Samurai Flamenco (Mermaid AU) - It's Not Supposed to Work Like That [Gotoyoshi]

[scriveyner]

Title: It's Not Supposed to Work Like That
Fandom: Samurai Flamenco
AU: Mermaid AU
Characters/Pairing: Gotou/Masayoshi
Rating: T
Length: 1895
Summary: "What eggs?"



Gotou set his duffel bag down on his bed and sighed. Three weeks was a long time to be out of his apartment, it smelled less like home and more like the must of absence. He turned on lights and plugged in appliances, and last of all, opened the window above his bed.

The scent of the ocean air filled his room quickly, the cool breeze rolling off the sea. He hesitated a moment, resting his elbows on the sill, and felt the wind ruffle his hair. The sun hadn’t set yet, and he could see the water past the rocky shore; and further out than that, the fishing ships. A long moment passed, and a pang of loneliness in his gut that he hadn’t expected surfaced. He glanced to the desk at the foot of his bed, where his study guides and text books were piled. On the shallow shelf sat a small glass jar, and catching the light within the jar was a thin layer of red scales.

He hadn’t had a chance to tell Masayoshi he was leaving. It was sudden, the call from his mother; his great-uncle had been ill for a while but he went a lot quicker than expected. And it wasn’t like he could just text Masayoshi, they only made contact by chance. Gotou glanced back out at the ocean, the fading light of day reflecting across the waves, the scattered wispy clouds already pink, the sky darkening.

Gotou picked up his courier bag, slipped the strap over his head and patted his pockets to ensure he still had his cigarettes. He’d just have to apologize in person … if he saw Masayoshi, tonight.

Their favorite meeting place was a small stretch of rocky beach, at low tide there was more sand than rock. At high tide, like now, most of the area was covered in shallow water up to the rocky overhang. Above that overhang was the street itself, a two-lane highway that saw semi-frequent usage, headlights sweeping across the night above his head. Unless you stood right at the barrier and looked straight down, or were on a ship pointed exactly at the tiny inlet, the cove was a blind spot to everyone. It meant privacy, the perfect spot for a mermaid and his best friend to hang out and watch the stars.

’Best friend.’

Gotou’s ears heated. He sat on a large, flat rock, his shoes and socks beside him. He’d taken them off to splash through the shallow water, and his cell phone sat in one shoe, lighting up occasionally with the infrequent notifications from his messenger app; a friend from back home he’d reconnected with at the funeral. Gotou smoked his cigarette and stared at the emerging stars in the canvas of sky above him. A friend, huh?

The image of Masayoshi underneath him, chest and face flushed, eyes hooded, arms outstretched… Gotou coughed a little and resolved not to think about that, that was a one-off, a mistake of booze and opportunity and wouldn’t be happening again. Itwouldn’t, he’d promised his girlfriend he wouldn’t, but she seemed ambivalent about the whole thing. It was a hard pill to swallow, I mean, Gotou had told her he’d fooled around with a mermaid, for fuck’s sake.

It was cooler here, the waves didn’t crash so much as lap the base of the rocks, the spray minimal. It was foolish to believe that he’d see Masayoshi tonight, he’d been gone for so long … it was possible that he would never see Masayoshi again. If the mermaid had moved on to other shores … they’d never find each other again.

That thought hurt a lot more than he expected it to, and with an aggravated sigh, Gotou ground out his cigarette on the rock. He’d smoke another, and another … he’d wait until the tide rolled out, and then he’d go home to his musty apartment, and lay on top of the sheets and stare at the shadows across his ceiling until the morning.

Midway through his second cigarette, he heard a splash, and a second one. He looked up in surprise, and saw a head and shoulders appear out a fair distance – too far away for him to recognize features; he’d met more than one mermaid by now, but only one had ever been to their secret cove. He sat up a little straighter, as he saw the head swim a little closer.

“Masayoshi?”

The head and shoulders disappeared suddenly, underneath the waves as quickly as they’d appeared. Gotou slid off the rock, splashing in the warm surf a bit. “Masayoshi!” he called out to the dark waters, his voice desperate in a way he didn’t expect. He was in the water up to his knees now, the hem of his shorts soaked with seawater when he saw the head and shoulders appear again, in the distance, farther out. Gotou stood in the never-still water and watched, and called again, Masayoshi’s name.

This time, there was a response, tentative and uncertain. “Gotou-san?”

