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Hajime and Tooru finally come to an agreement.
They don’t talk about where Tooru comes from. They don’t talk about what happened that day at the riverbed. And they don’t talk about Tooru’s holes.
“Why does a brute like you even need to know? Were you planning on selling me to science? Are you going to dump me on the doorstep of some sushi bar so they can cut up my beautiful tail? I should have known better than to be deceived by such a big bad wolf!”
Cutting the bunny ears thin enough is always the trickiest part. Hajime grunts in irritation as his knife slips against the apple peel. “You’ve known me since you were an ugly little tadpole. Do you ever stop talking?”
“Mermaids sing, Iwa-chan. Isn’t that what they teach you in fairy tales?” Tooru has delicate green gills at his neck that ripple extravagantly when he’s in a mood, floating like seaweed underwater, like Tooru never left the waves at all to come winter in the large bathtub in Hajime’s home. “I’m singing for you right now, and you should appreciate me more by cutting me more apple slices, thank you very much.”
Mermaids were rare, but not unheard of — they mostly kept to themselves, their scents prickly green and briny with the salt of the deep sea, never sweet enough even in heat to entice an alpha from the shores except for the most foolhardy. Which would, Hajime thinks with some annoyance, make him the fool in this particular case.
But the thing is: he likes listening to Tooru talk. It’s like holding a seashell up to your ear. It’s the sound of the waves washing up against what he’s always known as home.
He slides the plate of apple slices over, each apple bunny ear carved with the meticulous care of a man completely ensnared. He might be a fool, but he’s not stupid — a well-fed Tooru is a subdued Tooru, and growing up along the shores of Tooru’s sea he’s long since accepted his fate at Tooru’s sharp, clawed hands.
“Thank you, Iwa-chan! I always knew you cared!”
Tooru smiles happily with all of his teeth, the front row, and the back row, and the special row of microscopic hooked razors that spring up from under the fleshy pink of his tongue ready to drag an unsuspecting man’s heart into the cavern of his mouth, and Hajime wonders for the third time today what he’s going to do about Tooru’s holes.
*
Tooru has five holes.
There’s the obvious ones — his smiling mouth, his vestigial blowhole. Mermaids have a full set of lungs and breathe primarily from the mouth, so a blowhole is nothing more than a way for Tooru to duck his face underwater and blow bubbles when he’s feeling showy. “Mermaids don’t have a gag reflex,” Tooru had smirked, a little too proud. He had let Hajime see his blowhole once, lifting the soft brown wave of his hair to expose the way it glistened wet and open against the pale blue of his nape. The thin skin fluttered with each shallow breath with such mesmerising rhythm, a tiny sea flower unfurling in the winter air, that Hajime had a thumb dipping in before he knew what he was doing, the warm wet skin sucking his finger in instantly. Tooru had shivered pleasantly against the rough calluses of Hajime’s thumb pressing inside him, breath hitching as if Hajime had wrapped his hands around that pale throat. Hajime had not forgotten.
The scent that wafts from these holes is sunlight on the shallows, warm and briny and ever changing in moods, a memory of the sea carried inland on a faraway wind — mermaids don’t have scent glands in their necks.
The third is less obvious but it keeps Hajime awake at night. Nestled between the upper fins of Tooru’s powerful tail is the main scent gland and Tooru’s— there’s two, inside. Hajime remembers the heavy weight of them that first and only time, the change in sea season and land season too confusing for Tooru’s cycle. It was nothing like his own. Too cool and too hot all at once, the two slick pale blue cocks had become too wet to be held even in both of his hands, but Tooru had trashed so piteously in the bathtub, pleading alpha, alpha, please so keenly his song rattled the bathroom windows, that Hajime had pushed him down into the water, let Tooru hit the back of his throat as he swallowed the entirety of the sea down in one long held breath. I’ll show you no gag reflex, huh.
Hajime had expected Tooru to taste strong and salty, fishy even, but the slick that drained in rivers down his throat was fresh and clear and sweetest here, and Hajime’s alpha instincts of harder, harder, more, mine, thundered in his chest so violently he thought he was going to drown. Tooru was delicious. He wanted more. He wanted to claim everything that Tooru was and the want of it made him see a strange, frightening red.
The fourth hole was tucked right under. But Tooru has never had a full heat, has never produced any roe.
The fifth hole— Hajime doesn’t know. How can he not know? They’ve been together for so long so how can he not know? He’s pored through books and dug around online with the quiet desperation of a man who knows his search algorithm is going to be forever changed, but there are as many species of mermaids as there are fish. And Tooru won’t tell him.
Just wait until my real heat comes, Iwa-chan! No need to be so impatient!
Tooru winks at him. Hajime thinks about the difference in taste between saltwater and freshwater, and swallows wetly.
*
Hajime has never had delusions about what he is — the alpha of a small pack he won through silly high school games, grey tufted fur tucked in behind his ears and eyeteeth the only telltale sign of his wolf lineage. Most people were like him, with Tooru being the exception. But then, Tooru was always exceptional.
