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Chapter Text

It was his laptop’s fault.

If it were anything other than the cheapest thing he could afford from a shady Shanghai stall, perhaps Shang Qinghua wouldn’t be in this position now. He’d always had an abusive relationship with the thing. It seemed to run on a combination of desperate prayers, a suspicious amount of electricity, tears, and percussive maintenance.

Who’d have guessed that Shang Qinghua must have hit it one too many times! Enough that it decided to kill him, like a dog biting the hand that both fed and smacked it.

How pathetic a death! Killed by ‘Wicrosoft Mindows’.

Though maybe it was the water that really did him in. It wasn’t like Shang Qinghua had clear memories after jumping into the koi pond to rescue his source of income. His sleep-deprived brain had just been a lot of !!!!s and calculations on how the hell he would even be able to afford enough rice to put Mindows-zong into. Maybe he’d drowned? Maybe this whole transmigration thing was some sort of sick cosmic joke, as if his life hadn’t already been one.

Universe, why beat down this nail that was already thoroughly hammered in?! So unfair! You couldn’t get much lower than Shang Qinghua!

He slapped his cheeks, wincing at the bite of claws.

Bright side. He had to look at the bright side, or he’d fall into hysterics (again) and drown himself (again). Somehow.

Okay. Okay.

It could have been worse.

Yeah, it could have been worse. In the way that falling into a frying pan was technically better than falling into the flames underneath. There were surely worse realities to transmigrate into than this one. Like, he wasn’t a slave.

...Because slaves were human.

He was a fish.

Well. ‘Domesticated Mer’.

A pet. Sentient, yet ownable. A status symbol.

What was that? Slaves were considered less than human too?

Aish! This wasn’t the time for splitting hairs! This was the time for internally wailing, lamenting, and raging at the shitty heavens!

Systems-dage, was this karma!? Did the heavens follow his anti-fan Peerless Cucumber’s demand for his ‘little airplane’ to disappear? He hadn’t even known mermaids could be male, or where ‘it’ could be now - nor had he had any private time to explore the nebulous area of potential fish-junk. His new job, after all, was to be seen and be pretty. Plus, even if he wanted to sneak off into a corner and go ‘spelunking’, it was impossible.

As it turned out, “domesticated” was only a nice title. This pond’s pod of pretties were as vain as peacocks, as bitchy as betta fish, and as territorial as the wives in the harem-drama books he wrote.

...Was this considered a harem too? Had a spiteful goddess read his work and determined he needed to bake in his own pot? Fall on his own sword? Get skewered by his own, or more accurately a rich man’s--- okay, he was losing the thread here, because really, what he wanted to know was:

DID THEY FUCK THE FISH?!

It’s not like he could ask any of the other mers idling around the waterway that was the center of a grand courtyard.

If he wasn’t hissed at for approaching, he was looked at like a popped slug on the bottom of someone’s shoe.

Regardless, Shang Qinghua, who had no pride, thickened his face and paddled over to a couple of beauties sunning themselves on a rock to try again. His robes dragged heavy in the water, making his advance clumsy.

Oh yes! His cursed luck had indeed dropped him into the one world where mermaids apparently were expected to wear clothing, and lots of it. Silky, formal, and detailed half robes with long flowing sleeves, ones that Shang Qinghua kept getting tangled up in.

That’s right: transmigrated into a mermaid AU without even naked chests or even clinging starfish that left little to the imagination as compensation.

(Second) Life was so unfair.

The two beauties turned their heads to stare at him. Instantly, the fan of frills on both of their ears flattened back like annoyed cats’ ears. Shang Qinghua felt his own ears lower in instinctive dismay, and he stopped and held his hands out. They were clawed, webbed, and lightly scaled, and Shang Qinghua felt he’d never get used to them.

If he tried to type on Mindows-zong now, he’d look like the office ladies with the long acrylics: he’d never hit his usual 10k words a day.

“What’s up, fellow mer.” He said, because the system was too cheap to give him a handbook on how exactly he was supposed to speak in this weird ass place, and the male beauty had just curled back his lips to bare his teeth and whoa did they look sharp.

His poor brain was doing its best, okay?!

“Fellow?” Sneered the woman. “As if we’d be the fellows of someone so unfavored.”

“Do you even have a singular piece of treasure?” Asked the man.

It was then that Shang Qinghua noticed both wore jewelry: jade bangles, gold and silver necklaces, and gem rings. Irregardless of color or theme or apparent taste.

Peh! Who wanted your stupid treasure!

...Is what he wished he could say. But for some reason he found himself staring like he would at someone who’d just pulled his waifu in a gacha.

He... He really wanted it. The sparkles tingled his hindbrain juuust right.

“Of course he doesn’t.” The woman scoffed. She tossed the curtain of her long hair and angled her body so the light of the sun caught on her vivid blue scales. “Look at his tail, it’s too short and chubby.”

“His colors are too patchy.” Agreed the man. “Like a painter spilled cups drunkenly.”

“Would have only been in fashion fifty years ago. Calico is an old man’s color.”

...
...

What was this, an American mean girls movie? Why was he getting flashbacks to the middle schoolers who sat outside in packs at convenience stores and heckled poor overworked writers who just wanted to grab instant noodles?

“Of course, of course,” Shang Qinghua agreed, “but could I just ask what we-”

In less than a second the trash talk turned into violence. They hissed, pupils turning into slits. Their tails raised, the decorative fins along their hips flared wide. One lunged, and Shang Qinghua flailed backwards away from the swipe of claws.

“Speak to someone your own rank!” The other snarled.

Shang Qinghua retreated, cursing them out in his heart.

May your hair fall out and your finns rot off! Ptooey!

There weren't any unoccupied basking spots left, so he wriggled around for a while, feeling the unfriendly gazes of everyone he passed and getting flashbacks to highschool life. He wasn’t a short sweaty otaku in this world, so why was he still being treated as one?! QQ!

Finally, he pulled himself into the shallows of a far-flung corner. The silt was soft enough to feel slimy and loose enough to cloud the water as he heaved himself partially ashore. As isolated as he figured he could get, Shang Qinghau mentally banged on the System’s wall.

Days ago, before he’d awakened into this body, the cursed thing had glitched and flashed worse than the porygon episode that gave kids seizures, one set of yellow text and one set of blue text clashing like dragons until they’d broken into tiny pixels and left him in a cold vacuum of space.

After what felt like forever, an orange popup had blazened the message of his rebirth:

[New System, who dis? (⚗❥⚗ )]

[What a mess! Uhh... Original world failed. Backup world failed. What is this spaghetti code? (゜∀。)]

[Honestly this is above my paygrade. _(:3 」∠)_ Here, just--]

And then he’d opened his eyes to a picturesque pond and a fish ass.

Even now, after hours of protesting, the only message his system displayed was:

[Oops! Ehe~▂( •ॢ◡-ॢ)-♡ ]

Even his system ignored his messages! Should he call it a parent??

Turning his attention away from the infuriating text, Shang Qinghua finally took the chance to take better stock of himself.

As far as fish asses went, his wasn’t bad, right? What metric was he missing? Sure, it was a little shorter than the long dainty stretches of most of those he’d seen around, but it was still plenty long, longer than in D*sney. The finns at his hips and tail were ornate, even if they weren’t the gigantic gossamer swathes that matched the half robes’ long sleeves...like...most of the others...

...Was he plain again? Couldn’t he have transmigrated into a world class hottie? Wasn’t that the transmigration trope for average people? Where could he file a complaint?

At least his scales were interesting. His dad had once shunted the care of a yuan bao goldfish to lil tyke Shang Qinghua, and he’d done enough research to know now that the combination of matte, shiny, and something in between scales was characteristic of being a calico. It made an interesting effect, highlighting certain patches like holographic stickers, and mostly they seemed to shine in his areas of white, which covered a large proportion of his underbelly. On that base were patches of color like spilled pigments: hues of orange ranging from gold to the namesake and darker splotches that ran from blue-toned silver to black. The latter also showed up as a bunch of freckle-like spots on his hip fins, and on the scales that trailed up his human torso’s sides.

His robe lifted to his chest, Shang Qinghua observed those sides, mainly the gill slits along his ribs.

They were kind of gross to see in real life. Much better in art. But. But were they soft and squishy and you-know-what-like, like the...special artists, liked to imply?

Curious, he poked a finger inside and--!! Ow! No!

How could porn lie to him (again)?!

He shouldn’t have written his protagonist in his latest book hooking his fingers in a mermaid wife’s gills in order to pull her hard back onto his [Beeep] while they [Beeep] with the [Beeeep].

Apologies, fish wife! Daddy Airplane understood now!

He dropped the robe and realized he was breathing exclusively with his human lungs. If he wanted to use his gills, wouldn’t the robes be in the way?

Now that he thought of it, none of the wide waterway seemed very deep, and most of the other mer were displaying themselves only semi-submerged.

Status symbols were meant to be seen, after all.

Shang Qinghua beat the system box for a few more minutes before giving up.

He’d just have to figure out this world and setting for himself.

And, in the next couple weeks, Shang Qinghaua did so.

The number one thing he quickly learned was: if you didn’t suck up, you didn’t eat.

Shang Qinghua was really good at sucking up.

Pride? Peh! Zzzzzzz, snrk, huh? Who cared!

The lord magistrate and his guests would often take daily walks around the courtyard perimeter, feeding the mers as if they were koi.

The number two thing he learned quickly was: he was weak. If they were tossing food out indiscriminately, he had little chance to nab anything. They all tried to play it elegantly, as if they were just dancing around each other like orchid petals in a breeze while they collected the thrown food. Showing beauty and poise was paramount to the whole domesticated mer thing.

However, as one of those ‘delicate blossoms’?

Being part of the ‘dance’ was like trying to survive an 11.11 sale in a marketplace. Shang Qinghua was more bruise than a mermaid under his robes, and his smaller size meant he’d somehow be unerringly ping-ponged into the outskirts with little for his efforts. So many pointy elbows and disguised tail slaps!

He had more of a shot with the parties, where Shang Qinghua discovered mer were expected to entertain.

However, when asked to sing, what was he supposed to do? This body had a lovely singing voice, but it hadn’t come installed with any songs from this world to recall.

Like other artists not appreciated in their time, his anime covers and pop songs fell flat.

There was no accounting for taste!

Even so, it wasn’t the worst job he’d ever had.

‘Sit there and look pretty’ was loads better than scraping his brain for every synonym and simile for quivering bosoms multiple times a day every day of his life. Even with the leftovers of what was tossed out, he was still eating better than instant noodles for every meal.

So they thought he was weird and not great at stuff: what made that any different than a family reunion? LOL. Laying back, relaxing, and just coasting through life with no pride: what could go wrong?

...

One month later, Shang Qinghua found himself shut in a barrel and being loaded onto a ship.

Fate, it had been a rhetorical question!

----

The copper tang of blood flooded his nose and taste buds, unfortunate in the fact that it was his own and not something to eat. Pre-transmigration, the only sushi Shang Qinghua had been able to afford had been gas station sushi, which hadn’t led to developing a taste for raw fish. (Though it had led to developing food poisoning.)

Now? He would gladly snap up even a slimy, wriggling, sardine and chomp its head clean off and beg for more. Even with a new kinship for them, after having spent the last two months crammed in a tiny tank, crammed in a tiny cargo hold, crammed in a tiny ship, crammed in a -- well, the ocean was not tiny. It was the opposite. Which was the problem.

Seafaring took so long.

Especially when you were seasick.

...Yes, yes! So funny, ah! A mermaid who was seasick hardy har. Did you see Shang Qinghua laughing so hard he was crying? Oh, just the second part? Well, keep looking and you’d soon see something even more unsightly. Blearh! Starving for lunch and then losing lunch and then starving for lunch and then losing lunch.

For. Two. Months.

Shang Qinghua lifted his head from the water and blinked blearily as he was swished back and forth in the bathtub-sized tank, hand going to stem the blood from his nose. It’d been smashed into the tank wall when a particularly violent wave had whiplashed him against it.

The two tiny port windows were blackened by lashing waves and the glow lanterns had been hauled out for use on deck, making the only light inside the storage-keep bags of light pearls that had burst open at one point. As the ship rocked from side to side they rolled wildly back and forth across the floor, like the bursts of light that played out against one's eyelids upon taking a heavy blow to the head.

In terms of ambience, it just gave this whole ‘storm at sea’ experience more nightmare fuel, and Shang Qinghua more nausea.

He groaned pitifully, sinking back into the tepid water and covering his eyes with the heels of his hands. Most of it had already sloshed out, leaving barely enough to keep himself submerged.

“If you don’t stop whining, I’ll give you something to really cry about.” Hissed the voice of the only other living occupant in the storage hold.

“I’m soooo sorry my cries of pain are inconvenient for you.” Shang Qinghua grumbled. Then he groaned louder out of spite at the next wave.

In fact, Shang Qinghua WAS afraid of the other mer, but the weeks of being witness to the effective restraints holding him in place had whittled that fear down to something thin enough to let annoyance poke through. For as long as he was kept far out of reach.

In terms of threat, the sailors seemed to rank Shang Qinghua low, but not anything like a human passenger. He hadn’t had -high- hopes when his method of finding out he was being gifted to a foreign dignitary had been being gasbombed with a vapor that made him sluggish, getting stuffed into a barrel, and then gasbombed again when they’d transferred him into the holding tank. Not a single ‘Hi’, or ‘Sorry to bother you’, or ‘So about that overseas transfer’.

Did pets have HR? He wanted to file a complaint.

While he’d been loopy, unable to tell his fishass from his fins, two men with biceps the size of his head had held his scrawny arms while a third clicked a metal collar around his throat. It connected to a long chain bolted into the tank wall on the opposite side as where the drain plug for soiled water was.

Within the two months, the sailors who tended to them had lost much of their caution around Shang Qinghua. They would casually pass him his allotted food, and even regularly scold him for his increasingly shabby appearance.

“You’re getting more shriveled than these salted fish.” The apprentice live-transporter, Fu Xiaobo, had said during the one feeding, tossing the unappetizing meal over. He never let himself within arms length of Shang Qinghua, but felt plenty comfortable roasting him from afar.

Shang Qinghua pouted.

What was it about him that middle-school aged kids were drawn to be rude to? It was the same in every world.

“How can I help but waste away when I’m fed less and less fresh fish?” Shang Qinghua had answered. “First it was every day, then it was every other, and now it is every three days! Am I not precious cargo? I’m becoming a salted fish myself!”

“Stop throwing up.” Fu Xiaobo said, with the mercilessness of a ten year old. “Niu-Ge says it’s a waste of good food.”

“And what of me?” Said the voice from deeper in the hold. “What excuse do you have for feeding me on a sailor’s rations while your lot pilfers what should be mine?”

Fu Xiaobo blanched, and subconsciously moved closer to Shang Qinghua as he looked into the depth towards the only other tank.

It was much dimmer back there, the lighting atmospheric with the thick tension the other’s hisses brought (foolish! More horror scenes could be prevented with better lighting). One could just see the suggestion of light green and a long thin tail forced to loop around and back in order to fit. The fluke had gossamer fins like those of a siamese fighting fish, though gravity had wilted them down. There was a ring just under the fluke that was attached to a chain holding it up out of the water. Chains rattled as the other merman adjusted, glinting at his neck and wrists, their presence much heavier than the singular one found on Shang Qinghua.

Shang Qinghua had learned a few things about the other so far, more from gossiping with the crew than any conversation between the two of them. The most important were:

His name was Shen Jiu.

He was a man eater.

At least, that’s what the rumors said. The rest of the whispers he’d been able to pick up had been conflicted on whether he’d been a pet who’d turned on a master who’d always spoiled him or if he’d been recently wild caught and not properly ‘broken in’. The only thing confirmed was that Shen Jiu had been ordered to be put down, yet just before the ax fell, a mysterious edict had arrived and ordered instead for the condemned mer to be transported to the neighboring nation across the sea.

“We-we’re catching less fish than we expected.” Fu Xiaobo mumbled, “The new crew aren’t as good at fishing.”

“Though great at skimming from the top, I would wager.” Shen Jiu said. “You don’t look like you’ve been dining on hardtack alone or missing any meals.” Chains creaked as he adjusted, an electric green eye finding a beam of light, the pupil pulling into a slit.

