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They find him just before noon. The creature is half in and half out of a tide pool, fishing line wrapped around his throat; a man from the waist up, not counting the gills on his throat and chest, the fins where his ears should be; scaled body and jagged fins below; a dark slit where a man would have a cock.
Song Lan blinks. Once, twice. The creature is still there, caught on the rocks, stranded, drying out so long its gills have started to crack and bleed at the edges. It’s breathing shallowly. Lungs and gills?
Song Lan thinks it—he?—is dead before Xiao Xingchen drops to his knees beside the creature and it flinches. The fishing line is cutting deep, white against red, threatening to sever something important.
“It’s alright.” Xingchen unsheathes his dive knife with a small click and the thing's eyes go wide. He hisses at them, mouth full of too-thin, too-sharp teeth, trying to jerk away from Xingchen's touch and choking himself further on the line. The teeth remind Song Lan of one of the deep sea fishes he’s seen brought up from the depths. They’re made for tearing flesh in the dark.
“Xingchen.” Song lan's hand goes to his own knife, unable to look away from those fucking teeth. Xiao Xingchen doesn't even blink. Of course.
"I’m not going to hurt you, you’re okay," he says, voice low and soothing. The way he sounds when Song Lan is having a bad day. "It's okay. Let me—" he reaches for the line.
The creature hisses again, softer, but doesn't move, doesn't try to bite. It probably can’t.
It's pretty, for something that shouldn't exist. Long, dark hair, dark eyes, cheekbones Song Lan could cut his hand on. Where a man would have ears, the creature has frilled fins, fine scales like freckles across his face, the bridge of his nose. The fish parts are a sickly black-green in the dull sunlight.
It looks like the other strange rockfish that Song Lan has been fishing for. He’s never seen them outside of this specific cove. A deep sea variant? Something profaning a drowning victim? Is this where the rest of the villagers have gone, into the depths?
Or, no, it’s too clean, too put together, contradictory and mundane all at once, to have once been pure human.
"It’s okay," Xingchen repeats as he brings the knife closer. He keeps his hand angled so the thing can see its approach, so it's not a surprise when the blade touches skin.The creature still flinches. A single drop of blood trickles down his throat, over his collarbone. It doesn't make sense that this hybrid thing has nipples, dark and peaked.
"Easy," Xingchen says, steadying the creature with a hand at his jaw, heedless of those fucking teeth.
It takes less than a handful of seconds for the line to be cut, less than that for the fish-boy-creature-thing to disappear down the beach, into the dark waves, leaving only an ident in the sand and a handful of broken fishing line to prove he was ever real.
“Oh.” Xiao Xingchen brings the tips of his fingers to his mouth. Song Lan realizes, belated, that he's bleeding.
“What—” Song Lan finally, finally steps closer, his legs shaking with the aftereffects of adrenaline. It already feels like a dream
"The fins," Xingchen says, and he sounds awed.
Song Lan takes his hand, shaking off the automatic hesitation—who knows what algae or trash the creature was coated in—and thumbing away Xingchen’s blood to look at his cut. There’s a thin, red wound across his fingers, where the creature’s fins must have sliced as he ripped away from Xingchen’s grasp. The creature’s left behind a small smattering of shed scales, iridescent, clinging to Xingchen’s skin like particles of sand.
“We should clean that,” Song Lan says.
They go home. Song Lan wraps Xingchen’s hand in clean white bandages, watches the faraway look in his eyes.
They’ve had more good days than bad since they found this strip of coastline, like the sun finally breaking through the clouds. Xingchen has started smiling again. Song Lan doesn’t know why his gut is roiling, why he feels like a storm is about to roll in.
Xiao Xingchen stares out the window. Song Lan stares at Xingchen’s bandaged hands, watching the white turn pink.
#
Song Lan rises before dawn, eyes gritty from lack of sleep. The wind is still, the sky a dull grey, threatening the rise of the sun. He wraps his lunch in paper, gathers his tools, his fishing pole, his bait, the same as any morning. He pauses beside his sword, resting in its sheath beside Xingchen’s, but leaves without it. What good is a sword to combat drowning?
He regrets the choice as soon as he leaves the dock, the old Pale Frost rocking in the current. The Pale Frost is more of a dingy than an actual boat, but Song Lan must make do with what he has available to him. When they arrived on the coast, it was the only vessel still floating.
Song Lan can’t tell if the rocking is more aggressive than usual or if there’s something wrong with the oars, before pale, clawed hands appear on the railing, tilting the vessel dangerously. Webbing stretches between the fingers, iridescent in the faint moonlight.
“Hey, fuckface,” says the fishboy, as Song Lan scrambles for purchase, bracing himself against the rotted wooden bench. It peers over the side at him, long black hair slick, framing its narrow face. It looks like nothing he’s ever seen before, no water ghost he’s ever read about, just a step away from human. Its eyes are so dark Song Lan forces himself to look away, in case it enthralls him.
Song Lan’s own fingers are tight around one oar. He probably can’t kill the creature faster than it can drown him, but maybe, if he strikes first—
“What, aren’t you looking for me? The one that got away?” The fishboy laughs, musical and mocking, and then he’s gone, releasing the Pale Frost abruptly and causing Song Lan to stumble back. It wouldn’t take much for the fishboy to upend the Pale Frost, probably only a little more effort than ripping the vessel apart at the seams.
The fishboy appears on the other side of the vessel, treading water barely an arms length away from Song Lan. His earfins are flared, mouth stretched in a wide smile, revealing all those thin, sharp teeth. Song Lan has no idea how he speaks around them.
“Fisherman,” says the fishboy. “Fuckface.” Water streams down his face as he speaks. His gills pulse as he bobs up and down, sucking oxygen from the sea, closing as the fishboy peers up from the grey-blue water.
“Where did you learn to say that?” Song Lan says. He’s never met a demon that could swear. He’s never met any monster quite like this.
