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Taeyong enjoys swimming. The repetitive movements clear his mind, allow him to sink into a calm headspace where it’s just his body pushing through the weight of the water, clawing forward with each stroke. He feels weightless and pulled down all at once, and once he goes long enough, it’s like he starts gliding. The water becomes his friend, propelling him forward as oxygen effortlessly fills his lungs. He’s even grown fond of the scent of chlorine clinging to his skin after a session.
Ocean swimming is a little different, a battle the whole way through, the water not still, patiently waiting to receive him. It has a life of its own, roiling and churning in a deep rhythm almost as old as the planet itself.
When he’d first thrown himself into the elements, he’d been tired after not even a quarter of an hour. In fact, that first time, he’d so overestimated his skill that he nearly caused his own drowning. He was so used to swimming an hour at a time, at full speed, that he’d gone out too far, and found himself very suddenly exhausted by this water that fought back. He learned the hard way that the ocean didn’t care if you were tired. There was no pool ledge to help him catch his breath, and no bottom to push back up against. He’d taken a few panicked breaths, as he fought to keep his head above water, but his limbs had grown ever heavier, refusing to do their work to keep him afloat.
And then he’d taken a deeper, more settling breath, and allowed himself to sink a little bit, allowed to ocean to gently sway him this way and that. Then he’d gone up for another very deep breath, enough to help his chest stay afloat. He’d repeatedly rested and sunk that way, until finally his muscles wanted to cooperate again, and he could make the slow trek back to the shore.
His skill had grown exponentially since that first time. He’d learned to better listen to his body, to its limits and warning signs, and not push himself too far. He’d learned to recognise the ocean’s mood any given day, and let it be the basis for the distance he’d be swimming that day. If it was very turbulent, he stuck closer to the shore, only going out far enough to avoid the pull of rip currents.
He’d also invested in some proper gear, a wetsuit rather than the racing brief he wore to the pool, to help retain body heat. Even some thermal swimming socks and gloves, for especially cold days. He feels like a mysterious little sea creature when he has his full gear on, turning his body into this sleek black thing, his goggles obscuring his eyes and turning them bug-like.
His hobby is the perfect counterpoise to his desk job, calling on every part of his body and instincts that go neglected at work. When he has to skip a day, he’s antsy, and has trouble going to sleep. His body craves the exercise, that perfect moment where everything goes still inside his mind, even out in open water. Where he becomes nothing but a physical form, made for repetitive movement.
He tells friends and colleagues that he enjoys swimming, and remains light-hearted when questioned about his devotion. The truth is, Taeyong loves swimming, loves it more than any other aspect of his life.
--
When he gets promoted at work and office hours start dragging out later and later, inevitably, swimming gets relegated to an evening activity. The first time he’s swimming back home in total darkness, it takes him by surprise. If not for the bright lights of the apartments and hotels by the shore, he wouldn’t be have been able to spot the beach at all anymore. An isolated strip of white, bobbing and intermittently going out of sight when a surging wave ahead of him obscures it. He’s gasping by the time he makes it back, crawling up onto the beach with trembling hands, a small black figure in sombre lighting. Not tired, but scared. It reminds him of just how small he is, and that no one would have been able to spot him if he’d gone under, not even with his fluorescent swimming cap. He spends over an hour finding his car, because his usual landmark had proved invisible in the pitch black, and he’d made shore in a completely different location.
He nearly cries at the sight of his car, grateful for the isolation and quiet once inside of it, after stripping out of his gear and getting dressed in record time. It takes him several minutes before he’s calmed down enough to even turn the key in the ignition, and set off for home.
And then, like all frightening things, he gets used to it. Maybe even starts enjoying it. There’s something about night swimming, about the dense peace of it. There’s rarely anyone left on the beach when he’s putting on his gear by his car; no laughter of families playing, no seagulls screaming overhead. Just the whisper of the waves, crashing louder as he approaches them. The sun bloodied as she sinks below the cusp of the horizon, painting the surface of the water in vibrant reds and yellows. He glides into the water and swims, and reaches that point of mindless peace quicker than ever, like the dark is a physical blanket, tucking him away warm and safe. It becomes routine, no different to any other part of Taeyong’s meticulously organised life.
So when a day comes where he approaches the water right after sundown and spots something narrow just above the waves, difficult to pick out in the fading light, it rattles him for a moment.
It’s a hand. Reaching up, desperate for anyone to spot it. He’s reminded of the time he almost drowned, and anxiously looks over to the lifeguard station. But there’s no one, because it’s after hours, and technically against the rules to still go out swimming. An unenforceable rule, continuously shirked by swimmers like Taeyong. And today, by the lone swimmer out past the surf.
He runs into the water at full speed, keeping his tinted goggles up to help with visibility. The hand slips out of sight for a moment and fear grips his heart. Just don’t let me be too slow, he desperately asks the universe, wondering what he’d do if he arrived too late, and would find no one, or the body.
He goes into a front crawl, cutting through the water, dipping down just below the surface to help reduce the drag. The water is relatively clear in this area, but the fading light and bubbling waves rob him of sight. He can see the sand below him, until it falls away, and then it’s just blackness. Above him the sky has gone a deep purple, and when he comes up for air, he’s relieved to see he’s almost reached the hand. This close he can also see the back of the swimmer’s head, held just above the surface. He can hear rasping gasps, the stranger’s fight to get air, to remain afloat.
I’m here, Taeyong thinks, and within five more strokes, he’s close enough to grab the hand, closing his fingers around the wrist. It’s as black as his, clad in thermal gloves. So an experienced swimmer after all. Maybe he’d gotten a leg cramp...?
The hand grabs back, and Taeyong is pulled under abruptly. He belatedly remembers that drowning people are pushed past all reason, the fear of death so intense that they clamp onto and sometimes also drown their saviours. He struggles and twists, trying to get free of the grip, but– it’s not working. In his panic, the hand seems to have become larger than life, this huge thing that’s going to rob him of all his oxygen. The last of the light bleeds from the sky, and there’s nothing but blackness all around him. He fights below the surface, against the iron hold around his wrist, clawing at it with his other hand. It doesn’t budge. And then, a fierce pain in his leg. He cries out involuntarily and takes on a bit of water. He’s released very suddenly, but it does him no good, because he can no longer tell which way is up. He swims a couple of strokes, as his heart is drumming in his ears, and then curls and swims a few more in a different direction. Mercifully, he breaks the surface, gasping and coughing when the cool air touches his face.
“Fuck!” he curses, fear and adrenaline shooting through his body, “fuck, you almost drowned me!” He looks around, still coughing. He can’t see anything much. Remembers why he came out here in the first place.
“Where are you?!” he calls out, interrupted by another coughing fit, but determined to find the person at risk of death. “Hey, where are you? Can you hear me? Call back to me!”
He looks down, even though it’s futile. The light is gone. He can’t even see himself, let alone a second person. The sea is quiet, aside from its natural noises, and his own voice.
“Don’t die,” Taeyong begs pointlessly, swimming in a circle, blindly feeling out the water. He dives, comes back up, dives again. There’s almost no chance he’ll actually find them in a body of water that’s so vast, but he has to try. “I had your hand, I had you,” he murmurs, “you’re not allowed to die.”
He spends more time swimming and feeling and calling out, he doesn’t know how much time has passed since he began. But it’s futile. The other person is gone, probably already sinking down to the bottom. Probably used the very last of their energy clamping to Taeyong.
Taeyong slaps the water, and cries out in frustration. Strangely, he feels like crying. A person is dying, someone who is precious to others, and they don’t even know it yet. He’s the only one in the world who knows, and he can’t even identify them, can’t alert anyone. A sickening stab of sympathy goes through him.
