it. Fought back the smile that was threatening to curl his lips, because it totally sounded like the sort of warning someone might give a young merfolk to prevent any accidents. Time for him to teach Hitoshi something.

"Only if we breathe it." He was trying so hard not to laugh, "I'll be okay if my head stays in the air."

Hitoshi only stared back, clearly uncertain. But, well, there was an easy way to prove it, wasn't there? Denki patted down his pockets to make sure there wasn't anything inside that couldn't get wet -- pulling out his phone (which had a waterproof case, but no reason to test it) and the notebook to sit on the deck. He stretched his shoulders before pulling himself to his feet, using Hitoshi's tail as convenient leverage.

The boat was kind of specifically made to make it difficult for people to fall off of, but there was a ladder off the back that he walked towards, kicking off his shoes as he went. Hitoshi trilled a questioning note, one that rose in pitch as Denki peeled off his shirt and tossed it behind him. He cast a glance backwards as he flipped the ladder off the side to see Hitoshi leaning forward on his arms, eyebrows pinched together. Denki winked before he jumped off the side -- any response Hitoshi might have had to that being drowned up by the splash of water.

He knew what that response was a moment later, because there was a much larger splash and a blur of purple under him as Hitoshi joined him.

Denki had maybe gotten a little too used to Hitoshi being on the boat with him, because he had forgotten all-too easily how beautiful he looked in his natural environment. Not that he didn't usually, but the grace and ease that he moved through the water with, the way the sunlight sparkled off his scales, the way he looked up at Denki with this worried expression, had his mouth feeling suddenly dry.

The siren took a long moment to assess and decide that Denki was not, in fact, in danger of immediately drowning before surfacing beside him, eyes poking out of the water to squint at him. Denki grinned back, wrestling down his blush at the reminder of how insane his situation was. Hitoshi glowered for a moment longer before laying back in the water and raising his hands.

"Why are you moving around so much? "

Denki didn't have to move much to stay afloat, but he still had to tread water, while Hitoshi seemed to drift next to him without any effort at all. Even getting his arms out of the water enough to sign was sort of an awkward affair; he had to hunch up his shoulders and couldn't move too fast or risk splashing himself. Still, he replied, "I have to. To float."

Hitoshi didn't appear to like that answer, frown pulling at his lips.

"You'll get tired ."

Denki clicked his tongue when he realized he didn't know the sign for eventually. He had to settle for, "Yes." To which Hitoshi responded, "And then you die."

He seemed very serious about this, which was just a little adorable.

"I can get out of the water before that."

Hitoshi pouted "…What if you can't?"

And because it was in Denki's nature to tease, he replied, "Guess I'll die." His heart picked up a little as he added, "But I know you wouldn't let that happen."

He assumed that Hitoshi would realize he was joking around, not for the siren to flare his fins and proclaim, "I wouldn't."

Denki considered, for a moment, hanging off the back of the boat in order to give Hitoshi a little peace of mind, but before he could make a move, Hitoshi decided to immediately make good on his statement, pulling the bulk of his tail underneath Denki's legs for him to rest on.

That in and of itself wasn't anything special, nothing more than what they had been doing on the boat, anyways. The difference was that in the water he sort of had to balance on it, and though the scales gave him some grip it was easy to slip off. Denki kept having to swing his arms around to get perched how he wanted, which Hitoshi seemed to like not at all, so he bent his tail, flexing it around until there was a dip for Denki to… Well to straddle . Making things worse, said dip was quite close to Hitoshi -- as in, where his legs would be, if he were a human -- so really, Denki was basically sitting in his lap. And to make sure he wasn't going to splash around, the siren held him in place by his hips until he had stopped moving.

Hitoshi didn't seem to think anything of it, focused more on making sure Denki's head stayed out of the water than the position he was in.

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. This wasn't weird. Hitoshi didn't think it was weird, so it wasn't weird. It would only be weird if Denki made it weird, and he wasn't going to.

A soft chirp from Hitoshi had him blinking his eyes open, and he definitely missed the feelings of hands on his waist as the siren signed, "Are you dying?"

"No" Denki replied out loud, then shook his head for good measure. "Cool now, though."

Hitoshi huffed in agreement, and having now decided that Denki was safe, he narrowed his eyes for a moment before asking, "Why did you only take off one of your coverings? The other one is wet now." A beat, and then, "What are they for, anyways?"

It took Denki a moment for him to understand what he was being asked. His shirt. Apparently it was teach Hitoshi about humans day.

"They cover up…" What was the best word? Sensitive? Secret? " Private parts. But the top is less private than the bottom."

He leaned his head back to look up at the sky as Hitoshi very obviously flicked his eyes downwards. Not weird. Not going to make it weird. He was going to distract Hitoshi before he could get too flustered though.

"Izuku knows a lot about humans, right? Has he not told you much?"

Hitoshi gave a halfhearted shrug with one shoulder.

"Some. He gets strange about it." The siren tilted his head to one side, a brief smirk showing off a flash of sharp teeth, "But I think it's better to learn from the source."

"Yeah." Denki agreed, smile on his lips, "It is."

Four days later, Denki sat down for dinner. That night, the conversation was an old one; Raltei was saying she was more than old enough to get some cool new piercings, maybe a tattoo. Ma pretended to entertain the idea while Mom argued that if she was just going to have to wait until she was eighteen, like the rest of them had. Denki had mostly tuned it out, because this was far from the first time this conversation had happened.

"Oh, yeah--" Said Ma, not quite drawing Denki out of his thoughts until she pointed at him, "You got some mail today. I uh -- Opened it, sorry. Thought it was for me since It was from a supplier I've bought from before, but nope!" She smiled at him. "Got a project in mind, huh?"

The rest of the table had gone quiet and Denki felt embarrassment creep up his neck. He'd been doing all that research when he'd lived under the same roof as a professional enchanter. And it wasn't as though he'd forgotten that or anything, he sort of just hadn't wanted her to know. He knew it was stupid and childish, but he had wanted to prove he could make something on his own.

"Um. Yeah…" He wanted so badly to just leave it at that, but everyone's eyes were on him. Denki swallowed, "It's for… Well you know how I've been learning merfolk sign language?"

All of his sisters had some kind of reaction, but were bowled over by Moriko raising her eyebrows and going "Ooh. Denki you're not trying to make a translator, are you?"

He shook his head. He honestly hadn't even considered it -- the whole point of him going out was to learn a new language, having it done for him sort of defeated the purpose. Plus that kind of magic was notoriously difficult, and he didn't even know how it would work with sign.

