Chapter Text
This close to shore, each breeze carried echoes of seafoam, its salty kiss a balm to Jayce’s sweating skin.
He’d spent the afternoon in the forge, working out his frustrations over the latest failed experiment. Barely a week into underwater trials, and early results were so offensively unpromising he’d been tempted to scrap his submersible prototype altogether.
The trouble was, as always, the power source. Depletion or destabilization—a curse of premature material under pressure. Waste heat, dirty energy, and a system nonviable.
Jayce shut his eyes against the setting sun. The grease under his nails was still warm, but the ocean wind was cool.
He budged off his shoes and left them near the top of wooden steps lining a familiar path to the beach. It was short work to navigate down the slope; in his youth, he’d made this trek near-daily.
When he reached the shallow tide, he rolled up pant legs and burrowed ankles into wet, moving sand. Jayce sighed and felt tension melt from his body with each pulling wave.
His family’s estate was not the wealthiest by Piltovan standards, but they had advantages of heritage—enough to lay claim over one of the modest micro-islands splintering off the western coast. One end of the isle was home to the Talis Forge; the other, to him and his mother, in a chateau overlooking endless blue.
Jayce loved the sea. For all that he was not a sailor, he still felt an inseverable connection. How could he not, when it had been the sea that saved him so many years ago?
The memory remained vivid as reality—a storm like gods’ fury and a ship cored by knifing waves, iron innards spilling into black waters, taking Jayce and his mother with it. Crushing currents and unrelenting darkness, the frigid flavor of drowning. And then, like a break in the surf—the grasp of something solid, shielding against the beating torrent—a pause in perpetual motion.
Jayce remembers staring into the face of salvation. The moon-pale glory of it, with alien shape yet near-painful beauty; an impossible brightness at midnight, a gentle embrace in the tempest. A creature with eyes as gold as anvil sparks had pressed a glowing stone into Jayce’s waterlogged palms, and suddenly he could breathe.
They’d been borne to land with unnatural speed and relinquished just as abruptly. Afterward, holding tight to his shivering mother, Jayce caught sight only of an opaline tail flicking back into inky water.
If not for the sapphire, he might’ve allowed memory to blur into dream. But despite his mother’s insistence otherwise, the evidence of something more than miracle lay in the indigo rock embedded in his wrist-strap.
Jayce thumbed absently at the arcane sigil etched into its center. Since that night, he’d made a habit of venturing to these shores whenever he needed peace. The stone’s weight against his pulse-point was a comforting reminder of sanctuary.
And—of possibility. He never lost hope of one day meeting again the sea-being that rescued him. Sometimes he’d catch glimpses of iridescence and allow himself to imagine it was something other than the sparkle of cresting waves.
Speaking of, right then—there was an unusual shine, disrupting the hot-orange of molten horizon. Jayce bent and deftly scooped it from the undertow.
He found a pearl, small but substantially dense, a perfect milky sphere. Jayce held it to the dying light and admired the way it shifted silvery-pink in hue.
His lucky day—pearls like these were valuable, highly so. Jayce counted himself fortunate that they seemed to have a penchant for washing up on Talis beaches. Over the years, he’d collected a small hoard that funded his scientific pursuits far beyond what the family hammer business would have afforded.
Just another sea-blessing of many. Jayce touched the pearl to his lips in gratitude before pocketing it. As he dislodged himself from the sand and made to head back home, he thought he caught glitter in the corner of his eye.
But he didn’t stay to seek more treasures. He wasn’t a greedy man, after all.
~
A whale-length away, nestled between shadowy cragrock, the creature with golden eyes pursed his lips in a frown.
With a graceful twist of light-tipped fingers, he coaxed a wave to push the cluster of pearls closer to the sandbank. When the brown-man failed to take notice, turned fully away and shrinking in sight with every step, his expression fell into a full pout.
Brown-man, to Viktor’s continued chagrin, was dismally unobservant. But this was forgivable, because he was very handsome.
Viktor huffed and slid back into the tides with nary a ripple. The gulls could pilfer the rest; those pearls were about as useful as scale-sheds to him. Which is to say, not at all—though he had it on good authority they were worth quite a lot to humans.
(He’d trust a pirate-king’s judgment of value, if anything.)
But the onset of evening signaled his need to return home. Viktor tightened his woven kelp-sack, laden with the day’s scavenges, and slung it across his torso. The clink of metal parts against shell startled a group of minnows that had been sheltering among his finlets; Viktor winced apologetically as they scattered.
He shimmied out from under ribs of rock and jetted into the open waters, carving a smooth line towards the southern bay, where warmer currents sustained a kaleidoscopic forest of reefs. In dim twilight he cast no shadow, but he still managed to cause a disturbance for one particular mantis shrimp.
“Mother,” the striped crustacean unlocked his hefty, part-robotic body and swiveled a beady eye to regard Viktor testily. “You—frightened—my—prey.”
Viktor glanced dubiously at a traumatized family of clownfish cowering in an anemone bloom. “I don’t think I was their cause for terror.”
He received a ring of bubbles to the face and a tsk that burbled through the voice modulator’s baleen grate in a way Viktor always found endearing. “What—tidings—do—you—bring—mother.”
“Only the fattest scallops for you,” Viktor untied his bag and produced a handful of loot. “And I found new springs, Blitz! I can upgrade your claw. Of course, I’ll have to make some adjustments to the release chamber to ensure the components are compatible, but—”
Blitzcrank the mantis shrimp gamely listened to his adoptive parent’s energetic musings as he launched himself off the coral ledge, through Viktor’s gesturing arms, and onto the oceanid’s sternum. He scuttled down the expanse of his front, Viktor rolling easily to accommodate him, until he could curl against a softly sunken stomach.
It was, objectively, the best part of Viktor to lounge upon. The rest of him was either too spindly, frilly, or sensitive, or overly wriggly when talking about science.
Which was usually their topic of conversation, except when it involved—”Your—human,” Blitz interrupted the beginnings of a rant about sprockets. “Did—you—visit—him—today.”
“-and I don’t even know why they’d be lubricated! Oh,” Viktor blinked, unhanding an extremely dizzy scallop. “Yes, I did. It was nice.”
“Hm.” Blitzcrank made sure to deliver this as monotonously as possible. “Did—you—finally—introduce—yourself.”
Viktor’s hair-tendrils tinted pink. “Of course not,” he made an admirable impression of a pufferfish. “I’m a monster! And, he’s not my human—”
“The—pirate—did—not—think—you—a—monster,” Blitzcrank reminded as he put that scallop out of its misery with a precise punch.
“That’s an exception,” Viktor lamented, patting the mantis shrimp’s multicolored tail while he feasted. “Pirates are criminals, and criminals are open-minded. It’s why they’re so good at breaking the law.”
Then he sighed a little dreamily, propelling them forward with whimsical twirls of tail. “But the brown-man is no criminal. He works hard on his science and is certainly very clever, with those inventions of his. Although, eh, perhaps a bit egotistical, given that he’d signed every page of the notes I found—what a shame he’d tossed them! They were quite intriguing. Anyways, it is a minor character flaw. Surely his good qualities outweigh—”
Blitzcrank had a maw-full of mollusk-flesh, so it was truly impressive that he was able to intelligibly cough out “stalker” in between chews.