His leg is starting to burn really bad now, and he reaches down to try and feel out what might have happened to it. He can feel slight irregularities in the leg of his suit, but that’s it. Maybe he’d bumped into something, some type of sharp jetsam. Maybe it had caused the other swimmer injury too.
He starts panicking a little bit. He can swim with a burning calf, but he could be losing blood, and what if he hits the debris again. He should go back to shore and survey the damage. He looks round for the shore, put at ease by the steady lights in the distance.
And then he starts choking. His eyes go wide, hand flying up to his throat. Nothing is blocking his airways, he has his head above water. And yet he can’t breathe. His neck is burning something fierce.
“Hngh,” he pushes out with all his might, struggling, willing his lungs to obey him. Was it just a stress response? He needs to relax, allow his diaphragm to do its job, he needs to–
Something closes around his ankle and starts dragging him down. Taeyong lets out a final gurgle of fright, giving the shore a desperate glance, and then he’s under water.
Things are quiet under water. He can feel he’s being dragged at some speed, because of the sensation of the water against his skin. But that’s all he can feel. He’s lost to the darkness, and running out of air. He tries to bend to reach the thing around his ankle, but he can’t fight the push of the water, rushing up around him.
Am I going to die here, he thinks to himself. He scrunches his eyes shut, trying to think of a way out.
“Breathe,” an answering voice comes. It’s a voice he’s never heard before. Maybe it’s the voice his mind saves for when his life is truly in danger, his deepest survival instinct.
I can’t, he replies desperately. He’s under water, he’s running out of air, he’s–
“Just breathe. You can do that now.”
The voice is very calm. Cold, almost. Actually, Taeyong is not so sure it’s internal. But that’s insane. Maybe he’s hallucinating, because his brain is becoming more and more oxygen deprived.
In the end, he can no longer suppress his body’s instinctual need to gulp, and he takes on a lot of water. It goes down into his lungs as his final breath of air bubbles from his mouth, and he waits for it to start burning. But, it doesn’t. It just feels cool inside of him. He gulps again, and the water flows in and out smoothly. He realises he no longer feels like he’s going to choke.
What the fuck? he thinks.
“We’re almost there,” the voice says. It’s smooth and full inside his ears, and most definitely not coming from inside his own head, which makes no sense. Voices are unclear under water, and more importantly, who is speaking to him.
“Where?” Taeyong asks instinctively, garbled, and is surprised that he can actually hear his own voice, as clear as it were travelling through air. It feels strange forming the word with the push of the water fighting him, making his tongue feel odd in his mouth.
“Resting spot,” the voice replies, and then goes silent.
They must be travelling deeper, because he can sense the increasing pressure of the water. But it doesn’t feel bad. It feels like the weighted blanket he has at home. Comforting, putting something primal inside of him at ease. What is happening to him?
He has no sense of how much time has passed when they begin slowing down. Because, by now, he’s quite certain there’s two of them. Something (someone?) is holding his ankle, has been speaking to him. He can’t wrap his mind around it. The most likely explanation is that he’s already dying, and this is a final hallucination. Other people spoke of going to the light when they had near-death experiences, of a deep sense of peace. Maybe he’s falling down into the dark.
“You’re not dying,” the voice says, and then he’s let go. Taeyong kicks, tries to swim a little bit. In every direction, there’s only impenetrable black.
Something is brushed aside ahead of him, a small light coming into view. It’s a fish, a bioluminescent one. It’s trapped against a jagged rock, some fishing string keeping it in place, its little mouth opening and closing rhythmically. There’s pale sand underneath him.
But the fish is not the thing that terrifies Taeyong. It’s the man whose face is being lit up by it from underneath, his eyes inky black.
Taeyong screams, and tries to swim backwards, away from the stranger. The man makes no move to come closer. He simply waits. Because he knows he’s faster than I am. I can’t outswim him.
“That’s right,” the stranger replies, and this time, Taeyong can see his mouth moving. He shudders in disgust. There’s something deeply wrong about being able to hold a conversation on the bottom of the ocean. He’s either going crazy, or it’s already happened.
“You’re not crazy,” the man assures him, and then turns away from him, beginning to untie the fish. He’s saying something to it, but if the fish replies, Taeyong can’t hear it.
Because fish don’t speak. He’s dead. And that’s the devil.
He sees something glinting out of the corner of his eye, swaying attractively, refracting what little light the fish gives off. Actually, as his eyes start adjusting, he’s able to see more and more. He can see the ocean surface, impossibly far above them, the thin layer where the moonlight is able to penetrate. He can see the ocean floor stretching out in either direction, upwards towards land. And he can see he man in front of him is not a man at all, his lower body a massive fish tail, fanning out in intricate fins at the end.
A merman, Taeyong thinks helplessly. Those were real...?
“A human term. It’ll have to do for now. You couldn’t speak my language even if you tried,” the merman says, without turning around. “You, stick around. I brought you more food.”
Taeyong is about to reply, when he realises the merman is addressing the fish again. Undecipherable morsels are produced from somewhere, and the fish starts chasing them around as they float through the water.
Taeyong is combing through his perception of the world, trying to see where he’d gone wrong. If he’d misunderstood somehow, if he’d accidentally miscategorised mermaids under fictitious, and no one had had a chance to correct him because the topic hadn’t really come up since boyhood.
“Oh, I know only your young believe in us,” the merman says bitterly, turning back to him. It takes one half-hearted lash of his tail to close the distance between them.
Taeyong can see better now, and what he sees unsettles him to his core. In human art, merpeople were usually depicted as beautiful, or dainty, or at least friendly. This creature is none of those things. If he has a beauty to him, it’s of a chilling kind. He has dark blue and tough-looking skin, like that of a shark, with blackened hands ending in claws. This close up, he can see that they’re lightly webbed, the webbing fine and almost see-through. Black hair, braided down to his back. Massive all the way through, at least one and a half times Taeyong’s size.
“Why? Why bring me here?” Taeyong asks, and again, his speech is garbled because of the water. He has to force out the words with more intent, actively push his tongue to follow the shape of the syllables.
“Are you going to be doing a lot of that?” the merman asks sharply. “Hold your tongue, if you know what’s good for you. Can’t stand to listen to your kind’s drivel.”
He’s grabbed then, and one of those sharp claws start cutting up Taeyong’s wet suit. It’s not being done carefully, either, and he feels the claws dig into his flesh over and over. He cries out and tries to jerk away, but it’s pointless. He feels like a pet being groomed against its will, too small to be able to put a stop to it, to get away from the scary clippers.
“No, please,” Taeyong begs, despite himself.
“I’ll cut out that tongue, see if I don’t,” the merman threatens.
That shuts Taeyong up, as he’s peeled out of his wetsuit entirely. He’s still wearing his underwear and thermal socks and gloves, none of those of any apparent concern to the merman, and he’s lost his goggles somewhere, probably on the trek down. The cold should be unbearable, so far down, but he’s fine. He feels good, actually. When he looks down, he can see the cuts the merman caused, dissolving trails of blood drifting away from them. But they don’t hurt that much.
“Stay in the crevice. There’s sharks around here. I’ll be back soon.”
He points towards the little bioluminescent fish, which is indeed floating in front of a jagged opening in the rocks. Taeyong swims towards it and goes to sit inside, shoving himself as deep as he can manage. Sharks are attracted to blood. He didn’t need to lose a limb on top of his current situation.