“Fisherman? It’s what you all call each other. What they call each other.”
“They?”
“I can talk, I can hear, you know. I’m not fucking stupid. You’re fishermen, and I’m a fish.” It sounds almost aggrieved, or angry. Like Song Lan is accusing him of something.
The fishboy disappears once more. Song Lan watches the shadow of the thing’s tail flow behind it. It’s almost as long as the Pale Frost, and sinewy, like that of an eel, but with the delicate edges of ornamental carp. In the water, the green of his scales is less visible, the color more like an ink spill.
If he wanted to, the fishboy could easily tip the boat over. He–it–must be dangerously fast beneath the waves, power evident in the lazy flick of its fin.
Song Lan stares back at the dock, illuminated pale gold in the dawn light. He wonders how long it will be before Xiao Xingchen realizes he isn’t coming back. Wonders if Xingchen would be able to guess at what had happened, or if he’ll think Song Lan has abandoned him.
The fishboy twists under the Pale Frost, grasping at the railing. His laugh sounds different above water.
“Scared, fuckface?”
Song Lan adjusts his grip on the oar. The fishboy smiles.
“Don’t want to get eaten?”
“Not particularly.” The steady quality of his own voice is a welcome surprise.
“Most things don’t. But you eat things like me, huh,” the fishboy says, teasingly pulling at the rail, tilting it. Song Lan shifts his weight. “Bring them home to your pretty wife.”
At that, Song Lan coughs. It’s just—he wasn’t expecting it.
“My partner,” he says, and the fishboy frowns. It changes the whole shape of his face.
“What?”
“When it’s—two men, there isn’t a wife.” Except for–but, well, he probably doesn’t need to explain feminization to the fishboy, unless they have an analogous sense of gender. Although, they speak the same language, which might mean–
Fishboy mouths the word men. He cocks his head, watching Song Lan like a cat watches a mouse.
“But you’re fucking. He smelled like you, and sweat, and skin.” The fishboy cocks his head. “Fishermen fuck their wives, and fish, but not other fishermen.”
And fish.
Song Lan looks down at the monster and wonders how it might know the word ‘fuck’ but not the word ‘man’, not the word ‘partner’.
The town has been empty for years now. They found the deserted houses, dust coating abandoned furniture, all the broken down docks; signs of a hasty departure.
“How old are you?” he asks, like the fishboy is any young delinquent instead of an impossible creature threatening to—eat him? Drown him?
He looks young, is the thing. A round face, and a clever, soft mouth, despite the fins and the gills and the sharp, sharp teeth. Song Lan doesn’t think, if the fishboy were a human boy, that he could yet be twenty.
The fishboy’s earfins flatten against his face.
“What does that even mean?” he asks, and before Song Lan can answer, he’s released the boat and disappeared, there and then not-there, leaving behind only the barest hint of disturbed seawater and a suddenly-rocking vessel.
Song Lan waits for a long moment, scanning the tops of the waves. When he finds nothing, when enough time has passed that his heart rate begins to even out, he secures his nets, inspects his oars, and rows back to shore.
#
Later, he catches Xiao Xingchen leaving a small ceramic bowl with broth and stewed mushrooms from their midday meal at the edge of the dock.
“It’s not a dog,” Song Lan says.
“Of course not,” Xiao Xingchen agrees, placidly. He’s staring out at the waves like he can see something in them; all Song Lan can see are shifting shades of black and blue-green. “I just thought he might be hungry.”
“It has teeth.” Song Lan can’t help the harshness of his voice. He can’t stop picturing that mouth, stretched wide, can’t stop thinking about if he’d lost his footing when the thing grabbed the side of the Pale Frost. “What do you think happened to this village, Xingchen?”
Xiao Xingchen doesn’t even look at him.
“I don’t know,” he says, after too long a moment.
When they lay down to sleep, Xingchen wraps himself around Song Lan, his chest flush against Song Lan’s back. Song Lan closes his eyes and counts sets of eight over and over, listening to Xingchen’s pulse, the steady, constant beat of it. He’s alive. They’re both alive.
The wind outside is loud and shrill; it almost sounds like screaming.
#
The bowl is gone when Song Lan wakes the next morning. He gathers his tools, and his lunch, but leaves the fishing gear stowed by the door.
He brings his sword, this time.
Song Lan sets out, rowing steadily, past the breaker waves to the quiet space just beyond. He checks his lobster traps, hauling the rope up from the depths; every single one of them has been gnawed through, the wood cages shattered.
Something cold settles in Song Lan’s gut.
It’s too early for Xiao Xingchen to be showing signs of the curse that’s been pursuing him for years now. It almost killed him before Song Lan heard the story of the dark waters on this coast, and their strange, restorative properties.
There’s still the kelp, though, and the seawater itself. He forces himself to take deep, steadying breaths, closing his eyes to concentrate on the way his chest fills and empties. He doesn’t know for sure that it’s the fish he catches putting color back in Xiao Xingchen’s cheeks.
When he opens his eyes, the fishboy is hanging off the side of the Pale Frost, arms folded along her bow, chin resting on his crossed wrists. He must be treading water, working to bob with the ship instead of dragging it over like before. Song Lan hadn’t even heard him approach.
“Fuckface,” the fishboy greets him. Where its left hand is propped carelessly on the railing, Song Lan can see that the thing is missing a finger, the wound long scarred white and soft. It looks like there used to be webbing between its remaining fingers but that, too, is edged in white.
Song Lan stares at him.
In the midday sun, the fishboy looks even more impossible. Skin and scales meshing, his face clearly more flesh, and yet—it’s beautiful. His dark, clever eyes track Song Lan’s breathing. His wide, smiling mouth is blood-red, just the hint of chapped from exposure to the sun, or something else. He looks alive, more than the thing on the beach did.