“Iamnotastalker,” Viktor protested in a scandalized rush. “I’m simply a—patron of scientific discovery. A champion of scholarly pursuit! As a fellow inventor—oh, stop laughing, Blitz—”
“Heh—heh—heh,” Blitzcrank reiterated, making grabby-claws for another snack. “You—should—talk—to—him.”
Viktor gave him the remaining haul. “That could only lead to disaster,” he said sensibly. “I will not risk scaring him off. Better to keep a distance.”
They lapsed into a comfortable silence while Blitzcrank finished his meal, floating lazily with the rising tide. Around them, nocturnal routines yawned awake with the moon’s ascent, starbursts of bioluminescence blinking to life in an underwater galaxy. Viktor’s own fanning fins were trimmed in quartz light along their ruffled edges, billowing about him like ghostly veils; his gill-stalks, unfurling from the base of his skull, glowed vibrant violet.
Blitzcrank would challenge any human to behold Viktor and find him anything less than beautiful. He made the very picture of a moonbathing siren, from those tomes of land-legends Viktor had painstakingly preserved and read to him in their grotto, when Blitzcrank was but a young fry.
Unfortunately, humans often confused the marvelous with monstrous, the mantis shrimp thought mulishly. Viktor’s excessive caution was not entirely unwarranted.
(They’d learned that lesson the hard way years ago, from a certain wolf-marked admiral. Viktor still bore the scars.)
Clicking his mandibles perfunctorily, Blitzcrank discarded his shells and climbed into a pocket of Viktor’s rucksack not currently occupied by machine parts. Viktor cradled his bundle to his chest and swam them swiftly the rest of the way home.
Their dwelling was sheltered within a labyrinthine system of underwater caves tunneling deep below the island—which itself was the carcass of an ancient volcano long gone dormant. Its myriad stalagmite-studded chambers were well-suited to Viktor’s collecting and tinkering, providing ample space to house a veritable treasure trove of mechanisms, tools, trinkets, and other motley bounty—the spoils of shipwrecks and things lost to sea.
Blitazcrank teased him for being somewhat of a hoarder, but Viktor fancied he just had a discerning eye for what was useful. Not his fault humans tended to dump an absurd amount of useful things into the ocean.
He detoured to his workshop to drop off the day’s catch of cogs and coils, noting that his jar of axle grease was running low. He’d have to skim a little from the runoff of the factories dotting Piltover’s coast, soon.
Viktor grimaced. He had a love-hate relationship with those docks. They were awfully polluted, but also rife with the most interesting of plunders. Without their contributions, many of Viktor’s more sophisticated designs would be impossible to execute. Blitzcrank’s punch-claw, for one, had been fashioned from the scraps of a dissected surgical automaton.
“You’ve gotten so big, Blitz,” Viktor observed with fondness, and the mantis shrimp poked his head out proudly. “You’ll be as long as my arm, soon.”
“I—gain—mass,” Blitzcrank’s arm-motor whirred to pose his claw in a flex. “I—grow—strong.”
“My strong boy,” Viktor concurred with a grin, and then spun them through a winding pass into their nesting quarters. “Whose bedtime is far past.”
“Yes.” Blitzcrank wriggled from the pouch when they arrived at the kelp-beds, making a beeline for his favorite algae patch. “Time—to—power—down.”
However, he fixed Viktor with a keen stare as the mer tucked a blanket of sea-ferns over him. “You—did—not—discharge—yet.”
“Ah,” Viktor tied two small fronds together around Blitzcrank’s little shrimp head as a nightcap. “I’ll attend to that later. I want to finish some work first.”
“You—will—be—defenseless,” Blitzcrank protested, as he always did. “I—must—protect—you.”
And Viktor countered, as he always did, “There’s no one in these caves but us, Blitz. Just rest.”
“Hm.” While the foregone conclusion of this specific argument was dissatisfying, the crustacean was already drooping with lethargy. Viktor smiled, heart-soft, and pressed a kiss to his carapace.
“Goodnight, Blitzcrank,” he murmured.
After he ensured the other was asleep, he glided from the room, pulling a partition of sea whips closed behind him. There was a stack of partially-deciphered alchemic texts calling his name.
For the past decade, Viktor made a devoted study of runic science, insights unearthed from archaic stone tablets scattered across the ocean floor—remnants of dead civilizations, their wisdom buried by time.
He sought answers to quandaries that had plagued him since he could remember—the root of which being, what was he?
In all his travels, he’d never encountered one such as himself. If only he’d been simply part man, part fish—but the merrow clans of the north found him foreign, and none of the merfolk tribes in the south could claim him.
The reasons as to why were apparent. His tail was a sea serpent’s, long and slender, yet his fins were wide, flaring ribbons of silk-skin akin to a battle-fish’s. He had the claws of a predator, but the teeth of a herbivore; his limbs were colorless as sun-bleached coral, but his scales were firestones. His crown grew both the plumage of anemone and the rami of water dogs, yet the pattern of amethyst splotches spilling from shoulders to spine was of a texture not unlike tortoise-shell.
A chimera of mismatched parts, belonging nowhere. And that was to speak only of the physical differences. Viktor flexed a hand. How the waves eagerly responded to his call was—unnatural.
Had he even been born, or was he perhaps made? And if the latter, why was he crafted so monstrously? Were there others like him? Was he truly alone?
Viktor hugged his arms to himself. No, better not to dwell on that particular possibility. His people were out there, somewhere—he needed only to unravel the secrets of the runes, solve the puzzle of his existence, and hope he was not sorely mistaken.
The next hours were spent poring over his slabs, the rhythmic clicking of his translation cypher a meditative drone muffled in water. As usual, every new rune he decoded revealed a dozen unfamiliar arrangements, scuttling their meaning and leaving him with incomplete, if not wholly inaccurate, interpretations.
Viktor sighed, frustrated but unsurprised. He was missing crucial data. There was only so much the sea could give him.
He needed to go to land, to walk among humans and learn from their scholars and scientists. So much of the ocean’s offerings were man’s discards; he yearned to get at the source. A whole world above was waiting to be discovered, if only he could access it.
And to do that—he needed legs. Viktor glared in consternation at his tail, lopsided from old injuries and rather functionally impractical, being too flashy for stealth, too skinny for strength, and too flouncy for speed.
“You are an affront to evolution,” he scolded his bottom half, and immediately got a cramp.
Viktor hissed and pressed a palm to his lower belly, feeling the firmness of the swell there. He’d lost track of time, and his pearls had grown overlarge.
Of his many faults, the one that earned him haranguing from Blitzcrank was a bad habit of neglecting his own needs. Specifically, this tedious task of expelling his unfertilized eggs, which amberized into heavy pearls, on a monthly cycle.
(The biological purpose of which still eluded him—why must he manually eject them? Why couldn’t they just dissolve or liquify instead of turning into cumbersome mini-bezoars that risked him becoming eggbound on a regular basis? His body was so stupid.)
Nevertheless, he ought to tend himself posthaste, lest he incur Blitzcrank’s special brand of metronomic disapproval. Being lectured by his own child in 4/4 time was a mortifying exercise.