Shang Qinghua munched on his salted fish like the world’s worst and most chewy popcorn.

“Tell me, child,” Shen Jiu continued, as Fu Xiaobo’s mouth opened and closed, soundless, “when we pull into harbor, will you and the other fishkeepers,” he hissed the word, “be weighed and inspected like produce at a market stall in order for your captain to be paid? Or will we?”

Water sloshed as the shadowy form of Shen Jiu tossed his hair and turned away from them.

“You must forgive this lowly fish,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm, “for forgetting which one of us is worth our weight in gold. You’d better take this back to further your efforts, I’m sure the captain will appreciate it.”

There was a sharp wizzing sound followed by a thump, and Fu Xiaobo fell down. The salted fish he’d tossed into Shen Jiu’s tank the day before dropped from his forehead, a red mark already beginning to develop. Fu Xiaobo’s eyes filled with tears, his puffy little face flushing.

“They’re just going to chop you up across the sea anyway!” He shouted, and stomped up the stairs and through the trap door.

Shang Qinghua waited a moment in the silence that followed and then stretched as far as the chain would let him.

Shen Jiu’s thrown fish was just out of reach of his fingertips.

“Congrats on winning a verbal argument with a ten year old.” Shang Qinghua said. He lifted his half-robe up and looped it over his shoulders so his gills were exposed, and then stopped using his lungs so he could stretch further without choking himself.

“If I wanted your opinion, pet, I’d have asked you for it..” Shen Jiu said, icy. “I wouldn’t advise you to hold your breath in anticipation of that happening.”

Shang Qinghua gave up his attempt to reach the fish and slumped like a dejected noodle, thinking mournfully of the rest of his meal Fu Xiaobo had stomped off with.

“Aiya, so many words just to tell me to shut up! Have you ever thought of being a writer?”

“Shang Qinghua.”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

That had all happened after they’d been at sea one month. Now, a month after that, in the middle of the storm, Shang Qinghua was being told to shut up again by Shen Jiu!

...

To be fair, it wasn’t a rare occurrence.

Even if they were in the same boat (literally and figuratively), Shang Qinghua couldn’t say they had much in common. Shang Qinghua was a suck up to their captors, meanwhile Shen Jiu wanted to suck up the bleeding hearts from them and eat them whole. Shang Qinghua was driven mad by the long silence and inactivity of captivity inside of a ship, and Shen Jiu was driven crazy by Shang Qinghua’s attempts to fill that silence and anything that encroached on his space.

It was just sometimes, in the middle of the desperate ramblings of stories he’d say out loud in the hopes he’d remember to write them down some day, when his voice would grow too hoarse to continue or he’d run into a mental wall, there would be an annoyed voice who would break the silence with “and then what did she do?” or “well, obviously it couldn’t end like that” or “if he runs into another peerless beauty, I’ll feed you your own fins”.

Shang Qinghua felt he was growing on the other mer.

“Perhaps like a tumor, or some sort of mold.” Shen Jiu had derided, when Shang Qinghua had said that out loud.

Here and now, being tossed to and fro by the storm, Shang Qinghua had little attention to spare his acerbic roommate. He wedged his fingers between his throat and the iron ring, trying to cushion the blow as he was yanked taught like an errant dog every time the ship tipped too far to the right. Every breath ached, and swallowing was agony. His neck was surely ringed by purple bruises at this point.

As the waves intensified and the ship bobbed like a cork, Shang Qinghua desperately tried to wedge himself in place with his tail, but there was no place to grip. Everywhere was slick with water and accumulated slimecoat, forcing him to slide in a drop that became harsher and sharper as time passed.

“HELP! ANYONE! YOUR GOLDEN GOOSE IS BEING HUNG! YOUR MEAL TICKET IS GETTING TRASHED! YO-guuuh”

His voice was a wrecked thing already, but Shang Qinghua persisted for what felt like an hour until he wasn’t even able to get enough air into his lungs through his gills. The water in his tank had slopped down to a mere couple inches - just enough to aid in the helpless slip of his heavy body down into the sharp sudden yanks to a stop. Over and over.

He’d long lost feeling in his fingers, which was probably a bad sign, but at least his hands weren’t throbbing in pain any longer. He also couldn’t feel the knobs of his knuckles against his throat by this point, flesh too swollen and abused to be distinct. The meager cushioning was becoming a tighter collar instead of a saving grace.

What was that famous saying?

Life sucks, then you die.

Then apparently you wake up in a different life, which also sucks, and then you die in an even worse way.

Weird how no one mentioned that part. He guessed it was less snappy of a phrase.

Shange Qinghua could only mentally flip the unresponsive system off, as the world grayed at the corners of his vision.

It was an odd sensation, to not be able to draw in air through either method. First, it ached in his chest, a strange sticking sensation like his lungs were trying to fold up inward towards his throat. Then, it burned along his sides. His gills flared and fluttered, reflexive jerking like muscle spasms - and as they gulped in air it felt as painfully wrong as if he were to suck water into his lungs.

The pressure in his head felt like it was going to burst. He thrashed his tail weakly, trying again to clog the corner of the tub with the knot of it and his body, but it hadn’t worked when he’d been full strength and it wasn’t working now.

At least with this death there wouldn’t be boxes of...research dvds...to be discovered under his bed at home.

Or an estranged family to be forced to discover them.

Through the haze that had descended upon Shang Qinghua, he could hear the sound of Shen Jiu’s voice, though it was too distorted to be clear. Sorry narrative, no cool biting one-liner to thematically end things. Just. Fuck you!

And then there was a shrill piercing whistle that blew through even Shang Qinghua’s oxygen deprivation. At least I don’t have to deal with that, he thought spitefully as his eyes rolled back and everything faded to black.

And then everything faded back in.

“-cause if we unlock...just be....flopping....where!”

“Shit, sh... is... dead?”

“Stop le.... him dro..!”

“How? What am I supposed to hold ont....”

“Attach stra....”

Shang Qinghua blinked. His eyes felt like peeled grapes. His throat ached so badly he didn’t want to breathe, but had no choice but to rasp in air as there was still an absence of water along his sides.

He was no longer being hung by the neck. Instead, he was being held under his arms near the top end of his tank, head lulled to the side.

“Watch where you’re stabbing that thing!” The man above him yelped. Shang Qinghua’s awareness sharpened as a harpoon slammed above his head.

“It’s not exactly easy!” Snapped the other. These two were the professional ‘fishkeepers’ hired to tend to the mers during the trip. “I can’t even make a dent. It’s built to restrain monsters, how the hell am I supposed to pierce it?!”

“Heeeeavy.” Shang Qinghua heard Fu Xiaobo whine. He managed to collect his strength enough to lift his head and look down the line of his body to see the boy braced at the bottom of the tank, shoving Shang Qinghua’s tail up with all his might as one of his seniors kept his grip on Shang Qinghua’s arms. He let his head fall back, eyes taking in the harpoon as it slammed again into the high backed area of the tank his chain was connected to.

“We’ll just have to tie up the rest of his body using the same anchor point as his neck. Get the rolls of bandages, the rope will slice him up in the waves.”

He slipped in and out of consciousness.

There wasn’t a part of his body that wasn’t aching in pain by the time they’d lashed more achorpoints to take the pressure off of his neck. First his shoulders and then arms, then his waist. Then, the worst, they’d pulled his tail binding so tight that it had been forced into a bend. When a particularly nasty wave hit and tossed them all up into the air, Shang Qinghua woke to agony exploding along his back as he was whipped into an arch.

“Are you trying to snap my spine?!” Shang Qinghua wheezed. “Aren’t you supposed to be professionals? How did you not account for-” He ran out of voice and air and could only mouth soundlessly at them.

“These seas never get storms like this.” The middle of the fishkeepers defended. “There’s something unnatural about it, how it keeps shifting.” He wiped his forehead and motioned to Fu Xiaobo.

“Go check on the other one.”

“Me?!” Fu Xiaobo squeaked. The boat gave another lurch and he fell onto his ass (and onto Shang Qinghua’s ass) for what felt like the hundredth time.

“Xiaobo is too shaky, you go take a look.” Said the senior.

The middle fishkeeper winced.

In order to hear each other over the swell of the storm, even ensconced inside, they were shouting. It was no wonder the subject they were speaking about overheard.

“Yes, do come closer.” Shen Jiu called, tone acidically sweet. “I’m hungry after missing my meal today.”

“...”

“He’s got plenty of chains to anchor him. I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Y-yeah!”

“You’re right.”

----

By the time the storm finally ended a week later, Shang Qinghua decided that dying quickly would have been a much kinder fate.

He felt like one of those Wish VS Reality memes.

Or like a malicious genie had taken a hold of one of his late night fantasies and monkey’s pawed it into an abomination no one could get off too, even a degenerate like himself.

The wish: Being tied up by men, handfed and doted on everything-wise for his needy body.

The reality: His body being coaxed to unfurl from the rigid position it had gotten locked into, his muscles screaming in agony for each burning inch. Untangled from the tethers he’d been fastened down with, they took advantage of his inability to move and tied his arms above his head.

No matter how much he whined, reasoned, rationalized, or wheedled, the stupid humans wouldn’t believe he was capable of NOT turning on them out of the blue as they healed him.

And he needed a lot of healing.

Bruises purpled much of his human skin and even darkened a lot of his tail, and his muscles were drawn as tight as bowstrings to the point his tail was stuck curved when at rest. Additionally, large areas of scales had been sloughed off by the restraining bandages rubbing back and forth as the ship was rocked by waves.

His scales were much tougher than that of fish, but the keepers had a lot of difficulty keeping them wet during the disaster. With his slime coat dried, his scales grew more brittle and easily damaged. They had to rearrange the positioning a few different times during the week, leaving thick crisscrosses of inflamed raw welts around his tail. They weren’t even artful looking! Couldn’t one of the keepers have been a secret shibari-enthusiast?! Ugh. His flowy fins had survived mostly intact, but his beautiful colorful scales... Even where they weren’t damaged, the colors were muddied and dull from malaise.

An F-! He gave his ‘keepers’ an F-!

“Stop squirming.” Grumbled the senior of the keepers, as he smeared thick paste that stung over the worst of the welts.

His demanding tone wasn’t manly, and he wasn’t even handsome.

“This isn’t a pretty scene at all.” Shang Qinghua complained. “It’s such a waste. Just untie me already.”

“So you can slice me to ribbons? I’ve been in this job long enough to know all your kind’s little tricks. You may play-act civilized for the lords in the estates, but I’ve seen it all. I know inside you’re all just like him.” He jerked his head deeper in the hold, in Shen Jiu’s direction.

“Wow, merpeople show you their bad sides when you traffic them like animals? I’m so shocked! Appalled! Flabbergast--arghbleah!”

“You are animals.” Said the keeper, wiping what was left of the medicinal paste, after he’d flicked the last glob of it into Shang Qinghua’s open mouth, off on his smock. “Animals with ideas above their stations.”

With that, he turned and left. Leaving Shang Qinghua coughing up the vile tasting concoction.

“So what was that ear-splitting shriek you did during the storm?” Shang Qinghua asked one day. He had a very inconveniently placed itch in the upper back of his tail, and was currently contorted awkwardly to try and scratch it with his own fluke. Fins were not the best for such work, but his arms were still tied up over his head.

Shen Jiu had been even more reticent since the storm, rarely responding to any of Shang Qinghua’s rambling or complaints. So he was surprised when the other mer actually answered.

“One who doesn’t even know of a whistle-call shouldn’t call himself a mer.”

“Okay, I’ll give up the title. I’m not too fond of the benefits.” Shang Qinghua said, rolling his eyes and pointedly wriggling his hands to his neck chain rattled. “What should I call myself instead?”

“A worm.”

“Ahaha, ooof.”

“You produce it in the back of your throat, let it out through your second vocal cord set.”

“My sec--? Wait. You’re just hoping I’ll practice, which will drive everyone onboard crazy.”

“...”

“...How far back in the throat?”

----

Fu Xiaobo winced in sympathy, but the kid was a clumsy hand at best, and his attempts to dab some of the herbal medicine onto Shang Qinghua’s eye felt more like just being jabbed in it. Shang Qinghua squirmed away, lest he get it gouged out instead of just blackened.

“The ship crew are already bein’ real nasty to us. Shang-Shushu shouldn’t make Master angry right now.” The apprentice warned, tone like an auntie scolding a slow child.

“Merchants aren’t supposed to damage the goods!” Shang Qinghua grumbled, sinking down low enough to blow bubbles to drown out the rest of his cursing.

So what if this teapot was already pretty chipped - a seller shouldn’t just ding it again because it made a tiny bit of shrill whistling from time to time. In some countries that was a built-in feature!

This voyage couldn’t end fast enough.

----

The days passed, monotonous mornings broken by mid day meals, followed by monotonous rest of the days that shepherded in monotonous nights.

Something Shang Qinghua learned was that a mer’s sense of smell was better than that of a humans, even above water. At first he assumed the traces of rot were coming from his own wounds, but with treatment his lacerations were scabbing over as cleanly as one could hope. As time passed the foulness increased, reminding him of when the winds would sweep the scent from the wet market towards his apartment in summer.

Shang Qinghua dithered here and there for a while. Shen Jiu had been in an increasingly awful mood, and he was half convinced the other really would find a way to hulk out and break free just in order to bite his head off. Thus, his respect had grown alongside his fear.

“You should maybe,” Shang Qinghua said, after a lot of meaningless filler, “let them treat your wounds? I can smell that they’re getting-”

A guttural growl, more akin to some wild cat than anything that was human shaped should be able to achieve (could Shang Qinghua do that?!) cut off his words like scissors snapping closed.

“So they can string me prone like you, little pet? Fit to be carved at the slightest convenience?” He spat. “So I can suffer their touch and extend my misery and be expected to thank them for it?”

There was the sound of agitated water.

“Do you have a brain in that pretty little head of yours, or did the humans breed it out of you? Can’t you see the big picture? When was the last time they gave us live food? Food fit to live on?”

Shang Qinghua rolled his shoulders, tail twitching in annoyance.

“Forget I said anything.” He said, “I’ll just mind my own business and-”

“Not since the storm. You’ve seen the limping. You know the keepers have the ire of the rest of the ship’s crew.”

“Wow, the sunset looks really, uh, orange, from what I can see from that port window. Lots of orangey light, makes me thirsty fo-” Shang Qinghua chattered, feeling a tic in his eyelid. Shen Qingqiu bulldozed past his attempt to change the subject and lighten the mood.

“Do you even know what that means, you pebble-brained guppy? You spoiled, stupid little pet-”

“OF COURSE I KNOW!” Shang Qinghua snapped. He went to throw his hands in the air, but they already were tied up there, so instead he slapped his tail down, making a loud splash.

“The ship is lost! The storm probably blew us to the middle of fucking nowhere. Yes, I get it! They’re feeding us scraps because they probably lost food stores, and the fishkeepers are independent contractors so of course they’re going to get shit on first! You think I don’t know the pecking order, ah!? If they’re going to let anyone starve, it’s going to be us.” Shang Qinghua deflated, his sudden anger sinking away and leaving a heaviness behind. He lay slumped, floating limply with his arms above his head.

“But what’s the point of talking about it?” He whined. “You think I haven’t been wracking my brains trying to find a way out of here? But even a rat can get trapped in a bucket!”

He’d been secretly untying and retying his wrists every night and morning, for all the good it did. The metal collar and chain about his neck were a wall he couldn’t pass, and unlike in what RPGs had prepared him for, none of the keepers seemed to carry a damn key anywhere on their person even if he’d found a magic opportunity to try his completely untested pick-pocket skills.

Shen Jiu laughed, and the sound slithered into the little part of Shang Qinghua’s rodent hindbrain that screamed ‘DANGER, DANGER’. He shivered, and turned his brown eyed gaze in the other’s direction.

“Oh Shang Qinghua, you optimist.” Shen Jiu sighed, and Shang Qinghua’s mouth popped open because never in his life had he been called such a thing, “they aren’t going to let us starve first...”

“They are going to eat us.”