He inhaled, relief palpable, as now the form moved closer, Masayoshi’s appearance resolve out of the darkness. He swam up to Gotou slowly, almost skittish, and he moved smoothly through the water. Gotou moved a little deeper into the water, and then Masayoshi was up on him, a full body tackle, his arms going over Gotou’s shoulder’s as he yelled in excitement. “Gotou-san, it is you!”

It was by luck that he didn’t land on one of the sharper rocks, splashing over backward with the full weight of the mermaid on him. “I missed you!” Masayoshi said, too loud now that he was close but Gotou didn’t really mind, because he’d missed Masayoshi quite a bit himself.

“Sorry,” Gotou got out once he’d got his breath. “I had to go back home, I didn’t have any time to let you know – were you coming here every night?”

Sitting in the warm surf with his arms full of a content mermaid Gotou was, for the first time aware of something different. “You’ve gained weight,” he said, and pinched Masayoshi’s slightly-chubbier cheek.

“Oh,” Masayoshi pushed himself off of Gotou just a bit. “You can tell! It’s blubber,” he said, almost shyly.

“Blubber.” Gotou repeated, amused.

“Yeah,” Masayoshi shifted a little bit out of his arms, and Gotou could see the lines of his body had plumped out a little. Masayoshi draped one arm over Gotou’s shoulder, and rested the other on his stomach. “It helps insulate the eggs,” he said, blushing. “Until they’re closer to hatching.”

Silence, a moment. Gotou stared at Masayoshi. “…the eggs…?” he repeated slowly, and Masayoshi squirmed a little in his arms, his face almost as red as the scales that patterned his long tail. “What eggs, Masayoshi?”

The sweep of headlights across the ocean made them both freeze but the traffic on the road never stopped; it moved far too fast for a single person to be noticeable, especially at night.

The silence stretched longer, and Gotou stared at Masayoshi. Finally Masayoshi said, “um, my eggs.”

“Your eggs.”

“The ones you … fertilized.”

“What.” Masayoshi flung himself backward into the water, as if to escape but Gotou had a very strong grip on his arm now. “You’re pregnant?” Gotou yelled, half in disbelief.

“I knew you’d be upset!” Masayoshi almost wailed. “I shouldn’t’ve come! I should have waited out the nesting period-!”

Gotou just stared at him, unable to process most of this. “Aren’t you male?”

Masayoshi kept trying to swim away, but Gotou wasn’t about to let him. “Stop struggling!” he barked at Masayoshi, who after another moment, twisted and slapped him clear across the face with his tail. It was a strong blow, enough to send Gotou backwards into the water and stun him, mouth open. He surfaced choking on ocean water, scrambling to his knees in the soft sand. Masayoshi had retreated a little, but not far.

“I’M SORRY,” now Masayoshi was wailing, and there was a strange undercurrent to his voice, one that stirred Gotou’s blood. “I’m so sorry Gotou-san are you okay!?” He wisely didn’t come any closer.

He spat water into the ocean and wiped his eyes clear. “You’ve got eggs,” he said. “What do you do with them?”

“Carry them until it’s almost time for them to hatch,” he said. “We incubate them for several cycles, though, so it will still be a few – ah, weeks I think is how you’d measure it.”

This was way, way too much. “I’m not dealing with this,” Gotou said aloud, staring past Masayoshi at the ocean behind him. “I need another cigarette, and beer, and to sleep and then, then maybe I can think about dealing with this.”

Masayoshi slithered up into the shallows behind Gotou. “I’ve only got five eggs,” he said. “I think. I’ll know for sure when I lay them, but Mizuki-chan said she sensed five.”

“Five eggs,” Gotou said as he splashed toward the rock where his bag was sitting. “Great, five eggs. Five fuckin’ eggs.”

“Oh, only one or two ever actually are strong enough to hatch.” Masayoshi floated on his back, and when Gotou looked back at him he could see, now, the slight swell of a rounded stomach. Eggs.

“You’re sure they’re mine,” Gotou said as he fished out his cigarettes.

Masayoshi sat up, puffed up in indignation. “Of course they are, Gotou-san! You’re the only one who could have impregnated me, no one else has touched me!” He crossed his arms. “I wouldn’t let them, you’re my betrothed.”

“Masayoshi,” Gotou said softly. “How is this gonna work, huh? I can’t be your betrothed. If you haven’t noticed, I can barely even swim.”

“We’ll make it work,” Masayoshi said firmly, and settled his hand on his belly. “For the babies.”

Gotou made a strange noise of resignation, and wished not for the first time he’d included whiskey in his bag, along with a change of dry clothes.