He spared a moment to reorganize his workstation before heading toward a coterie of cozier caverns. These hollows, higher in elevation, benefitted from their positioning near the steam-powered forge mantling part of the island.
While Viktor scorned the toxic emissions from Piltover’s factories, he rather appreciated the byproducts of this foundry—and not just because it belonged to the brown-man. The technological merits of the forge’s design stood on their own; an industrial site that worked with its environment, not against it.
Below the hearth, seawater was pulled into long, man-made channels constructed in an upward-climbing spiral, where it underwent treatment that simultaneously desalinated and purified, allowing it to be utilized for cooling metal. Viktor marveled at the ingenuity and engineering feat.
But the best part was the drainage. Filtered free of chemicals, it flowed back into natural corridors underground, flooding them with hot, clean freshwater. In these caves, fed on humid air and emanating warmth, a cornucopia of fungi flourished—vivid bluecaps and nightlights, glowing dragoneggs and lush trumpets—buffeted by fluffy weavemoss and mergrass.
Altogether, they made for an exceedingly comfortable nesting zone, so Viktor made good use of it as such. Here, the ground was more pearl than sand.
(Though it may be more accurate to liken this place to an especially cushy bank. After all, Viktor basically withdrew from it whenever he wanted to float the brown-man a few, and he was technically about to make a deposit.
Blitzcrank would think him very lame indeed if he ever heard this analogy.)
Viktor shook his head. He was stalling, and his pearls had already set for too long. They’d be uncomfortable to extract, but Viktor had dealt with worse.
He settled himself against moss-cushioned rock, and got to work.
~
Jayce couldn’t sleep for the life of him.
His mind spun with racing thoughts of his dysfunctional prototype. When he shut his eyes, he saw melting math and crooked calculations. He was probably close to pulling a muscle with how stiffly he was lying in bed.
Screw it. Maybe hitting something repeatedly with a hammer will knock him out. He wouldn’t normally do this at such an unholy hour, but—desperate times.
A short motorbike ride later and Jayce was stripping to his undershirt, considering a row of non-uniform iron ores. Call it unorthodox, but beating scrap metal into a perfect cube was his preferred method of meditation. He selected his piece, plucked his favorite hammer, and was about to get started when an unexpected noise gave him pause.
The forge’s industrial bellows were inoperational overnight, and in the hearth were only sleeping embers. Nothing should sound besides Jayce’s own movements. Perhaps there was a trespasser.
“Hello?” Jayce squinted into the dark, tightening his grip on his hammer. “Anybody there?”
Empty quiet in response. But then—a faint, shuddering note, the foundry’s metal chassis warping it into a ghostly echo.
Jayce’s palms started to sweat. The likelihood of a forge being haunted was low, but never zero.
He cursed under his breath and set down his tools—on second thought, he kept the hammer. That noise seemed to have come from below, where the cooling systems fed into the inner chamber’s water jacket. It was an area of the understructure that he, admittedly, neglected in terms of maintenance, but only because it was designed to be self-sufficient.
But that meant security breaches were more likely to go undetected in those parts. Hopefully whoever—or whatever—had gotten in there was simply lost and not malignant. Jayce was a dab hand with a hammer, but his technique was rather untested when it came to combat.
Moving as silently as possible, Jayce descended the utility corridor to the flow-basins, scanning for signs of disturbance. Periodically, those indiscernible tones would haunt the halls, raising the hairs on Jayce’s arm each time. There was a quality about the sounds that was decidedly inhuman; Jayce gainfully refused to examine that thought further.
As he crept down the stairs to the lowest levels, he noticed a hazy illumination bleeding through the grates in the floor. Jayce knelt to examine the still waters below, taking a careful, measured whiff in case of chemical contamination. There was no scent, except a tinge of something strangely sweet.
Jayce frowned. The hydrocooling system drained safely into the cave networks, but perhaps there was an obstruction causing backflow. Either luminescence or odor could signal the presence of fungal spores; given such a rich food source, it was only a matter of time before wildlife came to investigate. Maybe an animal had gotten injured?
Committed to that line of reasoning and thus made significantly more confident, Jayce determined he’d rescue whatever poor creature was stuck in the bowels of his forge. Plus, it was a good opportunity to audit the apparent gaps in the infrastructure. He was being heroic and productive; Papa would’ve been proud.
Something closer to a whimper warbled through the grates, and Jayce sped up his steps. As he pathed deeper, the glow shone brighter, and the sounds became clearer—a mournful yet oddly melodic lowing. By the time he reached the final drain-wall, he could hear it distinctly for what it was—sobbing.
Jayce’s heart-rate quickened. God, there was a person down here? How long had they been trapped? He sprinted to the last exterior grate and pried it open efficiently with the tapered peen of his hammer.
The hole in the rockwall was just large enough for Jayce to squeeze through. Uncaring of the flow-water dampening his clothes, he made a single-minded scramble for the light at the end of the—fortunately shallow—tunnel. He emerged atop a slippery outcrop and abruptly froze at the sight.
It looked to be some kind of subterranean lagoon, doused in dreamy ambiance from a tapestry of cavern fungus. Warm-orange torchstalks and plummy chanterelles framed a wide pool of glacier-clear water, glittering from an exuberance of pearls glutting its depths. But it wasn’t the mystical scenery that made Jayce’s breath catch in his throat.
Banked at the far end of turquoise waters, amidst a bed of twining sea-vines, lay an angel in the throes of miserable passion. Marble skin with jewel veins and star freckles; oceanic filigree in shades of flaring iridescence, splayed like wings across stone. A riot of mosaic scales cascading toward—oh—a marvelous tail, the color of shattered prisms and buried treasure, thrashing like a snared beast.
Jayce’s mesmerized gaze held him hostage to each excruciating detail—how the core of this being flowered open betwixt fluttering, lace-fine fins, and how the moist, plump flesh revealed was tinted an erotic ultramarine. How slender fingers plunged frantically within, nectar overspilling, the sounds lush and obscene. A dainty, rolling wrist and thin arms, another hand cupping a heaving, charmingly-slight breast tipped in blue. Jayce tracked helplessly up piano-key ribs and porcelain collarbones, to an arching, elegant neck splitting a halo of wavy white hair, then a delicate jaw, aristocratic nose, and tear-streaked cheekbones that could cut glass. And finally—eyes, golden eyes, the very ones ensnaring Jayce’s dreams for years.
Eyes that were wide and unblinking, staring right back at him in shock.
“Oh my god,” Jayce’s voice cracked magnificently. He clumsily tried to get to his feet, forgetting that he was still clutching his hammer in a death-grip. He clocked his own shin with the hammer-head, yelped like a kicked dog, and slipped from the ledge.
The creature gasped, and a tall wave surged up from nowhere. Jayce barely remembered to pinch his nose as it swept him from the fall, sending him head over heels. He braced for impact.
Luckily, he was instead floated gently to ground-level and deposited onto a soft bed of purple toadstools. He coughed out water and flopped onto his back, trying to catch his breath.
His vision became eclipsed by light. The golden-eyed creature peered at him from upside-down, in equal parts curiosity and concern.
“Are you alright?” it asked, with a voice that could doom sailors.
“Oh my god,” Jayce said again. In response, the creature frowned and pressed one cool palm to Jayce’s forehead.
