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Makoto moves lightly and swiftly over the moon-cooled sands. Although the tents look near, he knows the one he wants is at least a mile off and he urges himself on.
This is the third day of the week-long extravaganza his father is holding for the sixteenth birthday of his beloved eldest son. It is the most elaborate celebration anyone can remember for years and years, even for generations. Today's entertainment was a traveling carnival with seven tents full of attractions, exotic animals, performers and performances. There was a dark-haired acrobat who defied gravity in a way Makoto has never seen before, soaring through the air from one end of the tent to the other, relying on nothing but his own body, limbs outstretched as if they were the tendons of invisible butterfly wings. Makoto's brother and sister had liked that one best of all, enough to favor him with an invitation to their tables at the nightly feast. Makoto had liked the acrobat too, but the highlight for him was in the next tent they had gone to—the one he is running towards now.
He had been wonderstruck when he first entered the tent that afternoon: water. A vastness of it, contained in a wide, curving structure of glass, glimmering in the sunlight streaming through vents in the tent fabric. He had never seen so much water in one place in his life. Makoto thinks you could take all the water he has ever seen and put it in that glass tank, and it would not fill up even halfway. He has heard stories of such water, and he was amazed that the ocean—for surely this vast body could be nothing else—had been brought to him.
The water itself was such a wonder that at first Makoto did not realize it was only housing for the real attraction: The Merman. Or perhaps The Merboy. He had looked not much older than Makoto himself—though of course Makoto is not well-versed in the realities of merfolk; the one he saw today could be a hundred years old or merely a babe.
"Makoto," his twin younger siblings had chided him, "you are too old to believe in fairytales."
Yet Makoto does believe. He thought the ocean was a tale—but now it is here, no less amazing, no less real than the merman.
Outside the tent, he stops to listen before he enters, as he has been taught. Sensing no movement or presence within, he goes inside.
It is here: the marvelous water. There is no sign of the merman but at least the water is here. Makoto stands where he is for a while, watching the moon and stars play across the surface. Finally, he dares to approach.
The glass sides are taller than he is but if he reaches up on tiptoe, he can put his hand over the side and touch the water. Makoto has touched the surface of water before but it was just that: shallow, meager. Now that he has touched the surface of depths, he wants more—but he doesn't know how it would work, to be in this water. He is not a merman, nor even a fake merman. Makoto does not think he would float and he is certain his body would not know how to breathe water. Drawing his fingers back, he contents himself with standing outside it, face and hands pressed to the glass, gazing into the depths.
Suddenly, the depths are gazing back.
Makoto takes a quick, straightening step backwards. With a little distance from the distorting curvature of the thick glass, he sees that of course it is not the depths themselves. It is The Merman. The Merman smiles at him; from the corner of his mouth, little pearls of bubbles fly for the surface, and Makoto intently watches them go. He hadn't been allowed this close for the show and he is now very certain that he would not know how to breathe water. He brings his eyes back down to The Merman's face, which looks young to him. He wonders if the sea keeps you very young-looking, with no sun to age and weather your skin. Looking at The Merman, who is still smiling, he remembers his manners and smiles too. Then The Merman raises his hand; taking it for a greeting, Makoto raises his own. The Merman extends his forefinger straight up and Makoto mimics him again, pleased to be learning the hand language of the sea.
The Merman's mouth moves in something that is not breath and Makoto wonders if it might be words as he knows them, spoken with water rather than air. More little bubbles trail up. Then there is a blur, a flash of glimmer, and Makoto feels drops of wetness fall about his face and shoulders. The Merman is no longer in front of him. Or he is—but not his face. The length of his tail shimmers as it pushes water back and forth, The Merman's body not moving with it but held in place.
There's another shower and this time sound falls with it—low, light laughter. Looking up, Makoto sees The Merman's face above water, his arms hooked over the side of the glass. His hair no longer floats about him but sits in a heavy slick pushed back from his face. Dark brows keep the clinging streams of water out of his smiling eyes. His mouth is smiling too, his lips shimmering as pale light catches the droplets lingering there.
"Hello," The Merman says, his voice sounding as youthful as his face. Makoto has heard him speak before, during the performance. That was part of the evidence his siblings used against The Merman, aside from the fact that only babies and fools believe in merfolk: this merman spoke their language. How could a real merman speak the desert tongue?
Makoto doesn't know and right now he doesn't care, because he is speaking with a merman. "Hello," he replies, unable to stop smiling.
The Merman lets the glass wall take more of his weight; his tail drifts and sways, the end fins curling and unfurling with ease.
Makoto looks up again when The Merman says, "You're the prince, aren't you? The one being celebrated?"
"Yes. My name is Makoto. And tomorrow—" He glances up through the ventilation slits in the tent, glimpsing the stars above. "Today," he modifies, knowing midnight has passed, "I am sixteen years old. I am a man," he can't help but add proudly.
The Merman smiles. "Congratulations on your manhood, Makoto."