In all the years Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen have cleansed monsters, none of them ever stared back at them like this one does. None of them ever called Song Lan fuckface.
“Well? Aren’t you going to yell? All the others yelled when they saw me.” The fishboy’s eyes gleam. “Until the water got into their lungs.”
Song Lan’s skin prickles. It’s one thing to know, objectively, that something happened to the people who used to live in his and Xiao Xingchen’s little shack. That something happened to the small fishing town, leaving behind only graves and the remnants of hastily-packed family altars. It’s another to see the thing in front of him, looking so young, so—pretty.
“Are you hungry?” Song Lan asks the fishboy, and takes his wrapped meal from its place on the rowing bench beside him. Dried fruit, a handful of nuts, and two eggs from the chickens that Xiao Xingchen had managed to find and corral.
The fishboy frowns at him. His nose flares, like a dog hunting for a scent.
Carefully, Song Lan takes one of the eggs and offers it. It’s stupid, he knows it’s stupid, but his sword is in its sheath, and the thing is too quick, too clever, for Song Lan to reach for Fuxue.
As if to emphasize the thought, the fishboy disappears in the space of a breath.
A few drops of saltwater splash Song Lan’s face. He blinks, and suddenly the thing is right beside him, hauling itself half out of the water with a few lazy pumps of its tail. This close, Song Lan can smell the decay on its breath, the salt of its skin.
“What is it?” the fishboy demands, pointing one scaled hand at the egg.
Lacking a better idea, Song Lan offers it to him.
“Chicken’s egg,” he says.
“What’s a chicken?”
“A bird.”
“What’s a bird?”
Song Lan glances upward, to see if he can spot any gulls circling overhead, and in the moment his gaze is averted, the fishboy snatches the egg from his fingers and crams it into his mouth.
The shell breaks against his teeth with a crunch, and the fishboy laughs, delighted, devouring the whole of it all at once. There’s something distinctly eel-like about the movement, about the ease with which he swallows. It’s horrifying to witness.
Wordlessly, Song Lan holds out the second egg. The fishboy takes it without hesitation, movements sharp and precise, a contrast to the unrestrained delight with which he swallows the egg, seeming to relish the way the shell breaks as he bites down.
Song Lan should kill it now, while it’s distracted. The fishboy all but confessed to murder, to terrorizing an entire town. It’s a monster.
“Are there others, like you?” Song Lan asks, unable to look away from the thing’s red, red mouth.
The fishboy shrugs, licking its lips like a cat cleaning itself after a meal. Song Lan wonders how it avoids catching its tongue on its teeth.
“You’re asking if there’s other fish? What the fuck have you been eating, if I’m the only fish?”
“Are there other fish like you?”
“Sure. They all have fish-faces though. I’m special; I stole this face.”
“You must be very clever,” Song Lan says, because he thinks the fishboy will like it.
He’s right; the fishboy visibly preens, or seems to, tilting his face up, chest expanding, fins fluttering against his skin.
“Maybe you’re not that stupid, for a fisherman,” he says. “There were other stupid fishermen, but I ate them.” He snaps his jaws, sudden. Song Lan can’t help his flinch.
The fishboy laughs at him, and then it’s gone again.
#
“It’s dangerous,” Song Lan says that evening, after Xingchen has taken him apart with his mouth, his fingers, his cock.
“We’re cultivators,” Xingchen says, like they’re picking up a previously stalled conversation. “We face danger all the time.”
Song Lan swallows the bitterness in his throat.
“That thing—” Song Lan can’t finish his own thought. He cannot stop thinking about its face, the gleam of scales, the flare of its fins. Those thin, needle-like teeth. What does it eat, when they don’t leave food out for it? When it doesn’t have fishermen to catch?
Xingchen threads their fingers together. Silent. Waiting. Always willing to wait for Song Lan to find his thoughts. Willing to listen, even when all Song Lan has in his mouth and throat is poison, fear and rage and hurt.
He doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve Xiao Xingchen, the way he burns so quietly at his core. He shares his light so easily, so relentlessly.
It would be easy, Song Lan thinks, for something to snuff it out.
“I don’t understand it,” Song Lan says. “I don’t trust it.”
Xingchen hums acknowledgement.
“Do you need to?” he asks, when it becomes clear Song Lan isn’t going to continue.
Yes, Song Lan wants to say. He needs few things in this life, but Xiao Xingchen is all of them, and Song Lan almost lost him once before.
“It’s dangerous,” Song Lan says, again, but they both know that isn’t a real answer. “It isn’t–balanced.”
“It’s not a demon,” Xingchen counters, but Song Lan shakes his head. He doesn’t think the fishboy is a demon; it’s so clearly something new, something different, disruptive to the very knowledge he thought foundational to the world.
“There’s something wrong with it,” he insists.
“How do you know?” Xiao Xingchen asks, like the village isn’t empty. When they’d first arrived, they’d had to clear out more than a few lingering resentful spirits. The fishboy doesn’t feel exactly the same way, but there’s something familiar to its qi.
“We can’t destroy everything that we don’t understand on the assumption that it’s unbalanced,” Xingchen says.
Song Lan cannot find a response. It chafes at him, the way the fishboy had looked at him. I stole this face, it had said, but Song Lan can’t bring himself to really believe it. He looked right. The expressions fit him so naturally.
Song Lan has made a life out of the eradication of evil. He should be able to recognize it on sight. He should.
#
“You’re loud when he fucks you,” the fishboy says the next morning, waiting beside the Pale Frost where it’s moored at the dock. He looks different before the sun has risen, shadows playing across his face. He looks like what he is: a monster.
Song Lan deposits his tools in the boat. Once again, he’s left his fishing gear at home.
“It’s rude to listen,” he says, trying to ignore the heat in his cheeks.
“You have to be quiet when it hurts, or they just do it more,” the fishboy says, like he thinks Song Lan is stupid for needing to be told.