The merman swims away with strong whips of his tail, cutting through the water in a way Taeyong can only dream of, even when he’s at peak performance in an enclosed pool. Taeyong closes his eyes, and allows himself to have a serious freak-out. How can he get out of this situation? He can’t swim back up, so slow in comparison to the creature that he’ll be caught ten times over. He could try hiding elsewhere – the merman might not be able to smell his blood in the water the way sharks can. But what if he can? And what if he punishes Taeyong for his escape attempt, and makes good on his promise to cut out his tongue.
For now, he decides staying put is the safest course of action. He also decides he should accept his circumstances. Fear will not help him keep a clear head, might even cause him to miss an opportunity to escape. He takes a deep breath – or was it a gulp? – and closes his eyes, going through the anti-anxiety exercises the company therapist taught him.
He must have drifted off at some point, because he wakes up to the merman hovering right in front of him. He frowns and loses himself to an extensive yawn. “How long were you gone for?”
The merman ignores him, busy rummaging through a satchel he’s carrying over his shoulder and hip. Taeyong hadn’t noticed it before. It sits smoothly against his body, probably to reduce drag while swimming.
A dead fish is produced, and held out towards Taeyong. It’s small but glossy, clearly fresh. “Eat this. The transformation will have taken a lot out of you, you’ll need the energy.”
“Transformation?” Taeyong questions, and then regrets it when he receives an unimpressed look in response. Right. He’s breathing under water. He looks down at the proffered fish, and feels vague concern. “How am I supposed to eat that?”
“Just swallow it.”
“Whole? Ew, no,” he says empathically, making a face of disgust.
His captor rolls his eyes and places the fish back into his satchel. “Fine. Starve, then.”
“What’s your name?” Taeyong asks impulsively. If he’s going to remain caught for a while longer, he doesn’t want to keep referring to his aggressor as ‘the merman’. If it feels like he knows this merperson, maybe he’ll become less stressed.
The merman doesn’t answer right away, long enough that Taeyong starts to think he won’t receive an answer at all. But then he makes a tonally intricate sound, one Taeyong has no hope of reproducing. He tries a few times, and then gives up and decides it sounds closest to Johnny. He knows a Johnny back on land, a popular singer. The merman looks unimpressed when he’s told this fact.
“Your whole kind is terrible at singing. Don’t sing.” He grabs Taeyong by the wrist, tugging at him harshly. Taeyong is dragged along like a puppet, having no hope of overpowering the much larger, much stronger man. He realises that if mermen and humans had been competing for the same habitat at the dawn of humanity, humans would have lost. “Let’s go,” Johnny grunts, tugging even harsher and making a gesture, until Taeyong gets the gist and takes hold of one of Johnny’s arms. “We still have a ways to go.”
“Where are we going?” He frowns, moving his tongue inside of his mouth. “I just realised. Speaking isn’t as hard as it was before.”
“Your body is getting used to the spell,” Johnny informs him.
“Spell? You mean magic?” Taeyong asks, eyes wide. The conversation comes to an abrupt end, because Johnny starts swimming again, and Taeyong has to place all his energy towards not losing grip. The water rushing past his face is preventing him from opening his jaw safely, forcing it further down than is comfortable. If he’d thought Johnny was swimming fast before, he’s now seeing his error. They’re going so fast that the sound of water rushes in his ears, like he’s standing inside a waterfall – the pressure on his eyes is immense, he has to keep them squeezed shut. He’s having trouble breathing, placing all his focus with pulling water into his lungs. But it’s nearly impossible.
Johnny, he thinks desperately. Only in this moment is it occurring to him that it had been Johnny who had been replying to his thoughts, before, and that he might be capable of hearing all of them.
“What?” Johnny asks, barely audible over the roar of the water.
Can’t breathe!
There must be enough desperation in his voice to convince even his cold-hearted captor, because they slow down quite abruptly, Johnny grabbing hold of Taeyong’s face and inspecting it. They’ve left behind the glowing fish at the crevice, and Taeyong can barely make out anything. He has no clue what Johnny is looking for. His head is manipulated to the sides, and Johnny makes a noise of disapproval.
“Don’t breathe through your mouth. Use your gills. They’re angled to help you breathe while swimming.”
“My what?” Taeyong asks thinly. He reaches up for his neck, fingers trembling with the exertion of keeping hold of Johnny.
“Squeeze your nose and your mouth shut and exhale as hard as you can.”
Taeyong does as told, and is shocked to feel the sensation of water flowing from his neck, being pushed outwards with force. “Ew,” he complains, the foreign sensation giving him goose bumps.
“You look tired. I told you to eat the fish.”
“I don’t think I can keep going,” Taeyong admits honestly. His muscles were giving the telltale signs of being at their end for the day, feeling stiff and trembly. He should also be freezing, but– the water’s temperature feels pleasant, if anything.
“You can. I’ll help you.” Johnny grabs him and cradles him to his chest, both arms closing around him, holding him steady.
They set off again immediately, but this time, Taeyong doesn’t have to accomplish anything besides learning how to breathe better. He closes his eyes and focuses on it, blocking off his nose on the exhales by pushing his tongue up into his soft palate, and then trying to accomplish the same on the inhales. It’s so far removed from his instincts, he’s not doing a very good job. But the drag is less now, here tucked up against his captor, and it’s easier to breathe regardless.
They stop after an indeterminate amount of time. Taeyong’s let go of, left to drift by himself. He can feel the ocean floor brushing against the tip of his toes, and visibility has improved a smidge. He looks up, and thinks the faint reddish colour up above him could indicate the sun is rising. Johnny has swam further up ahead. Something heavy is dragged aside, creating a grinding noise that Taeyong can feel inside his skull, with seemingly great effort on Johnny’s part, because he’s grunting and straining. And then there’s a sudden, blinding brightness, and Taeyong has to squint.
“What is that?” he asks, struggling to get his eyes to adjust after all that time in the dark.
“Home,” Johnny replies simply.
--
Home turns out to be an intricate set of connecting caves, beautifully lit with glowing algae and animals, casting everything in bright blues, greens and reds. Taeyong waits while Johnny struggles to close up the entrance again, pulling on a boulder easily twice his size. A tiny, fluorescently green jellyfish drifts past, and Taeyong reaches out to touch it, eyes round. It stings him, and he hisses, sucking his finger into his mouth.
He’s grabbed again, held tight as Johnny whips forward. He’s swimming at a speed that betrays he knows his way very well around these corridors, anticipating bends before they’re fully in view. Taeyong takes in as much as he can, but most things flit past in a blur.
Then, the area they’re in opens up into a giant cave, as big as an arena. It’s clearly a gathering place for other merfolk, because he spots several of them in the distance. He even sees a few children, their colours ranging from purple to pink, racing through the water in a game very reminiscent of tag. The adults are all similar in appearance and hue to Johnny, although none of them quite as massive. And none of them spare them a second glance, absorbed in their own business.
“Who are they?” Taeyong asks.
“Do you know everyone who lives in your city?” Johnny asks sarcastically.
Taeyong’s mouth gapes wide open for a couple of seconds while he processes the information, and then he closes his mouth abruptly and pouts. “Didn’t know it was a city,” he huffs petulantly, but quiet enough that Johnny won’t hear.
They disappear back into a narrower set of corridors, following a confusing trajectory that Taeyong couldn’t hope to reproduce. When Johnny swims into a cave at the very end of a particularly claustrophobic passageway, he’s both panicking and relieved. It’s nice to finally be still, but how will he ever find his way back?
The space is relatively large but cosily furnished, clearly some type of apartment. Bioluminescent fish flit through a tank embedded in the wall, and more algae grow on the walls. Things aren’t as eclectic as they are outside, every source of light approximately the same blue. As soon as he’s released Taeyong starts twirling through the space. There’s so much to see in every direction, he doesn’t know where to look first.