---

This was Shen Jiu’s plan: Allow the wounds he’d secretly sustained in the storm to fester and taint his meat, so that he could at least go out spitefully now that he’d seen the writing on the wall. That was, if he couldn’t manage to do more damage alive.

Shang Qinghua was still lost in his horror (though not surprise) that eating mermaids wasn’t without precedent. Nevermind that reportedly some species were poisonous (and if any were, surely Shen Jiu would count by sheer willpower), and they were clearly sentient. In fact, until a century and a half ago, when being forcibly bred in captivity for the pet trade began, mer was seen as a delicacy. Even now, it was apparently accepted in some countries and would just get you disgustedly side-eyed in others, like any other pet being picked up and chomped on.

Come on, he was clearly different from a hamster! A-and you wouldn’t eat an innocent little hamster, right?

Shang Qinghua, king of eating dubiously labeled and out of date clearance food in between deadlines, looked shiftily to the side.

...W-well, he’d have to be very, very hungry, in his defense.

Ahhh, what wouldn’t humans eat, really?! In every world, wasn’t it the same??

Lost at sea, sailors would eat each other at home too.

And here, Shang Qinghua couldn’t help having the pumpest and most juicy ass on board!

Was this what beautiful people meant when they complained about being too well endowed? Even with the months of ill treatment, he’d lost some weight, but wasn’t in as dire shape as would be expected outside of his wounds. Considering Shen Jiu and himself were only fed once a day, and that none of Shang Qinghua’s bones had broken during the storm - even his fingers - he had to assume the resilience was related to mer biology.

But perhaps in this case, it could stand to be a little less convenient?

Shang Qinghua looked sadly down at his tail. Battered, littered with the slices of pale healing flesh still waiting to regrow scales, and with colors muted where scales already were. His ornate fins were crushed up from being constantly forced into a furled state, the end of his fluke curled backwards in on itself where it was slightly too long for the tank.

The part of his brain connected directly to his eyes now, the bit that was wired into instincts, wilted at the sight.

The part that had been human, and always would be somewhat human, looked more objectively.

That was, with his stomach.

...

...

Suddenly he was craving Xiyu Ci Yu.

...

Yeah. Shang Qinghua was fucked.

----

It had been a week since they’d been fed or visited when Shang Qinghua woke to the sound of violence. The thundering of feet above their heads, shouts and screams, and the clanging of metal.

It went on for a shorter time than he expected for the amount of voices he heard before it turned from a ‘them’ problem into a ‘his’ problem. The door to their storage keep slammed open, and a man tumbled down the steep stairs to land hard. A few more men followed him down, their steps swaying enough Shang Qinghua was surprised they didn’t fall themselves.

From what Shang Qinghua could guess from the months of his keeper’s grumblings, most of the sailors that manned the ship were recent hires picked up for this long expedition, and not affiliated with keepers or even the captain.

These men must be some of them. Though the food stores had been ruined, by the thick stench they exuded, the liquor must have survived just fine.

A couple of them hoisted the man they’d tossed upright, and Shang Qinghua saw by the light of the pearl lanturn that it was the head fishkeeper. The man’s salt and pepper hair was speckled by blood, and it oozed sluggishly from a bruised contusion above his brow. His mouth was a thin line, eyes glassy but narrowed.

“Well, pick one and hand it over!” One of the men snapped, punctuating his words with a shake. The head fishkeeper wasn’t a large man. It gave off the effect of a rottweiler shaking a corgi from side to side.

When the Keeper didn’t respond, the sailor’s expression turned uglier.

“It’s either unlock the fish and you get the kid back, or don’t unlock the fish, we chop it up here and bring it up in pieces. The cook’ll get pissed and who knows how he’ll take it out on the kid. Now pick, or we pick for you.”

“Hey, hey, I’m not good to eat!” Shang Qinghua said quickly. “I’m poisonous! See my bright colors!”

“He’s not poisonous.” Said the keeper, voice dull.

“He wouldn’t know!” Shang Qinghua squeaked, “My breeding project was a secret insider thing! A jealous concubine drafted up my pararentage, she was trying to develop a secret weapon to use against-whoa, wait, look at me!”

“I’m clearly the smaller one here. I’m just a little guy, not even as big as any of you! Just a little guy! And it’s my birthday! I’m just a little birthday boy!”

Oh dear gods, he was losing his mind. Red hot panic was pumping through his veins, making it hard to think.

Sorry! Shen Jiu, Shang Qinghua would light candles in your honor and burn joss paper! It was nothing personal!

One of the men wandered further into the keep, where Shen Jiu remained silent and still, eyes like glowing green gems staring, slit-pupiled. He hung limp, in a way that seemed to be as if he was at the end of his chain, yet Shang Qinghua could tell he actually had plenty of room to lunge.

He swallowed, heart racing. Just a few more steps and there would be a bloodbath that would grant Shang Qinghua a few more minutes to--! To, uh--! Continue to be completely useless, but alive!

But the sailor stopped short.

“That one has too many damn chains!” He called, stumbling his way back. “Let’s jus’ take this one!”

When he was grabbed, Shang Qinghua quailed, but bared his throat, going limp. The keeper hesitated only for a moment longer before he stepped forward and pressed his fingers against the metal collar. There was a strange tingle, like the time he’d mistakenly bit into tinfoil with a new dental filling, and the shackle that had haunted him for months finally popped open.

Pain erupted at the top of his scalp as the sailor holding him started to drag him out by his hair. With a strangled scream, Shang Qinghua pulled his hands free from the bindings he pretended to be bound by and clawed the man across the face.

He’d been aiming for the throat.

Even so, his claws were viscous things, small, but powerful and sharp. They were well made for hooking into fish, which meant his swipe got stuck deep before he dragged down. The sensation was indescribable, in both a hair-curlingly sickening and somehow satisfying way.

It was a futile effort.

Shang Qinghua hissed and clawed and bit and thrashed his muscular tail, but in the end he was still like a fish in a bucket on land. He could overpower maybe one human, but four big men?

When they dragged him out of the tank and struck his head enough that the world was a confusing tangle of colors and fog, there was little he could do besides whimper and play dead.

His dead weight was hauled up the steps and onto the deck. The wood was harsh against freshly sprouting scales, tearing bare patches anew. Through the slivers of his eyelids he saw a lot of men milling about amongst fallen forms. His drag across the deck was eased by the slick of blood.

A great cheer went up when he was pulled into sight, drunken and rowdy. The stench of blood and wine was a sickening mixture. It added the twisting of his guts.

It was his last chance at life.

Shang Qinghua heaved his tail with all of his might, slapping against the deck and sending their group lurching to the right towards the ship’s side.

But it wasn’t enough.

Even more sailors joined the fray. All the air was knocked from Shang Qinghua’s lungs as his tail was tackled down and a boot stamped between his shoulder blades. Sound became muffled, as if he was hearing the world through cotton. A smear of people laughing, cheerful as if he were nothing more than a feast of tuna in their eyes.

Tears burned his vision, the clear nictitating membranes trapping them and blurring the world as readily as his head trauma.

“Please! Help! Anyone! I don’t want to die!” Shang Qinghua yelled, digging his nails into the wood. He left long scratches as he was dragged unerringly to the galley.

“I’m bitter! I’ll give you all diarrhea! I’m diseased! I have STDs! I-” He babbled, mind not even able to keep up with his mouth anymore.

His voice hitched into a sob when they made it into the galley, and the heavy door swung shut.

“No, no, non, no, no!” He hiccupped, squirming as many hands lifted him onto the long table - the only thing large enough to serve as a chopping block.

System! System!

“Listen, wait! Wait! You need lots of food, right? Well, let me go in the water and I’ll bring back lots of fish! Don’t give a man a fish, have a fish bring men fish! That’s some god’s wisdom! No, no, stop!”

There were hands holding him down everywhere, his arms, wrists, sides, hips, and above his fluke. The fingers jamming into his gills hurt so badly he wanted to puke, if fear and horror hadn’t already twisted his stomach beyond that ability.

The cook was a small thin man, unlike the general stereotype, but he held the massive cleaver with a practiced ease. He traced his fingers up and down Shang Qinghua’s tail, an expression of clinical interest on his face.

Then he moved onto Shang Qinghua’s human torso, feeling up the concave of his recently neglected stomach with a frown, but seeming to find more of an interest in his chest and sternum.

“I’ve heard the heart is especially nutritious when fresh.” The cook said, conversationally. “Let’s parse out some tail first and see how long we can keep it alive and unspoiled.”

“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!” Shang Qinghua screamed, passed the limits of endurance. “FUCK YOUR MOM, YOU DOG FUCKERS, I HOPE I GIVE YOU THE WORST SHITS OF YOUR LIFE! AND FUCK YOU SYSTEM! FOR THIS SHITTY ASS VORE WORLD!”

Someone covered his mouth, so he bit them hard. Copper flooded his taste buds, and he choked the thick gush of it, but refused to unlatch his teeth. He groaned as his head was lifted and slammed until he was forced to let go, coughing weakly.

He couldn’t think, he couldn’t think!

His heart was racing, his thoughts were shattered, mind broken, sight just on the glint of the cleaver rising higher and higher, poised to swing down onto the flesh of his tail.

Then the world broke.

It looked like a glitch.

One moment the room was an intact nightmare scene, and the next, a large solid mass of shadow formed a circle that blotted out an entire wall of the galley.

In less time than it took to blink, a deluge of water exploded in from the shadows, as if it was a portal opened directly into the ocean below. Everyone in the room was swept over and against the opposite wall.

Suddenly free, Shang Qinghua was nonetheless spun around and around by the sudden current and collided into the jumble of humans. What happened next were a few confusing moments of panicked flailing on all accounts. With his sensitive ears, Shang Qinghua could hear screaming from other areas across the ship, and the deep shuddering groan of the ship shifting hard to the side.

Shang Qinghua found his fins in time to avoid being buffeted by the floor as it swiftly swapped places with a wall. The still-hot coals from the recently extinguished fire flared pain against his side as they clipped him in his haste to swim against the tight whirlpool the strange shadow portal had created. His gills flared, free with the fluttering of his open robe.

Almost at once the small room was filled to the brim. Shang Qinghua sank to the bottom as most of the sailors floundered against the new ceiling, desperate for the vanishing air pocket. A few dove down to scramble against the galley door.

Shang Qinghua grabbed a knife, and then a second knife from the floor. Then clasped the handle of a third in his teeth just in case, but none of the humans had any attention to spare for him now.

Because it wasn’t a sliding door that would be found on land, the weight of the constant press of water meant the sailors couldn't pull it open.

Shang Qinghua watched them devolve into stomping at the handle, one man after another going limp or throwing themselves through the strange shadowed wall in their desperation as the minutes ticked by.

Brand new discovery: being in close proximity to people as they died in water was an awful assault to his senses. Underwater scent and taste were linked with some strange quirk of aquatic creatures. When people died. Things. Let go.

Shang Qinghua wrinkled his nose and recoiled as far as he could against the wall, but actually, where were the scent receptors for under the water at? He wasn’t using his nose here.

System-Dage, you could have at least given mer health class 101 before going on vacation!

He didn’t know where to plug now to keep the awful taste/smell out.

There was a strange sensation against his back. A sudden ripple of cold like a chill running from the center of his spine and out instead of down it.

Then something slammed into him.

Whatever it was was large and dragged him across the small galley as it shot by at an incredible speed. Shang Qinghua caught just a flash of a long dark tail and the glint of a powerful fluke before the world became nothing but blackness for a moment and everything seemed to stretch and flatten at once.

If one were to ask Shang Qinghua later what he was thinking, when he clung to whatever creature had just essentially clotheslined him, Shang Qinghua would think for a while, trying to figure out how to pronounce the sensation of a concussion out loud in combination with finding the words to describe (ΩДΩ).

At the time, he clung on the instinct a remora had to cling to something more powerful.

Also : concussion.

At first, the creature didn’t slow. Shang Qinghua clung like a barnacle, his arms wrapped around a powerful neck and shoulder, and was dragged along like a carp-streamer. They were in the open ocean, and in front of his eyes the scene was unfurling like a cinematic: the ship sinking into the depths, spires of ice cracked through the hull in some places and shadowed pockets of portals in others. The shadows were fading out now, unneeded.

He wasn’t able to get a good look before again the world became nothing but darkness. That strange flattening and pulling of the portal stretched, and then:

The sudden cold was like being stung by needles everywhere, like the water was full of glass shards. Shang Qinghua yelped, muscles locking, making his arms close even tighter around the monster he’d grabbed.

Speaking of, the thing stopped swimming abruptly, causing Shang Qinghua to swing around like a purse. The momentum was just enough to have him swing around the other’s shoulders and then slide into place against its chest.

Its... His, it turned out. His, nice. Very nice, very nice, chest. Torso to torso. It felt hard. The- the torso. Like a wall of muscle. For the split second he was able to feel it.

Shang Qinghua looked up, brown eyes wide, and met a slit-pupiled gaze. The other -- mer? Perhaps? It was hard. Thinking! Thinking was hard! Concussion. The purple-pink-yellowed bruise behind his eyelids when he blinked. Hurt. But the other’s gaze was--

Fucking terrifying!

His sclera were black and visible all around his glowing blue irises now, his eyes widened in disbelief.

“You dare?” The creature snarled, voice so deep and guttural in a way that shot right down into deep places in Shang Qinghua. He felt both simultaneously like a mouse hearing the yowling of a cat and also the toxoplasmosis inside the little rodent brain going ‘yesyesyesss’.

“This lowly one apologizes!” He yelped, clinging harder out of fear.

Pain laced through his back, though it was numbed by the sheer cold. The creature's claws had sliced along his back, but had hooked mostly into his robe, which it now pulled hard. Desperate for even the little warmth they provided, Shang Qinghua was forced to cling to the lapels and hold them closed as he was yanked off. He hunched up like a scruffed kitten, tail curling up, as he was held at arm’s length.

“Wait- Wait, there’s been some misunderstanding! And it’s my birthday, and I’m just a little guy!”

His lips were numb. Words were hard to form. His body trembled from tail to tip, from fear and from cold. He had better arguments than this! He just needed to think. But it was like his thoughts were running at 180p.

Now that he was at arm’s length, he could see a little more detail. The creature in front of him did seem to be a mer, though nothing like any he’d seen so far. His skin had a ghostly pallor, tinged near purplish-blue in paleness. It contrasted harshly where dark scales framed his sides, thick and an inky blue down the entirety of his long, long tail. Its underside was paler, the scales wider and more plate-like, and that, alongside the length, brought to mind something serpentine like a naga. Shang Qinghua watched the scales literally raise and bristle, going from flat to appearing like those of a bush viper.

The other mer was much bigger than Shang Qinghua, at least two to three times his length easily and much more thick. Wherever Shang Qinghua’s mer traits were dainty, the other’s were like an extreme mirror.

Most alarming to the instincts seared into his hindbrain were the massive fins that raised at the other’s hips and ears, and a long spiny sail-fin along the other’s back and tail flaring open.

Suddenly Shang Qinghua understood Wicrosoft Mindows-Zong on the days where the machine struggled under having 20 tabs open.

In less than twenty minutes he’d been beaten, felt up, put on a literal chopping block, seen people die for the first time, been clotheslined, been teleported by weird portals, was actively being frozen to death, and was about to be murdered by a terrifyingly hot merman with apparent magic powers.

All without a break.

He burst into tears. Loud hysterics that had the other mer jolting like he’d been electrocuted. He was held even further away, the other’s expression one of confused disgust, as if Shang Qinghua were some kind of contagious wad of tissues.

“Don’t kill meeeee!” Shang Qinghua cried out, latching onto the arm. He swung his tail up and looped it around the arm clumsily, the fin of his fluke even curled around the back of the other’s mer’s head in an attempt at suction. “I’ll serve you for the rest of my life! I’ll do anything!”

His brain sloshed in his skull as he was thrashed back and forth for the next couple of minutes.

Eventually, the back of his robes were grabbed again and he was yanked free, his poor noodle-arms nothing in the face of those glorious biceps. Shang Qinghua squeaked and curled back in on himself, hugging his own head like in a bear attack.

“You dare, strange little creature, to beg for mercy while flaring at me?!”