"It's just, uh-- one of those empathy ones? A really simple version. Thought it'd be good to help figure things out."

Ma nodded thoughtfully, but Mom frowned and tapped at her chin.

"Denki don't merfolk have webbed fingers? Can they wear rings?"

Oh. He was such an idiot. He had just ordered the largest size of ring that they had, but had failed to consider that Hitoshi would only be able to fit any ring over one knuckle at best.

"Er -- No." The shame must have been apparent on his face, because Ma leaned over the table to pat at his shoulder.

"It's no big loss, bug. I'm sure I have some silver chain around here somewhere. Magic necklace, problem solved."

"But--!" He didn't know why this conversation was making him so anxious. "Wouldn't it tarnish and mess things up?"

Moriko waved her hand around as if to brush off the thought, "I mean it might limit the magic a little, but if you're going with something simple it probably won't make much of an impact."

Denki nodded and glanced down at his food.

"Right… That's good then. Magic necklace it is."

It was, really. He was just more than a little ashamed that he'd learned it like this.

There was a moment of silence before Yuko interjected with, "…Why is Denki the one making this thing and not Ma?"

"Oh!" Moriko said easily, "He's gonna try working at my workshop after the summer."

Yuko pursed her lips, nodded, and didn't say anything else. But she was smart, he knew she'd figure it out soon if she hadn't already.

Secret was out, big bro was a college dropout, and he couldn't even do the backup he'd been offered right.

"Can we back up for a second?" Interjected Raltei, "Is that where you've been? Hanging out with merfolk?"

"…Yes? Did you forget my job?" He huffed, "Also I'm not hanging out --" Most of the time. "I'm learning a language."

"Show us some!" Piped up Raikou. It was maybe a little too easy to sign a 'fuck (curse) you', but Denki was in kind of a mood, at this point.

"What was that?" Raikou asked at the same time Raltei said, "That looked vulgar."

"It was." He confirmed. Hikari sighed.

"No swears at the table, sign, merfolk, or otherwise."

"Right, right. Sorry." He obviously didn't mean it; Mom rolled her eyes at him but didn't call him out.

The conversation continued on to other topics from there -- Yuko had been emailing back and forth with some professor about working in their lab for some internship, because of course she had --  and Denki quickly tuned out again. He picked at his food until he could justify leaving, and grabbed the bubble mailer with the rings inside as he went. Hopefully everyone would just think he was excited to get started on his project.

He didn't. Instead he laid in bed and tried very hard not to think about how embarrassing he was.

The weather had finally cleared -- this afternoon Hitoshi was stretched out on the deck of the ship, a pleasant sea breeze gusting occasionally to make the summer sun bearable. Denki absent-mindedly stroked a fin as Hitoshi told him about jellyfish. Or rather, told him about his massive distaste for jellyfish.

"They don't make any sounds and the ones around here don't even light up, so they're hard to see. And it's never just one of them, it's always a whole fucking bloom, so you can't even move around. You just have to sit stuck in your den or get stung." Hitoshi punctuated his statement with a soft growl.

Denki knew why this topic had come up -- he'd gotten the advisory message to avoid beaches thanks to the jellyfish just this morning. Nakagame must have had a field day with that -- he'd forgotten to ask.

The fin in his hands twitched and his attention was drawn back to Hitoshi.

"What's so funny? "

Oops. Had he been making a face or something? "Nothing. Just--" He hummed in thought, " I think it's funny how you treat jellyfish like…"

Nope, he didn't know the word for allergy, and sick didn't really  have the right connotation. "…Sometimes, during certain parts of the year, the plants on land will put out a lot of --" didn't know the word for dust, much less pollen, "-- fine sand, and it makes people feel bad. Jellyfish are kind of like that for you."

Hitoshi sighed. "Good to know I'm not alone."

Denki snickered, "Nope. I get all red in the nose every year -- I usually can't even smell anything. And when try to take medicine for it, it makes me really stupid, so I just have to suffer. Sometimes there's so much that it coats everything and makes it yellow. Once I left the…"

His hands stilled as he realized he didn't know the word for window. He'd caught himself starting to ramble.

One the one hand, he now knew enough sign to be able to ramble, so that was good. On the other… He now had much more opportunity to show Hitoshi just how embarrassing he could be. Denki swallowed and let his hands fall, cutting himself off with a "Sorry, not important."

Hitoshi squinted at him and signed back, "What's important?"

Huh?

"No." Denki frowned. Had he messed up a sign? "Not important."

"No, I mean… Nothing is important." Hitoshi looked pensive, and Denki got the feeling that something wasn't quite translating right, "Nothing is as important as anything else." He tried again. "Sometimes not important things are important?" Hitoshi huffed a sigh and settled on "What did you leave? I want to know."

Denki kind of felt like he might cry. When was the last time someone had paid attention to his rambling, much less said 'I want to know more?' Sure, there was his job, but that was different. This was different, too, but maybe… Maybe in a good way.

Denki sniffed and started, "Well we have these things like boats, but they're only for the land…"

Enchanting was totally simple, and not hard at all.

Really. Denki just took a grease pencil and wrote out the runes for the spell he needed on the rings, double checked them about a hundred times, found a rotary cutter, and got to work cutting the glyphs into the material itself.

…For a few seconds, before realizing he should probably dig up some safety goggles and a mask. Which he did, before continuing.

His room really was a good place for this -- there was already acoustic foam on the walls from the time when he'd been big into trying to make music, so the sound of him working didn't really bother anyone else. It was just…The process was sort of tedious. But Denki knew he had to stay focused and finish while he still had the motivation to try, or else the rings (well, necklaces -- Ma had dropped off a spool of thin silver chain and a box of bits for turning them into jewelry) would never get made.

His back was hurting by the time he finished carving out the first one, but when he looked at the time and saw that it wasn't too late, he hunkered down and did the second one, too.

That was step three, done.

Step four was unfortunately the most vague. Enchanting for Dummies had just said to "add the magic " while A Primer on Enchanting had multiple chapters that waxed on and on about the pros and cons of various magical substances. Magical substances meaning anything from dragon parts to charged gemstones. Denki…Did not have those things. He was going to have to work with what he had. Or what his Ma had.