“I didn’t think you hit your head, but perhaps this is a reaction to the spores? I have never studied their effects on humans before,” its brow furrowed further as fingertips traced, light as raindrops, down to Jayce’s pulse.
“No, I’m, uh—” Jayce manfully recovered his words. “I’m okay! You caught me in time. Thank you.”
“Ah,” and did he imagine that blush? “Very good, then.”
The creature pulled back and Jayce mourned the loss. As he sat up, he noticed the other recoil slightly at the sight of his hammer.
He hastily shoved it away, but underestimated his own strength. Jayce watched in despair as his best hammer skidded off the rock-bank and into the pool with a pathetic, echoing ‘plop.’
A pair of sunset eyes regarded him in bemusement. Jayce sighed, “I meant to do that.”
He was rewarded with a short exhale that may have been the start of a chuckle, before it cut off with a wince. The creature clutched at its middle, a grimace twisting its lovely features. Jayce then noticed the prominent bulge distending its upper pelvic area.
“Hey, are you alright?” he shuffled forward on his knees, hands held open placatingly. “I know I probably, uh—interrupted something. But that doesn’t look so good.”
The creature whimpered, and then immediately looked like it wished it hadn’t. “I will, ah. Admit to being in a bit of a situation.”
By now, Jayce was definitely too close for propriety, henning over the other in worry. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Another unbidden whine, half-choked. Doleful golden eyes. “It’s my own fault. My pearls, they’re—too large, and I can’t get them out. I tried, but—I can’t get deep enough.”
It glared down at its fingers. Jayce glanced at his own. Yup, they were bigger.
“I can try,” he offered, slowly connecting the dots as to what he’d witnessed and what he was now being told.
The creature eyed him wearily. “You do not have to,” it insisted. “This can be—messy business.”
Something in the darkest, most embarrassing corners of Jayce’s psyche vibrated awake and stood at attention at those words. He gulped. “I don’t mind.”
Its expression was still dubious, so Jayce cleared his throat and got his shit together. “Hey, it’s okay,” he shifted more fully into personal space, deliberately telegraphing his movements, and was encouraged by how the creature’s body language began to soften. “I’m gonna take care of you, I promise.”
This time, the whimper didn’t seem caused by pain. “Alright,” a quiet voice and angel-eyes tinged with the barest hope. “I trust you.”
Jayce felt as if warmed by a hearth. “Lay down where it’s comfortable. Can I put my hands on you?”
The creature nodded shyly, then shimmied backwards until the upper half of its long tail surfaced from water. “Is this sufficient?”
“You’re perfect,” Jayce said honestly, and carefully wrapped his hands around its diminutive waist, swallowing thickly at how his thumbs and middle fingers kissed at its center. “I’m just gonna massage a bit here. Tell me if anything hurts, okay?”
“Okay,” the pretty thing echoed obediently, locked onto Jayce’s motions with wide eyes.
Jayce pressed with gentle intention down the slim line of its navel, stroking up its flank and rolling his knuckles into the soft, giving dips of its pelvic region. The creature sighed in content, its cheeks dusted periwinkle, as Jayce lightly petted its taut bump.
“You’re so warm,” it murmured, like Jayce’s mere body temperature was worthy of praise. The scientist in him spared a second to wonder about ocean-dwellers and cold-bloodedness; the man in him focused on much more important matters.
“I’m going to touch lower,” Jayce repositioned himself so that he was straddling the creature’s tail, pausing for permission.
“Yes,” effusive nodding and hands tucked neatly against décolletage, as if to keep them out of the way. “Please.”
Jayce fought demons not to groan aloud, and then promptly lost that battle when the creature opened for him.
Layers of dainty fins parted like drawing curtains, exposing the treasure at its center. A gorgeous blue cunt, with multiple sets of smooth, plush folds flushed sapphire in arousal. Its scalloped lips sheltered a wet, clenching hole, and an enticingly fat clit crowned the whole affair.
“Oh my god,” Jayce squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as his mouth flooded with saliva and all the blood in his body rushed south.
When he opened them, the creature was gnawing its bottom lip anxiously. “Is it ugly?”
Jayce shot upright. “I need you to know,” he impressed upon the other with grave solemnity. “That you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The full-body shiver that elicited reverberated right back into Jayce, sat upon its tail as he was. “Oh,” the creature whispered weakly. “Thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Jayce said, dead serious. “Literally. Maybe to an inappropriate extent, actually. Tell me to stop.”
“No, don’t stop,” the creature quickly rebutted, seeming appalled at the suggestion. “You can—can you go inside?”
Jayce made a noise like a deflating balloon and then got with the program. “I will. But first…”
He brushed the calloused pads of his fingers along his partner's folds, drawing a shuddering moan. Taking a leap of faith, he bent to press a light kiss to the swollen nub up top, and the creature gasped.
“So warm,” it hissed, but its eyes were glazed with pleasure. “Please, again.”
Jayce would’ve killed himself before he refused. Emboldened, he parted its ruffled labia and buried his face in its sex, dragging the flat of his tongue along the length of a damp slit to envelope that precious blue clit in his mouth, enjoying the sweet taste and lilting keen his actions earned.
“Oh, oh, oh,” the creature was chanting, enchantingly. Jayce teased its hole with tongue and fingertips, and then he slowly inserted just his thumb, testing the waters.
The sensation was addictively alien—sticky-wet and vise-tight, yet cool and glassy in texture. The creature smelled fresh, like a seabreeze after storm, and had an inexplicably sweet flavor that Jayce was desperate to drink his fill of.
“I’m adding more fingers,” he said huskily. “If it hurts, or if you want me to go slower—tell me. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I’m not fragile,” the other granted him a small smile. “Give me more.”
“As you wish,” Jayce sealed it with a kiss to velvet scales.
Then he pressed two fingers in at once, slow and steady, and was squeezed tight in welcome. As he pumped them in-out, he laved attention all over that blooming vulva with his mouth, while the being it belonged to babbled its gratification freely.
“You’re so warm, so good,” it chattered in its pleasing, low-tide tenor, artful mouth sensually agape as moans overflowed like floodwaters. “Please, please, more.”
“You’re greedy,” Jayce came up for air, delighted. The creature just moaned harder, long and shameless, and flexed its hips off the floor, chasing Jayce’s tongue.
“More,” it reiterated demandingly.
Jayce found its imperiousness adorable. He added another finger, splaying three apart on the inside and spreading that gooey hole wide.
The creature all but melted. Jayce reached up to capture both of its wrists in one hand, and it hiccuped in anticipation.
“Why don’t you play with your pretty tits for me, sweetheart,” Jayce rasped, fingering its perfect cunt in earnest. The creature thrashed its head, overwhelmed with sensation, but dutifully let Jayce guide its trembling hands to its own breasts, holding on for dear life.
Keeping pace, Jayce slipped his pinky in on the next thrust, finding it so slick-loose it barely registered. A good sign—so he tucked his thumb into the hollow of his palm after another few shallow pumps, and then pulled all the way out.
Jayce hushed the resultant whine. “Don’t pout, baby. I’m gonna give you the whole thing.”
“Now,” the creature ordered, eyes wild. Oh, Jayce was in love.