Flaring? Who was flaring, ah?? Shang Qinghua’s fins were practically inverted; they were so flattened in fear! He looked wildly around, following the other’s gaze to the long flowing sleeves of his robes. They had billowed out wide, tailored to flow in water for maximum dramatic effect.

Had this other mer never seen clothing like this before? He was bare.

Gloriously bare. And perfectly sculpted.

Shang Qinghua's attention couldn’t linger because faster than he could blink, the other mer struck.

The sheer cold muted the sharpness of the pain, making the sensation of the skin of his arm tearing strange. It was mostly the sudden burst of taste and smell, like burnt pennies shoved under his tongue. He thrashed, but as soon as the other’s claws tore free from the back of his robes, that hand shot out and snagged him by the back of the neck. He was held clamped in place like a violin, scaled fingers an iron cage.

Shang Qinghua froze. He swallowed, hard. The bob of his adam’s apple pressed against the deadly point of a claw.

[(✿❛//ᴗ//❛) Oho~]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN OHO? SYSTEM-DAGE, HELP!!

Eyes rolling into the back of his head, Shang Qinghua went limp.

...

The other mer shook him a few times, like one would a toy that wasn’t working.

There was a ripping sound, and a tugging against one arm and then another. Shang Qinghua watched through the sliver of his lids as one of his beautiful ornate sleeves was shredded and then the other, suppressing his wince whenever his arms were nicked by the swipes of claws. With the blood from his limbs and the surprisingly low amount that fins usually bled, Shang Qinghua supposed the other still thought he was tearing through fins and not material, and Shang Qinghua wasn’t going to correct him.

Yes, yes, he was punished! So severely! His poor beautiful finns boohoo! How would he ever get married now, yada yada.

System! System, were you finally back? Were you ready to fill him in and grant him OP powers and a smartphone?

[Came cause I heard this became a cut sleeve. Misinterpreted. Bored now. Bye. ¯\_༼ ಥ ‿ ಥ ༽_/¯ ]

(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻, thought Shang Qinghua, more spiteful than a concubine in the cold palace.

After tossing him around like a chew toy and getting no satisfying response for another couple of minutes, the bigger mer let him go.

Shang Qinghua let himself drift limply down, further and further.

He was... Getting...Colder... Keeping his eyes open...a sliver...was becoming...more difficult... He watched the long dark silhouette swim off, vision blurring it into a smudge of gray that blended into the ocean above.

The last hour reared like a pustule into his exhausted mind, red and inflamed, bursting over and over and clogging all his thoughts and nerves with the jitters of delayed panic. His chest ached, gills struggling to flare. Pressure was mounting. In his body and mind, and all around him.

Shang Qinghua dragged his eyes open and realized there was little light left, and that the pressure was literal. His ears ached with it, his limbs heavy. He was so, so, cold.

Every inch of his body ached. He could feel the unique muscles of his tail in the way they throbbed.

This deep, the waves were gentle. They rocked him back and forth, like a mother soothing her child. Shang Qinghua’s mother must have done so at some point. He hadn’t been repellant from the very start, surely? Or at least their hired Ayi must have. She’d been paid to put up with him.

Aish.

At least he wasn’t being vored. And he hadn’t dropped into an area of even deeper ocean. He could still see the semblance of light far, far above.

Of all the recent ways he could have died, freezing to death here wasn’t the worst. A solid 3 out of 5.

Huffing that copium.

He’d stopped shivering now. He didn’t have enough strength for it.

A slightly stronger wave swept him off the rock floor and down a gentle incline.

Before Shang Qinghua had time to curse his fate, his body gave a twitch.

Warmth.

He clumsily waved his tail, swimming in little bursts closer to the source.

Soon he had to stop, the sudden heat after such prolonged cold felt like swimming into a field of cacti. He gasped and flopped onto the warmed stone, shuddering through the waves of pain as feeling began reconnecting nerves that had frozen.

In the near distance there was an underwater vent. It teamed with odd life, weird wiggling tubes and arthropods fit to be in someone’s nightmare fuel. Things crab-adjacent and odd fantasy fish that Shang Qinghua thought looked like the kind of thing he’d stumble into making in Spore.

Shang Qinghua lay there for a long time, dethawing like tilapia from a freezer, slipping in and out of consciousness.

Prod. Prod.

Zzzzz. Just five more minutes.

Prod. Poke.

...

Something slimy and warm was dragging itself across his tail. Shang Qinghua startled stiff like a plank of wood, eyes snapping open.

It looked like - well for a second Shang Qinghua feared he had indeed died again and had isekai-ed into the hell of his cursed internet history. With a strangled yelp, he slashed at the probing, phallic shaped animal.

It snapped away, shocked the corpse it had just found was fresh enough to fight back, and Shang Qinghua saw jawless rings of hooked teeth. He recoiled in revulsion.

Directly into a mass of the creatures.

It was like sinking into a warm, squishy mountain of [beeps].

They were kind of like hagfish, the back of his mind thought, as unspeakable horror unfolded. He’d once researched them for a monster he was writing about. They produced copious amounts of slime when stressed.

These creatures were stressed.

...

Shang Qingha swam away, peeling his own fins from his flesh with a sticky slowness. The scent-smell was surprisingly sweet, more like a citrus and cream deal than the slug-fart Shang Qinghua would have expected.

System, is this world based on a Stallion novel? Shang Qinghua asked. Phallic shaped monsters that spurted out slick sweet goop... If he had a critique, it was that it wasn’t making his robes melt off.

But they were disgustingly sticky, and shredded beyond all reason by this point. He shrugged them off and rolled them up, sighing in relief as his gills had better access to the low oxygen level.

It was then that he realized he’d fled quite the distance from the vent, yet the bite of cold hadn’t returned. In fact, he felt cozy, like the tingling of massage oil.

...

Had he just stumbled weird-fish-bukake-first into surviving the cold water of the area??

Right. Right!

How hard could the rest of the whole ocean survival thing be?

...Could he maybe revisit just playing dead forever? QQ

Chapter Text

Shang Qinghua was not an open ocean mer. The fish there were sleek and fast, and the endless looming dark stretching below triggered the big red panic button in both his human and mermaid instincts.

“I’m a goldfish.” Shang Qinghua mumbled to himself, creeping from one section of rocky coral to another. “I’m made for shallow ponds and being pampered! How can I even tolerate salt water when I was raised on fresh water? Peerless Cucumber would tear this world a new asshole. How am I supposed to catch any fish when they swim so fast, ah? And every few days I have to go down and rub the dick fish for cold resistance? Am I supposed to eat them too?”

A shadow flicked by and Shang Qinghua threw himself under cover, wedged at an uncomfortable angle. After a few minutes of nothing, he cautiously ventured out once more.

“Ahaha, ‘eat a dick’, says the universe. That’s about my luck! I can’t catch anything else down here!”

He was in the shallows now, where the sun penetrated all the way to the sand and rock bottom. Instinct drove him up like a constant spur against his ass, just as pressing as the fact that he’d discovered that the deeper water around the vents attracted sharks six times his size.

There was an island near the vent, and the shallows around it were picturesque. Truely, the kind of shit you’d see on travel instagrams. Not tropical, the islands were cloaked by conifer forests of strange purple trees and mountainous spires that gave it a look of ancient mysticism. There was an inlet with a waterfall and white sand beaches. Despite the low temperature, life flourished in the waters around it. The corals were vibrant and fish darted here and there in bursts of color, and the strong sunlight made one feel warm without the dick-fish goop.

It was perfect.

It was also guarded jealously.

“EEP!”

The spear of ice missed Shang Qinghua’s tail by less than a couple centimeters, wedging instead deep into an unfortunate coral.

“Have mercy!” Shang Qinghua screamed, but saved most of his breath for tearing out of there as if his life depended on it.

Because it did!

Shang Qinghua dove into one of his boltholes, giving a harsh wriggle to squeeze his tail through the tight space. After a short tight tunnel it opened up enough for him to turn around, body twisted like a pretzel to face the opening with his palms out.

“Wait, please, have mercy! My king!”

The title was new, something that he’d thrown out in an awkward combination of annoyance and sucking up recently (who died and made you king of the ocean, ah??), but, lacking anything better, he’d clung to it with both hands.

“This servant just wants to serve you forever! He can--” Uh, no clothes to fold. He was terrible at catching fish. There was no tea to make. There was no house to clean. “--bring you anything pretty he finds! And bring you mussels and kelp! And, AAH!”

For some reason, his King’s face, which had been glaring at him from the entranceway he couldn’t fit in, twitched. His brows drew down and his face tinged purple while his pupils thinned to mere slits.

“Shameless.” He snapped. With a wave of his mighty arm, the water at the entrance way crackled with cold.

“Wait, no, please! My king!” Shang Qinghua begged, as the other mer sealed the bolthole’s exit with a thick wall of ice, blocking his view with opaque white.

“I’ll starve! No, have mercy! Please!’ He wailed for a while, while casually letting himself sink further into a hidden pocket of the small cave where he’d stashed supplies. After a few minutes of loud lamenting, he ducked over and checked on his two hidden escape routes, making sure they were clear.

Finding them secured, he returned to the iced over bolthole and sobbed theatrically for a while longer, shucking a couple oysters for a late lunch.

If Shang Qinghua’s estimations were correct, the wild mer would soon leave this immediate area for the next couple of days. If he was confident this victory had finally swatted the annoying fly buzzing around him, then maybe he’d linger out even longer. From careful observations, and many brushes with near disembowelment, he’d learned the other had a vast territory he constantly needed to patrol. It turned out, compared to their wild cousins, domesticated mermaids really did seem tamed. For all the elbowing and snide words he’d gotten at the palace at home, he’d never risked having his throat ripped out for encroaching another’s space.

It wasn’t like Shang Qinghua hadn’t tried to leave! If he’d had any idea of where to go, he’d have headed back to the ship wreck. Shen Jiu might have been terrifying, but the scary you knew was better than the scary you didn’t, and he was about 77% sure he wouldn’t get instantly eaten if he freed him. He could also scavenge around and collect anything of value from the storage keeps. Gold, necklaces, the night pearls, other shiny things... Oh, and of course, a compass. With one of those babies maybe he could find his way someplace safe.

But too bad! He was stuck. Thanks to weird portal magic. Outside of this little paradise of shallows was nothing but open ocean in every direction, and trying to swim through the endless blue with no idea what kind of freaky shit existed in the abyssal dark below... He was in a world with mermaids! He could practically see long tentacles with hooked suckers slithering up from the depths to wrap around his nubile body. No thanks, no thanks!

Swimming into the fathomless water triggered both his human’s paranoia and some deep seated instinct that laced green panic up and down his spine.

Even still, he’d pushed himself forward a little in each direction, driven out by his king’s hostility.

Yet the further he got, the colder he grew, forcing him to double back to the only vent he knew about. Without a reliable source of dickworms, he was stuck being a parasite scrounging away at the corner of his king’s territory.

“And why shouldn’t he take responsibility?” Shang Qinghua complained to the mussel he was clawing open, “He was the one who dragged me here - literally! If unhappy with his purchase he should return me to where he found me! Shen Jiu wouldn’t treat me li-- Aiyah, yes he would, why are all mers such assholes? Are fish just bitches inside?”

It was nearly sunset. He sighed and slumped down to wait through the night. He’d learned his king’s night vision was much superior to his own, and that a lot of sharp-toothed things were nocturnal. In the morning he’d begin more careful mapping, trying to eek out an existence as a remora living alongside a shark that wanted to bite him in half.

Three days later, Shang Qinghua woke up to the smell-taste of blood. It was both bitter and sweet, foul and compelling, and there was a lot of it. He checked himself first, so used to being the source, but even the latest claw marks from where the wild mer had managed to grab his arm a week before were still scabbed over nicely.

He turned over in his crammed alcove, rocks digging painfully into his fins.

No thanks - none of his business!

...

Unbidden, his stomach growled. Mollusks and seagrasses for two weeks felt like a diet of bread and lettuce, and something about this blood felt warm and made his little fangs itch and body jittery.

He tossed and turned for a while before throwing his hands up in an annoyed surrender. He’d just take one quick peek.

Something large had beached itself. The amount of blood was staggering, painting the water a foamy reddish purple. Smaller sharks and other fish swam in agitated circles further out, unwilling to risk themselves upon the sands. Shang Qinghua let a wave pull him onto shore a few yards to the side, emerging into the blinding white of the sand and sun.

“My king?!”

The wild mer was laying limply on the shore, his long tail still in the to and fro of soft waves cresting up to his waist and then down to his fluke, washing the blood from copious wounds into the ocean.

As cautiously as one might approach a bomb, Shang Qinghua pulled himself through shallow water to take a closer look. The wild mer had no reaction to his presence. His eyes were closed, the swoop of long lashes casting shadows on his pale cheeks. Even unconscious, he appeared grumpy, brow tense. The deadly points of his teeth could be seen peeking from his full lips as he dragged in breaths that sounded pained.

“It’s such a shame! What right do you have to be so handsome, ah? You look like an OC I’d make. One just for myself! Why do I only get to look at you now that you’re dying? What a waste, what a waste.”

There were some wounds that seemed to be various kinds of claw marks, but also deep punctures. In some places metal strands of what seemed to be the remnants of a torn net were embedded into the base of his tail, crushing his sailfin down flat. The rest was tangled into his hip fins by many jagged hooks. His tail had been savaged the most, yet his human torso still carried its own nasty slashes.

“It should be a capital crime to damage such a perfect chest.” Shang Qinghua huffed, trailing a finger alongside a long cut that went from one breastbone to belly button. “Though, hah, I guess murder is a capital crime? Ahh, what am I gonna do now?”

He crossed his arms and thought for a moment. Then he opened the shitty little make-shift pouch he’d made from the remains of his robe and pulled out the knife he’d kept a hold of from the ship. He bit his lip as he unwrapped the blade from the cushioning scraps of fabric.

A more perfect opportunity for revenge wasn’t likely to occur again. For two weeks this man had hounded him like a nightmare, leaving savage marks on his body. It was only due to pure luck and the dick-fishes’s extra slipperiness that had allowed Shang Qinghua’s insides to not become his outsides.

Trading the known evil for the unknown evil that was sure to replace him later wasn’t up to him - it wasn’t like the wild mer would be fighting off anyone who wanted the territory now anyway.

Shang Qinghua raised the knife and stared.

Stared into that stupidly handsome face.

...

...

“Ugh!” Shang Qinghua stabbed the knife down into the sand and thrashed in a mini tantrum for a moment.

He couldn’t do it! His king was simply too beautiful to die!

Putting the knife away, he launched himself back into the water and rocketed towards his latest stash of supplies.

Shang Qinghua had no idea what he was doing. He felt like a child playing at traditional medicine. But fantasy world genre rules dictated that local plants would be medicinal in some sort of way, so Shang Qinghua collected the most purpleist of the sea weeds and mashed them into a poultice as fast as he was able, stuffing them first into the deep punctures and then into the slashes. He then used the longest strips of them to wrap the wounds. Moving the much larger, more muscular, mer’s dead weight back and forth was a nightmare that was nearly impossible.

Luckily, there were minimal wounds on his back. Allergic to retreat. Shang Qinghua couldn’t relate.

The kelp wasn’t able to force enough pressure to stop the bleeding in the deepest spots. Shang Qinghua clapped his hands in prayer, bowed to the heavens for mercy, and then climbed up to lay across the long line of the other’s body.

Chest to chest, stomach to stomach, then tail to stomach before tail to tail, because Shang Qinghua was much too short.

The wild mer was ice cold beneath him, but the pleasantly firm squishy of relaxed muscles.

“Please don’t die, or I’ll feel even weirder about this.” Shang Qinghua pleaded. Calling his mood complicated would be an understatement.

Whether it was his weight or his voice, the mer underneath him showed his first sign of life. A weak growl rumbled against his chest. Shang Qinghua heard a weird whine follow, some kind of whimper meeting a croon in a dark alley, then he startled when he realized it was coming from his own throat.

Whatever the automatic response sound was seemed to calm his king down, so Shang Qinghua mentally shrugged. His body came with built in mer language? Yeah, whatever. He wasn’t going to question it in a world that had teleportation and ice powers.