She probably didn't keep anything too magical at the house, but Denki didn't need anything extreme. Rummaging through the boxes he'd pushed onto the floor eventually turned up with a couple bottles of thick liquids of various colors, labeled with names he didn't know. Searching those told him he'd found what he was looking for -- resins and nectars from a few magical plants, plus some sealant, which was perfect since he didn't think any of this would last underwater without it.

Both books just said that adding the magic was "as simple as incorporating it into the design." Again, unhelpful, and vague, but Denki still grabbed a paintbrush from a set he hadn't touched in years, and filled in the runes he'd carved with the thick, syrupy, golden-brown dragonwood tree resin.

It was magic, he could feel it, when some got onto his fingers, but it hardly felt like much. Maybe the tingle of the barest bit of static electricity, the feeling easily confused with numbness. Nothing compared to what just leaning on Hitoshi felt like -- But, well, Hitoshi was apparently super-magical, so that probably wasn't the best comparison.

It would take a day to cure and dry, then another day for the sealant, but he was feeling antsy. He wound up putting together the chains the rings would go on before he was able to put himself to bed that night.

The night after, when he painted on the sealant, was even worse. Because the rings were done, right? He had to wait before they could be used in the water… but they were done. He wanted to test them, but he wasn't sure that it was a good idea, or even possible for him to do by himself. 

He needed someone else to try this out with. He probably needed an expert opinion to look over what he'd done, but showing off his work to Ma made him feel like he was just asking to be set up for disappointment. She'd be nice about it, but he had no doubt that she'd find every single flaw in what he'd made.

…Magic could be dangerous. He knew that very well. And he might be reckless, but he wasn't going to give Hitoshi something that might hurt him.

It was with that in mind that he took a deep breath, grabbed the rings, and made for his parent's room. Mom was still downstairs, watching some reality TV show she'd gotten into recently, which was perfect because now was about the time that Ma would be in bed reading.

He knocked on the door and peeked his head in. Moriko blinked up over her reading glasses and smiled at him. He offered a smile that probably looked more like a grimace and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

"So… I have something I want you to look at?" He started, presenting the rings before she could make any assumptions. "I think they're done? I just wanted to make sure that they're all good…"

"Oh , that was fast!" Ma shut her book and drummed her fingers together, even as Denki winced internally. Still, he dropped both rings in her hand when she reached out for them.

He sat on the edge of the bed, flexing his hands in the blankets, not able to bring himself to look at his Ma's expression as she looked over his work. It was a very long minute, Denki's leg was bouncing restlessly by the end of it, but eventually Moriko hummed to herself and said, "Well you couldn't sell this or anything, but this is really not bad for a first go. Good work, bug!"

Denki snapped his head to look at his Ma, who was still peering closely at one of the rings. Good. Good for a first go, though, which meant not actually that good. And there was that other bit.

"What… Do you mean about not selling it?"

Moriko shrugged, "Well I can't find a power limiter on here, which is sort of a no-go for commercial stuff--" Denki immediately flushed deep red. Stupid. Embarrassing. Of all the things he could have forgotten, of course it would be that. Ma continued, unaware of his internal struggle, "--But for personal use? I mean, the materials themselves will stop this from drawing up too much magic, so it should be fine." She finally looked up -- by now Denki had schooled his expression -- and winked at him. "You want to test them out?"

"Uh -- Not…Yet?" If they did that right now, and if the enchantment worked as he'd intended, Ma would find out right away that he was not fine. Though the fact that what he'd made would still work, that the time he'd spent hadn't been for nothing had loosened the tightness in his throat. Thankfully he didn't have to explain further, because Ma said, "I get it, saving it for your mermaid friend."

Denki blushed and accepted the rings, but he didn't deny it.

Denki hadn't been able to fall asleep until late that night, but he still came into the tour office buzzing with energy. 

Today was the day.

Nakagame gave him a tired wave as he pushed open the door and he made his way right over to the counter she was currently behind, leaning over it to peer at the magazine she was leafing through. It had pictures of dolphins in it, whatever it was. Fukukado was next to her, answering emails with an unusually bored expression.

"Hey, could you help me test something?" Denki had been a certified menace in his youth, and anyone who had known him for long enough would be smart to reject him on the spot, but there was a hint of nervousness in his voice that had his co-worker knitting her eyebrows and looking up at him.

"…Depends on what."

Denki pulled the rings out of his pocket, long chains twisting around each other as he dangled them in the air.

"I… Made something to give to Hitoshi. To help with understanding each other. But I want to test it out before I give it to him."

Both women in the room turned to stare at him and he stumbled over his words to defend himself, "Look, it's just. A simple empathy thing right? To know if someone's feeling good or bad. My Ma said it was fine and all, I just. Haven't tested it? And I wanna make sure it works before I hand it over because if it doesn't it'll be embarrassing."

"Uh." Said Nakagame. "…Okay?"

She took the chain he offered her and carefully squinted at it.

"If this is some kind of prank you owe me lunch for the rest of the week."

Denki huffed, fiddling with the necklace still in his hands before pulling it over his head in one swift movement. The metal felt slightly warm against his skin.

"It's not, I promise."

"If you say so."

She stared at the ring for another long moment before sighing and pulling the chain over her own head.

The feeling was subtle. A click of something slotting into place that wasn't there before. It was like a new sense -- there wasn't a lot of information, at first, like how breathing in didn't mean you were focused on all the smells in the air, but if he focused on it…

"Wow." Said Denki, "You're feeling pretty neutral, huh?"

Maybe erring on the side of bad, which was probably her being nervous she was about to get shocked or something.

Nakagame just looked confused. "I mean, I guess. You're feeling… Good and bad?"

"Huh. Excited and nervous, maybe?"

Nakagame shrugged at him, "It's your feelings, man. Is that it?"

Embarrassment was probably bad, right? She could probably feel the change as he nodded at her.

"Like I said, simple." He paused. "Fuck you, though."

Oh, there was a definite shift towards bad. It was a weird sensation, like thinking about what it felt like to feel something, without actually feeling it. Denki waggled his eyebrows, "Now you're offended?"

"Mildly." She pulled the necklace off and tossed it back to Denki, who scrambled to catch it. "I guess that's pretty cool though."

"Yeah." He scratched at the back of his head, "It was kind of a pain in the ass, but I hope it helps."

"…Kaminari." Fukukado was leaning forward in her office chair, hands pressed together over her chin, "You said you made that yourself?"

"…Uh huh."

"And you were planning on giving that to a merfolk?"

Oh, he knew where this was going. He tried his best to look unaffected. "Yeah."

"You know what that's gonna look like, right?"