He brought all fingertips to a point, creating a tapered shape with his hand, and brought it to the entrance of fucked-open, ocean-blue pussy. There was more than enough slick to ease the way, but Jayce screwed in carefully regardless, watching his partner’s flushed face for any signs of pain.
All he received was a guttural groan as the widest part of his hand finally bullied inside. The rest followed suit almost too quickly, in a smooth, lewd slide straight to the core.
The sight of his entire hand swallowed by that hungry hole was literally stunning. Jayce momentarily lost access to executive functioning, so hard he hurt.
He realized belatedly that he’d been grinding his aching bulge against the tail he was riding. The other didn’t seem to mind the indiscretion at all; if anything, it curled upward to provide a better curve for Jayce to use.
“Earlier, you were trying to cum, weren’t you,” Jayce said lowly, remembering those skinny hands and their desperate, ineffectual jerking. The creature whined piteously now, a gush of sweet slick escaping its overstuffed cunt.
“When I orgasm, the muscle contractions,” it explained breathily, hypnotizing with its golden gaze. “They help the pearls move.”
“But that didn’t work this time?” Jayce prodded, twisting his fist slowly, rocking in soft and steady.
“Noo,” half-mewl, half-sob. “Too big.”
Then it displaced one palm to cup Jayce’s cheek, tracing the corner of his lips with a clawed thumb. “You’ll have to open me up, deep inside. Take them out. Please.”
Jayce turned his face into the touch and kissed its palm tenderly. “I will, don’t worry. Just relax for me.”
And then he helped it do so, by lunging down to clamp his lips around its defenseless clit, and sucking fervently as he fucked his fist in further than ever before.
The creature screamed, aglow with ecstasy, and squirted generously all over Jayce’s face and arm. Jayce moaned with abandon as he was doused in salty-sweet pleasure, drinking it down eagerly. He fucked his partner through a shaking climax, punching out helpless, hitching gasps as it came down from its high.
Utterly boneless, leaking lilac, and looking like all of Jayce’s wet dreams come to life—god, but what a vision of perfection. Jayce voiced his thoughts aloud.
“No,” the other protested, flustered yet clearly flattered. “I’m really not. You’re the one that’s—oh…”
It trailed off, equally captivated by Jayce’s amorous expression. They stared at each other stupidly, sharing a sex-drunk daze, hazel on gold.
Jayce chanced a glance down to where they intersected, the bronze skin of his well-muscled arm piercing into throbbing blue. There was another bulge protruding from the creature’s middle now, one formed by its body submitting to Jayce’s fist. He laid his other hand on top, struck by the realization that the only thing separating them was a thin layer of the creature’s stretched, giving flesh.
Said creature practically purred as Jayce rubbed him from inside and out simultaneously, languishing in the lull of their activity. Jayce figured this was as good an opportunity as any to finally introduce himself.
“Hi,” he said, like he hadn’t spent the past half-hour fist-fucking someone so beautiful he might actually perish from the privilege. “I’m Jayce.”
“Jayce,” and the way that seaglass voice caressed his name got him higher than any drug. “That’s very good, Jayce.”
“Yeah,” Jayce said emptily, utterly stunlocked by the devastating feeling of tight, infinite wet around his wrist. “It’s—it’s so good.”
He received possibly the most indulgent smile to ever grace anyone’s face, and Jayce wondered nonsensically if perhaps this being was part catfish.
“Jayce,” it repeated like a spell. “Keep going.”
The creature could have ordered Jayce to commit grand larceny and he would’ve carried it out without question at this point. Being asked to pleasure something so gorgeous it was possibly divine was certainly no chore at all.
“I’m gonna reach deep inside you,” Jayce wasn’t saying this to be sexy, but to simply describe what he’d be doing next. It came out sounding obscene anyways.
Luckily, they were more or less on the same wavelength. “Yes, to my cervix,” the other instructed matter-of-factly. “It should have loosened by now, but you’ll still have to stretch it.”
Jayce locked in. “Okay. I’ll go slow. You gotta tell me—”
“If it hurts,” the creature finished for him impatiently. “Hurry, Jayce.”
He was a man of action, at the end of the day. Jayce carefully flattened his fingers inside that squirming cunt and slowly drilled forward, fucking well past his wrist until he bumped into a spongy barrier. His partner’s breath caught, so Jayce held off.
But—“don’t stop,” commanded with flashing eyes and bared teeth. “It hurts good.”
Jayce got light-headed but dutifully soldiered on. “I’m gonna open you up, sweetheart. You wanna hold onto me?”
The creature practically snatched Jayce’s free hand into its own, joining them atop its tensing belly. “Keep going.”
Jayce obliged, circling that puffy vertex with his fingertips, feeling out its shape, before dipping his index finger into hypersensitive flesh. The creature squeezed him at every point they were connected, its entire body holding him close. Jayce softened its cervix with a single finger at first, then added another, scissoring them as much as he could. Submerged past the mid-point of his forearm, he quickly knocked into something very firm.
The creature gasped, back arching like it couldn’t decide whether it wanted to buck away or hitch closer. “That’s it, Jayce,” it encouraged, bringing Jayce’s other hand to press on top of its bump. “My pearls.”
“You’ll need to push,” Jayce worked three fingers in to their knuckles. “I can hold you open.”
“Yes, good,” the creature was panting, expression tight with concentration. Jayce rubbed its stomach and applied a few comforting licks to its clit, fucking its cervix tenderly all the while. “I’ll push now.”
“I’ve got you,” Jayce soothed, stroking him everywhere he could reach. He felt his partner’s pulsing inner sphincter, so thoroughly plied and stretched, mouth at him with increasing fervor. The creature keened, its entire form tense with effort, as it bore down magnificently onto Jayce’s hand.
The sensation of a cold, heavy pearl compressing the ramp of Jayce’s fingers was a hard-earned victory. Another agonized groan, another flexing push, while Jayce plunged smoothly forward in sync. For a sparse second, when the widest part of the pearl forced its unyielding way past that tight ring of muscle, the pressure was so dizzyingly immense that Jayce felt he would be the one to break.
Then, finally, the pearl popped through, sliding smoothly onto Jayce’s palm. He could barely celebrate, however, as the creature’s cunt clamped so fiercely down onto Jayce’s arm at that moment, his hand actually went a bit numb—his shout of surprise was drowned by a ringing wail from his partner, sounding utterly wrecked as it was dragged into a sudden, violent orgasm.
“Oh fuck, fuck,” Jayce squeezed his eyes shut, as the expression of absolute, tormented pleasure on that lovely face would’ve tipped him over the edge. He raised off his knees so he wasn’t pressed against that sinuous, rolling tail. He was probably crushing the poor thing’s bird-bone hand in his own.
“Jayce! Jayce, ah, please,” the creature was begging, soaked in tears and slick. “Please, please, take it!”
Pulling together his frayed nerves, so turned on he might be slightly delirious, Jayce groaned helplessly as he curled his fist around that slippery bulb and slowly, painstakingly extracted his hand from the other's deepest place. Thick, opaque slick the color of thistle blooms coated his arm, a string of it connecting them still, as if that cunt couldn’t bear to part from him completely. Jayce was desperate for a taste—so he brought the pearl to his mouth and licked the honey-like cum from its surface hungrily.