He continued to make the low crooning sound, nearly like a cat’s purr. His king’s furrowed brows relaxed slowly. His eyes opened, glassy and half lidded. He stared down with some difficulty, gaze sliding in and out of focus.

After a moment, the wild mer’s lips curled back into a snarl, and his growl deepened.

“Hey! No more of that! My king, please listen! If you throw me off, you’ll bleed out and die! I’m the only thing holding your wounds closed now!”

Ignoring his pleas, the wild mer slowly lifted a hand with intense effort. Shang Qinghua watched his limb shake and then swing down.

...

It was probably meant to be a viscous clawing, but the lack of strength made it feel more akin to a caress, claws barely brushing along Shang Qinghua’s back before coming to a stop near his lower back.

“Aiyah! Have mercy.” Shang Qinghua said, conciliatory, and totally not fighting a laugh. Better to not kick a man who was down if that man had a chance of getting up again.

The prickle of claws sharpened against his back, becoming pinpricks of pain.

Shang Qinghua’s annoyance flared, and with it, his instincts. With a growl of his own, he lurched forward and bit down at the junction of the larger mer’s throat and shoulder, a warning press of his little fangs.

...

...

A long, long, moment passed, both mers seemingly more stunlocked than the other at this new development.

...

...

System, could you prepare a better world next time he died? He’d probably be needing it soon!

...But... It seemed to work. The wild mer stiffened and then went limp. When Shang Qinghua was brave enough to pull back, he saw him staring up at the sky with the blank expression of one whose brain seemed to have broken.

---

The wild mer’s name, insofar as Shang Qinghua could get, was more of a title. “Mobiei-Jun.” It had seemed his attempts at sucking up hadn’t even been far off - Mobei-Jun was both a beachmaster and a literal prince of some kind, though the first title seemed to matter more immediately.

He was also, more than anything else, a huge fucking brat!

Shang Qinghua dodged the handful of clams flung at his head. They shattered upon the rocks behind him with the force of the throw, ruining perfectly good flesh with splintered shards of shell.

“Was dinner not to your liking, my king?” Shang Qinghua asked, wringing his hands (like he’d like to wring this prince’s perfect neck). Early in recovery, a couple weeks back, they’d managed to get Mobei-Jun into a large tide pool alongside a shallow inlet that Shang Qinghua could access through most phases of the tide.

“I’m tired of mollusks.” Mobei-Jun said. “Bring me live fish.”

“Ah, this useless servant will do his best! But he isn’t as fast or agile, nor as powerful as you, my king! This servant struggles to catch the fish in your waters, which are the cleverest and fastest of fish, fit only for one such as yourself!”

Mobei-Jun crossed his arms, certain assets emphasized by the pose (awooga), and leaned back to stare haughty down.

“Then, you may bring them to me already slain.” He said, with the air of one granting a large personal favor.

Fuck! Your! Fish! 凸ಠ益ಠ)凸

“This servant will do his best! Even though it took me all afternoon to find clams that large, and now they’ve gone to waste because of a tant-- Because you spotted they weren’t fit for your kingly lips, of course! Fish, coming up!”

...

Mobei-Jun stared at the meager offering of two scrawny fish (nabbed through Shang Qinghua retooling the metal net that’d been part of the attack on the other mer into fishing lines).

“If that will be all, I’d better- eerk!”

Mobei-Jun’s recovery was progressing astonishingly fast. Even in spite of Shang Qinghua’s misguided attempts at medicine, which had probably done more harm than good. It was easy to mark his progress now in how quickly the wild mer lunged forward and grabbed Shang Qinghua in front of his fluke as he turned tail to flee.

“Have mercy!” Shang Qinghua cried, on instinct, covering his head with his arms.

The high tide had rolled in, cresting a foot of water over the land that always separated the channel from the tidepool, and he was hauled backwards and over the separation like a misbehaving pet.

Brought into his king’s recovery pool, Shang Qinghua didn’t know what to think. His scattered thoughts jumped from his king’s craving for fresh fish and over to the pathetic supply he’d brought.

Then a conclusion hit him with the force of an isekai-truck.

“No! No, please don’t!” He yelped, squirming. Mobei-Jun made a sound of annoyance, and shifted his grip further up his tail, grabbing his hips with his large hands and dragging Shang Qinghua closer.

“Noooo! Not again! Don’t eat me!” Shang Qinghua thrashed against the iron grasp, water flying everywhere in giant splashes.

“Shang Qinghua!” Mobei-Jun snapped.

There was a wave of vertigo. Water poured down Shang Qinghua as he was lifted up out of the water. For a brief moment he was stunned by the raw strength of arms able to lift him so easily up into the air - his frantic heart giving a little pump of blood southwards - and then he was shaken.

Brain rattled and effectively shut up, Shang Qinghua blinked away interesting colors as he was lowered back down.

“Such a noisy little thing.” Mobei-Jun grumbled, from above. Shang Qinghua realized all at once they were very close together, Mobei-Jun’s large hands holding his hips firm and tight against his stomach.

Like this, he was eye level with two of the realm’s finest creations: firm and large like the rest of Mobei-Jun. His nipples were dusky, carrying a purple tinge like the delicate veins in the webbing of his ear fins visible in the inky blue only from this close.

Shang Qingua had the sudden desire to trace their path with his tongue. The variance of texture, from the supple fin interspersed with ridgid spines, to the small space of soft flesh between his ear and where the scales braced the sides of his neck. How would those scales feel, against his lips? From experience, he’d learned Mobei-Jun’s tail scales were harder than his own and tougher, able to prickle up in excitement, and were painful to touch in a reverse direction. But if his mouth was delicate - if his lips were soft in their exploration of the rough points, how would it feel against them?

Then he could just continue down, travel to the collarbone. There was no notable dip - his king was too fit. Plenty of muscle to sink his teeth into, Then he could just trail a little further, and take that pert point of the perfect pec--

Mobei-Jun, apparently seeing his vapid, salivating stare, seemed to decide Shang Qinghua had malfunctioned in some way. Like a child with a toy, he shook him again until Shang Qinghua went limp with dizziness. The corner of Mobei-Jun’s lips pulled down, and he easily supported the other mer’s dead weight.

Shang Qinghua watched him from under his cracked lids. He’d been hoping the wild mer would lose interest and drop him... Keeping so close to the wild mer was dangerous. In sooo many different ways. He’d rather keep his lips, and the jaws they were attached to, please! He didn’t like his impulse control when it mixed with his new instincts and the most handsome man that existed.

Instead of dropping him, Shang Qinghua barely contained a surprised yelp as he was flipped over, the wave of bubbles bursting like the vertigo against his ears. Suddenly ass up and head down, he blinked at the underwater scene painted by the sunset.

The tidepool wasn’t teeming with life anymore, not with a hungry mer having been living in it for two weeks, but it was still a pretty scene painted with the pinks and oranges and purples of the dusk falling. The way the light ripples against--ACK WHO CARED ABOUT THAT NOW, WHY WAS-??

Shang Qinghu looked up (down?) the stretch of his body to where as much of his tail as could fit was being held out of the water. Mobei-Jun had grabbed under his fluke and lifted it up high. He turned Shang Qinghua left and right, taking in Shang Qinghua’s calico patterned scales as the warm light reflected off those that shone in patchworks of glittering gold. The wild mer used his free hand to pinch his flowy tail fin between the sides of his clawed fingers and spread it against gravity, gaze as unreadable as ever.

...

What was Shang Qinghua?! Some Zibo goldfish contestant!?

“My King!” Shang Qinghua complained, feeling his face grow warm. He had a feeling that if his scales could bristle, they would. He reached up and covered the worst of the rough patches he could, where the damage from the voyage was still visible and ugly. Curved into a crescent, his head and shoulders popped free from the water’s surface.

“This servant apologizes for his unsightly appearance - he isn’t currently in his top form!”
And Shang Qinghua really shouldn’t care about scars and patchy scales, but the stupid fish part of his brain really DID. So he continued, more speaking to convince himself than anything else. “After a couple sheds, there'll be no more traces left! Then I’d only bear any marks from you, my king. Ow!”

The last bit he squeaked. Mobei-Jun’s grip had tightened suddenly, claws sinking into the flesh below his fluke. The wild mer let him go as he writhed, and Shang Qinghua went to flee the tidepool.

“Stop!” Mobei-Jun barked, and Shang Qinghua froze with his hands braced on the stone wall.

“Stay.” Movie-Jun commanded, in a tone that brokered no argument. “It’s a new moon.”

“Yes, yes, of course, my king!’ Said Shang Qinghua. He slithered backwards through the water, keeping as much of a distance as he felt he could get away with. He poked his clawed fingers together for a while. Looked up at the sky as dusk faded into night. Shot occasional glances over.

“My king is so wise! It’s the newest moon I’ve ever seen tonight. Er. Well. Not seen. Since it’s a new moon.”

Mobei-Jun grunted.

It was very dark. Shang Qinghua’s night vision was good, but with only the light of the stars, he was nearly blind. Though he knew the pool was shallow and protected by walls barely breached by the tide, the gentle bobbing of waves in growing blackness kept bringing to mind hovering above the depth of the open ocean. The creepy-crawling feeling of insects running up and down his spine, of ice in his veins. Seaweed brushed against his tail, and Shang Qinghua felt his stomach tighten and his body grow stiff. Every instinct told him to find shelter and tuck into a small den, like he’d been doing every night so far.

He dithered for a couple minutes, swimming in circles like an anxious dog trying to find a place to settle.

Here was too shallow.

Over there was too close to the breached wall and open ocean.

This spot was too deep.

This one too far.

In between spots he cast glances over to where Mobei-Jun had sunk under the surface. There were two dimly glowing spots of ice blue staring at him through the inky depth - which, creepy much?? But the monster you knew was better than the one you didn’t, right?

He hesitated.

The night air broke with the sound of a long high screech. On instinct, Shang Qinghua darted under the surface, and realized that what had been audible above the water had been coming from somewhere in the ocean. It was joined by another screech, and another. Near yipping calls like the combination of a banshee and a pack of hyenas cackling.

Shang Qinghua slapped his hands over his ears. The sound lit up something inside him like the world’s biggest flashing danger sign, each discordant note dragging against his nerves in an awful melody of terror. He’d discovered when hyper-stressed he produced a chemical that could be tasted in the water - which, major design flaw?? - and the tang of it was thick on his tongue now.

In his panic, he heard a distinctly annoyed sigh.

Suddenly, there was light in the inky blackness. Pale blue spots of bioluminescence interspersed with thin blue connecting lines. They ran down Mobei-Jun’s sides and tail, looking much like patterns of constellations against his dark scales.

“Come.” He said, with an imperious hand motion, like calling a pet.

Shang Qinghua didn’t need a second’s more prompting. With a hasty thrash of his tail, he darted over to Mobei-Jun’s side. He’d have hidden behind him if his king hadn’t been reclined right up against the wall of stone. He sidled up as close as he dared, sides nearly touching. The water near Mobei-Jun carried a chill, and a sort of pleasant spearmint taste/smell now that the other was recovering well, as if some of his ice powers just oozed from the rule of cool. ...Rule of cold?

Another round of the strange shrieks filled the water, their vibrations causing Shang Qinghua to pin his ears flat to his head.

“My king, if this servant may ask, what are the things making such horrible noises?”

“Abyssal eels.” Movie-Jun answered, as if bored. His lights pulsed gently, dimming and brightening in slow waves that Shang Qinghua had trouble looking away from. He felt like the answer should alarm him, but it was hard to focus on anything aside from the gentle pulse.

“Ah. Are they - are they big, scary monsters with giant bulging eyes and jagged teeth, able to swallow a mer whole?”

“Ten mer. Twenty of you.”

“Aiyah, of course, of course! Of course there are giant fucking deep sea monsters here - ahaha! And they come out every new moon?” Shang Qinghua felt somewhat lightheaded.

“Not all. Just their breeding season.”

“Giant HORNY deep sea monsters, got it.”

He must have leaked more fear into the water, because Mobei-Jun reopened one eye to glare at him. He swung the long length of his tail over and dropped a heavy coil onto Shang Qinghua’s tail. Shang Qinghua hadn’t even realized he’d been anxiously moving his back and forth, fiddling with his fins, until the movement was forced to abruptly end with the sudden weight pressing it down.

“Sleep.”

With the cursed knowledge of nightmare serpents swimming nearby? As if he could! And - tail, his tail, wasn’t that, that was pretty personal, yeah? Was he basically being sat on right now?! Brothers in virginity, what base was this? And what game, because in what world was Shang Qinghua in the same league as Mobei-Jun?

Ahhh, this had to be more like slapping a hand over a buzzing fly!

With all these thoughts scattering here and there in his brain, Shang Qinghua was never more awake.

Mobei-Jun’s lips thinned, not used to being disobeyed (brat! brat!). Frustrated, he snapped:

“Sleep!”

“Yes, my king! Asleep now my king!” Shang Qinghua squeaked, clamping his eyes closed.

...
...
Shang Qinghua was a pro at feigning sleep to escape his problems, but he could feel the ice cold stare bearing down on the side of his face. Yep. Just trying to sleep next to someone who’d been trying to kill him recently. Totally easy!

He was trying his best, okay? One hundred sheep, one hundred and one sheep, one hundred and two sheep - where was ancient fantasy melatonin when you needed it? The more anxious he got, the more chemicals he was sure he leeched.

There was a heavy sigh to his right.

Without a hint of warning, Movie-Jun snapped into movement. Shang Qinghua yelped and found himself scruffed, the wild mer’s big clawed hand grasping him by the back of his neck, below his hair.

Against his wishes, his body grew stiff - all his muscles tensing at once, and then Mobei-Jun squeezed and - oh. It would be the kind of oh Shang Qinghua would emphasize with italics if he were writing it in one of his scenes, because nothing else could accurately describe it. It was as if his mind emptied all at once, and his locked muscles loosened as if someone had snipped the cords of a marionette. Like his head was an egg and someone cut a hole in the bottom and let the yolk of his mind all pour out - leaving a sort of blissful emptiness.

He slumped limp and dazed, being held up by Mobei-Jun’s strength alone.

For his own part Mobei-Jun didn’t seem to have expected such a dramatic result, or else seemed uncertain of how to proceed. He stared at Shang Qinghua with his stoic yet haughty expression for a while more before the pulsing of his bioluminescence began again.

Shang Qinghua watched it like a moth watching a candle’s flame, eyelids growing heavier and heavier and heavier...

---
Shang Qinghua woke up to being thrown through the air.

He barely had time to scream before he belly-flopped into the ocean and was dragging into the undertow, vision becoming a sandy slurry. The tide was retreating as the sun rose, and Mobei-Jun had tossed him across the now-exposed barrier of rock and into the shallowing water. He was spun like dough back and forth between a giant’s fingers by the restless waves until he was able to snap through his bleary confusion and find his fins.

Spitting out sand, he popped his head out of the water, forcing a smile on his face. Meanwhile under the surface he wrung his hands together to prevent flipping the stupidly muscular, stupidly handsome, stupidly assholeish prince off and getting an ice spear to the face.

“How thoughtful of my king to prevent this servant from being marooned!” Shang Qinghua simpered, as oily as a used car salesman - or as a startled dickfish - he was starting to get cold, it looked like another trip to the vent was in order soon.

“Go hunt.”

Mobei-Jun said. He motioned a dismissal with one imperious hand, already turning his attention away before Shang Qinghua could respond.

“Of course, my king!” Shang Qinghua said, while imagining catching one of the phallic shaped fish at the vent and throwing it directly in the other’s (stupidly handsome, it was worth repeating) face. Eat a dick, eat a dick, eat a dick, eat a dick!!

But Shang Qinghua really didn’t want to die again, he couldn’t trust that his next reincarnations wouldn’t just get progressively worse in a conga line of trauma. So he grit his sharp little teeth and went off to bring home the fish-bacon.

For the next week, they settled into a routine. Mobei-Jun would throw him out in the morning, and Shang Qinghua would go out and bring back whatever food he could muster. More often than not, Mobei-Jun would act spoiled and discontent, sometimes pinning him with a cold stare or other times chasing him around the small area snapping at Shang Qinghua’s tail, as if threatening to make up the deficient meal. But, even if Shang Qinghua tried to flee the tide pool at night, he’d find himself iced in or grabbed. So he would awkwardly jitter around until being wrangled or lulled to sleep by gently glowing bioluminescence.