He swallowed. "I do."

It would look like a courting gift. Denki had thought about it a lot and decided that he was actually in a pretty awesome position. He could offer the necklace to Hitoshi, hope for the best, and when he was inevitably rejected because there was no way the siren could think of him like that, he could just say that he didn't mean it like that; that he was just a stupid human who didn't know what it meant to give a gift, and they could move on and still be friends. It was a serious step up from the classic, 'my flirting is only a joke if you want it to be' trick.

Fukukado broke out into a smile behind her hands, eyes crinkling with how wide it was.

"Just making sure. Good luck, kid!"

Denki's strong front broke as heat rose to his cheeks.

"Y-yeah. Thanks." He cleared his throat, "Anyways, we uh…Better get to work."

Denki couldn't decide if work was passing him by too fast or too slow. The tourists certainly keyed onto his nerves, which meant that when Mina decided to visit, half of the tour was too nervous to approach the edge of the boat as she flipped around in the water and made grabby hands up at them.

He was also pretty sure that she kept calling them all something demeaning, now that he had a little bit more of a handle on mermish, and it finally occurred to him what she was doing: flirting to get free stuff. It worked, but probably not for the reasons she thought it did. Because humans around here didn’t typically announce that they were interested in a relationship by giving a gift -- Denki would be, though. Kind of.

It was probably kind of rude to her, but that's what he explained to the tour group. Thank goodness, they found it funny. It only made Denki's nerves worse, to the point where, as the last group of got off for the day, a middle aged woman, stopped, patted his arm, and told him she thought he was doing great, and to keep going. Because she thought he was new at this, that’s how bad his nerves were. Fucking hell.

He spent the ride back out forcing himself to take deep breaths and calm down, because if he was nervous when Hitoshi put on the necklace the siren would be able to feel the general aura of bad.

Excited! He was excited!

He stopped the engine as he got to the colony and stood up to pace around the deck.

And nervous. He could be both. Feelings were complicated.

He was finally starting to pull himself together when Hitoshi heaved himself out of the water and onto the boat in a now practiced movement, shaking the hair out of his face and languidly stretching in a way that had Denki's heart picking back up. Denki took a breath, smiled, and signed, "Hi."

Hitoshi's answering smile was small, but it was there, and Denki's palms were sweating over it. Don't get your hopes up, he told himself, you're just shooting your shot, same as you would with any attractive person. Only, he didn't tend to spend nearly every day learning a new language from and hanging out with said attractive person, and he certainly didn't tend to wait this long before trying.

He must have been frozen in place for a little too long, because Hitoshi’s smile gave way to a more concerned look as he leaned forward and tilted his head.

"Are you okay?"

Denki nodded, "Yeah I --"

Should he just give it to him now? If it didn't work out the way he wanted it to, he stood to make things very tense and awkward for the rest of the day. But if he waited until later, he might give the wrong impression…

He bit his lip and nodded, "Yeah. I actually made something for you. "

Hitoshi was suddenly very still, face slack with surprise. Denki didn't know what to make of that reaction, so he pushed through it, and reached into his pocket to pull out the rings, looping the chains around his wrist so he could continue to sign. Hitoshi's gaze followed the movement, eyes wide.

"I enchanted them so that you can tell what the person wearing the other one is feeling." Wow, actually explaining what he'd done wasn't really doing him any favors in trying to look casual, was it? "I would wear one, and the other is for you."

He forced himself to still his hands so as not to ramble. The whole 'I thought it could help with learning ' explanation could come after Hitoshi had rejected him -- and he hadn't yet. Actually, the siren was blushing, face slowly darkening to a deep magenta. Denki forced himself to smile and hoped it didn't look too strained. Hopefully that was a good reaction…?

Hitoshi finally moved, flicking his slack-jawed gaze from the rings to Denki's eyes and making a tiny trill that was so high pitched it was almost a squeak. Then he leaned forward, raising one hand as though to take one of the chains before freezing half way and letting out a soft breath. Denki felt his smile waver as the moment drew out, as Hitoshi flicked his aural fins, and then…  Bowed his head. Like -- like he was waiting for Denki to put the necklace on him himself.

Holy shit.

Was he accepting it? Just like that? Hands slightly trembling, Denki reached out and let the chains slide into his hands. Should he just put it on him? Would it be appropriate to cup his face in his hands? Maybe kiss the top of his head? Because Denki really wanted to do those things. He didn't, though. He'd lose all plausible deniability on not knowing what he was doing, and he couldn't be sure he was reading this right, just yet.

The necklace chain was long and fit easily over Hitoshi's head, and Denki had to force himself to pull his hands away and not leave them to linger around the siren's shoulders.

Now Hitoshi reached up fully, carefully taking the ring and turning it over in his fingers like it was something delicate. Jewelry still in hand, the siren raised his head to look at Denki again, expression… Expectant, maybe? How would that feel through the enchantment? Denki supposed it was time to find out.

He took a steadying breath in and pulled his own necklace over his head. That weird little extra sense clicked into place, and when Denki examined it --

Hitoshi was flustered, nervous, happy, giddy, confused -- It was totally overwhelming, way stronger and more specific than it had been when he'd tried it out before work, and Denki involuntarily flinched at just how much it was.

"Sorry." He signed before Hitoshi could get the wrong idea, "It's just stronger than I thought it'd be."

Come to think of it, there might be an obvious reason for that. Denki had gone looking for a source of magic and totally failed to account for the fact that Hitoshi basically was one. Without a power limiter they were probably lucky that the ring didn't explode on the spot -- the fact that the enchantment was simple and had a lot of room to self-adjust was probably doing a lot of heavy lifting.

More important than any of that, though -- Hitoshi had accepted his gift, and was happy about it. Which meant, in theory, that he liked the idea of Denki courting him, which had Denki feeling a little elated himself. He wondered if Hitoshi could feel that from him.

Hitoshi turned the ring over in his fingers again, almost absentmindedly, eyes roaming Denki like he was trying to memorize every detail. Denki was sure he was blushing. So they were courting now? Was that the same as dating? Was Hitoshi expecting something else from him? He didn’t know what, if he was.

"I just realized I don't know what comes after this." He signed, "If you have any advice."

Hitoshi's smile was back. In fact, it seemed like he couldn't get it off his face.

"The next part is mine, if you're willing to wait for it."

Denki nodded, something relaxing in his chest. Because that implied that Hitoshi was planning on doing… Whatever it was he had to do in order to keep this going.