Song Lan freezes, half in and half out of the Pale Frost. The waves lap against the hull gently.
“If you’re quiet, sometimes they stop, to see if you’re breathing. That’s when you can get them.” The fishboy snaps his teeth, so there can be no missing what he means by ‘get them’.
Song Lan swallows. He wills himself to take a deep breath.
“Hey, don’t get mad at me, I’m not the one fucking you, I’m just saying,” says the fishboy.
“I’m not mad,” Song Lan says, which is almost true. “It doesn’t hurt me when Xingchen and I have sex, or if it does, it’s because I asked him to hurt me.” This is almost certainly too much information. Song Lan needs to stop talking. He needs to sit down and—and—
“What?”
Maybe he should start with consent basics. Maybe he should just sit down.
Song Lan sits down. The fishboy is treading water in front of the dock, now, leaning forward, like Song Lan is a puzzle he can’t solve.
“Sex is—complex, sometimes. I ask Xingchen to hurt me to—to heighten the, ah, the pleasure, because it feels good, and because I trust him. Sex is supposed to feel good. When it’s good, sometimes, someone will—be loud.” Song Lan feels incredibly stupid, explaining it like this.
The fishboy squints.
“I know what rape is,” he says, after a long moment. “I know sex is supposed to feel good. I just didn’t know it sounded like that.”
Song Lan puts his face in his hands. If Xingchen were here, maybe he’d laugh. Maybe he’d look as sickened as Song Lan feels.
“If you’re that loud, something’s going to come eat you while you’re distracted, fuckface,” the fishboy continues. “Hey, what do you look so mad for?”
He slaps the water with his tail.
“I’m not mad,” Song Lan says again, and he wills it to be true, this time. There’s nothing he can do now. There’s something about that statement that makes it harder to swallow. “My name isn’t fuckface, though. It’s Song Lan.”
The fishboy is already so young. These houses have been empty for at least several years.
I know what rape is, he said. Like someone had told him that, too. Song Lan doesn’t want to think about those circumstances, about how the fishboy learned the word for wife, for fisherman, and for rape.
The fishboy makes a face. He hauls himself upward, resting his arms on the dock to hold himself steady.
“Song Lan,” he repeats in his musical tones. Song Lan wonders if the sound is different, underwater. “Where are your hooks?”
“I don’t need them,” Song Lan says. Braces himself. Deep breaths. Act normal. Let the boy steer the conversation. “I’m harvesting kelp, today.”
“What for?”
“Broth. For my partner.”
“Oh.” The fishboy blinks, a white internal eyelid, like a cat’s, and then he’s disappeared beneath the dock. He surfaces on the other side of the Pale Frost.
Song Lan counts sets of eight as he steps into the vessel, as he unmoors her from the dock. The sun has begun to rise over sea, staining the waves a pale blue and streaking the sky through with pinks and reds.
The fishboy keeps an easy pace with his rowing, tail flicking lazily at the very surface of the water. He almost looks like a dragon, moving easily among the algae and the waves, would be easily mistaken if his scales didn’t thin out to skin close to his navel. The thing has a belly button, has nipples–are they mammalian? Are they born from purses like sharks, or eggs, or is it a bloody, live birth?
If Xingchen could see him like this, he’d probably have a poem to describe the beauty, the impossibility of the monster. He’d know the perfect words to describe the thing’s cold, hard eyes that follow Song Lan’s movements.
When he gets past the breakers, to where the kelp forest nearly brushes the surface, Song Lan stops. The plants go down deep, lengths and lengths, disappearing into darkness.
He kneels in the center of the boat and leans over the rail. It’s a risk; maybe a stupid one. The fishboy has no reason to spare him. It’s so clearly a predator, despite its words, despite the advice he had deigned to share.
Song Lan draws his long knife, grabbing at the fronds of a stalk of kelp, and pulls a length of it closer. The fibers are tougher than he expects and it takes several strokes of the knife to get a fistful of the kelp. It’s slicker, too, almost sticking to his palm when he sets the handful on the net beside himself. When he returns to shore, he’ll dry some of it; the rest, he’ll start to cook down. Surely it will be enough to keep Xingchen’s curse at bay. To keep him safe.
Song Lan turns back to the sea and nearly flinches; the fishboy is right in front of him now, his hair trailing behind him like fine, black strands of seaweed.
“Here, fuckface,” he says, and drops an entire stalk of kelp onto Song Lan’s lap. It drips, dampening his robes. Song Lan moves it to the net.
“Thank you,” Song Lan says. Xue Yang makes a startled expression, and he mouths the words to himself.
Something small inside Song Lan’s sternum cracks open. Slowly, so the fishboy can pull away if he wants, Song Lan reaches out with his free hand. The fishboy watches him with slitted eyes, but he doesn’t move, not even when Song Lan’s fingertips make contact with his scaled arm.
His skin is soft, the scales smooth under the pads of Song Lan’s fingers. He brushes over the fishboy’s arm, a brief moment of contact, then pulls away.
They work together for the next few minutes, until Song Lan has a heaping pile of kelp next to him. The fishboy is efficient, diving deep to harvest handfuls of long stalks at once.
“I think that’s enough,” Song Lan says, after a few more wet handfuls land in his robe. His legs are soaked. The fishboy grins, tail twisting in the waves.
He is a contradiction, this fishboy, almost painfully almost-human. He’s vicious one moment and playful the next, capricious and, inexplicably, pretty.
“Thank you,” Song Lan says, again. “You’ve been very helpful.” He stands up, gathering the kelp into bunches.
The fishboy preens again. He’s leaning on the rail, cheek resting on one scaled forearm. The new dawn sunlight reflects off his teeth.
“Do you have a name?” Song Lan asks, suddenly struck. At once, the fishboy’s earfins flatten.