He reaches out to touch the ceiling, trailing his fingers over it. There’s indents of where there were once fossil seashells embedded in the rock, in between the patches of glowing blue. The pattern is intriguing. It doesn’t appear completely random. Had Johnny decorated his house like this? “So this is where you live?” he asks with interest.
“Yes. And where you live too, now.”
Taeyong thinks an angry protest, but then tamps it down. He’s still unsure how much of his thoughts Johnny can hear. If he betrays how much he doesn’t want to be here, maybe it’ll make it harder to escape.
“There’s no door?” he asks, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. Johnny is over by the doorway, busy removing his satchel. He looks over his shoulder and smirks at Taeyong. The stern, tense man he was outside seems to have dissipated. Maybe because he’s in his own space again.
“No, there’s no door. But if you get caught unattended out there, you might get added to someone’s livestock and find yourself dinner.”
Taeyong laughs nervously, his voice going high and thin. “What? You... you eat people here?”
“We eat animals on the lower end of the food chain, yes. Just like your species does.”
A chill of pure terror runs up Taeyong’s spine. He’s not sure why he’s been brought here, but after a lifetime of being the dominant species, the thought that he holds a status no better than that of a cow makes him break out into a cold sweat.
“Calm down. I’m not going to eat you. I didn’t go through all of that trouble for a meal.”
“Then why did you go through all of that trouble?” Taeyong asks, and isn’t sure if he wants the answer.
Johnny holds out a hand to him. “Come here. Let me show you.”
Taeyong weakly kicks his legs, floating closer half-heartedly. But what other choice does he have. It wouldn’t be wise to anger his captor.
Johnny is patient, remaining by the door with his hand outstretched. When he’s within reach, Johnny takes him by the hand and unhurriedly pulls him flush, his other hand coming to a rest against the small of Taeyong’s back. It’s big enough to cover half his back, but the touch is gentle.
“I think you can figure it out,” Johnny says quietly, and then dips his head and kisses him. Taeyong grunts in protest, but it’s futile: the kiss grows more insistent, as does Johnny’s hold on him. He relents and parts his lips, his newly grown gills fluttering as he struggles to regulate his breathing. It’s awful to admit, but it feels good to be touched. It’s been a really long time since the last time he had someone steady, and that someone hadn’t been particularly great. A fling that had been a direct result of a drunk night in a bar, and had remained vaguely unsatisfying the whole way through.
He doesn’t go to bars anymore. He’s been wholly focused on furthering his career, on building up his physique, on keeping things moving forward. He had felt like there was always more time later, to invest in his romantic life. And now... would he ever even see another human being again?
Johnny guides their entangled forms to what must be his bed, a soft looking collection of seaweeds and sea sponges growing across a flat-surfaced rock.
“I don’t... I don’t want to,” Taeyong says quietly.
“I know,” Johnny says against his lips, pushing him down against the stone. The water keeps him from resting his full weight, making the bed more comfortable than it would’ve been on land.
“Can we stop?” Taeyong asks, pushing his hand up against Johnny’s chest. It feels as unyielding as the rock below him.
“You better wise up, pet,” Johnny says, while he removes Taeyong’s underwear, pulling the garment off his legs with care. Taeyong holds his breath, eyes fixed on Johnny’s talons. They’re the length of Taeyong’s pinky finger, and they’re scratching him up, but only lightly. It’s causing goose bumps to erupt everywhere, his nipples perking up. “What you want, what you think, ... none of that matters anymore,” the socks come next, as do his gloves, “and it never will again.”
“That’s not fair,” Taeyong whispers. He thinks tears are forming in his eyes, but it’s hard to tell. They’re being carried away as soon as they well up.
“Do you ask a wild-caught dolphin what it wants before you lock it in a tank for the rest of its natural life?” Johnny asks darkly, manipulating Taeyong onto his stomach. “You have no value, besides the pleasure you might bring me. And if that’s as food, that outcome will just have to do.”
“No, please don’t eat me,” Taeyong sobs, no longer able to keep the terror at bay. He doesn’t want to die. More than ever, Johnny’s home feels like a tomb.
“I won’t, if you obey.” Johnny retrieves a glass tub from where it’d been wedged in the jagged side of the rock. It’s a fancy thing, made from milky glass and with a cork stopper. It looks like it was made by humans. Johnny removes the cork by stabbing it with a claw, revealing the thick, smooth looking substance inside. It’s unaffected by the water moving against it.
“Slick yourself up. I’d do it for you, but I don’t want to cut up your insides.”
It’s a small mercy, one Taeyong takes advantage of. Being used would only hurt more without glide, and even more if he’s been scraped by Johnny claws. And he doesn’t want to die of an internal puncture wound.
He digs four fingers in, extracting a palmful of the gloopy stuff, and rubs it in between his ass cheeks. It feels slippery, but also warming somehow. Like it’s causing the slightest amount of friction.
“Good. Now loosen your hole.”
Johnny allows him a long time to open himself up, encouraging him all the while, planting kisses to his shoulders, his neck, and the back of his head. If Taeyong had wanted this, it would have been intimate.
“You’re doing great,” Johnny praises him, licking the shell of his ear. Taeyong shudders with a mixture of revulsion and arousal. He’s adept at fingering himself, and it feels good, even with the strange sensation of water sloshing in and out around his fingers as he works to relax his sphincter. His cock is slowly filling out, partially because the ocean feels stimulating against it, like a whisper-soft caress that never ends. It’s humiliating that his body is responding in this way when his heart isn’t in it.
He goes to grab some more of the goo, and Johnny lets him. It’s oddly reassuring that Johnny isn’t looking to hurt him. Not in this way, at least.
“What is this stuff?” Taeyong asks.
“Whale blubber. It gets heated and whipped. It has many applications.”
Taeyong rests his forehead against the squishy moss, and allows his focus to be wholly on fingering himself. If he can keep this activity somewhat mechanical, and goal-oriented, then maybe it won’t feel so bad that it’s turning him on. Johnny disappears from above him, and Taeyong pauses his movements. Has he done something wrong? He waits, his intakes of water shallow.
His hand is removed delicately, held by its wrist, and the blunt tip of something starts being pressed into him. Taeyong looks over his shoulder, eyebrows drawn taut with nerves. He expects it to be Johnny. It is, in a way. Johnny is pushing a smooth object with a pearly pink sheen into him. It’s more oblong than its counterparts on land, but the thing is still very clearly a butt plug. He takes it easily, and Johnny looks pleased.
“You did a good job, preparing yourself. Some humans lack the knowledge.”
Some humans... did that mean there were more humans around? Taeyong blinks, lightly shifting his hips to get used to the intrusion. It sits smooth and heavy inside of him, pressing into his prostate in a way that feels distracting. Johnny helps him sit up. Only now does he notice a box on the floor, holding several more of the oblong shapes, each one a little bigger than the last. They’re all pink, the biggest one easily as wide as his fist. Taeyong looks up at Johnny with a frown.
“You have some way to go before you can take me,” Johnny says by way of explanation. “From now on, we’ll train your body together. You can’t take it out, do you understand?”
Taeyong shivers, and looks away sadly. He understands, but he doesn’t want it.
Johnny’s hand comes up, gripping Taeyong’s chin harshly and forcing him to make eye contact. “Don’t act defiant. I don’t like that in a pet. I had these carved just for you, the least you can do is act grateful. It’s rose quartz, its properties are excellent.”