It was starting into the second week that Shang Qinghua’s little rodent senses kept tingling alarms up and down his nerves during the day. He couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, but no matter how suddenly he turned or how circumspect his route, he couldn’t detect anything outside of the ordinary.

Even so, to have his nerves pulled so tightly so often made them frazzled. Nervous by day, nervous by night, when was his break, ah?? He was going to die from stress before Mobei-Jun or an abyssal eel!

Speaking of Mobei-Jun, his king was entirely uninterested when Shang Qinghua told him about his paranoia.

“Hm.” Was all he’d said. Because he was a great conversationalist! Truely, this author wanted to applaud! He weedled for more until Mobei-Jun put his palm against Shang Qinghua’s face (he hadn’t realized he’d swam so close) and...moved his hand up and down? Was he trying to shut him up? Or pet a dog? Was Shang Qinghua practically as low as a dog now?! (What was the mer equivalent of a dog?)

Ah, whatever, whatever. Pets didn’t seem like they had it too bad. Shang Qinghua grumbled some things to himself, but lowered his head so at least Mobei-Jun was petting the top of it instead of his face.

After a couple days more of constantly looking over his shoulder, Shang Qinghua nearly missed the attack coming directly from the front.

To be fair, the mer’s tail was drab colored, an olive-brown with a lighter underside that blended into many of the rocks. To be less fair, he was openly swimming straight at Shang Qinghua with all his fins flared out and hissing like a kicked cat.

Bizarrely, for a moment, Shang Qinghua was filled with a blind fury: the kind of instinctive pull to violence that Peerless Cucumber must have felt every time he saw an update alert for Shang Qinghua’s latest harem stories. It rose up so suddenly that it clashed with his usual instincts of ‘getting the fuck out of there’, resulting in his body spasming back and forth in what probably looked like something seizure adjacent, fins flaring open and then snapping closed so rapidly that he fluttered up like a butterfly in the water.

“What the fuck!” Shang Qinghua hissed through grit teeth, forcing water through his gills in a deep breath to combat the haze of red that’d flashed over his vision. His claws sank into his own palms and his muscles strained as he squirmed against the competing drives.

Brain, he was not a territorial tiger! He was the live rabbit they threw in the enclosure that survived by staying the fuck away from jaws and claws! Simmer down!

In a stroke of luck, Shang Qinghua’s bizarre wriggling brought the other mer up into a harsh stop, the yellow-green of his narrow fins flashing bright (but boring, in comparison to Mobei-Jun’s vivid blues).

The stranger hovered, eyes raking over every inch of Shang Qinghua from tail to tip. Shang Qinghua almost covered his chest and then disregarded the weird impulse. He was definitely reading that look waaay wrong - there was no way he was being eyed up like a piece of meat. It was more likely he was being eyed up like a -literal- piece of meat.

System, zero stars for this vore kink world! Was this punishment for the pudding fairy short story? His rent was overdue, okay?!

The other mer made a strange whistling call, low and inquisitive. Shang Qinghua felt goosebumps emerge on his arms.

“Uhh, no thanks?” Shang Qinghua guessed, not knowing what the fuck the sound meant, but edging away as subtly as he could.

“Ah, but pretty little thing, how could you hope to hold this territory all by yourself?” Said the stranger.

“Eh? I think that-”

“Starting a dance and then backing out? Never seen colors like that, but being rare doesn’t mean you can be rude, Sunset.”

“Wha- There’s definitely been some kind of misundersta-”

“Let me hunt you up something special, sweet thing. Bet you can’t catch anything with those frills slowing you down. This territory is prime now it’s empty, I’ll catch you something real good. C’mere, let me look at you.”

“Waah, WTF, hey, back off!”

Before Shang Qinghua even had a chance to lurch backwards, a surge of water from behind buffeted him to the side as a large dark shape lunged past him.

The interloper let out one cut off squawk before the taste of blood burst into the water. He might have been larger than Shang Qinghua, but still paled in comparison to Mobei-Jun’s great size and strength. He was on the backfin immediately, desperately deflecting Mobei-Jun’s powerful strikes with the haft of his spear until it snapped in half. Shang Qinghua’s king scored another line of claw marks down along his flesh, deep and unforgiving in a way that made Shang Qinghua realize he’d been lucky with the other’s ire before.

The stranger screamed, inhumanely high and piercing. He tried to flee, but Mobei-Jun hooked his claws into his tail and hauled him back.

“The markers! Hadn’t been refreshed!” The intruder sobbed, voice desperate. “I didn’t know! I won’t come back!” He writhed in Mobei-Jun’s grasp, emitting shrill cries and placating whimpers and an uncomfortable blend of the two that set Shang Qinghua’s teeth on edge and heart racing.

Mobei-Jun dragged the other wild mer in and gave him one last bite to the shoulder, and Shange Qinghua heard the sickening crunch of bone. He winced, heart racing and stomach turning. Once released the injured mer took off like a rocket, trailing a cloud of dark blood like a comet’s tail.

Shang Qinghua flinched as Mobei-Jun turned around, his blue eyes piercing and his mouth bloody.

Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit!

“W-wow!” He squeaked. His voice cracked down the middle with fear. He could feel himself trembling, and tried to suppress it. “My King is so impressive!” He swallowed hard, vision a little wiggly.

He’d had a suspicion that Mobei-Jun had been sneaking out of the recovery pool for a few days now, his hangry fussiness having relaxed and the feeling of being watched having started, but Shang Qinghua had allowed himself to get too comfortable. To let himself see a spoiled cat where there was a lion. He watched Mobei-Jun lick the blood off his sharp teeth, bright white against the darkness of his mouth.

Mobei-Jun watched him, a silent moment stretching the tautness of Shang Qinghua’s spine tighter and tighter like a stringed instrument being overtuned.

Then the silence broke.

Mobei-Jun made a low crooning rumble, the inflection lifting at the end nearly like a question.

Shang Qinghua’s face grew warm, and his stomach felt weird.

Uncertain, he chirped.

It seemed like a good enough answer. Mobei-Jun nodded.

“Hunt.” He commanded, again. Then, with a flip of his long dark tail, he set off into the dark distance.

“This worthless servant will do better tomorrow! Please have mercy!” Shang Qinghua offered up his catches and bowed in the water like a shrimp. Unlike the bravado he’d held that morning, there was no dick fish in the small haul. Only a few crustaceans, a few mussels, and an eel that had given his butt a nasty bite.

He’d tried, he’d really tried! But the fish around here really were too fucking fast!

Mobei-Jun stared at him, his face as impassively bitchy as ever, though one brow raised. Shang Qinghua couldn’t see how he’d be confused at his deference after the display he’d seen earlier. He liked his bones not crunched apart, thanks.

Mobei-Jun’s tail came over and swept the entire pile over to himself, and Shang Qinghua didn’t let out a single grumbled complaint. The kelp he’d stuffed down throughout the day would just have to be enough.

He was just lighting a candle to his future constipation when something lightly thumped off the top of his bowed head and floated down to land in front of him. An absolutely delicious scent filled his...nose(?), and he blinked dumbly at the giant fish.

It had been killed cleanly, just one clawmark puncturing the skull. It was large enough he had to hold it with both his hands spread wide, and so plump that it would take a few bites to hit the spine.

Shang Qinghua blinked.

And blinked again.

When it didn’t fade like a desert mirage, he looked at Mobei-Jun. He was already eating Shang Qinghua’s pathetic offerings, cracking the hard shells like they were peanuts.

“M-My king,” Shang Qinghua said, swallowing his pooling drool, “you dropped this.”

Mobei-Jun’s slit-pupiled gaze slid up and pinned Shang Qinghua in place like a bug on a board. Hints of blue-violet showed as the fins at his ears and hips opened. His eyes narrowed.

“Is Qinghua saying it’s not good enough...? He is not grateful?” He asked. His voice was low, and contained traces of a growl.

“No!” Yelped Shang Qinghua, the most grateful of all grateful beings. “It’s perfect! Stupendous! The most fish of fish ever! This servant is not worthy and thanks his king on bended knee! Tail!”

To end his own blabbering, he stuffed his mouth.

!!!

!!!

Uwaaaah~!

Ah, judging by the weird look he just got, he probably just moaned IRL, but who could blame him? Shang Qinghua had never tasted anything as amazing as this in either lifetime. Who said being a pathetic little gopher didn’t pay? Shang Qinghua would make them eat those words! While he ate this amazing fucking fish, uhh!

There was still more than half the fish left before Shang Qinghua felt like he would physically pop if he took even one more bite. He watched Mobei-Jun take it and polish the rest of it off, bones and all.

Finished with his meal, Mobei-Jun reclined himself against the rock wall and stared at Shang Qinghua with a half lidded gaze.

Shang Qinghua figited under the scrutiny.

The silence between them ripened, like a fruit gone soft in spots, stuck in the state where Shang Qinghua wasn’t certain on whether it was still good, or was about to go bad.

In Shang Qinghua’s experience, silence could be a lot of things. It could be a weight, the heavy reminder of failed expectations, conveyed by the thinning of his father’s lips as he ignored Shang Qinghua’s explanations, pressing his report card back onto the table and picking up the newspaper, never once looking over at him.

It could be a weapon, turned against him when he’d made his mom upset.

It could be a trap, back when he was young and overeager, blabbering just to fill any silence just to impress his step-mom, before he’d grown and realized that there were no right words, nor any amount of them, that could make her love him.

But ahh, had he really grown enough? Because as the silence stretched, words bubbled in Shang Qinghua’s throat. He craved to fill it with something.

Words. There were always so many words clambering up inside, jumbling around, wanting to get out. Why else could he write 10k a day?

Shang Qinghau hesitated for a moment, then decided to take a bite out of the silence and see if the result would be rancid.

“My King, can this servant tell you a story?”

----

Somehow, they settled into a new routine. Mobei-Jun would throw him into the open ocean in the morning and command him to hunt again, then go off to patrol or do whatever big scary territorial mers did. Then by the evening, he would corral Shang Qinghua back to the safe haven of the tide pool and demand all of the collected food. He’d present Shang Qinghua with a much better dinner of some kind and watch him eat it with a smug, satisfied expression. Afterwards, Shang Qinghua would speak deep into the night. He’d start with stories - but often he found himself branching off into complaints or anecdotes, tolerated sometimes, but not always.

It was during one such rant, where Shang Qinghua had somehow begun to speak about his time on the ship and what a waste it was that he couldn’t rob it blind for all he was put through, when Mobei-Jun shifted from his relaxed position.

Shang Qinghua squeaked, covering his head with his arms, and pulling his tail in tightly. Mobei-Jun liked to yank on it when he was being particularly annoying.

“Tomorrow. This King will bring you.”

“Eh? Really? Uh- Thank you, my king!”

The water was much warmer on the other side of the shadowy portal. Mobei-Jun brought them out at the same elevation, and then directed them to swim down. Even with his increased night vision, the husk of the ship loomed in a realm of deep shadows. Shang Qinghua found himself bumping into Mobei-Jun’s side, anxious to stay close.

The ship was mostly intact now that the portals that had made it take on water were gone. There were some highly unpleasant remains. Shang Qinghua went around them as best he could. Most had jumped ship, but...

Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it. Gaslight. Gatekeep. Girlboss.

He was NOT going to check what he thought was the fishkeeper’s cabin.

“How long can mers go without eating?” He mumbled to himself, fins twitching as he dug his claws into the trap door that led to the first cargo hold below. “Ugh, if he’s still alive, he’s totally gonna kill me for taking this long. But what was I supposed to do, ah? I bet he’d have left me high and dry anyway, so really he should-- AH, WHATEVER here we go!”

He yanked the door open and swam down before he lost his nerve.

Like the rest of the ship, his ex-prison was on its side, all the cargo boxes strewn messily along the narrow wall. His tub was there, chain and bloody ribbon hanging loose. Beyond it, lit by spilled nightpearls...

Empty chains dangling above an empty tank. The encircling collars all snapped apart.

Shang Qinghua let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He sagged in the water like a deflated worm, boneless in relief. Mobei-Jun frowned and poked him with his claw, pushing him a few inches each time.

“I hadn’t realized I cared that much.” Shang Qinghua said. Ha, his voice was a little silly sounding. Breathless.

Mobei-Jun observed him for a moment, gaze unreadable.

“Is this about the violent green mer?” He asked.

Shang Qinghua’s ear fins shot up.

“My King, you know about him? Did you see him when you attacked the ship?”

Mobei-Jun shrugged, looking bored with the conversation already. He turned his attention to the limply floating length of ribbon, dyed reddish brown with Shang Qinghua’s blood, eyes narrowing.

“My kiiiing!” Shang Qinghua prodded, tail twitching impatiently.

“He was the reason the Dragon Emperor ordered the attack on the ship.” Mobei-Jun said, as if that wasn’t a bombastic revelation. “Junshang brought him through a portal to the jade palace before ordering me to finish sinking the vessel.”

Shang Qinghua’s head spun with so many questions queuing up that they clogged his throat, leaving him stunned silent.

He would... He would address all that later!

For now, it was time to loot!

He startled at a loud clanging sound.

For some reason, Mobei-Jun had ripped Shang Qinghua’s once-chain and ribbon from the tank wall like he was uprooting a weed that had offended him. He then proceeded to crack the chain links like nut-shells in his hands, destroying the length bit by systematic bit.

It was a waste.

But.

For some reason, Shang Qinghua’s stomach felt light, and the feeling bubbled up to his chest.

Unable to prevent it, he sidled up and brushed against his king, a soft drag of his tail along tail. The fluttering feeling intensified, a little like being drunk.

“Ah, thanks, my king.” He mumbled, sincerity awkward in his mouth and strained in his chest. Quickly, before Mobei-Jun could respond, Shang Qinghua fled to the pile of boxes. Grabbing a night pearl, he began to inspect the haul.

The hold that held them was one that included monetary valuables. Shang Qinghua struggled to pull himself away from glimmering jade statues and gemstones, passed up on vases and fine china, salivated over fine silks and jewelry... There wasn’t much of real use here, but oooh he yearned!

Were mermaids part magpie?? Seeing shining, beautiful, things sent sparks of pleasure up and down his extended spine. In a flash of vanity he couldn’t resist, he used a jade comb to order his hair (which had surprisingly little tangles - was this part of mermaid magic?), and set it into a bun with a beautiful hairpin with trailing goldfish of burnished gold and rubies. He covered his wrists with bracelets and neck with necklaces. The silks and fabrics he had an excuse for: surely they could be used for something. He grabbed his favorites and tied them like sashes wherever he could get them to fit, until he looked like a present wrapped by a deranged group of kindergarteners.

He stuffed many night pearls into the makeshift fabric-slings, and then pulled away from the treasures with a sigh. He was already nearly over burdened: he could only take so much.

“We should check for more useful supplies elsewhere.” Shang Qinghua said, wistfully, floating backwards, yet unable to tear his gaze away from the pile of wonders.

Mobei-Jun made a low sound.

“Qinghua likes these kinds of things?” He asked.

Shang Qinghua looked at him in surprise.

“Don’t you? It’s so- It’s so--” He floundered, “shiny!”

Mobei-Jun gave him an inscrutable look.

Eh?? Maybe the magpie thing was a domesticated mer trait? His king really didn’t seem impressed.

The wild mer turned and swam up through the trap door, his bulk barely fitting through. Shang Qinghua followed, swimming awkwardly with his load.

With Mobei-Jun’s help, they returned to the island bay with various useful tools. Fishing lines, hooks, nets, and traps were the best of finds objectively for Shang Qinghua - he was determined that soon their strange dinner exchanges would become much more equal.

They also brought booze.

Mobei-Jun’s lips had curled back in a disgusted snarl, and he’d nearly thrown it against the rocks when he’d first uncorked a bottle and been hit with the smell. Only Shang Qinghua’s frantic pleading had prevented the tragic waste.