The creature made a punched-out noise, bright gold gaze affixed on the movement of Jayce’s lips and tongue. When Jayce made eye contact, it shivered and covered its face with its mobile gill-stalks.
Charmed by the creature’s bashfulness even after having half a man’s arm thoroughly drilled into it, Jayce gently took one of its hands into his own and returned the pearl to its owner. The other didn’t resist, but still seemed perplexed by the gesture, peeking back at Jayce as if wordlessly asking what it was meant to do with such a thing.
Jayce studied the large pearl, the size of a chicken egg and perfectly round, in swirling shades of milky pastels—a tiny globe held in the palm of divinity. The longer Jayce stared, the more its beauty became simultaneously more otherworldly and yet—familiar.
There was an undeniable resemblance to the pearls he’d been scavenging from Talis beach since his Academy days. The same peculiar sheen, the uncommon heft of it—and the fact that these pearls, supremely rare elsewhere, tended to wash ashore here frequently enough.
Perhaps because the very organism that produced them claimed these waters as home territory. Perhaps because that organism was actually an ethereally exquisite being that lived below the island all along—that nested here in these forge-warmed caves, burdened with the pleasurable task of expelling the pearls from its—
“Holy shit,” Jayce whispered. He thought of the moleskine pouch hidden beneath the false bottom of his desk drawer, plump with those uniquely-marbled treasures that maybe couldn’t be called pearls at all, given where they came from. Oh god, literally.
The creature had no idea that Jayce’s brain had melted from an internal monologue that was now just record-scratching variations on the phrase—pussypearls, pussy. pearls. pearls from the pussy ohmygod, that’s so hot, whatthefuck—on repeat, so it tugged primly on the hem of Jayce’s undershirt, come untucked from their vigorous activity, to remind him that, “There are still many more.”
“Guh,” Jayce said. The creature nodded patiently, somehow achieving a picture of poise despite its flushed skin and the liquid evidence of ecstasy splashed in lewd patterns across its front.
“Yes,” it encouraged, carelessly discarding a pearl that was probably worth an entire Academy tuition and grabbing instead onto Jayce’s wrist. It guided Jayce’s hand back to its swollen sex and arched up imploringly, rubbing fat blue folds against Jayce’s limp fingers. “Please?”
Not even temporary insanity could resist that call. Jayce cleared his head of cotton, stat. “Okay, yeah—yes, here we go,” he scrambled to get back in position, sinking his fist easily into the familiar wet clutch of the other’s body. “How many more, d’you think?”
His partner hummed. “Usually there are around a dozen.”
Jayce fought to keep the unhinged level of eagerness he felt off his face. “Are you gonna come every time?”
“Oh,” the creature hesitated, brows pinching in worry. “I can try—not to?”
“No!” Jayce said much too quickly and loudly, and the other blinked at his outburst. “No, come a lot! I mean, come every—uh, come as much as you want! As many times as you want.”
“Okay,” the creature said, nonplussed and agreeable as ever. So Jayce shoved right past his own bumbling and into his partner’s womb.
The resultant choked-off gurgle was gratifying enough; having his free hand captured in a bony grasp and planted on a shivering breast was simply overkill. Jayce was not complaining, though.
He squeezed the little mound of flesh and felt an answering squeeze from the responsive cunt hugging on his other arm. Tweaking a pudgy, dusk-blue nipple awarded him with another pulsing clench and a sharp gasp of pleasure.
“I’m going to push now,” the creature warned, gaze half-lidded and molten. It was still drawing Jayce’s hand over its chest, using the appendage to tease its sensitive tits. Jayce was only too happy to oblige.
He swirled his inserted hand around his partner’s cervix, loosening that inner hole until another pearl budged up against him. This time, with a mighty push, two pearls dropped along with another river of lilac slick. Jayce slurped it up as he gently pulled the pearls from a convulsing cunt, kissing from clit to navel and back again.
There was a ragged, desperate edge to the creature’s moans now. It pressed breast and cunt to each of Jayce’s hands, begging with both word and body, “Again, Jayce, please.”
He may as well have been puppeteered, with how immediately he returned to task. Diving into that raw, forbidden depth was becoming familiar, and that thought was a power rush in itself. He found the cervix so quickly that the creature wasn’t even finished shuddering through the final waves of its last orgasm when Jayce had coaxed another clutch of pearls onto his fingertips.
“Good to go again?” he asked, peppering his partner’s mound with kisses, brushing his thumb over a hardened nipple, gentling. The creature whined through its teeth and nodded frantically, already gushing wetness.
“I’m coming,” it announced rather unnecessarily, as it pushed and squirted and squealed, and more pearls fell.
“Doing so good, sweetheart,” Jayce murmured soothingly, lapping at its soaked clit as he plopped this set of pearls next to the others in a damp pile amongst the weavemoss. By his count, they should be about halfway through. “Just a few more rounds.”
The creature exhaled a tortured moan, ribs heaving with its gulping breaths. “Ohh…”
But it screwed its face in concentration and went right back to pushing. Jayce barely got his hand inside in time to catch the next batch of pearls, drenched in so much slick he couldn’t get a grip on all of them. The ones he missed crested between undulating midnight folds, hatching erotically onto a cradle of flared fins.
And Jayce felt such a sudden, intense need to put his mouth on there, he would’ve worried he’d become possessed if he hadn't long made peace with his degenerate tendencies. He kissed open-mouthed and sloppy at that thoroughly-plundered pussy, sucking in as much labia as he could fit at once. He hoped that the copious sticky-wet smearing all over his face and neck was the creature’s juices and not blood from his own nose; he was so unbelievably aroused.
While Jayce ate happily away, the creature was reduced to a sobbing, twitching mess. It abandoned its efforts to direct Jayce’s hands and merely laid there in overstimulated defeat, tears running past its temples to water its hair. Jayce fucked his fist back in and ceased his enthusiastic groping in favor of rubbing the much-diminished bump in his partner’s stomach.
“I’ll help you push,” Jayce managed to pant out, as reluctant as he was to part even a second from that addictive cunt. “Just one more, baby. Push for me, one more time.”
The creature cracked one bleary golden eye open and nodded feebly. It took a few false starts, but with one last, shaking heave, Jayce pressing down and twisting up inside in tandem, the remaining pearls plunged free.
“Jayce!” hearing his name sung in such shattered ecstasy was too much. Moving with a madman’s focus, Jayce opened the front of his pants and allowed his rock-hard prick to spring free. The creature gasped at the sight, its pupils dilating in an instant—Jayce wondered if it had ever seen a cock so large and red, so vulgar and monstrous with arousal. Those gold, gold eyes tracked him hungrily as Jayce gripped himself with both hands, pearls long forgotten, suspended at the edge of pleasure.
“Please, I need to cum,” he was the one begging now, and those liquid eyes got even brighter. “Can I cum? Oh god, please.”
The creature surged forward and grabbed Jayce’s hips, drawing him up the line of its body until the man’s engorged rod was positioned at the apex of its fucked-open hole. “Do it here,” it urged, ruinously eager, its sensual mouth panting in anticipation. “Come on me, Jayce.”