“Just for me?” Taeyong asks, his mind running with the implications. That had to either mean Johnny had had his eye on him for a while, or he’d been hunting for a human for a while. He bites down on the inside of his lower lip, thinking. “Who was the drowning man?”
Johnny gives him an incredulous look. “Have you never read any merfolk lore? It was me, I was luring you.” Johnny releases his face with a flick. “You really are stupid, aren’t you.”
Taeyong bristles, and thinks something feisty at Johnny. No, he’s most definitely not stupid. He’s just been kidnapped, and assaulted, and told he’s never going to escape here. If anything, he’s in shock! He’s been trying to keep it together, but so much has happened in such a short amount of time, all of it entirely outside of the realm of his imagination. He’s still not entirely convinced that any of this is real. This must be some kind of fucked up hallucination right before death. One of those that people wake up from, only to claim to have lived an entire lifetime in the few minutes they were out. Maybe he’s actually just being drowned by that other swimmer in this very moment. It would explain why his thoughts, more and more, feel like molasses in his head.
“You’re the stupid one,” he says angrily. The pain registers before the action does, Johnny’s claws digging into his thighs until the muscle spasms. Blood starts drifting up into the water, swirling because of the light but continuous current in Johnny’s room, and he can taste it when he gasps in pain.
The punishment ends almost as soon as it has started, but the pain lingers and blooms. He curls up and sobs. The current lifts him from the bed, transporting him through the room in slow revolving movements. Johnny watches him go with a satisfied expression. His voice seems to be coming from very far away, and yet it’s still clear as a bell, right inside Taeyong’s ear. “Don’t worry, pet. You’ll learn your place, and things will become easier on you.”
Taeyong doesn’t respond. He hates Johnny, and he hates this place, and he just needs to wake up already. After a while, when the pain has settled into a dull throb in his thigh, he opens his eyes.
The room is empty. He hadn’t heard Johnny leave. He’s not sure if he feels relief or more fear. What if Johnny never returned? What would happen to him then? He doesn’t understand this society at all, and he’s beginning to regret turning down that fish before, because now, in this calmer moment, he can feel how hungry he is. He checks for Johnny’s satchel by the door, but it isn’t there.
He lets himself float for a while longer, allowing himself a few moments of complete despair. And then takes in a deep breath. “Okay, enough now,” he tells himself sternly, bracing his shoulders and jutting out his bottom lip in determination. “If you want to survive, you can’t continue acting like this.”
Despite his gloomy prospects, his surroundings are intriguing, and he gives in to his natural curiosity. His thigh stings something bad when he kicks his leg, and it jostles the plug inside of him, so he resorts to using his hands only, navigating slowly but elegantly. There’s something deeply relaxing about being able to be under water without that underlying burn of depleting oxygen. He can just swim, and exist.
On one of the walls there’s a extremely polished surface, which causes it to function as a mirror of sorts. Perfect, because he’s been curious about his gills for a while now. He swims closer, eyes wide in anticipation. But he sight that greets him makes him yell out, instinctively kicking his leg to move back and causing another painful sting to run through it.
He takes a few moments to collect himself and then swims back warily, but the facts haven’t changed: his eyes are as black as Johnny’s.
See? He’s the devil and this is hell, and he’s stolen my soul too.
“You’ll believe fairytales about hell, but not ones about mermaids,” Johnny remarks from the doorway. He’s holding a struggling swordfish, which he deposits on a raised platform on the far end of the space. He kills it swiftly with a small but sharp looking knife. Then he begins expertly filleting the fish while Taeyong watches on warily.
“What would you know about hell?” he asks. Did these creatures even have souls?
“I know more than you,” Johnny assures him with an unimpressed expression, and then continues his work. When he’s done, the fish sits cut up into bite-size pieces, and he gestures for Taeyong to come closer. Taeyong obeys, only because he doesn’t want another punishment. The knife is reminding him of Johnny’s promise to cut out his tongue.
As soon as he’s within reach, Johnny drags him close with force, settling him down into his lap. The plug pushes in deeper, lodged against Johnny’s tail, and Taeyong gasps.
“We tried to keep the changes minimal,” Johnny explains, petting Taeyong’s hair. “Only enough so you’d be able to breathe, would be able to resist the pressure and the cold. Minor changes to your dietary needs. That’s standard, you understand. Your kind can’t live here unaltered. We killed so many of you before we found the right balance.” He cups Taeyong’s chin, forcing him to make eye contact. “The eyes were my choice... it’s so you can see like we do. Some pets don’t get enlarging pupils, and they live out the rest of their lives in near-complete darkness. Some owners prefer it that way.”
When it’s put to him like that, Taeyong undeniably feels gratitude. The thought of having to live through all of this while literally being kept in the dark, it would’ve been too much. He would’ve had zero chance of– no, he shouldn’t think about escaping, Johnny will hear, and–
Johnny presses a kiss to Taeyong’s head. “You’re never going to leave here. The sooner you let go of that false hope, the sooner you’ll adjust.”
A morsel of fish is offered to him, and Taeyong looks up at Johnny with a doubtful look in his eye. “It’s swordfish,” Johnny explains, as if Taeyong doesn’t already know that. “Their meat is not fish-like. Here, have a bit. You’ll like it.”
He opens his mouth and allows himself to be fed, because, he’s hungry. The meat is firm and lightly sweet. It’s pleasant. It’s delicious, actually.
“Yeah?” Johnny asks, and offers him another piece. Taeyong eats with increasing enthusiasm, his appetite making itself more apparent as they continue. By the time he’s getting full, a good portion of the fish is gone, and Johnny praises him. “Good boy,” he says, and pets the back of Taeyong’s head.
And Taeyong, despite himself, likes the praise. It’s the first positive thing that has happened to him in a while. He feels sated, a little sleepy. His defences are down. He closes his eyes, an embarrassed flush settling hot in his cheeks.
He’d always been naturally receptive to praise, but that didn’t mean he had to give away his dignity over a piece of fish.
--
Things fall into a rhythm after that first day. Johnny steadily works Taeyong up to bigger and longer plugs, and punishes him swiftly and viciously whenever he catches Taeyong without it in. The amount of scarring Taeyong has grows week by week.
Johnny is gone very often, and Taeyong figures he must have some kind of job. When he’s not plotting his escape, he thinks of his own job in the hours that Johnny is absent, while floating and consuming the multitude of snacks he’s provided with. He thinks of stupid details like the reports he’s still meant to fill out. Do they even miss him at work? Has he already been fired for failing to show up, have they already taken on someone new? He wants to feel like he’s irreplaceable, but he knows he’s not. No one is, in a corporation.
He gets to go out more often than he anticipated, accompanying Johnny. He uses these times to map out the route to the forum – the locals’ name for the huge cave he’d seen that first time.
It’s a meeting place and a market place, and Johnny regularly takes him there to buy food. It’s where he figures out Johnny must either be really rich, or held in high regard for some other reason, because other merfolk cower when he nears, and he’s offered the most beautiful pieces of merchandise at every stall.
It’s not clear to him what Johnny’s profession is, and every day he grows more curious. But Johnny treats most of his questions like white noise, and so he’s figuring things out at a snail’s pace.
The goods being sold at the stalls vary from live catch, to household items, to garments. Taeyong misses clothes. Johnny allows him to wear his underwear when they go out, so he won’t lose his plug, but nothing else. At first he had felt on display and embarrassed, but then he’d begun seeing other humans. Most of them were afforded nothing at all by way of clothes, and none of them looked good. Ghostly pale, with lifeless eyes, even if they’d been given the gift of sight.
Taeyong tries to draw their attention every time he spots another person, but to no avail. A lot of them wear thick collars, and allow themselves to be dragged behind their owners. Like they’re nothing more than dogs. He hates the sight with a passion.