“Do I have a name?” He tilts his head, like he’s trying to find the question beneath the question.
“Or something I can call you?” I just want to know what you are, Song Lan doesn’t say. If you’re–but he doesn’t know how to end that thought, not even in his own head.
“I’m a fish.”
“Don’t fish have names?”
It’s the wrong thing to say.
“Are you really that fucking stupid?” The fishboy says, massive tail flicking back and forth, restless and powerful, rocking the Pale Frost’s hull.
Song Lan stumbles.
One moment he’s standing, and in the next, drowning. The water closes over his head and Song Lan glances upward as he sinks. He kicks, but to no avail. He never learned how to swim; there wasn’t ever anyone to teach him.
Xingchen, he thinks, watching the light disappear as he sinks deeper into the dark blue of the ocean. Kelp stalks twirl around him, doing nothing to stop his dissent. He is going to die here, and Xingchen will never know why or how or–
The fishboy is there. He’s big, next to Song Lan like this, tail twisting effortlessly to keep up with Song Lan’s plummet.
Song Lan gasps, inhales sea water. Maybe he’ll drown before he’s eaten. His lungs burn, trying to expel the water pouring in and only making it worse. Song Lan thrashes; he can’t see the fishboy anymore, amid his own flailing.
The claws in his shoulders hurt. The thing grabs him and pulls–deeper? Is it taking Song Lan to some cave in the deeps, where his bones won’t even wash up on shore? He’ll never know. White sparks in Song Lan’s vision. He should never have opened his mouths, never asked the fishboy monster if it had a name. Monsters don't have names, he can’t breathe–
His feet hit rock and the claws in his shoulders tighten, hauling Song Lan upward. Air.
The fishboy holds him steady while Song Lan fights for footing in the shallows. He can’t stop coughing, seawater coming up with every half-breath. The thing has taken him back to the beach, the same one where they first found it. Song Lan stumbles, falls to his knees, but still keeps his head above water.
In his struggle, he almost misses the words.
“You fucking idiot. Was that really worth almost drowning for? You fucking idiot fisherman?” says the fishboy.
Song Lan coughs up another mouthful of sea water.
The fishboy lets him go once Song Lan has managed to breathe un-interrupted for a span of breaths. He’s agitated, back to that frantic, thrashing state, his fins flat, eyes dark and sharp. He keeps clenching and unclenching his fists as he twists in circles around Song Lan. It must hurt, to scrape his scales along the rocky bottom.
“Xue Yang,” says Xue Yang. “Are you fucking happy?”
Yang. Well, it’s certainly fitting. Song Lan wants to ask who gave him the name, but it’s not too late for Xue Yang to change his mind about drowning him.
“You can’t even swim,” Xue Yang says. “Fucking idiot, don’t fucking come back.” Then he’s gone, a dark shape beneath the waves.
And Song Lan is alive. Gasping and coughing, but alive.
#
“His name is Xue Yang,” Song Lan says. He’s soaked to the bone, dripping all over their threshold.
Xiao Xingchen stands at the kitchen window. He doesn’t tear his eyes away from the sea.
“I know,” he says. “He told me, that night after we found him.”
Song Lan’s breath stutters.
He can picture it, Xingchen creeping out of bed after he’d fallen asleep, walking through the dark to the swaying dock. Had he put his feet in the water, the way he loves to do when they walked along the coastline? Had Xue Yang—but Xingchen is here. Alive. His judgment wasn’t wrong.
“You could’ve told me,” Song Lan says. “I’ve been calling him ‘Fishboy’ in my head.”
Xingchen laughs, and it surprises them both.
“He called you ‘Fuckface’ at first,” Xingchen says, unable to keep the smile from his face.
“I know,” Song Lan says, dry, and Xingchen laughs again.
#
They both go to the dock that night.
“Snitch,” Xue Yang says, when he sees both of them, but he doesn’t leave. He’s half hoisted himself on the dock, lounging on the decaying wood, his tail huge and shining.
“Hello, Yang’er,” Xingchen says, and Xue Yang visibly colors, gills flushing dark.
Of course.
“I told you to fuck off,” Xue Yang says. “He almost fucking drowned, because he’s an idiot, and not a fish.”
“I heard,” Xingchen says, sitting down beside Xue Yang, who turns even darker. Song Lan sits on his other side, letting his bare feet dangle off the side of the dock.
“You should keep him on a leash,” Xue Yang says, still talking only to Xingchen. His eyes dart at Song Lan’s face, then away.
Xingchen laughs. Of course the fishboy never stood a chance; Song Lan knows what it’s like, to be faced with the weight of him, his care, his attention.
“You brought my boat back” Song Lan observes. The Pale Frost is bobbing aimless in the shallows.
“I broke your nets,” Xue Yang says, after a solid pause.
Song Lan feels his mouth twitch. Of course. The image of Xue Yang half in the boat, tearing them to shreds with his teeth, causes something in his chest to tighten.
“Are you mad?” Xue Yang says, and now he’s looking directly at Song Lan.
“I’m not mad,” Song Lan says. Xue Yang makes a particular clicking noise in his throat. It sounds like ice breaking.
“You look mad,” he says.
“That’s just his face,” Xingchen teases, and now it’s Song Lan’s turn to blush.
“Hmm,” Xue Yang says, and his tail smacks the surface of the water. “Fucking sucks for you. Xingchen is going to leave you if you look like someone pissed in your mouth all the time.”
Xingchen doesn’t laugh this time, just reaches out for Song Lan’s hand.
“No, I won’t,” he says.
“Gross.” Xue Yang slaps the surface of the water again, then rolls onto his back between them. Scales glitter on his sternum, dotting the skin above his gills.
Song Lan wants to touch them. Instead, he squeezes Xinghchen’s hand.
“I brought your stupid kelp back,” Xue Yang says.
“Thank you,” Song Lan says.
“Whatever.” Xue Yang’s face is pink.