Now, hours later, basking in the golden glow of the setting sun, Shang Qinghua giggled and went lax, hair and fins spread around him as he was tipped back and forth by gentle waves. He let himself be spun in slow circles like a rotisserie chicken, or a gas station hot dog - man, he missed those things.

He opened his eyes, vision hazed with the pleasant blur of alcohol, and saw Mobei-Jun staring at his spread fins and tail. Normally, he would have anxiously and hastily sucked them in tight to his body, hoping to prevent any chance of looking like he was manspreading or whatever dominance thing the motion served, but, though his king’s gaze was intense, it didn’t seem any more hostile than usual.

Even so Shang Qinghua felt prickles of... Fear? Something squirmy and electric like static, starting in his stomach and traveling along wherever his king’s eyes trailed. Filled with liquid courage, he spread the gossamer fins of his tail. They’d recovered well from his time in the tank, their wounds knitting together nicely. In this light his holographic scales shone especially bright, while his matte ones were painted warmer tones. The thick welted scar patterns were fading under new growth.

Shang Qinghua felt a little proud.

It was an odd, alien feeling.

Mobei-Jun made a low sound of what Shang Qinghua hoped was approval. The wild mer’s own large fins flared out, the vivid lighter blue and purple tones a beautiful contrast against his inky blue tail. His fins, minus the back sail, were more streamlined. They were all powerfully built and strong, stiffer than the flimsy gossamer of domesticated mers. Shang Qinghua could see the spots and lines where at night bioluminescence could form, like bright stars in a tapestry.

“Story.” Mobei-Jun commanded imperiously. Despite drinking more of the bottles, he seemed less affected, yet still had a slight flush of purple to his cheeks.

“Aish! Okay, okay.”

So pushy, even drunk. Shang Qinghua would pinch his cheek, if he weren’t afraid his hand would get bitten off.

---

It was hard to keep track of the days and weeks that passed. Shang Qinghua from Shanghai would have never imagined his life would have ended up like this.

Though, to be fair, living some sort of bizarre mermaid island life wouldn’t have been on the table for any sane person’s picture of the future.

Shang Qinghua slowly grew more efficient using the fishing tackle they’d salvaged, and was rewarded by approving growls and rumbles during the strange nightly food exchanges when he started being able to present his own nice caches.

The bizarre prickles of pride he’d felt were so alien the first few times, he’d had to swim in agitated circles, before going back and fishing again, this time for more praise.

Living alongside Mobei-Jun wasn’t always nice or easy. Whether through nurture or nature, violence was baked into his core. He was quick to action and quick to anger, often falling into that emotion first as default before any feeling more complex could be slowly worked out. He was unused to not getting his way, ordering Shang Qinghua around like a servant, and he was prone to sulking, even if he’d been the one to cause the problem.

“Spoiled brat!” Shang Qinghua cursed, rubbing salve onto claw marks. Mobei-Jun had given him the light scratches himself, but had been giving them mournful looks ever since, consistently turning away from Shang Qinghua.

“What am I, a battered wife, forced to comfort her asshole husband? It’s okay, you didn’t mean to- Well, yeah, yeah, whatever, he’s probably never had a gentle touch before me, his family sucks...” Shang Qinghua paused in his administration.

Yikes, he really didn’t want to think about... any of that. The wife part, which was ridiculous. Right? But also Mobei-Jun’s life so far, and what he’d picked up of wild mer culture...

...

Shang Qinghua covered the shallow wounds as best he could, and then went off to check the trap for lobsters Mobei-Jun particularly liked.

-----

It started with gemstones.

After dinner one night, Mobei-Jun dropped a handful in front of Shang Qinghua. Then came the necklaces. And rings. And bracelets. Then coins, combs, and hair pins. Soon, Shang Qinghua had to transfer his gifts from the tidepool to the various small cavern caches he had around the island shallows, lest the tidepool’s water become toxic from all the metals. At first Shang Qinghua recognized the things from the ship he’d been captive on, but then it became a mix of stuff he’d never seen before: all beautiful.

On a particularly cold day, Mobei-Jun grabbed Shang Qinghua by the arm and watched him shiver with his brows drawn low in confusion. He gave him a little shake, gentle compared to the brain rattling things from before, but still unpleasant when one was already frozen.

“What are you doing? What is wrong? Stop that.”

After Shang Qinghua explained the concept of being too cold, and shivering, Movie-Jun’s lips had drawn tight.

“Qinghua is hurting?”

“Ah, just a little my king! I probably just need to go back to the vent an- GAH!”

And thus came the discovery of a sort of nearby ‘town’ for sentient sealife. Small groups of more sociable mers had established a bartering pitstop for the more nomadic kinds that passed through the area, and it had grown into a bustling undersea marketplace.

“Feed him one of your scales, my lord.” Said the sea witch, carefully tucked behind her cluttered shelves so only her pale face and a few dark tentacles could be seen. “One every moon cycle for four seasons. He will grow a cold tolerance - none of my potions required.”

Her body language made the message pretty clear: she didn’t want to have any reason to deal with the icy prince. Most of the citizens here seemed to agree, if the way they somehow managed to stumble in -water- in their haste to clear a path.

They parted like a shoal of fish around a shark.

“I should just grow suckers!” Shang Qinghua mumbled, feeling ever more like a remora as he clung close to his king’s side.

He could feel the weight of curious eyes from every angle. Even with all the variety here, he’d yet to see any wild mers anywhere near as brightly colored as he was, even the most vivid tones he spotted were in darker shades. It made sense. In an evolutionary design way, he stuck out like a sore thumb where when against white sands his reds and blacks stood out and when in the shadows his white jumped out.

Even so, he was curious in return! Ack, my king, why so intimidating? Shang Qinghua wanted to gossip. QQ

“My king, will you show me the path back by swimming?”

Mobei-Jun turned his head, gaze narrowing.

“Why?” He asked. The corners of his lips downturned a smidge more than usual.

“This lowly one just wants to serve you better! He can run errands and collect messages and news.”

Mobei-Jun hesitated for a long time. Shang Qinghua tried not to let his impatience show. Why the resistance, ah? What was he - a toy Mobei-Jun didn’t want to let out of his sight? It was hard not to giggle at such a ridiculous notion.

“Fine.” The prince said, as if he were granting a large favor (the brat!). “Qinghua must tell me when he leaves and must return before nightfall.”

With that, his apparent parole officer turned around with an irritated flick of his tail and took off at a steady pace.

Late fall fell into winter. Shang Qinghua became very thankful for the sea witch’s advice as the temperature plummeted even lower and the land and sea around the island iced over.

“And this is your warmer southern territory for the colder half of the year? Will we move north when the season changes?” Shang Qinghua asked, miserably, as he chipped away at the edges of a hole he’d made in the thick sheet of ice above. He had to work on it each day or it would close, leaving him feeling claustrophobic.

They’d been forced to move their den to a cavern further out. Mobei-Jun had disappeared for days and then dragged Shang Qinghua to a veritable palace of stone and beautifully carved ice. Then he’d preened and stared in such a smug manner that Shang Qinghua knew he was meant to effectively praise his new hobby of architecture.

It was easy to find praise for the wild mer’s Elsa-castle-building-moment. Thanks to the scale Mobei-Jun shoved into his mouth every month, Shang Qinghua could no longer feel cold. In fact, Mobei-Jun felt pleasantly warm to the touch each night when the larger mer tossed his tail over Shang Qinghua or dragged him against his chest.

Hot even.

Too hot.

Being pressed up tight against the soft give of his muscles filled Shang Qinghua with an uncomfortable squirming heat in all sorts of places. Ones he was familiar with and those he wasn’t. And as time went by, and his fear of getting mauled kept lessening, it was like a little gauge labeled ‘poke the bear’ was filling up.

Back to the present moment, Mobei-Jun considered Shang Qinghua’s question far longer than Qinghua had expected him to. He ‘eeped’ as the other mer reached out and prodded his stomach with a finger, curled in so he wasn’t speared through with a claw.

“Perhaps.” He said, thoughtful. He jabbed again, this time at the flesh of his tail near his hip. Shang Qinghua squeaked again (had his King ever even HEARD of the word ‘gentle’?) and tried to squirm away, but Mobei-Jun snagged him by his hips and held him still.

Shang Qinghua could feel his face heat.

Was it arousal or annoyance??

He would be the first to admit he had no pride or shame, but even he couldn’t bring himself to say the words that had been bouncing around wrecking the inside of his head for weeks again.

( ‘What are we?’

“...Mer.” Mobei-Jun had answered, the question flying so far over his head Shang Qinghua had internally wept bitter tears.)

Did Mobei-Jun take his words at face value - was Shang Qinghua some kind of servant? One that accomplished very little and took up more resources than he gained?

Were all the times he made Shang Qinghua groom his fresh shed scale by scale, rub his scalp, and hand feed him sea-grapes really worth all the trouble Shang Qinghua managed to drag the two of them into weekly?

On the whole, Movie-Jun was forced to take care of Shang Qinghua much more than the reverse.

Maybe... Did Mobei-Jun see him as a weird little pet? Some hamster to feed and bully?

Sometimes, like now, when his king rubbed his strong thumbs into the dips of Shang Qinghua’s hips, he got ahead of himself. Got a wild little idea that maybe his king... Was attracted to him as well. Saw him as someone special.

Feh! As if!

The bite mark on his cheek had just managed to fade from the time he’d deluded himself and lunged in for a kiss.The way he’d been pinned afterwards was in the top ten least sexy ways his king had done it so far (which was still pretty sexy - he was never gonna beat those M accusations).

“My king,” he whined, trying to ignore the fact Mobei-Jun’s hands could encircle his waist if he moved them from his hips, “we need to talk about mixed signals.”

“Then speak.”

“Uhh, hahaha.” Shang Qinghua said, as those thumbs rubbed their maddening circles. Warmth curled up and down his spine, pooling in his stomach.

Blood pooled lower. Thank god for mer anatomy holding things inside!

“They are...” His brain whirred as loud as the fan on Mindows-Zong when it had three tabs open. What were words again? “Bad, and should...stop?”

“Yes.” Mobei-Jun said. “They should stop.”

But he kept rubbing.

-----

If this is what period cramps felt like, Shang Qinghua wanted to light a candle for womenkind. He was bloated and miserable and somehow sweaty despite being under water.

Shang Qinghua lashed his tail, displacing the woven kelp blanket.

“Spoiled! Brat! Jabbing my sides every day like a toddler with a toy and then taking off! What do I look like, ah? This is his fault!”

He pressed down on his tail below his hips - the areas that Mobei-Jun so often poked and prodded as Winter faded into Spring - were now swollen and sensitive to the touch, like they had finally taken enough abuse.

“Probably popped something.” He muttered darkly, tossing and turning. “Like my appendix. Do I have an appendix? Or maybe I have two appendixes? Appendi? Ugh!”

He missed being able to feel the cold. Unbearable heat had settled under his skin, and with it came irritation.

It was lucky that Mobei-Jun had been going out more often and staying away for longer. The start of spring seemed to bring in a rush of eager challengers vying for the territory that he had to thoroughly shred. If he were here, Shang Qinghua would find it hard not to - to - well, do something! Something to dispel this prickling irritation! Maybe flare a little at his back, or gnash his teeth, or swipe his claws in his direction while Mobei-Jun was still turned around.

He couldn’t let himself be seen of course! Mobei-Jun was also on edge, his treatment once again rougher, as if he was impatiently waiting for something all the time now. When he was back at their den, he hovered annoyingly close and prevented him from ever leaving - even to hunt.

Shang Qinghua bashed a crab against the rocks with unusual violence, and then picked at his food.

If only it weren’t so hot.

His entire body felt like scales before a shed, like an ill fitting leather jacket squeezing down tight on his body and trapping heat inside.

He pressed himself against the ice walls of the den, but the lack of cold sensation continued to bite him in the ass.

“What the fuck. Give me back the dick fish goo, it’s better than this shit. Fucking spring fever.”

After tossing and turning for another couple hours, Shang Qinghua groaned his disapproval and sat up properly in the water.

He was going to the fucking town himself and getting some god damn medicine to rid himself of this fever.

----

There was an odd smell in the water. It took a few miles for Shang Qinghua to realize that it was coming from himself.

It wasn’t his fault! His thoughts were... Slurred together, like his mind was underneath a layer of glass angled just a bit off.

The smell/taste was sweet in a heady, strange, way. It spread thick on the back of Shang Qinghua’s tongue, and he could tell it was the type of scent that would travel far in the water.

Great. What kind of fucked up ‘come and eat me, sharks’ shit did he trigger? He rubbed his swollen sides, the pain like a bruise. It felt. Almost nice. To be touched. Despite the twinge of pain.

He did it again, harder, blinking blearily through a full body shudder.

Ah, okay.

Weird.

Anyway.

He continued on, ducking down into the reef that stretched wide around the trading town, hoping to avoid open ocean sharks.

Through the weird haze, he noticed he seemed to be drawing attention. Mers who passed did U-turns, others appeared from the depths. Some watched him go, but others trailed behind him, keeping their distance.

Shang Qinghua’s hindbrain lit up, flashing red. He barely suppressed a snarl as the latest mer joined the few tailing him. Each one was much larger and stronger than he was. His instincts could scream at him to charge and bite and slash as much as it wanted, but he didn’t want to die! There were four at the moment, and he was still a good distance from town.

They seemed to be waiting for something.

Shang Qinghua clutched his bracelets jealousy and sped up.

They followed suit.

What the fuck? These were HIS treasures! Mobei-Jun had given them to him himself! The thought of his king sent a lace of sensation through his body - it was like lightning down his spine.

The scent sweetened.

One of the following mer darted closer, and Shang Qinghua flared his fins and hissed in alarm. The mer flared in response, sweeping close by in a dazzling display of green that nonetheless wasn’t satisfying at all.

There was a sinking feeling in his gut, surrounded by a rising whirlpool of sticky heat flushing the vessels of his brain.

Something was wrong.

He needed to swim - to flee - to be chased.

But the one he needed-

The one he needed to catch him wasn't here.

Shang Qinghua whimpered as his body throbbed with unfamiliar sensations.

No, no, no, no!

He didn’t understand what was happening, but it was wrong.

He couldn’t - he wouldn’t! It hurt, it hurt not to, but he wouldn’t!

“What the fuck?!” He hissed through grit teeth, one clawed hand clenching into his hair and yanking painfully against his tight bun. “System, what kind of..of...”

Then a bolt of clarity struck with the force of a steel pipe swung into his head, sweeping through the fog and cracking through his skull.

“No, no, no! I’m in heat?! Is this an omegaverse thing?! System, get your ass back here and expl- ughhh!”

Another throb of heat, this one so blistering that Shang Qinghua couldn’t even draw enough breath to moan. The sweet smell grew thick on his tongue, filling the nearby sea. Even the slightest movements made water slide against his skin, the sensation magnified a thousand times like silk caressing his body.

Against such strong stimulation, his mind was swept back as if by a rushing current. Sounds became muffled, his head full of cotton fluff and yearning.

Where rational thought drew back, instinct came forward to take command of the vacancy. Shang Qinghua bared his teeth at the mers circling him like sharks.

They were waiting to chase: Shang Qinghua could feel it in his bones. The primal need to flee, to be sought, to be chased and caught and claimed by the fittest and fastest. Every cell in his body yearned to take off - but something held him back, some stubborn lingering rationality and unhappiness.

He needed to wait - he needed, he was waiting for something, or... Or someone...?

Flashes of pale flesh and dark scales filled his mind and sweetened his scent.

“My king,” he whined, not quite remembering why in the heady dance of red and hot and pleasepleaseplease.

Shang Qinghua knew every mer here was faster and stronger than he was. Despite his instincts screaming to dash away - he did the only thing he could think of.

He went completely limp - dropping in the water in a feigned dead faint.

The sound of his heart pounded in his ears, and the organ felt stuck in his throat as he tried to swallow his fear as he heard the swishing sound of rapid swimming.

Holy fuck, holy fuck, this could go so, SO, badly!

But then-

An eruption of snarls. This close together, there was no front runner or clear winner, and each of his want-to-be pursuers - doubtlessly pumped up on stupid hormone juice - met each other in a tangle of claws and thrashing tails.

Shang Qinghua was buffeted down by the force of their displaced water, watching from beneath his cracked eyelids.