When those other humans are being addressed is the only time he ever hears any merfolk speak, and he figures they must have some kind of telepathic native language. He asks Johnny about it, who just smirks at him.
He grows more frustrated by the day.
--
He sleeps in Johnny’s bed, the heavy fish tail draped across a leg or his chest. He thinks Johnny likes the feeling of having someone close while he sleeps, but it also serves a practical purpose. Taeyong still hasn’t figured out how to remain in one place while sleeping, and the first few nights he’d repeatedly woken up because he was bumping into the ceiling, or the wall.
“How do the other humans living here do this?” Taeyong had asked, a little indignant.
“Most of them sleep chained up,” Johnny had explained, and Taeyong had never asked again for fear of giving Johnny ideas.
A large hand skates across his abdomen, but he’s used to it now, and doesn’t even bother opening his eyes. “Hm?” he hums.
“Time for a new plug,” Johnny informs him. “Get on your stomach.”
Taeyong groans but obeys, rolling over and grabbing hold of some moss. These days, he barely needed to assist anymore. He’d become loose enough that each ascending plug went in with relative ease and minimal slicking, as long as Johnny found the right angle and pushed with enough force. Once they were past the initial barrier, the plug would slide in smoothly and settle deep inside of him, a now-familiar weight.
“Look,” Johnny says, and shows him the plug that’s going inside him today. It’s the biggest one. Taeyong blinks and frowns.
“That one? That won’t fit.”
“It’s the last one,” Johnny says.
Taeyong’s eyes go wide, and he looks down at the case that holds the neat row of carved quartz. To his horror, he realises it’s the truth. Ever so slowly, ever so quietly, he’d been brought up to a size he could never have imagined for himself.
He reaches back and feels at his hole. What he finds is deeply unfamiliar, wrinkly and puffed up.
“Do you want to look at it?” Johnny asks. He sounds proud. Taeyong wants to scream.
“No!” he says, and hides his face in his hands.
“Suit yourself,” Johnny replies, and then works the new plug into him. There’s a moment where it feels like it won’t fit, and he feels vaguely triumphant. But then Johnny presses down harder, causing Taeyong to grunt in pain, until finally his sphincter relaxes and allows the quartz to sink in all the way.
“Oh,” Taeyong says faintly, curling his fingers into the moss. His breathing is shallow and rapid. For the first time, it feels like there’s physically not enough room in his body for the intrusion, like he can’t breathe in all the way.
“Good boy,” Johnny says warmly, and gives his thigh a squeeze. Taeyong doesn’t move at all, doesn’t speak. Simply tries to get used to his new state.
By the time he’s done getting over the feeling of being impaled, Johnny has left for the day. He tries to swim, but finds it’s significantly harder than before. The thing inside him is literally so heavy it’s dragging him down. He can walk across the floor now – or rather, waddle. The current no longer picks him up.
Then something awful happens: the plug slides right out of him. He watches it hit the floor with a dull thud, and grimaces, eyes flitting to the door opening. But Johnny isn’t there.
He lifts up the plug, and is again shocked at its weight. Surely the one before this hadn’t been this heavy? He would have noticed. He puts it back down on the floor, and frowns at it. Then he swims over to the case, which goes perfectly smoothly now, and picks up the plug that had just been inside of him. It’s still warm from residual body heat — even in his cooled down state, he runs warmer than the environment and merpeople — and like he suspected, it’s nowhere near as heavy.
He eyes the biggest plug warily, debating how long he can leave it out. It’s never clear how much time passes down here, but he’s grown a sense for how long Johnny stays away. There’s no telling the punishment he’ll receive for not having it in, but he’s afraid of it, because each new punishment has consistently been more brutal than the last. He’d lost a molar after the last time, and the time before that he’d been convinced he’d bleed to death, the gashes across his chest impossible to stem.
He should probably be scared to death of Johnny by now, but hope still burns within him. He knows he’s going to get out of here, and all these horrible things are just temporary torture methods.
He could buy an implant to replace the molar. He could cover up the scarring. But his ass...? Would it ever go back to normal.
He swims over to the mirror and twists himself, using one hand to even out the current and keep him in one spot. After some manoeuvring he gets a clear sight of his asshole, and the sight shocks him deeply.
It really could barely be called an asshole anymore. It sits in between his ass cheeks like a slit, his opening closed along a little line, his rim wrinkly and puffed out. He runs his fingertips over it, pulls his cheek aside. His hole gives easily, a bit of seawater slipping into him.
Johnny had given him a cunt, clear as day. Taeyong lets out a little sob of despair. Would he even be able to have satisfying sex, after this? And who would want him like this? He thinks of every man he’s been with, and all of them, invariably, had complimented him on his tightness. He’s been ruined.
Getting the plug back into his body takes him a very long time, the quartz too smooth, both the shape and the angle awkward. His arms are trembling by the end of the ordeal, and he can’t do anything besides lie on the rock, weighed down and exhausted.
He’s still there when Johnny comes home, and refuses his dinner.
“Don’t be like that,” Johnny reprimands him playfully, and then a little more sternly, but still Taeyong refuses to play nice. In the end he’s forcefed, caught on Johnny’s lap, gagging and coughing as fish is brutally shoved past his lips. Johnny chokes him until he swallows, massaging his throat.
“I hate you,” he says venomously in between feedings, gasping for air, and Johnny gives him a pitying look.
“I know. What you still don’t seem to grasp with that little peanut-sized brain of yours, even after all this time, is that I don’t care. What you want, need, think, all of it. It doesn’t matter. I can do whatever I want, and I will.”
Taeyong starts crying, ugly crying. The plug has settled deep inside of him, making it hard for him to pull in breaths, causing him to hyperventilate. He promised himself he wouldn’t break down like this, not in front of his torturer. It’s just– the extreme unfairness of it all. He’s being treated like nothing more than an animal, and he’s not an animal. He’s a person.
“You’re not a person in this society. Do you understand? Just like I wasn’t one in yours.” Johnny shoves another piece of fish into his mouth, and clamps his huge hands over Taeyong’s nose and mouth, and the other one around his throat, cutting off his air. “You will never be anything down here, besides a pet. And pets don’t get a voice.”
Taeyong swallows the food and tries to bite Johnny. Johnny digs the tips of his claws into the side of Taeyong’s face, deep, until the grinding noise of keratin over bone is all Taeyong can hear.
“You can’t win. Give up. Give into me. I’m nice when you’re nice. That’s true, isn’t it?”
Taeyong is still crying, because it hurts, because it’s awful. But he’s listening. Because those words are true. Never once has Johnny been cruel to him without cause. So if Taeyong just... if he just... then the pain will stop. He wants that. He’s been in distress for so long now. He’s so tired. He doesn’t see the way out, still, not even after thinking about it endlessly.
He breathes in once, twice, and goes lax in Johnny’s hold. An occasional hiccup wracks his body, but other than that, he’s more pliant than he’s ever been.
“Good,” Johnny praises immediately, and removes his claws from Taeyong’s face. “Have you had enough food?”
Taeyong sniffles, and closes his eyes. What’s the point of answering. It doesn’t matter if he’s had enough. He’d had enough before any of this began. It doesn’t matter. What he wants doesn’t matter. He doesn’t matter. He feels small and lost and hopeless.
When he opens his eyes again, Johnny is grinning at him. He’s never seen Johnny grin before, and it’s an awful look on him, all of his spaced-out, pointy teeth on display. But it still makes Taeyong feel better. Because at least it’s meant to be nice.