“Iwa-chan, I think— please—”
The bathroom isn’t very big. There’s nowhere to run but Hajime isn’t a coward. Just a fool.
“What do you need?” It’s a fight to keep his voice steady. Tooru’s scent is the crash of the entire sea spilling into his chest. Salt, green water, dead fish rotting under the sun into something unnamable and sweet, so sweet he thinks he’s going to lose his mind.
“You, alpha,” Tooru hisses between the third set of teeth. Someone asking for a favour should maybe ask more nicely, is the thought halfway to Hajime’s brain and an amused snort, before he notices the green gills flaring menacingly, the pile of delicate orange roe running down the side of the bathtub.
They smell salty and delicious. He wants to put Tooru in his mouth.
“Come here, Iwa-chan, be nice, be good to me, you’re always so good to me, be good to me now—”
Just follow your instincts, they say. But what if your instincts are bad?
The water is freezing cold. Inside Tooru is fever hot. Clawed hands pull Hajime close, strip him of his clothes in a daze of dizzying thoughts and all he can think of is how he should be the one taking care of Tooru through his heat, how he should be the good alpha and see things through. But Tooru just smells so good this close, like Hajime has walked into the mystery of the sea and drowned all reason, doing whatever Tooru wants like he always has, following his lead like they’re children again, and all the need in Hajime thrums blood-thick with smell more, touch more, swallow more, fuck more, Tooru, more—
His nose is pressed against Tooru’s cheek and he breathes deep and it’s just light shallows and Tooru and It’s okay, it’s okay, I got you, Tooru, the slide of Hajime’s engorged knot pressed so deep and thick inside Tooru that he can feel the bulge rubbing against him under the thin blue scales. Tooru keens in his ear, and his instincts go red all over again as Tooru’s two dicks spill milky and sweet in between them, his tail wrapped around them so tight it’s like Tooru wants to crack Hajime’s bones right down to the sweet marrow.
Hajime thinks he could fuck Tooru forever if he let him. “Is my knot good for you, is that what you want, do you want—”
“I want you here, alpha.”
Tooru’s hole is gushing so much slick that when he pushes Hajime away, his knot slides out without a hitch, and the surprise of it is like ice water in his face. Orange roe is spilling from Tooru and he’s panting and shivering so much with each translucent globe that falls into the water, that everything seems to freeze into the feeling of a normal day. This is just like any other day with Hajime cutting apple slices, and he reaches out the gentlest hand to steady Tooru in his bewilderment.
It takes only two tugs from Tooru’s hand for Hajime to come all over the fresh pile of eggs in the bathtub.
“It would have been nice to have apple slices, Iwa-chan,” Tooru murmurs as he licks up the cum that has spilled in excess between his fingers. It’s so wildly erotic that all Hajime can do is stare, mind blanking. Is Tooru hungry? But Tooru is always hungry. And everything is so wet and sweet now.
“But my alpha is always so good to me, isn’t he,” Tooru breathes as he presses into Hajime’s side. The eggs are secured carefully in the curl of Tooru’s tail. It’s beautiful. Everything about Tooru has always been beautiful, but Hajime doesn’t know when he last said it. Thinking is hard with the air thick and full with the relaxing scent Tooru is letting out, the sweet, playful pull of a riptide before it sweeps Hajime’s heart completely to sea.
“You’re beautiful,” Hajime says for sure this time, and it’s like the entire weight of the sea is pressing on his brain when remembers that he still doesn’t know what to do about all of Tooru’s holes. The slick tail. The fluttering blowhole. The sharp mouth he’s always known to watch for. The—
“My Iwa-chan is the best alpha,” Tooru smiles as he presses his front row of teeth into Hajime’s belly. “My mate, mine.” Mermaids mate and bond differently. Mermaids don’t have scent glands in their necks. So what smells so strongly of copper and salt now?
Oh.
It should hurt but maybe that was just Tooru, too, exceptional in all things including this.
Blood wells up in the hole that Tooru’s teeth dig out from Hajime’s soft belly, the slide of his hands almost gentle as he pulls the skin taut while he takes another bite, like he’s taking his time unwrapping a gift. The hooked teeth keeps the meat open and Hajime watches as if through mist as Tooru laps lovingly at the blood that pools there. It feels… nice. Is this how it feels to have someone pressing so deeply inside you? Mates shares everything. It feels almost better than Tooru’s heat, the gentle tongue lapping, the electric shivers every time he runs over a raw nerve. The red feeling surges as Tooru eats deeper, digging, digging into the fat, the hole getting bigger.
Tooru looks so happy. The red gore smeared across his chin clashes with the pale blue of his throat, and Hajime wants to kiss him clean. “Iwa-chan is better than apple slices!”
An alpha provides, so Hajime can only grunt in agreement.