"I can do that ." He signed, before lowering himself down and tilting his head at Hitoshi's tail. Denki wasn't an especially patient person, but he could be, for this. He'd have to be.

Hitoshi huffed a quiet laugh and swung his tail until it swept around Denki, giving him a solid wall of muscle to lean his weight on. The siren's gaze was, as ever, on him, eyes soft, and Denki couldn't help it -- he felt for it and found that, in that moment, Hitoshi was feeling, more than anything else, affection. Denki's stomach filled with butterflies. This was it. This was real. Hitoshi, somehow, liked him back.

They spent a lot of that afternoon getting distracted. One or the other of them would catch themselves smiling, or staring, or their eyes would catch on the ring the other had hanging around their necks, and they would look away, seemingly embarrassed. Actually, Denki knew for sure that Hitoshi was embarrassed, among other things. 

It honestly felt a little invasive, being able to tell exactly what the siren was feeling. It wasn't like you could always control your first reaction to things. He'd have to keep that in mind, not jump to conclusions, and hope that the silver would tarnish and maybe dull the effect a little after all.

There was a slight problem though. When they parted ways that day, he still wasn't totally sure what their actual relationship was. He hadn’t asked and Hitoshi hadn’t specified -- but he was hopeful. Partly because before he left Hitoshi leaned forward and bumped their foreheads together before getting bashful and diving off the boat, and partly because as he drove away, Denki reached for Hitoshi's emotions and found him still feeling giddy. Like a school-girl screaming into a pillow over a crush-level giddy.

Yeah, Denki thought, same.

Weirdly, Denki found that when he stepped onto dry land the enchantment settled back to what it was supposed to be in the first place. He tested it a few times, stepping onto the dock and off again -- Hitoshi was feeling somewhere between nervous and delighted one moment, and a nebulous good and bad the next. There had to be some kind of magical theory tied up in that, right? Something about the ocean, and magic, and how merfolk were tied to it? It was probably for the best. The only other way to deal with being able to feel the siren’s emotions at a whim would be to take off the necklace, which he could do, only Hitoshi hadn't, yet, and Denki wasn't sure if it would be considered rude or not.

He was pretty sure he didn't want that kind of access to Hitoshi's emotions 24/7; he knew he'd overthink things if he had it. He was already going to overthink things anyways.

He wound up texting his boss 'hey, so do you happen to have any tips on courting a siren??'

He got back first a string of emojis, then 'omg omg, congrats. cant believe I know who hes courting before anyone else lmao.' Followed by 'also just follow your heart :D'

Unhelpful. As was his Ma, who kept asking him how the merfolk thing went, even after he said good . The person he probably needed to talk to the most right now was actually Izuku, because if he visited land and talked to other humans, then he probably had a good idea of what Denki didn't know and might be able to give him some advice. Only, it had been well over a week since he'd last seen the green mer, and he didn't have a way to get in contact with him, short of asking Hitoshi. He'd do it, if he had to, but Denki did not particularly want to say 'hey, I need to ask someone else for advice on how to date you.'

He did not see Izuku for a few days yet, and Hitoshi always led their meetings with an apologetic, “Sorry, It’s not ready yet.”

Denki had said he’d wait, and he was, but it was sort of agonizing. There was no one else he could ask who knew about this, as far as he knew, and no way to get in contact with the person who might know.

Eventually he did have some luck, because after a few days of torture he went out only for Izuku to be the first one to haul himself aboard with no warning at all.

"Oh, dude hey!" He greeted, "How've you been?"

Izuku responded with a smile that was definitely smaller and more nervous than he was used to seeing on him.

"Oh you know. Busy. Uhm --" The mer ducked his head, "Actually I wasn't going to stay today either, I just came to let you know that Hitoshi was going to be a little late? And I guess to wish you congratulations?"

Denki wondered if those two things were related. Hitoshi was feeling pretty nervous, which was a weird thing to be able to tell without being able to see the siren at all. If Izuku was wishing him congratulations , though…

Denki looked down to hide his own shy smile.

"Thanks. I actually kinda wanted to ask you about stuff? Like --" He laughed weakly, "I gave him a gift right? I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now. And I don't want to like, offend him or hurt his feelings because of something I don't know, you know?"

Izuku gave him a long, considering look, brows slightly furrowed.

"…I guess that depends. What are you trying to get out of this, exactly?"

Well that was kind of a weird question. Why did anyone date (...Court?) anyone? He blushed and tried to steer himself towards his more innocent answers.

"I mean I just… Like him, you know? And I like spending time with him, and I know I don't know a lot about him, but I like what I know so far, and I want to know more--" He was so much worse about rambling when he didn’t have to think so hard about what his hands were doing. "And he makes me feel--" A lot of things, "--good. And I think it'd be nice if I could make him feel the same?"

Something in that vomit of words made Izuku's expression relax, but the mer took a long moment to think, tracing the deck of the ship with one finger as he did.

"Well a lot of normal courting stuff isn't really possible because you're so… Different." He said haltingly "So you're going to have to just figure it out as you go. But relationships between humans and mer can work, just…" Izuku trailed off, face twisting uncomfortably.

"Just…?" Denki prompted hesitantly. Izuku sighed.

"Just don't expect too much from him?" The mer winced, "I mean, do, from your relationship, I'm sure that'll go great. But don't uh -- use him. Not that I think you're going to, it's just that when it comes to humans and magic… And Hitoshi's is…"

Oh, Denki hadn't even thought about that. He waved he hands around in a signless gesture that might well have been interpreted as oh hell no, absolutely the fuck not .

"No way dude, I'm not interested in magic like that at all. Like, I'm really shit at it, to be honest. Plus I'm pretty sure that if I tried anything funny Hitoshi could take care of himself."

Izuku chuckled mirthlessly, "He told me the same thing. Just… Don't hurt him, alright?"

"I won't." He promised. He hoped he could keep it.

Izuku gave him a serious nod, and then totally blindsided him.

"Do you have a phone?"

"…Yes?" Huh?  "I don't have service out here or anything, though…"

"I could give you my number if you have more questions,” The mer cleared his throat, “since you seem pretty serious about this…"

Wait, wait, wait. Izuku was offering him his…?

"You have a phone?" Denki blurted. Izuku flushed and held up his hands.

"Only sometimes!" The mer waved his hands in front of his face, "So I might not be the most responsive, but… Yeah, I do."

He must have had something for when he went on land. That was surprisingly modern of him.