How old are you? Song Lan doesn’t ask.
“Are you hungry, Yang’er?” Xingchen asks, taking a chicken’s eggs from his qiankun pouch. Xue Yang perks up, his focus making his whole body taut. He moves like he feels with his whole body, always moving, his fins flicking back and forth, his gills rippling with pleasure as he crunches through the shell of the treat.
When Xingchen slips him a piece of candy next, Xue Yang nearly breaks the dock.
#
They visit him every night. Xue Yang comes along on Song Lan’s kelp gathering expeditions; Song Lan takes the lengths inside his and Xingchen’s home, then returns with Xingchen beside him. Together, they sit by the dock, drinking tea from three mismatched cups.
It’s strange. Xue Yang looks no less eerie, no less bizarre the more Song Lan talks to him, touches him, watches his thick tail gracefully cut through the currents. None of it makes sense, and he stops trying to force it.
#
“Here, asshole, you look thin,” Xue Yang says, and spits a still-wriggling rockfish onto the splintering dock.
“Oh,” Xingchen says, drawing back. The rockfish nearly jumps back into the waves before Xue Yang spears it with one long claw. He hoists himself and the fish onto the dock, settling heavily between Xingchen and Song Lan.
“How did you even eat before you met me,” he says, mock-despairing. “You can’t even fish.”
“Well, we’ve never been fishermen,” Song Lan says.
Xue Yang looks at him. He chews at his bottom lip, accidentally splitting it where the soft skin catches on his sharp teeth.
“No,” he agrees. “You’re fucking idiots.”
“Yang’er,” Xingchen scolds, but he doesn’t mean it. Xue Yang leans back against Song Lan’s knees, his dorsal fin cutting uncomfortably into Song Lan’s skin.
#
Xingchen’s cheeks stay pink. Xue Yang keeps swimming up to the dock.
Song Lan sees years stretching out in front of them, time restored. The village is still empty, haunted, but close to the waves, it matters less. Song Lan tells himself that it matters less.
#
One night, Xue Yang guides them into the shallows. Xingchen and Song Lan have stripped down to their trousers, wading through the near-black waves.
“I can’t believe you can’t even swim,” Xue Yang kept saying, splashing water on both Xingchen and Song Lan. “Useless. Two legs, and for what?”
Xingchen nearly slips on one of the algae covered rocks beneath their feet, catching himself on Song Lan’s arm and threatening to send them both sprawling.
Xue Yang laughs. The same music sound from when he first taunted Song Lan, reminding him that this creature–their Yang’er–isn’t exactly safe. Now, though, there is a quiet voice in Song Lan’s heart that wishes Xue Yang had been more dangerous. If he had been born biting and vicious, maybe he would have less scars for them to trace in the evenings, Xue Yang laying between them half-in, half-out of the surf.
Maybe not, though. The world is cruel, and adult men–fishermen, Song Lan thinks, hearing the word in Xue Yang’s voice–are strong. Are good at hurting children, even children with sharp teeth and fins.
“Come on,” Xue Yang calls, circling back to shove Xingchen back onto his feet. His dorsal fin cuts through the waves like a shark.
It’s easy to reach out; Xue Yang lets himself be caught, digging his own claws into Song Lan’s forearms to leverage his way closer. It sends a thrill through Song Lan’s skin, how easy it is.
“Freak,” Xue Yang says, their chests bumping together as Song Lan reels him in. “This isn’t swimming.”
“Isn’t it?” Xingchen asks. He strokes one of Xue Yang’s arms, an absentminded touch.
Xue Yang makes a clicking noise deep in his throat. It manages to sound both derisive and fond.
Song Lan tightens his grip, testing. Xue Yang takes touch from them both, although Xingchen seems to find it easier. Every moment that Xue Yang allows them near, every time he lets Song Lan approach, reach out, when he reaches back–
Xue Yang wraps his arms around Song Lan’s neck and allows himself to be held, face pressed to Song Lan’s neck.
He’s warm. Song Lan wasn’t expecting Xue Yang to be warm; aren’t fish cold-blooded? It doesn’t matter. Xue Yang is solid muscle in his arms, leaning his weight against Song Lan’s body, and Song Lan wants to hold him forever. The water curls around their waists, forcing them to sway, like a slow dance.
“Yang’er,” Song Lan says, his voice thick in his throat. He doesn’t know what else to say. He moves with the current, listening to Xue Yang breathe rapidly, hot breath puffing against Song Lan’s throat. “Yang’er.”
Then, suddenly, Xue Yang pushes himself away, all his muscle tensing at once. Song Lan loses his grip, and then his footing, slipping into the waves up to his neck.
“Yang’er?” Xingchen asks, already at Song Lan’s back, pulling him back up. “What’s wrong?”
Xue Yang swims a tight circle around them, earfins pressed flat against the side of his face.
“Shut up,” he says, voice nearly a hiss. “Just shut the fuck up.”
Xingchen opens his mouth like he’s going to reply, then catches himself. Xue Yang swims another circle, twists, switching direction. He ducks his face underwater, but he doesn’t go far.
When he surfaces, Song Lan can see the bright flush in his cheeks.
“Xue Yang?” he says.
“Shut up,” Xue Yang says, but he swims closer. He’s got his arms wrapped around himself, like he’s trying to hide his skin from their gaze. “It’s not my fault.”
“What’s wrong?” Xingchen says, finally unable to stop himself. He leans into the waves, reaching for Xue Yang.
In answer, Xue Yang flips onto his back. Protruding from the slit in his tail, where a human’s legs might join, are two thin, dark red appendages twisting against each other. He flips back over again, face crimson in the faint light.
Oh, Song Lan thinks, his own face heating.
“Yang’er,” Xingchen says. Xue Yang puts his hands over his face as Xingchen tows him in, hands on his shoulders, then around his chest, holding him. “You don’t need to be embarrassed.”