It was more than enough. “Fuuckk,” Jayce moaned as he practically erupted, spilling hot, thick ropes of cum over his own sweaty hands and his partner’s perfect pussy. The creature echoed him, seemingly enraptured by the sight and sensation of Jayce coming undone, and wasted no time in collecting globs of spend onto its fingers to rub into its folds, over its clit, dipping within its hole—trembling in bliss all the while.
“So warm, you’re so warm,” its wondering praise made Jayce want to come again. He spurted a bit more, streaking across the creature’s scales, the vision of sticky white on jewel-blue permanently seared into his memory.
Once the other finished anointing itself with Jayce’s spunk, it sighed in utter contentment. But curiosity wouldn’t allow for rest, as the creature came to a pause and peeked at Jayce through its lashes, reaching a timid hand for Jayce’s crotch.
“May I touch?” it asked politely, and Jayce thrust his hips forward like a fool.
“Go ahead,” he rasped, and the creature wrapped him in a gentle but firm grip. It moaned in delight.
“So warm!” it declared again, petting his flagging member reverently. Jayce was beginning to understand that the quirks of warm-blooded mammalianism were likely a novelty to a sea-dweller such as this one; he was never more thankful to run hot.
“You like it?” Jayce asked dumbly, while the other purred in enthusiasm.
“Next time, you should use this on me,” it decided, and then visibly backtracked. “Ah, assuming that, well. I suppose I’m being presumptuous.”
That couldn’t be further from the truth. Somewhere between its third and fourth orgasm, Jayce had already imagined an entire future together. He was this close to asking this perfect, godsent creature to move in with him tomorrow, aquatic logistics be damned. He’d remodel his childhood home to include an entire underwater wing. Fuck it, he’ll build an aquarium in the forge too. Did it want his soul as payment? Jayce was ready to offer it on a crystal platter. Maybe they should get married; they could have a beach wedding.
Good god, thinking of marriage, and he didn’t even know the other’s name.
Oh. Right.
“You’re not presuming,” Jayce kindly extricated his very happy, softened cock from the creature’s curious ministrations. He tucked himself back in his pants and lifted off the tail he’d been sitting on; his thighs were slightly sore from holding the posture.
The creature cocked its head as Jayce leaned in, taking one of its hands in his. “But I don’t even know your name.”
He was granted a slow, hopeful smile, like moonlight through clouds. “It’s Viktor,” he said, lovely and sincere.
“Viktor,” Jayce adored the way his name felt on his tongue. “Can I kiss you, Viktor?”
In lieu of answering, the beautiful thing leaned in, lashes fluttering closed, and Jayce met him halfway. Their kiss was chaste and sweet, in stark contrast to their previous activities.
When they parted, they stayed close, sharing breath. Hazel on gold again, while time stood still.
Viktor quested hands onto Jayce’s shoulders as Jayce held him around the waist. His gaze was heated, “Jayce—”
“ASSAULT—MODE—ACTIVATED.”
It was only well-honed reflexes from years of dodging wayward wrenches that allowed Jayce to narrowly duck out of the way of a launched projectile—claw?
Viktor yelped in alarm and swiveled toward the rockwall. He went pale, “Oh dear.”
An entity from the shadows clicked menacingly and blared, “UNHAND—MY—MOTHER—YOU—BEAST—”
The mer yanked Jayce down again by the front of his tank. Jayce overbalanced and flopped forward, landing face-first in his partner’s breasts. Of all the ways to be manhandled, this was certainly agreeable.
Another narrowly-missed hit whizzed over his back. Viktor was beseeching something small and murderous, “Blitz, it’s okay! It’s not what it looks like!”
Jayce popped his head up, squinting into the dark. “Is that—a talking shrimp?”
“I—AM—YOUR—WORST—NIGHTMARE,” the shrimp screeched back, and Viktor goggled at him. “You can understand him?”
“Of course I can!” Jayce spluttered, trying to right himself without catching too many palmfuls of tit. “It’s trying to kill me!”
“DIE—INTRUDER,” the evil thing bellowed while Viktor pouted, “Blitz isn’t an ‘it,’ Jayce. He’s a very smart boy.”
“Sorry,” Jayce was immediately, genuinely apologetic. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
This time, the mantis shrimp’s aim struck true. Jayce doubled over from a solid punch to his stomach, wheezing in pain. Viktor was quick to steady him, torn between fawning in concern over his poor human and scolding Blitz for having bad manners.
Parental duty won out. “Blitzcrank!” Viktor barked. “You must calm yourself. Jayce is not our enemy.”
“HE—WAS—ACCOSTING—YOU,” the so-called cranky blitz argued. “I—SAW.”
“You what?” Viktor squeaked.
Jayce peeled himself off the floor. “Oh fuck, how much did you see? And did you say—your mother?”
He hoped this trigger-happy shrimp didn’t witness anything too compromising. Or likely, traumatizing.
Viktor wilted. “Yes, um. Jayce. Allow me to introduce my son, Blitzcrank. He is usually more polite than this.”
He said the last bit pointedly at said son, who didn’t appear repentant at all. Blitzcrank, aptly named, raised a claw less in greeting and more as a threat display.
Jayce waved weakly back. Okay, so the ethereal sea-being he fell in love with at first sight was a single mom whose child was a cyborg crustacean the size of a small dog.
Psh. This was totally doable. Jayce had always wanted to be a dad.
Viktor squinted at him sidealong. “I am sensing that you have embarked on a train of thought that ought to require some external input.”
“Did you build his arm?” Jayce smoothly changed the subject. “The engineering is inspired, and the reload design? Gosh, you could publish a paper on that alone. How did you maintain articulation in the claw?”
“Oh!” a spark lit in those golden eyes. “I constructed a miniature motor in the claw itself, programmed to carry and receive electrical signals from the main motor. It’s connected via silver fibers, you see, woven together with—”
“CEASE—THIS—DISGUSTING—FLIRTING,” and today was the day Jayce discovered that part-robotic mantis shrimp could, in fact, scowl. Viktor blushed terribly and straightened.
“Yes, sorry—ahem,” he made a valiant effort at composing himself. “Blitzcrank. Jayce was assisting me with my—predicament, as it were. I would’ve become eggbound had he not heard my struggles and come to help. All is well now, you can see.”
The mer patted his lower belly, radiating only the purest intentions. The aperture of Blitzcrank’s eyes shrunk in suspicion. Jayce sweated.
Luckily, the shrimp seemed to accept that explanation. He said, a bit dejectedly, “Assault—mode—deactivated.”
“Thank you, Blitz,” Viktor sighed, and then turned to Jayce. “And thank you, Jayce. I don’t think I’ve said that properly yet. I would’ve been in real trouble had you not arrived.”
Jayce felt his cheeks warm. “No need to thank me. It was my privilege, truly.”
Viktor smiled, and Jayce could tell it was genuine because it was small and fragile. “Regardless, it bears repeating. I’m in your debt.”
He perked up. “Oh, perhaps you can take a few pearls,” he maneuvered onto his stomach with a clever twist of tail, and Jayce tried and failed not to find that attractive. Sliding smoothly toward the bank, Viktor dipped a hand into the shallows and retrieved a palmful of the large orbs they’d just extracted, washed clean by water.