He reaches out and touches Johnny’s face, and for the first time, really looks at him. He’d always been nothing more than an obstacle, and Taeyong hadn’t cared about him one bit. Everything he’d tried to learn about Johnny was in an attempt to plot a successful escape.
But what if he’s right, a little voice inside his head says, and this time, it’s his own internal monologue. The one that doubts, the one that tells him he won’t finish projects in time, won’t be able to finish his laps today. The voice that’s only a little bit of sadness removed from the voice that tells him he will never be genuinely liked by his family or his colleagues, and will never be happy.
“You were on land?” Taeyong asks. Johnny’s expression darkens, becomes threatening again. But there’s something else there, too. It’s clear he misspoke. This isn’t something Taeyong was supposed to find out. Taeyong thinks it’s only fair, after all this time of being laid bare and having his thoughts picked over, that he’s finally gotten something real out of his captor. “You were, weren’t you. And we hurt you. Like we hurt everything.”
Being compared to livestock and pets over and over, with all the lack of rights that came with it, has given him a lot of incentive to consider the fates of livestock and pets. He drops his hand and tips his head forward, resting his head against Johnny’s chest. He’s bone-tired. “I’m sorry.”
It’s silent for some time, and then Johnny says: “You are not the one who owes me an apology.”
“Yeah, well. Those other people are never gonna give it, so I’m saying it on their behalf. I’m sorry we’re a shitty species, who torture everything we come across.” He yawns, can’t suppress it. His face is throbbing, his eyes feel puffy. He has nothing left to give. “Johnny, I’m tired. Can I please go to bed.”
He’s put to bed, and Johnny doesn’t come that night, but he doesn’t need the weight of a fish tail to hold him down anymore. The stone fulfils that function now.
He might as well be collared.
--
Some weeks pass, by Taeyong’s estimation. He wears the plug at all times, like all the ones before it, but the weight means he can barely get around anymore. Johnny takes to carrying him everywhere when they go out together, only briefly setting him down when he’s purchasing meals for them, or other items for himself. Money takes the form of intricate shell bracelets — the shells used thin and lightweight — of which Taeyong can never figure out the value. They all seem rather similar, but some buy a lot and some buy very little. Their value seems perfectly obvious to the buyers and the merchants however, the exchanges always rapid. After being told over and over that he is, Taeyong genuinely starts feeling a little stupid. How complicated could their exchange system be?
He’s lost in thought, and startles when Johnny suddenly picks him up. There’s an odd glimmer in his eyes, and Taeyong isn’t sure if he likes the look of it.
“What?” he asks sullenly. “I wasn’t even doing anything, so don’t give me that look.”
He’s surprised when Johnny kisses him, a long press of lips, Johnny’s cool and tough against his. He can’t remember ever being kissed out in public before, and he gives their surroundings a nervous glance. One merwoman is observing them with palpable disgust in her expression, shielding her child’s eyes with her delicately webbed hand, and Taeyong feels small and dirty.
“Don’t,” he pleads, looking up at Johnny. “You can’t kiss me– people are looking.”
“Hmm, you’re right. It’s strange that I’d kiss my dog like this.”
Taeyong is about to say yes, and then catches himself. “I’m n-not–”
But Johnny isn’t listening to him anymore. He’s carried home, and deposited in bed, the place where he spends most of his time now. It’s usually too tiring to walk around, especially while struggling to keep the plug lodged inside of him. The more his body had grown used to it, the easier he lost it. He rolls onto his side, and stares at the wall. Could he blame that woman? Johnny was right, he would’ve been just as disgusted if he saw someone kiss their dog like this. And that’s all Taeyong is in this nation.
He feels repulsive, tarnished somehow, and longs for the sensation of a shower. There was a stronger current in the corner that flowed directly out of the apartment, where they both relieved themselves, that sort of felt like a shower sometimes. But he misses a real shower. And breathing air. And running. He doesn’t think he wants to swim another day in his life. Most of the time, he didn’t notice the water at all anymore, but then other times it felt like something physically sticking to him, something that could never be removed. Some days the constant, unvarying sensory input made him feel like he was going to lose his mind.
Johnny rolls him onto his stomach, and Taeyong doesn’t fight him, because there’s no point to fighting. He looks over his shoulder, fixing Johnny with a squint-y stare. “What is it, you big brute. I’m trying to nap.”
He’s kissed again, another long joining of their lips. Taeyong’s heart flutters in his chest, and he hates himself for it. Johnny touches him often, but most of it is either practical or meant to teach him a lesson. He can’t recall many moments of just being kissed, for seemingly no reason other than enjoyment.
“Push,” Johnny asks, while clicking his claws against the blunt ending of the plug. Taeyong obeys automatically, pushing with all his might, his face going red. Johnny probably wanted to make him go before they went to bed. He doesn’t have to go, but he’s long since given up arguing the point. Johnny decided when Taeyong got to go. Maybe he should try, actually. He hated the scrubbings he got when he made the plug dirty; he’d get rubbed with a sponge until his skin looked red and stung because of the salt.
The plug slides out with help from Johnny. Taeyong lets out a little grunt when it pops out and then sinks back into the mattress, feeling immeasurably lighter. It felt good any time it was out of him, it made him feel smaller but free.
Then Johnny hovers over him, close, the end of his tail curling around one of Taeyong’s ankles and pulling them apart. Taeyong goes rigid, twisting his head to look over his shoulder.
“Johnny?” he asks hesitantly.
“I think it’s time you stopped calling me that,” Johnny says warmly, petting Taeyong’s hair. “It was cute for a long time, with the accent. But we’re about to be joined. You should address me properly.”
“But I can’t pronounce your name,” Taeyong reminds him. He’s not really focused on the conversation. He’s seen Johnny’s penis plenty of times, usually when the merman is relieving himself, or when he’s horny and toying with himself mindlessly. But he suspects he’s never seen it fully unsheathed. At the time it hadn’t really worried him, because in his hearts of hearts, he’d known he’d be long gone before Johnny ever got a chance to use it on him. But now, what now? He can see it bobbing in the water, a purple so deep it’s nearly blue, the tapered tip glistening.
“Not my name. I’m your owner. So you should call me owner.”
Taeyong can’t focus on what Johnny is saying, too tightly wound with anticipation. When the tapered tip finds his hole, there’s relief, at first. He’s been well-stretched, could probably take his own fist if he tried. Johnny pushes in with no resistance, and Taeyong relaxes a little bit.
But then more keeps coming, growing steadily wider. He can feel his body struggling to adjust, his large intestine twinging with discomfort as Johnny cockhead moves in ever deeper.
“Johnny!” he gasps, “wait, stop– please slow down.”
He’s paid no mind, and it feels like the water is physically forced from his lungs when Johnny arrives at the bend in his intestine, and is pushing in still, harder and harder. Taeyong twists and writhes, and Johnny places a hand in between his shoulder blades, keeping him pinned.
“Take it,” he instructs him in a growl, and Taeyong whimpers. He wants to, but he can’t relax. It’s too big. It hurts.
After some swivelling of his hips, Johnny finally finds the angle and can start working himself further into Taeyong’s guts. Taeyong is shivering, adrenaline pumping through him. By the time Johnny stops moving in, his scaled hips flush to Taeyong’s bony butt, Taeyong has become deeply grateful for all the training he’s been put through. He would’ve torn and died, that’s very obvious now. It still kind of feels like he’s about to tear, somewhere deep inside of him.
“Good,” Johnny praises him, licking at the sensitive bit of skin behind his earlobe.
“Hnah,” Taeyong moans in response, trying to make sense of the sensation of being so full. Nothing has even happened yet, and he already feels completely fucked out. He can’t stop shaking. Johnny pets him, and soothes him, until the shaking dies down, and his mind begins catching up.