“Fuck you,” Xue Yang says, but there’s no heat in it. He lets himself be pulled in. Song Lan can just barely make out the shape of his–cocks–his twin appendages through the refracting waves.
“It’s difficult not to feel like this when Zichen holds you.” Xingchen says, a touch of humor in his voice. He’s always been better at soothing than Song Lan is. “He’s strong, isn’t he, Yang’er?”
Song Lan’s face is definitely burning. Xue Yang’s cocks twist, one of them curling around the other’s base. He wonders if they’re prehensile, used to hook into–into others, for mating. The slit below them is closed–where another of his kind would penetrate?
Song Lan wonders if that’s where–and he erases that thought. Xue Yang is with them. They’re the only three people for hundreds of miles. He won’t bring ghosts to their beach uninvited.
“Let’s sit down,” Xingchen says, moving backwards, until he and Song Lan can sit half in and half out of the water.
Xue Yang follows, still holding onto Xingchen, before he settles back against Song Lan’s lap. His scales stick against Song Lan’s bare chest.
Song Lan tries to quell the want that surges in his throat as Xue Yang leans his head against it, fins just barely brushing Song Lan’s skin.
Xingchen rests his hand on Xue Yang’s chest.
“Do you want us to touch you, Yang’er?”
Xue Yang shivers with his whole body, tail twisting and untwisting, not enough to dislodge either of them.
“Fuck you,” he says. And, “Yes,” hissed out before he hides his face in Song Lan’s arm.
Song Lan wonders if he can feel how hard Song Lan is. He stares at Xingchen, feeling caught between the waves and the rocky shore.
Xingchen doesn’t look much more stable. He stares at Xue Yang’s face, at Song Lan’s hands, then meets his gaze.
Xue Yang is so easy to want. So hot and alive in Song Lan’s arms, clinging to him like a limpet. Song Lan wants the claw marks to scar. He wants so much.
Xingchen pets Xue Yang’s chest lightly, fingers dipping lower.
“Yang’er? Is this alright?” Xiao Xingchen’s hand moves slowly over Xue Yang’s stomach.
Xue Yang trembles. Xingchen strokes over his slit with one gentle finger, barely touching it at all. It’s not exactly like labia, too small, too–fishlike for that, but Song Lan finds himself making the comparison anyway.
“Oh,” Xue Yang says. His cocks twist in on each other, grasping and writhing. “Xingchen?”
“Does it feel good?” Xingchen asks. Xue Yang’s fins fan out. His tail twists, then straightens. He does it when he’s thinking, Song Lan realizes.
“Gege,” Xue Yang says, which isn’t yes but also isn’t a no.
Song Lan doesn’t know if he’s ever been this scared. The idea of taking what he wants, of failing to give Xue Yang what he needs, is overwhelming. Xue Yang is so fragile like this, turned belly-up toward them, gills fluttering and revealing the soft meat between filaments. It would be so easy to do permanent damage.
“Who taught you to say that?” Song Lan asks, before he can stop himself.
Xingchen’s cheeks flush.
“Gege did,” Xue Yang says, and this time he smirks a little. Song Lan wonders how thorough the explanation was, given Xue Yang’s use of it now. “Can this one call you ‘gege’ too, gege?” It’s an affected voice, but Xue Yang’s eyes are dark, watching him carefully.
“If you want to, Yang’er.” Anything you want, he doesn’t say. Song Lan strokes the soft place where Xue Yang’s earfin connects to the hinge of his jaw. Xue Yang’s mouth opens in a gasp. There’s a split in his lip, a spot of bright red.
Song Lan lets his hand wander. Xue Yang’s throat fits snugly against his palm; the scales of his chest drag at Song Lan’s calluses. His stomach is pure muscle, connected directly to his tail.
“Do you want gege to touch you, here, too?” Xingchen asks, as Song Lan gets closer to Xue Yang’s doubled cocks.
“Gege,” Xue Yang says again. Either he or Song Lan is trembling. Song Lan looks at Xingchen.
“Go on, Zichen,” he says, soft, and Xue Yang moans before Song Lan can even reach out. When he does, the reaction is instantaneous, Xue Yang arching up, mouth wide. So many sharp teeth.
“It’s too much,” Xue Yang says, but he doesn’t try to get away. In fact, his cocks twist, tangling in Song Lan’s fingers. He’s so hot here, surprisingly, a sharp contrast to the waves swirling around Song Lan’s thighs. He wants to bury himself in that heat.
“So pretty, Yang’er,” Xingchen encourages. He’s stroking slowly, around the edges of Xue Yang’s slit, then over them.
“I’m–” Xue Yang breaks off.
“What?” Song Lan pauses. He starts to pull away, but Xue Yang grabs his wrist.
Red faced and flushed, Xue Yang manages to get the words out.
“I want to say ‘no’ but I–want it. I want you to. But I want to say no.”
“Okay,” Song Lan says. He squeezes his fingers and Xue Yang pulses against his palm, one of his cocks twisting around Song Lan’s thumb. “Then say no. If you really want us to stop, you can say–” he looks to Xingchen for help.
“Say ‘red’ if you want us to stop,” Xingchen says. He’s rubbing with two fingers now, Xue Yang’s slit wet and swollen.
Xue Yang clicks in his throat. His cocks are squeezing Song Lan’s fingers in rhythm now, a match to his pulse. Song Lan wonders what they would feel like inside him, reaching deep, holding him open.
“So good for us,” Song Lan says, catching the tip of one between forefinger and thumb, stroking it.
“No,” Xue Yang says, shoving his hips up, toward them.
“Can I put my fingers inside, Yang’er?”
“Don’t, gege, don’t,” Xue Yang says, but he grabs Xingchen's arm with his other hand, pulling him closer.
“Will it hurt you?” Xingchen asks, stroking with three fingers. Getting them slick.