Once he was close enough to the lower reef and those above were significantly distracted, he took off to the best of his ability back in the direction he’d come.

He knew his head start wouldn’t last long, but he did his best to fight against the flames and fog. Despite his slurred thoughts, he thrummed with energy - like he’d downed multiple energy shots in one go.

He swam with a swiftness unlike himself, but it wasn’t fast enough.

Soon he sensed pursuit once more.

“Fuck. This. Genre. Change.” Shang Qinghua panted, adrenaline tipping towards delirium. Holding himself back from it by his clawtips.

He still hadn’t hit the edge of Mobei-Jun’s territory, but was close.

Stupid mers! Stupid weird body and weird biology! Weird feelings, weird smells, weird sounds-- AH!

Hearing Shen Qingqiu’s instruction in his head, Shang Qinghua sucked in oxygen through his gills and let out a piercing whistle.

It was a risk. A homing beacon for one was a homing beacon for all.

Yet, his unwanted pursuers seemed thrown off by the sound of alarm. They curved their approach, pulling up still in the distance, heads tossing like agitated horses and tails lashing. They were too far for Shang Qinghua to see the expressions of, but he could read confusion in the way they held back.

....

Ah. Maybe he’d made some mistakes from the get go. Should have used his words. Not run like a plump rabbit shaking his ass in front of wolves.

UGH but what were THOUGHTS? Shang Qinghua could barely grip any of them. They floated like smoke between his grasping fingers, trailing up and away into the blanketing haze.

If his - uh, dick-holder? Slit? Hole & holder? Whatever it was called - if it would stop throbbing so hard and stealing all the blood from his brain, maybe he could string something comprehensive together.

Right. Unsexy thought. Unsexy thought. Unsexy thought.

But then: there was Mobei-Jun.

There was a burst of relieving cold against Shang Qinghua’s overheated flesh, and then a wall of muscle and dark scales swept around him in a protective loop, shielding him bodily from anything that wished to harm.

Shang Qinghua watched the teleportation portal snap closed with vacant eyes. Mobei-Jun’s sudden arrival had been like plugging in something huge to an already over-extended power-strip, triggering a blackout to the entire street.

As if observing through someone else, he watched as Mobei-Jun caught his scent - the snarl on his face freezing and his pupils dilating wide. The wild mer slowly turned his head around.

As they made eye contact, Shang Qinghua heaved in air through his gills, returned all at once to his body like being dunked into scalding water.

“My King.” He whined. For once, he was out of words.

Mobei-Jun’s throat bobbed as he swallowed harsh, fangs glinting as he panted, the icy blue of his eyes mere slivers mostly eaten by the darkness of his pupils.

“Catch me.” Shang Qinghua begged.

“Go.” Said Mobei-Jun, his voice more growl than speech. “There is no place I would not chase you, no world if you’re not mine.”

With every inch of strength and adderaline, Shang Qinghua took off. He’d thought he’d been driven crazy before, but that was nothing compared to the heat flushing him from top to tail now. It was as if his blood was fire and song, thrumming through his veins with the arpeggiated beat. He was swimming faster than he ever had before; faster than he’d ever imagined he could with his ornate fins. Twisting and turning sharp corners, darting to escape the pursuer.

But no matter where he turned, Mobei-Jun’s tail was there, lashed out or curled around, corralling him away from the safety of the reef and its many crevices. Cutting off his escape here and ushering him in another direction there.

Shang Qinghua escaped a loop that nearly snagged his tail, a triumphant laugh bursting from his lungs. It was like a dance, this bare avoidance. This flirtation with danger.
In the corners of his vision, he could see flashes of other colors, other mers watching the display. But only once did another approach - a big and solid grey and white one, who did so cautiously.

Shang Qinghua snarled, baring his little fangs, which then got rattled together through the rippling vibration of a large growl behind him. It penetrated deep into his guts, the lips of his slit swelling with the wave of pleasure such a sound drove into his very soul. The grey mer veered off, chastened, and instantly the dance continued.
Soon Shang Qinghua forgot about the onlookers.

Forgot everything.

There was no ocean.

There was no breath.

There was only the chase; the hunt.

His king, the predator.

Himself, the prey.

The throbbing of his dick where it pressed against his slit, only held in by the muscles clenched from swimming; the staccato of his heart.

He made it a few yards before he was blocked off again, the great tail forcing him to turn around and face Mobei-Jun’s torso. The wild mer looped around him, his fins spread and wide and bright and vivid and amazing and ugh he couldn’t THINK. The bright glow spread along his body, and Shang Qinghua wasn’t fast enough to close his eyes before a concentrated flash of bioluminescent blue light blinded him. He thrashed away, but there were claws on him, at his shoulder and on his side.

Flee. Flee. Chase. Chase.

Worthy. Fight, fight.

Shang Qinghua yowled and struggled, but the claws hooked into his soft human flesh and yanked him forward. He was crushed with his face against a chest, so he bit at it as best he could, squirming and slashing with his claws. The hands let go of his side and shoulder, snagging one wrist and then his other. They were transferred to just one hand, the large palm easily able to restrain both at once and lift them over his head.

Shang Qinghua thrashed his tail, battering it against the torso in front of him, but it was as effective as smacking a cavern wall. His king raised his arms higher, dragging Shang Qinghua back in close enough to be inexorably pressed against the plane of his body once more. The grip around his wrists was iron and harsh, tight enough to feel his bones creak.

Shang Qinghua let out a pained gasp, which broke down the middle into something else as he felt the hard and solid weight of another tail coiling around his own. With their size difference, the wild mer was able to coil around him a few times in tight loops, trapping his side fins and causing the two of them to lose their balance.

Shang Qinghua was being forced to the seafloor by the creature before him, coiled tight and pulled flush. Trapped, trapped, trapped.

There was a low growl; sharp teeth against the soft flesh of his neck under his ear fins. “Yield.” Growled the voice, the deep rumble in his chest.

Shang Qinghua moaned, which was probably not the right response to daggers against your throat, but he’d always had his wires crossed like that. It was probably time to admit it, here, pressed into the seafloor about to live out an omegaverse fanfic wet dream.

“Please.” He gasped instead. Every inch of flesh where their bodies met was tingling. Pleasure flooded his system, szapping the strength from his limbs, but he still struggled, if only to revel in the brushing of scales and skin. His slit leaked out slick, puffy and opening and oh so fucking painfully empty. He couldn’t believe he’d barely been aware of it as anything more than his own dick-hider mere hours before, whereas now it occupied so much of his thoughts.

“...You’re small.” Mobei-Jun said, pulling back enough to look down at their bodies. Shang Qinghua chased him, making a pathetic little mewling sound.

They’d reached the seabed now, the sand scratchy against Shang Qinghua’s back. In full display, right out in the open, and he didn’t give a single fuck.

Well, he wanted to be given a fuck. Oh gods, he wanted. The heat was choking him now, burning through his nervous system and he ached somewhere so deep inside that tears would be running down his face if only they could be seen in water.

The coils were tight around him. He’d been well and truly tangled and tumbled down.

“Ah!” He gasped, as Mobei-Jun shifted, dragging a coil of rough scales against his aching slit as he adjusted their position. Maneuvered Qinghua into a more proper mating pose, bringing them hip to hip. The scent of his own sweetness was thick in the water between them, a tang on their tongue as his body prepared itself. Something hard but flexible caught against his rim, and Shang Qinghua let out a breathless gasp at the feel.

His king placed a hand on his chest to hold him down, and released his wrists. Leaned back to look lower. Shang Qinghua also took the chance to look below, vision zeroing in on –

Oh.

Oh it was huge. It was going to kill him.

It was fucking perfect.

The most perfect fucking cock he’d ever seen.

Would ever see.

He’d die so fucking happy.

???

Was he cock drunk before even getting dicked down???

Whatever, whatever!

The tip was tapered, rising in thickness as it went along. His king rocked his hips in small motions, dragging it along his slit. Forced it to part, more slick bubbling out to coat the head. Mobei-Jun shivered, his hand pressing too hard against Shang Qinghua’s chest for a moment and forcing the air from his lungs.

Hearing his strangled sound of complaint, he lowered himself to cover the smaller mer once more.

Instead of his throat, his lips found Shang Qinghua’s own. He kissed him once. Twice. Angled his head to the side and licked into his mouth. His tongue was cold and big, and Shang Qinghua whimpered, the sound swallowed up in the press and twist of it.

“Qinghua.” Mobei-Jun hissed. He sounded like he was in pain. His muscles trembled with the intensity of their tension, and pupils still blown wide and dark.

“Ah, my king.” Shang Qinghua murmured, struggling to remember how to speak. “You choose now of all times to hold back? To be gentle? Come on, come on. Come on, please? My king, my Mobei!” He stretched out his arms to pet along the wild mer’s tense face and grit jaw.

“Such a brat! Are you going to make me beg? I have no shame! Please, my king, fuck me. It hurts, I want you so bad, I want your co-”

“QINGHUA.” Snapped Mobei-Jun, but Shang Qinghua just moaned at the aggressive sound and threw his head back, squirming his hips in the tiny increments he was able.
Even so, this was apparently enough to get past the wild mer’s reservations.

“Mark your words.” He growled.

Shang Qinghua was scooped up from the sand, brought into his king’s arms and against his chest. The coil around his tail was so tight he knew he’d bare the bruises even on that sturdy flesh. But all he could think about was the cockhead sliding up and down at his entrance, teasing in a maddening display.

It wasn’t fair!

It wasn’t fair!

It wasn’t fair!

He’d been caught. He’d been twisted. Forced to the seafloor, and that cock STILL WASN’T IN HIM!

“Plu–Please.” Shang Qinghua gasped, jerking his hips to try and force the tip inside, but the coil around him locked him tight.

“Please, fuck, please, Mobei-”

Stars exploded. A tsunami jettisoned reality. The seas boiled into vapor.

Or rather, the head of Mobei-Jun’s cock popped in past the ring of muscle. Shang Qinghua moaned at the long, slow stretch, moaned and moaned until he was out of air and Mobei-Jun still not out of cock. Sucked in air through his gills and screamed as the last few inches were forced in with one hard thrust.

He was so, so full. Stretched beyond the limitations of his body by the thick intrusion, and he couldn’t breathe couldn’t think. And it hurt, but the pain made it even better somehow, a deep satisfaction of taking in his new mate. His insides being rearranged by that monster cock; ruined for anyone else from that moment on.

Without a buildup, without even one more thrust, Shang Qinghua crashed over into an orgasm. Trembled and threw back his head, sobbing out as the waves of pleasure swept him into a whirlpool and then left him without taking the edge off. His own cock still strained, still hard because the release hadn’t been from it, rather from something inside.

A++++ for mermaid heats. Shit. Fuck. Was this “coming like a bitch” he’d seen in danmei? Fuck, he’d never deride women’s pleasure in writing again. All the orgasms. Everywhere.
“My King,” Shang Qinghua choked out, claws scratching down the wild mer’s back as fire consumed him. “Breed me, fuck, please, I can take it, I can take it!”

Mobei-Jun didn’t need prompting. He thrust hard, but shallow, the thick slick being forced out around him, trying to ease the smaller body below into adjusting to his size and girth.
It wasn’t just his hips driving the action. His cock was flexible and seemed to have a mind of its own, squirming inside and grinding ridges against a spot inside that had Shang Qinghua shouting until his throat was ruined.

He was pistoned and pumped in equal measure, driving his mind away until he was nothing but rapture and electricity.

“Fill, ah! Fill me! Please, please–AH!”

Mobei-Jun ground their hips together. He was panting, his thin blue irises bright and glazed and lips bitten plump and purple. He closed his eyes and shuddered, hands bruising Shang Qinghua’s hips as his thrusts became harder and faster, starting to lose their rhythm.

“Mine.” It was more the baring of teeth and a gutteral sound than a word, but Shang Qinghua understood.

“Yours.” He gasped, dragging one hand from Mobei-Jun’s back and down his arm until their fingers tangled together.

Movie-Jun came buried deep inside, tails twined and fingers clasped. Shang Qinghua worked him through his release, swept into a state of near euphoria by his instincts as he was filled, body convulsing and eyes closing in pure bliss at the sensation.

After a few long moments coming down from the high, Mobei-Jun rolled them over so Shang Qinghua was laying on his chest. Ah, how considerate to not squish him post coitus: his king had a higher level in romance than Shang Qinghua thought.

He panted through his gills, growing limp after an extended moment of trembling. His dick still ached, but it felt distant, his body numbed and full of tingling like his blood was glitter.
Ahh, he could fall asleep right here, right now!

...
...

Aiyo? Why was Mobei-Jun still rock hard?

“Ah!” Shang Qinghua gasped, as Mobei-Jun gripped his hips with his large clawed hands and began to grind in shallow thrusts.

“Eh? Again? But--Ah! O-oh, yes! There, right there my king!”

----

To say Shang Qinghua was sore would be an understatement.

To say Shang Qinghua was smug would also be an understatement.

He lay back in his nest made of comfortable silks, assorted fabrics, and waterproofed furs from sea mammals, surrounded by the glitter and gold of Mobei-Jun’s other assorted gifts. Yet instead of admiring the bracelets on his wrists or golden chains decorating him, he was staring at the bruises in the shapes of eager strong fingers that were here, there, everywhere all over his body.

Mobei-Jun seemed to take the ‘season’ part of ‘breeding season’ literally.

Ah, give this poor ex-writer a break! His feeble body could only take so much pounding! Day and night! Morning and evening! Pounding, and thrusting, and jerking, and sucking and-
Shang Qinghua smiled, wistfully trailing his fingers across the dark marks on his hips.

Good thing being underwater meant he couldn’t be caught drooling...

With a contented sigh, he stretched. Compared to when he’d been shipwrecked, he was hardly recognizable. His tail was healthily plump, the scales bright and vibrant, and his fins unbroken and unbent by struggle or stress. Only slight traces of his scars remained, soothed over by the loving care he received as the one and only pampered mate of the area’s beachmaster.

Some day, in the future, Mobei-Jun’s father would pass: leaving open a wide kingdom to the north, and the power struggles that had already nearly killed Mobei-Jun would raise their heads and sniff the...current. Nearly killed him before a small, weak, and odd little mer had arrived and offered kindness in a world of cruelty.

It didn’t matter now what the future held: because they would face it together, and they would always win.

-----
AUTHOR’S NOTES & Mini Theature:
Just as a fun fact I couldn’t share because of Shang Qinghua’s limited POV: In mer culture, big, pretty fins and bright colors are considered ideal sexual characteristics, so SQH is swimming around with the equivalent of mermaid double DDs or something LOL.

Also, yes. You probably were faster on the uptake than SQH. Offering to or bringing pretty things and hunting and presenting another mer with food IS courting behavior, so to MBJ, the story was very different. If you want his POV of things, here is a memey recap:

SQH: [invades his territory (which only rival and wanna be mates do) flirts relentlessly]
MBJ: DIE THOT
SQH: [is persistent in sticking around and flattering him, offers to bring him stuff constantly while fleeing]
MBJ: ...you can't fool me with your phat ass and big beautiful eyes, I’ll never trust anybody ever
SQH: [saves him]
SQH: [brings him food and nurses him back to health (unheard of in the only-strong-survive culture)]
MBJ: ...Fine strange beautiful little creature... [gives all indications of accepting pursuit]
SQH: [keeps flirting status quo, never seals the deal]
MBJ: ...
MBJ: ...I’M WAITING?? INITIATE ALREADY??? [fun fact, in wild mer culture, the more submissive role partner/one planning to carry eggs is expected to initiate becoming mates]
MBJ: ... [drowns SQH in treasures and food] Still not enough? D:< (do..does qinghua want ME to carry the eggs???)
SQH: Ooow, my king, I’m all bloated and swollen here and here. [rubs where eggs are developing]
MBJ: Qinghua is developing eggs?? But we havent?? Become mated yet??? -lightbulb- Ah! Qinghua is a traditionalist! He is saving himself for a mating chase! I will respect him and be patient!
MBJ: I’m patient!
MBJ: ... [pokes SQH’s stomach like male fish nudging female fish] I’m being patient, so hurry up!