Three of those pearls engulfed Viktor’s dainty hand, though Jayce could probably hold twice that amount easily. Viktor studied them, seeming fascinated despite themself. “These are the biggest I’ve ever passed. They must be worth a lot in the above-world.”
“Oh, for sure,” Jayce nodded. “I probably shouldn’t take those. They’d disrupt the pearl economy. People would go hunting for them, and I definitely don’t want to endanger you.”
At the word “hunting,” both Viktor and Blitzcrank tensed. Jayce caught that, and though his heart hurt at the thought of what they might have encountered before, he didn’t press. “I don’t need payment, Viktor. I’m happy I could help.”
He grinned, a bit embarrassed. “Actually, I probably owe you. I’ve taken a lot of pearls over the years. If I had known what they were, I would’ve left them alone, I swear.”
Viktor looked aghast. “Nonsense, you were supposed to take more!” he protested, gesturing animatedly to the pearl-laden pool. “You can see there is an abundance, and they are worthless to me yet valuable to you humans. I tried to give you many, whole clutches even, but you only ever took one at a time. It is quite frustrating, you know!”
The pretty creature huffed, and Jayce melted like butter. But then he parsed the other’s words. “What do you mean, I was ‘supposed’ to? Did you—were you sending those pearls to me on purpose? To the shores, all this time?”
Indignation was immediately replaced by awkwardness. Viktor was blushing blue again. “I—I wasn’t stalking you. I live here too!”
Jayce blinked, and Blitzcrank sniggered in the background. “Who said anything about stalking?”
If Viktor had toes, he’d surely be scuffing them nervously by now. Jayce scooted over and laid a reassuring palm upon his back. “Viktor, that’s really sweet of you. You’re right, those pearls are worth a pretty penny. Golly, they really helped me out.”
In fact, Jayce was now certain that in a previous life he must have saved the world. There was no other explanation for how hard he was winning in this lifetime. Seriously, his secret sugar mommy was a beauty from the ocean who came million-aurem pearls? He couldn’t have even conjured this in his wildest dreams.
Viktor seemed shyly pleased by Jayce’s ready acceptance. “I told you, it is nothing. I’m happy I could help.”
He gave Jayce’s own words back to him, and the scientist beamed. “I’d say we’re even, then. Not that we need to keep score, moving forward. I’m here for you if you need any help with—’discharging’ your pearls. Or with anything else. Or if you don’t need help at all, I’ll still be here. Since I, uh, also live here.”
That sassy mantis shrimp was definitely judging him. Viktor, on the other hand, seemed to be just as much of a dork as he was, because he was nodding enthusiastically along.
“Yes, I would very much like to continue our engagement,” he said, as Jayce tried not to look too rabid at the use of that particular word. “I am particularly interested in learning more about your work, actually. You drop a lot of notes into the ocean, did you know? I’ve continued developing some of your designs—your Nautilus prototype, for one—and could use your consultation.”
“Really?” Jayce said, impressed. “Nautilus was a failed project. I couldn’t get the—”
“—power source to work,” Viktor finished for him, easy as breathing. “Yes, you likely have limited access to the right materials on the surface. But there are deep-sea crystals that serve as natural energy conduits. I can obtain them without much difficulty. Alas, many of my finer mechanical forms are impossible to construct underwater.”
“But they’d be a piece of cake with my forge,” Jayce offered, and there was that precious, barely-there smile again. “Viktor, this is perfect! We should become partners!”
Hope must not be something Viktor was used to feeling. The expression sat crooked and broken-winged on his face, but his golden eyes were star-bright. “Partners?”
“Yes,” Jayce brought their hands together. “Your crystals, my forge. Our designs, our breakthroughs! I’d love to hear about your projects, Viktor. If they’re anything like Blitzcrank’s claw, I know they’re brilliant. You’re brilliant.”
“Oh,” Viktor demurred, clearly getting a bit overwhelmed. “I don’t know about that, they’re nothing really. A lot of tinkering, a lot of failures.”
“That’s the best kind of science,” Jayce insisted. “You never know if you don’t experiment.”
He looked into Viktor’s gold, gold eyes. “What do you say? Partners?”
Viktor glowed back at him, a buried diamond catching light. “Yes, Jayce. Partners. You’ll be my partner.”
Oh, Jayce loved him. He hugged Viktor, pleased at how perfectly they fit together. “I’m glad to hear it, Viktor. I can’t wait.”
He couldn’t help the somersault his heart did when Viktor hugged him back. The mer didn’t seem sure of where to put his arms, yet he still was greedy for Jayce’s heat, wrapping around him like an octopus.
But then Viktor leaned back, looking hesitant, and addressed Blitzcrank. “Is this okay, Blitz?”
The mantis shrimp gave Jayce a stony stare. Then, he shrugged.
“He—is—not—the—worst—mate—you—could—have—chosen,” Blitzcrank said reasonably.
“That’s right,” Jayce cheered, and offered the shrimp a fist-bump. Blitzcrank returned it instead of outright breaking his hand; he felt part of the family already.
“Mate?” Viktor muttered to himself, quiet and pleased, and Jayce caught that too. He didn’t comment on it though.
“Let’s meet at the pier beside the forge tomorrow,” he suggested eagerly. “Around noon? I can bring some lunch.”
“Oh, I don’t eat,” Viktor said, like that wasn’t highly unusual. “But noon will work. I shall bring my notes—and also your notes.”
“It’s a date, then,” Jayce beamed again.
“Yes,” Viktor agreed shyly. The fact that he was this flustered over a science date, when not too long ago he was a veritable siren shamelessly demanding to be fist-fucked, was an exhilarating incongruence Jayce couldn’t get enough of.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Viktor,” Jayce said warmly, taking his hand like he would a nobleperson’s and pressing a gentleman’s kiss to his knuckles. Viktor made a moue of delight at the human gesture.
“Goodnight, Jayce,” the mer said sweetly, kissing him back on the cheek. He detached from Jayce as smooth as flowing water, scooped Blitzcrank from the mushroom-bed, and slid into the lagoon.
With one last glance over his shoulder, Viktor whispered, “See you tomorrow.” And then he disappeared completely into the dark depths of the pool, leaving the barest ripples behind.
“Goodnight, Viktor,” Jayce echoed into the empty cavern, totally lovesick and a bit pathetic with it.
He flopped onto his back, smushing some trumpets that snorted their benign spores at him in complaint. Jayce took a moment to simply bask in the objectively insane yet undeniably fantastical experience he’d just had, still not certain that he hadn’t simply lost his marbles and made the whole thing up in his head.
Well, he’d know for sure come noon. Which was—probably sooner than he’d expected. Damn, it must be really late. He needed to head back pronto.
Jayce got to his feet and dusted off his pants. He turned toward the door. Only there was no door.
Wait.
How the fuck was he supposed to get out of here?
~
Miles below, deep underwater, with Blitzcrank tucked safely back into bed, Viktor froze mid-glide. There was something he was forgetting—and he had a nagging feeling it was of crucial importance.
He floated a bit, but nothing came to mind. He hummed lightly.
Well, if he couldn’t recall, it must not have been that important in the first place. Satisfied with that, he finally rocked himself to sleep, soul alight from the lingering touches of his beautiful brown-man.