"Thank you—" Makoto starts, and then pauses. "What is your name?" he asks. "I ought to thank you properly."
The Merman's smile drifts across his lips, curving them as his fins lazily shape the water. "I don't have a name."
Makoto wonders if it was a foolish question, if perhaps merfolk don't name their children but have some other way of calling them, or if this one was taken from his home too young to remember his name—but then The Merman says, "If you wish to call me something, you may call me Haru."
Makoto takes another step back so Haru will be able to see him as he bows. "Thank you, Haru. I am honored to receive your wishes."
"I am honored to offer them," Haru returns. "But come: if we are being proper, then I should more than offer. I should grant you a wish, should I not?"
"If it so pleases you," Makoto replies, feeling an odd sparkle in his belly.
"It does. It would give me great pleasure to teach you how to swim, if you have such a desire."
Custom dictates that the one being celebrated make three wishes of those honoring him, and they in turn choose the one they will grant. All convention and proper conduct is forgotten when Makoto hears Haru's offer. His eyes widen and his mouth comes open but no words issue forth.
Tendrils of laughter fall from Haru's lips. "Is that enthusiasm? Or horror? Have I transgressed such that I will be executed at dawn?"
"Our executions are at dusk," Makoto tells him, finding his voice again, "after a long and painful day in the full sun."
Haru's tail swirls the water, sending it in slow, easy spirals. "That does not sound at all pleasant."
"It isn't," Makoto says seriously. Then, thinking to reassure Haru, he adds, "You won't be executed," and is rewarded with another slowly dazzling smile.
"Would you like to swim, then?"
"Yes." Makoto clasps his hands to his heart. "Please." He looks at the sheer wall before him. He could probably hoist himself up but he isn't sure about going over and just tumbling in like that.
"There are steps on the other side," Haru tells him. "I'll meet you there." With that, he pushes off from the wall, arching backward so his head disappears under the water, then his torso; his tail comes up out of the water to follow the arc before, with a soft slap against the surface, it slides beneath again.
Makoto drops down to watch the tail push Haru through the water before he runs around the circumference to meet Haru on the other side. He finds the steps where he expected them, a little less than halfway around, and is pleased for having judged Haru's trajectory correctly.
Haru is waiting for him, suspended in the water, his arms caressing it in time with his tail. Makoto wonders whether that is part of swimming or if Haru just enjoys the feel of it. It looks like it feels lovely.
Mounting the steps to the top, Makoto realizes that there are steps on the other side as well, leading down and in. He takes a moment to look at the water anew, the surface rippling as if it is a living thing. The desert lives if sand does not and it must be that way for the ocean too, even for this captive one.
He starts to dip his foot in when Haru says, "You'll want to take those off." Makoto looks from his toes hovering above the water to Haru. "Your footwear. It will drag you down."
"Oh." Makoto's face colors. He feels he ought to have known this. Turning to sit on the top step, he unties his sandals and lets them drop to the floor below. It occurs to him that he ought to keep his clothing dry so his dereliction will not to be detected upon his return. Though he was not explicitly forbidden from coming here, there is something transgressive about sneaking out of your quarters in the middle of the night and intruding, uninvited, into your guest's. Especially when the guests are performers—strangers—and not family or friends or allies.
Still seated, he looks back over his shoulder. "How much of my clothing would it be decent to remove?"
"However much or little as you are comfortable with," Haru says.
Makoto hesitates only briefly before asking, "Would you mind if I were to be naked?"
"Not at all." Haru smiles. "I am naked."
Makoto can't help blushing at that. He keeps blushing as he stands to undress, aware of Haru's eyes on his back. When his robes and undergarments have joined his sandals on the floor, he takes a breath and turns around.
This time Haru doesn't say anything when Makoto's toe approaches the water. Makoto touches the surface. It is cool but not cold, though the quality of the touch is too different for him to gauge if this is as warm as the sands when remnants of the sun linger just past dusk. His toe swirls across the surface but the tracings are more fleeting than those he makes in sand, disappearing even as he creates them. He goes beneath the surface, letting his entire foot sink into the water without resistance, engulfed by it as he reaches for the submerged glass step. Bringing his other foot to join it, he stands in water well over his ankles, lapping against his shins and calves.
All else forgotten, he looks up to grin at Haru, who is already smiling and maybe has never stopped. Makoto looks down again as he takes the next careful step, another, and another after that, until the water is dancing above his knees. There are no more steps. There is only water now.
"It's all right." Haru's voice is just like his laughter, low and light, words dancing and flowing. "Come in, Makoto," Haru says, and when Makoto looks, Haru is holding out his hand. Makoto knows that in the stories, the merfolk always say "come" in voices like music and offer their hands, and then when the sailors try to take those hands, the merfolk disappear beneath the waves. And so do the sailors, forever.
With a deep breath, Makoto closes his eyes and takes the last step that does not exist.