“Big,” Taeyong whispers, and Johnny laughs warmly, petting his hair some more. It still isn’t long enough for one of the braided styles of the merpeople, and so just floats around his head. Johnny says it makes him look like a baby.
“What an observant pet.”
“S-stings.” His jaw feels loose, as loose as his body and his mind. He doesn’t feel entirely with it anymore, thoughts slow and muddled and feeling very far away.
“Hm. You’ll grow used to it. All of you do.”
When the fucking starts up, it’s slow due to the drag of the water, but feels brutal nonetheless. Taeyong can’t speak anymore, only grunt and endure it, as Johnny holds him close and grinds in his cock as deep as it will go.
“Do you know why I’m doing this with you?” he asks, tucking some of the floating strands of Taeyong’s hair behind his ear.
“Hnn,” Taeyong whimpers pitifully. He can’t hear the question. He can’t hear anything anymore, besides a nasty little voice in his head telling him that he’s being ruined, and this is all he’ll be good for now. How could he ever ask another human to touch him after allowing a monster to have him like this?
“Mermaids only need to be bred once. They ripen and swim out to the open ocean, where anyone who wants, and is approved by her, can have a go. The competition is very fierce, as you can imagine. And then she keeps our roe for the rest of her life, fertilises them and has children when she wishes.”
Johnny pulls out, and Taeyong lets out a long, low grunt of relief. He’s turned onto his back, and this time Johnny’s cock slides in deep with more ease. The rutting starts up again, and Taeyong feels like himself flopping like a ragdoll, too impaled to do anything else. He looks down, and can see Johnny moving against the inside of his skin, pulling his stomach taut. Normally, that would’ve freaked him out. But it’s been a while since he’s been able to think, and he just watches the repetitive movement of the cock pushing into him with a slack jaw and unfocused eyes.
“And it’s torture for a lot of mermen,” Johnny continues, “because our biology asks us to breed frequently, but the opportunity presents itself so rarely. We can’t climax on our own.” He speeds up, tendrils of hair releasing from his braid and floating around his head. “We need... we need a body to release into.”
Taeyong touches a hand to his stomach, cupping it around the cock moving deep inside of him, frowning in confusion.
“Yeah,” Johnny says, and for the first time, is beginning to sound affected, “yeah, touch it just like that.”
A huge hand grips his throat and squeezes at full force, and Taeyong chokes in surprise, looking up into Johnny’s face. It’s barely the face he knows anymore. It’s twisted with pleasure, and hunger.
He’s released, and he gasps for oxygen.
“Come on, slut. Tighten up so I can finish.”
The hand returns, and Taeyong instinctively tries to pry the hand away, but it’s futile. He’s dragged back into some semblance of conscious thought, and gives Johnny pleading looks. Perhaps predictably, it does nothing. If anything, Johnny is squeezing harder.
He’s released again, Johnny now continuously grunting with pleasure, every time he moves into him. “Say thank you, bitch. Thank your owner for being bred.”
“Thank you,” Taeyong manages with great difficulty, voice whisper-soft.
“Owner,” Johnny grits out, sounding so close, right on the edge. He grins. “Say it or I’ll kill you.”
It’s a choice, a very clear choice. All Taeyong has to do is hold his tongue, and he’ll never have to suffer again. This is the first actual choice he’s been given since arriving here.
“Thank you, owner,” Taeyong whispers. The hands immediately return, and his vision flickers and starts to blacken, and his eyes roll back into his head, tongue lolling from his mouth. Here, on the edge of death, has a deep and troubling realisation about himself. He has no honour, he’ll say anything to avoid death, even the most demeaning things. When had he grown so weak? Or had he always been this weak? He’d just humiliated himself to the lowest rung, and he was still going to die.
When Johnny’s release starts being pumped into him, he’s on the edge of blacking out. Johnny grunts out a long moan, and releases him at last, placing his hands on Taeyong’s shoulders instead, keeping him pinned that way. Sweet, sweet water flows in and out of Taeyong’s gills freely, soothing the burn in his chest. He tries to use his windpipe too, desperate to get more fluid into his lungs, but nothing happens. It feels shut closed, like it’s been crushed. The pain is overwhelming for a while, until he’s distracted by the pain of what Johnny’s still doing to him.
It’s clear his release isn’t human at all. Taeyong can feel it gushing into him, and gushing, and gushing, seemingly neverending. Everything inside of him is stinging, fighting to make enough room. He can see the physical evidence of being pumped full as his stomach starts developing a little bump around the indentation of Johnny’s cock, a whine of distress bubbling in his throat as it grows steadily, because it’s pressing into his bladder.
But he can no longer make any sound, can’t even sob in embarrassment when his bladder gives out under the pressure and he starts going in bed, like some kind of untrained animal. It floats in between them, he can taste it in the water, and Johnny laughs at him. Maybe not even that viciously, but it hurts some deep part of Taeyong’s psyche, makes him feel like a dirty, stupid little animal.
Stupid. Worthless. You disgusting coward.
The thing that’s hurting him the most, that feels like it’s breaking his innermost self, is that a part of him likes it. He feels nauseous, and used to an inhuman point. But another part of him, a worryingly large part, feels satisfied. He’s been trained for this moment, and has finally completed his goal. Taeyong, Taeyong used to love training and achieving new goals. Johnny had given him a goal in his captivity, and he’d successfully reached it.
The breeding goes on for several minutes more, until he looks easily three months pregnant, and the burning inside of him is so severe that he’s convinced this is going to kill him.
Johnny pulls out with a satisfied expression then, his cock causing a gross slurping noise when he pulls free. Taeyong lies still, his gills fluttering as he breathes. He doesn’t think he could move if he wanted to.
“Your first time. How did it feel?” Johnny asks, back to conversational. He gets comfortable next to Taeyong, his majestic tail swishing lazily through the water as he caresses the little bump of Taeyong’s stomach, and occasionally, his ruined hole. Taeyong finds he wants the stone plug. After so much time of always having it in, it feels weird to be without it. “You’ll be able to take on more loads, over time. The communal breeding stock, they take it until they’re coughing up roe. It’s quite a sight.”
The first time, Taeyong thinks, feeling detached. This would happen to him again, and again. He’d picked the wrong fate, willingly. He’s less than a person now, and the only reason is because he’s chosen it for himself.
He turns his head to look at Johnny, and physically can’t answer. But Johnny is looking deep into his eyes, and seems to find the answer nonetheless. And for all the words Taeyong has lost, Johnny seems to have gained in them. Taeyong hasn’t been spoken to this much in months, and he drinks up every word even if he doesn’t grasp all of them, the overt attention feeling like approval.
“Finally cracked that little mind of yours, huh. About time. You took longer than most. Most just tie up their fresh catch with the public ones, pick them up when they’ve accepted their new status in society. I don’t like it that way though... our council doesn’t like it, and they come out too flat. There’s still a little fire in you, I think. A little spark. I think you’ll fight me again, next time.”
Maybe once that would have inspired pride in Taeyong, but now he only feels shame. He’d made Johnny wait, and displeased him. He would displease him again. Even in this, he was a failure.
“Tomorrow, I’ll show you the pillories, and the underwater volcanoes nearby. How does that sound? We can get you branded while we’re there, so everyone knows you’re my little cow.”
Taeyong nods, not really following. He knows he’ll go either way, whether he wants to or not. But he does want to. He doesn’t want to displease Johnny again. Because Johnny is in charge. Johnny has become the sole purpose in his life.
Johnny is his owner.