Denki pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the contacts screen, handing it over to the mer who handled it like he knew what he was doing . Because he did, apparently, what the fuck?

"Okay." Izuku huffed and handed the device back, "I have to go, but you have that at least. And… Denki?"

Oh no, what else?

"Yeah?"

"If you hurt him I'll… Hurt you, okay?"

Ah, an un-confident shovel-talk pinned to the end of the conversation. Denki knew he meant it, too.

"Understood."

He nodded as seriously as he could when he kind of wanted to burst into laughter. Izuku fixed him with a determined look and nodded back, before waving and pulling himself back over the railing and into the water.

Denki let out a long breath, let himself chuckle a little, and found a seat on deck crossing his legs and looking up at the sky for a long few minutes. It was beautiful weather, mostly cloudy with occasional breaks that let stunning beams of light through to gleam off the ocean. He tried very hard to focus on that, and not the fact that somewhere below him, Hitoshi was growing more and more nervous. Anticipating something. His heart rate picked up and Denki tried to drag his thoughts away. Izuku had a phone! How wild was that! And Hitoshi was--

A splash.

Hitoshi was at the side of the boat and on his way up, thank goodness. Denki wasn't sure how much more of that he would have been able to take.

Denki didn't need an enchantment to tell the siren was nervous. He didn't quite meet Denki's eyes, instead looking down at the woven kelp bag he had over one shoulder. Denki wasn't sure why, but he got back on his feet, heart hammering. This could still go wrong --

"Sorry it took me so long." Hitoshi signed at him, raising his eyes to meet Denki's. Yeah, definitely nervous, "I wanted to get it right. I made something for you."

Denki found himself gaping as Hitoshi reached into the bag and pulled out a short, thick, string of beads. He didn't recognize the material, but they were some kind of pale green stone, irregular shapes intricately carved with a pattern of whorls that united it into one pattern. It was kind of amazing.

Bracelet. His mind supplied. Bracelet that Hitoshi made for me. If he had declared that he wanted to court Hitoshi by giving him something, was this Hitoshi declaring it back? He really hoped so.

He reached out for it only to stop mid-movement once his mind caught up to him. When he had given Hitoshi his ring the siren had let him put it on him, so maybe he should do the same? He held out his arm straight, instead, and Hitoshi smiled.

There was something reminiscent of the first time they touched in the way Hitoshi moved to tie the bracelet around his wrist, the way he was so careful and gentle about it, fingers just barely there on his skin where he held Denki's arm in place.

Was it okay to be a blushing mess in front of the siren you were courting? In front of the siren, who was courting you?

It must be, because Hitoshi was flushed pink, too. He still had Denki's arm in his grip, even though the bracelet was tied on snugly now.

Saying you were lost in each others eyes was sort of a stupid cliché, but it had always been true when it came to Hitoshi. For once, Denki felt no need to tear himself away. He could stand there and stare forever and not mind at all.

Denki flinched as a warm drop of water hit his arm.

Rain. He realized dryly, Of course, what a good omen.

It was a summer sun-shower, and probably wouldn't last for more than a few minutes but Denki still tugged at Hitoshi's arm to coax him under the awning that covered the middle of the boat. The siren seemed totally taken aback by this development, tail twitching every time a droplet of rain landed on it. He was all-too willing to follow Denki to cover -- though the awning wasn't that big, and most of the floor-space beneath it was taken up by seats and the window to the water. Most of Hitoshi's tail wound up awkwardly curled around Denki's legs as they sat more-or-less shoulder to shoulder, looking out as the weather picked up.

Hitoshi nudged him, and Denki looked over.

"I've never been above the water when this happens." The siren signed, "It's weird. And loud."

"I like it." Denki replied, "It's relaxing."

Hitoshi hummed and leaned in closer, a slight smirk playing on his lips. It would have been easy to fall back into the moment they were just in, but Denki kind of wanted to do more. To lean in and--

Would it be okay, now? To kiss him? He wanted to, he wanted to really badly, but Denki couldn't risk doing it without knowing what it meant. He licked his lips.

"Could you show me the word for what we are now?"

Hitoshi's smirk softened to a more genuine smile, and if Denki wasn't totally wrong about everything they'd just done, the interlocking and twisting of fingers Hitoshi showed him was the sign for courting.

He mimed it for a moment, before asking, "Is there a sign for touching lips?"

Hitoshi looked a little surprised at that, but he showed him -- the sign for kissing was actually a lot like the sign for courting, but with the tips of two fingers instead of the interlocking of four. Denki took a measured breath.

"Is kissing a courting or a friendly thing for mer?"

Hitoshi sat up a little straighter, at that. For some reason he looked like he really had to think about his answer.

"It's friendly here. But it's courting where I was before." Hitoshi moved his hands slowly, " …How is it for humans?"

…Where he was before? It made sense for Hitoshi not to have been from this colony, if he knew a language that no one else did; Denki just hadn't ever thought about it that hard before. And he would continue not to think that hard about it yet, as he signed, "It's courting for us." And then "I'd like to do it, if that's okay."

There was a bare moment of hesitation before Hitoshi nodded, leaning even closer. Denki's heart was now lodged somewhere in his throat as he reached out and settled his hands on Hitoshi's shoulders. The siren, unsure what to do with his, eventually decided to settle them on Denki's waist. Which -- yeah. That was good.

Then Denki leaned forward and --

Well, there was a thing about kissing and magic. They were certainly tied together in some way, what with the amount of stories that featured one as a way to seal a pact or break a curse. Denki had expected it to taste like fish when they kissed, or salt water, if he was lucky, and that was still there, but far and above that, when Denki kissed Hitoshi, he tasted like magic. That same feeling he got when touching Hitoshi was ten times stronger like this, and it felt like it was in his bones.

If even a fraction of this was what had sailors jumping into the water when sailors heard sirens sing, Denki wouldn't blame them. He was feeling a little light headed from what amounted to a chaste peck on the lips, he couldn't imagine what it would be like if Hitoshi was actually trying to use that on purpose.

He pulled away, one hand coming up to brush over still tingling lips.

"Oh, wow." He said mostly to himself. Hitoshi heard though, and chirped a questioning note. The siren looked contemplative, and a little like he didn't quite get it. Which was fair, Hitoshi's experience probably hadn't been anywhere close to what Denki just been through.

He hesitated. Was this what Izuku had been warning him about when he'd been talking about getting overwhelmed by magic? It wasn't as though it felt bad, he was just more aware how much of it there was. Was that what merfolk normally felt when they were around Hitoshi? The feeling that he could, at any time, totally control them? Was that what made them uncomfortable?