“I don’t know,” Xue Yang whines. Then: “Oh,” as Xingchen slides inside, three fingers at once, pushing in.
“Oh, Zichen,” Xingchen sighs. He fucks into Xue Yang gently, just a little at a time, then pulls out, his fingers covered in slick. Back in. “He’s so warm.”
“No–Stop–” Xue Yang’s making the clicking noises louder now, claws digging into Song Lan’s arm, his cocks twisting frantically.
His slit seems to stretch easier than Song Lan expected; Xingchen adds a fourth finger, then tucks his thumb under them, pushing his whole fist inside. Xue Yang takes him, tail twisting even as he pushes back against Xingchen’s hand.
“So good, so good,” Song Lan says. With a shudder, a sharp thrust, Xue Yang peaks. His cocks clamp down, so tight that for a moment, Song Lan worries he’s going to break a finger.
“Oh!” Xingchen gasps. “It’s tight–oh, fuck, Yang’er–”
Xue Yang’s leaking slick all over his arm, all over them both, from his slit and from his cocks. He shudders and goes limp. Song Lan frees his hand gently.
He’s almost painfully hard, but the feeling is distant. He brings his fingers up to his own mouth, tongue darting out to taste. It’s salty, almost musky.
“Zichen,“ Xingchen groans. His own hand is between his legs, touching himself with the same hand that he used to fuck Xue Yang.
“Fuck.” Xue Yang watches with half-lidded eyes as Song Lan sucks his fingers clean. “Gege–”
Song Lan wants to use his mouth next time. He wants there to be a next time.
Xingchen’s eyes roll back as he comes. He presses his face against Song Lan’s shoulder, shaking as he strokes himself through the aftershocks. Part of Song Lan envies him; later, when they’re home, when he’s not holding who knows how many pounds of fishboy, Song Lan is going to fuck his own fist raw.
“You’re both disgusting,” Xue Yang says, but he seems content to keep lying on Song Lan. Song Lan folds his arms around Xue Yang’s chest, anchoring him in place. When Xue Yang sighs, it feels like he’s leaking the last bit of tension into the water.
With a few lazy pulses of his tail, he pushes Xingchen’s spend away, out of sight. Xingchen laughs, his arms around them both. Just the three of them, laying in the surf.
Song Lan wants to ask if Xue Yang liked it, but he keeps his mouth shut. If Xue Yang hadn’t, they would know, he tells himself. He wouldn’t be sprawled against Song Lan’s chest with Song Lan’s fingers over his ribs, his sensitive gills. If Xue Yang hadn’t wanted it, he and Xingchen would be dead.
Xue Yang opens one eye to look at him.
“Pity you’d drown if you slept here,” he says, and yawns. His teeth catch the moonlight in a thousand places, the brightest thing about him. It is a pity. Song Lan can’t imagine leaving him like this.
“Where do you go at night?” Song Lan asks. He needs–he wants impossible things. To reverse time, to pull a tiny, wriggling Xue Yang from his ocean home before anyone else could touch him. To keep him, always, pressed between Song Lan and Xiao Xingchen’s bodies. Isn’t blood supposed to be of a similar property to salt water?
Xue Yang’s expression takes on a wistful cast.
“I’d show you, if you knew how to fucking swim.”
“We did get a little distracted,” Xingchen admits. His voice sounds wrecked; Song Lan can’t blame him. The salt air stings his own sinuses.
“I guess you’ll have to try again tomorrow,” Xue Yang agrees, expression going smug once more. It’s a good look on him. Song Lan finds himself running his fingers through Xue Yang’s hair; it’s somehow silky, not catching against his skin even once.
Xue Yang sighs again, a pleased sound, his gills fluttering against Song Lan’s stomach.
“I’m glad I didn’t drown you,” he says.
Song Lan doesn’t laugh, but it’s a near thing. There are still scratch marks on his shoulders from where Xue Yang had dragged him back to shore.
“I’m glad we found you,” Xingchen says, which seems to be a little too sincere for Xue Yang, who wriggles in Song Lan’s grip. Not enough to break free, just enough to put the suggestion between them.
Song Lan presses a light, delicate kiss to the ridge of Xue Yang’s left earfin. It’s surprisingly soft against his lips. He bites down; Xue Yang gasps, and he bites down harder, until Xue Yang starts making the clicking sounds again, and Song Lan pulls away.
“I take it back,” Xue Yang says, wriggling again, until they’re chest to chest instead. His eyes are huge and dark. Definitively inhuman.
“Hi, Yang’er,” Xingchen says, and Xue Yang flushes under the attention.
“You’re both nasty fishfuckers,” he says, and playfully snaps his teeth just a few inches from Xingchen’s face. Xingchen, of course, just laughs.
Song Lan remembers how it felt to drown, to reach desperately for air and find none. The desire in his throat feels almost the same as he looks down at Xingchen and Xue Yang, their faces only a few inches from each other. Song Lan wonders if he’s going to choke on it.
It feels dangerous to care about a thing that shouldn’t be real. Something he doesn’t understand.
We face danger all the time, says the Xingchen in his memory, while Xingchen now presses a careful kiss to Xue Yang’s mouth.
The steady sound of the waves making their way to shore nearly drowns out the furious beating of Song Lan’s heart. He forces himself to breathe in, then out, to ease himself past the jagged edges, until his pulse matches the throb of Xue Yang’s, still pressed to his chest.
“What are you thinking about?” Xue Yang asks, squinting up at him.
“Just you, Yang’er,” Song Lan says, enjoying the flush on Xue Yang’s cheeks, the preening flutter of his earfins.
“Freaks,” Xue Yang whines.
Xingchen kisses him again. When he pulls back, Song Lan watches a brief trickle of blood drip down his jaw. Either his own or Xue Yang’s, he doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. Song Lan wants to bleed, too.