Denki made the snap decision that he didn’t care. Hitoshi was just as capable of hurting him with his claws as he was with his magic, and if he wasn't bothered by that, he wouldn't be by this, either.

"There's more to it than that." He signed to the siren, "If you want."

Hitoshi's nod was eager, and when Denki leaned forward and brushed their lips together again, he was more prepared for how it would feel. This time he cupped Hitoshi's jaw, and the siren followed his cue, tilting his head so that Denki could deepen this kiss. After a moment Hitoshi hummed a small sound and pulled them closer, one clawed hand migrating from Denki's waist to the small of his back.

Around them, the rain stopped, sun shining through to warm the deck of the ship, not that either of them noticed.

Yeah, Denki thought as the siren sighed into his mouth, I think he gets it now.

Denki was a fidgeter.

He drummed his fingers on things. He jiggled his leg. If he wore jewelry he was bound to fiddle with it.

The bracelet was one thing -- he'd shown it off proudly to everyone who'd asked, feeling a little like a woman in a movie who was showing off an engagement ring. It wasn't that serious, of course. Though once Denki had that thought it wouldn't leave him alone until he’d texted Izuku and confirmed that courting was roughly equivalent to dating. Not even exclusive dating, which meant that if Denki had been born a merfolk he probably would have been a master craftsman by now, what with the amount of people he asked out on a regular basis. Only, it was also more important than that, because while you could court and be courted by more than one person at once, it wasn't something that was really considered casual. It wasn't something you did for fun, it was something you did because you wanted to see if it would go somewhere.

Denki was maybe a little intimidated by what he'd gotten himself into, but not enough to make him back out. He liked Hitoshi, liked spending time with him, it was just hard to see where else they could go . But if Hitoshi was courting him back, hopefully he had something in mind?

(There was a whole courting process, he'd learned from the long rambling text he got back. One he largely wouldn't be able to participate in on account of not being able to breathe underwater. So, there was that, too).

But, the bracelet.

The irregular shape of the stones made for sort of the perfect thing to keep his hands occupied. He often found himself turning the beads over in his fingers, tracing the carvings as he shifted but never managed to quite break the patterns they made. It was both beautiful and great for keeping his hands occupied.

The ring, though, was something else. Denki felt like he'd made the chain too long -- it swung around as he moved, unless he kept it tucked under his shirt, and it was constantly warm where it rested against his skin. Those small distractions to say nothing of the new magical sense he had nestled in the back of his head. Even while he was at home, knowing if Hitoshi was feeling good or bad was only ever a thought away, and it got worse than that. In his unending quest to find something to do with his hands, Denki quickly discovered that if he put the ring on, the feelings got a little closer to the way they felt when he was on the ocean. Not quite as bad, but he could get a rough impression of what he figured must be whatever emotion Hitoshi was feeling the most.

He tried not to. It felt a lot like an invasion of privacy. But sometimes he didn't think about it. Sometimes the ring just found its way into his hands and onto one finger, because that’s where rings were supposed to go. And most of the time it was fine, just a, oh Hitoshi is feeling smug about something right now or oh, he's bored. And then there was the time that it wasn't.

Denki felt pretty lucky that he was alone in his room when it happened. He was draped over his bed, watching a video (enchanting searches had led him to enchanted item restoration videos, which were weirdly relaxing), and he found his fingers messing with the chain that the ring was on. It just… Slipped over a finger, as rings were wont to do.

As soon as the feeling hit him, Denki ripped the ring off, face burning.

Hitoshi was horny.

Which was, you know, probably not something Hitoshi just wanted him randomly knowing at 10pm on a Saturday evening. Yet there it was, and now that Denki knew, he couldn't not know.

Denki was not the best at distracting himself from thinking unwanted thoughts. Especially when they weren't exactly as unwanted as he was pretending. Because, see, Denki hadn't really felt motivated to do anything much since the whole dropping out of college thing. But now, confronted with the feeling, he couldn't help but realize that it had been a while.

He took a long moment to just… Consider. Puzzle out feelings. Make sure his body wasn't reacting to Hitoshi's feelings instead of his own. He was pretty sure that he had, at least a little, but now the interest was firmly rooted in the idea that maybe, possibly, somewhere out in the ocean, Hitoshi was thinking of him.

It wasn't that weird, right? They were sort of dating, and Hitoshi must have seen something in him to pique his interest. And conversely, that meant if Denki had a fantasy or two of his own, that it was perfectly normal.

As for his object of interest being a merfolk, well…Hitoshi hadn't been too off the mark when he'd commented on humans having a reputation. That internet existed. Merfolk had a whole genre, if a little niche, and while Denki had never gone specifically looking for it (it felt kind of weird, his job being what it was) he knew a thing or two about what to expect. And now here he was, blushing, half-hard, and alone in his bedroom with a head full of thoughts about an attractive siren. The conclusion was obvious, at least to him.

Denki rubbed a hand over the bulge in his sweatpants and bit his lip. He was kind of stupidly sensitive, considering that literally nothing had happened, but Denki chose not to think about why that might be right now and instead decided to do something about it. Starting with getting up and locking the door, because Denki was a man who was used to living without much privacy and would take what he could get. Then he made his way back to bed and laid back with a long sigh.

There really wasn't a need to do anything fancy. Denki had always had an active imagination, and in this case that was more than enough. Hitoshi was attractive enough on his own, the thought of the siren fixing him with that dark gaze, maybe twisting that long tail around him to pin his legs in place was-- Yeah. Good. Denki pushed his waistband down and muffled a sigh as his cock sprang free. For right now, the fantasy was more than enough. Hitoshi would nip at him -- gently, because he had sharp teeth -- but hard enough to leave a mark. Multiple marks, hopefully. Maybe on his hips. Maybe on his thighs. Just the thought of what Hitoshi might look like looking up at him was enough to have heat pooling in the pit of his stomach. The siren was always so careful not to hurt him, but the idea of him losing control, just a little, just enough to leave bruises was very, very tantalizing.

Denki's hand sped up without conscious thought. Was Hitoshi doing the same right now, out in some private stretch of ocean? Denki was a little too far gone to think too hard about his previous misgivings as he slid the ring over his pinky finger to check. The visceral sense of satisfaction that washed over him was enough to have Denki biting back a groan and coming himself in a few more strokes.

Well that answered that question. As he closed his eyes and leaned back, Denki couldn't help but wonder just how mutual that had been -- if Hitoshi had maybe been feeling what he had, too. He had to admit, he didn't hate the idea of Hitoshi checking up on him in the same way, at least not in this context.

…Denki would have to make sure the ring stayed off his fingers until they'd talked about it though. He wasn't sure how he'd handle being surprised like that somewhere else.

Denki didn't worry much about his fantasies making anything weird, because they weren't really anything new. The fact that he had acted on them was, as was the distant possibility of them coming true, but if he was good at one thing it was going with the flow in a potential relationship. He'd made a lot of friends that way!

Whatever Hitoshi had been up to didn't seem to bother him much either, he flopped his tail across Denki's legs and without any preamble asked Denki to tell him about human foods. Which turned out to be harder than he'd expected, not because he had difficulty describing it, but because he didn't even know where to start . He ended up focusing on things that he was sure didn't have underwater equivalents -- Denki wasn't sure he'd managed to accurately portray the glory of fried food, but halfway through his explanation of ice-cream Hitoshi hesitantly raised his hands and asked, "Could you talk while you sign? "

Denki paused. Blinked.

"You mean out loud? In my language?"

Hitoshi nodded, though he looked a little bit flustered.

"You're learning mine. It's only fair."

It took a moment for what he meant to really register in Denki's mind, and when it did Denki's jaw dropped.

"You want to learn…"   Denki wasn't sure what the sign for Japanese was, if one even existed, but he'd signed enough to get his surprise across.

"A lot of mer do." Hitoshi could have passed for nonchalant, if he wasn't keeping his eyes averted to somewhere around Denki's chest. "There's classes and everything. I've never bothered before. I didn't think there would be a point."

Left implied was the fact that Hitoshi now did see a point, and that really the only catalyst for that was Denki. An overwhelmingly fond feeling crept coiled it's way into Denki's chest, and he couldn't help but smile. Was this how Hitoshi had felt when Denki had declared he wanted to learn sign? It was no wonder he had agreed to teach him if it was anything close.

"I can try." He said out loud -- slowly, because he was trying to sign at the same time. That… Was really hard, actually. Even with just those words his signs were a lot more hesitant. Though maybe that wasn't the worst thing, because Hitoshi was now staring at him very intently.

The siren narrowed his eyes, tilted his head just a bit, and opened his mouth.

"Try." Hitoshi repeated. He made the sign for it, too, and much more confidently than Denki had.

Up till now the only human sounding noise Denki had heard Hitoshi make was his name, and that was still far and away his favorite but wow. He really hoped Hitoshi kept up with this whole learning Japanese thing, because his human speaking voice was really nice. All low and rumbly and -- Well, something to think about later, for sure.

"Yeah." Denki agreed, and prayed that the siren wouldn't comment on the fact that his own voice was a little strangled, "I -- We can try."

He signed as he did it, and Hitoshi grinned at him in response, and if he did one more cute thing Denki was probably going to explode on the spot.

He took a measured breath and tucked his hair behind his ears instead, because the other option was burying his face in Hitoshi's tail and screaming.

"So." He smiled back, "Human food."

Denki talked and signed for maybe an hour -- constantly discovering new troubles all the while. Like when he would use the wrong sign for the word he'd just said. Or the constant discovery of more new words that didn't have merfolk signs, and that he didn't know the JSL signs for. He resolved to brush up on that when he went home.

Denki didn't learn half as many new signs as he usually did, but after some fake math he figured it was fine. Hitoshi was learning stuff too, so the total amount of things learned was still the same. And they were both getting better as they went -- Denki firmly fixing common words into his muscle memory while Hitoshi quietly repeated them. Ordinarily they would have gone for longer, but something had Hitoshi's attention snapping to the side of the boat.

Denki had no idea what had drawn the siren's attention at first. Whatever it was had him hissing, and when Denki reached out for his emotions, to try and see what that even meant, he was a little shocked to find that Hitoshi was embarrassed. Which was a feeling that seemed totally at odds with the way the siren had curled his tail around him protectively.

First, there was a decidedly provocative trill. One Denki didn't recognize. Then a splash, and then he finally spotted the pair of webbed hands that had grabbed onto the railing.

"Um?" Denki said out loud, only to be ignored as Hitoshi bared his teeth and hissed something that sounded rude. And Denki should know, he counted at least two confirmed curse words.

The merfolk that pulled herself up looked totally unconcerned with Hitoshi's attitude, and in a show of incredible upper body strength, stayed balanced on the rail as she shot back with a playful wink and a response that somehow only had Hitoshi bristling even more. Denki was pretty sure that he recognized her, in that he'd seen her sort of around. She had a short, almost dolphin-like tail, with scales so dark purple that they bordered on black, except for the tips of her fins where they faded to a dusty pink, and hair long enough to keep her modest, if she wanted it to. Which she didn't seem to.

She clicked her tongue and turned to look at Denki.

"Sorry to interrupt you lovebirds, but I had to come see who our little Hitoshi was so enamored with." She said in slightly accented Japanese. She licked at her lips in a way that was almost cartoonish. "I have to say he picked pretty well! You are a cute one."

"Thanks?" Denki was a little too confused to feel flattered. And then he abruptly realized that he had never actually met this merfolk before, so he put his hand on his chest and bowed his head and said, "Uh - Denki. By the way."

"Oh , he's polite too! Nemuri." She leaned forward, only to lean right back with a roll of her eyes as Hitoshi hissed at her, "Well I'm not going to keep you if it's going to be like that. Just wanted to make sure you were being safe but, well..." She grinned at some private joke, sharp teeth poking at her bottom lip, "Humans are quite resilient, and very good at figuring things out, no?"

Denki felt like he had lost the plot at some point during the last sentence. As he gaped, she shook her head and looked back at Hitoshi. Whatever she said to him had Hitoshi sitting straight up and blushing deep pink. 

It occurred to Denki that he wasn't the one Hitoshi was embarrassed of.

Nemuri laughed raucously before shaking her head in amusement.

"Sorry, sorry, I just had to know. I'll leave you be. But --" She winked at Denki again, "If things don't work out, give me a call, won't you?"

She didn't wait for an answer before pushing herself off the side and splashing back into the water. Beside him, Hitoshi had sunk to the the deck, covering his still pink face with his hands. It took significant nudging from Denki before he uncovered his eyes.

"Who was that? " Denki signed.

Hitoshi's answer?

"The worst."