He knew there was no step but he doesn't really know until he feels it not there, until he is reaching and nothing is catching him; the water does not hold him as it holds Haru, it just takes him in, takes him down, and he opens his mouth to find that he was right: his body does not know how to breathe water—
Then there is air again and his body tries to take it in at the same time that it is expelling the unwanted water. Makoto chokes some but, oh, there is air. As well, there is Haru's voice at his ear: "It's all right, I've got you"; Haru's arms around him confirm the truth of it.
Haru holds him like that until Makoto stops coughing. The air hovering above the water is strange with salt and the taste is on his lips, in his nose; but it is air and Makoto sucks it into his lungs.
The surface around him is churned up, the water distraught. "I'm sorry," Makoto says.
"You have no cause to apologize."
"For disturbing the water. For disrupting the calm and the shimmer." Makoto looks back over his shoulder at Haru. "For that, I am sorry."
Haru only smiles. "You have done nothing to the water. Look, it shimmers still."
Makoto looks: shimmers swell in each cresting ripple, playing even brighter now. He smiles and tries to touch them, but though he feels the water, the shimmers elude his fingertips.
When Haru's arm loosens and drifts down, Makoto reaches below with both hands to try to hold on, sinking himself down so the new ripples jump over his lip into his mouth. The taste of salt is strong, this water truly like no other Makoto has known.
Before the strange water can fill him, Haru's arm tightens around him again, holding him up. "I'm not going to let go," Haru promises. "But I offered you the pleasure of swimming, and if you still want that, I will make it yours."
"It is my greatest desire," Makoto says, which is the response of custom—but also, here, the truth.
Haru smiles. "Turn to me." Makoto does and they are fully face-to-face for a moment; then Haru turns too, arms wrapping behind himself to hold Makoto, encouraging Makoto to take his shoulders. Then he tips forward, and for a fearful moment Makoto believes he is going under again; but the fear transmutes to exhilaration as Haru moves them across the surface, through the surface. Makoto delights in the decadence of the water as it rushes over his skin. It is one thing to see such water, and another to feel it, and still another to wallow in it as they do now.
Then there is the feel of Haru's skin, as cool as the water and softer, just as smooth. Makoto remembers how his fingertips wrinkled when, on a decadent whim, he kept them submerged in the tea saucer of dewdrops he had painstakingly collected from cacti one morning. He supposes that human skin wrinkles up when immersed for lengthy periods—but Haru is smooth, supple. Even the scales of his lower body and tail are soft.
After the swim, Haru offers to bring Makoto back to the steps. "So you may rest on them, if you don't wish yet to leave."
"I don't wish yet to rest," Makoto replies, hooking his hands over the side of the wall instead, his feet touching nothing but water.
Turning, he watches Haru's tail move with deceptive languidness beneath the surface as he treads water. It occurs to Makoto that perhaps the merfolk don't call it that. Maybe it's natural to them, like standing is for humans; maybe when merfolk sit on rocks at sea, they call it treading earth. He wonders how long they can sit on rocks, how often they surface. Taking in a deep breath, he holds it as he drops down along the wall, letting the water close over his head. He barely counts to ten before he has to pull himself back up, mouth opening greedily for air.
When he has enough breath for words, he asks, "How long can you breathe out of water?"
"Indefinitely. Or rather I should say that if there is a limit, I haven't reached it yet. I seem to be capable of extracting the elements necessary to breathe from both the air and the water. Maybe from other sources as well, though I have yet to breathe fire or earth." Haru's smile beguiles so that Makoto does not know if he is truthful, and he does not care, for the ideas and the mouth they come from are so pretty.
As they converse, Haru lies on his back, body stretched in a slight arch, the fins of his tail unfurled against the surface, his hair fallen back into a dark, drifting halo. "Shall I offer you the pleasure of floating now?"
Makoto speaks true again: "It is my fondest desire."
Once more, Haru's arm wraps around him. "Let go," Haru instructs. "Let yourself fall back into me." Makoto does as he is bid and feels himself not falling but arching, drawn back against Haru, stretched out, cradled and supported by the body beneath him. "Relax," Haru murmurs. "Breathe. Trust yourself. Trust me. Trust the water. Feel it holding you."
Makoto does all of it, listening to Haru's voice, listening to his own breath, listening to the lapping of the water, the ocean's breathing; he matches his own breath to that of the ocean, slow and easy...
He doesn't realize that Haru has dropped away, that nothing holds him but the water itself—he doesn't realize that he is floating until he sees Haru beside him. There's some splashing and sinking—but Haru reminds him to trust, and Makoto does. It is the single most wondrous and amazing thing he has ever experienced in his life. He never imagined anything in reality could be so glorious. It's exhilarating and soothing all at once and gentle, blissful elation suffuses him: he is floating on floating.
His full-bodied arch of pleasure and delight causes him to slip under, but this time he doesn't panic. He comes up laughing, merriment and water sparkling on his lips. The deep breathing that Haru taught him disrupted by his laughter, he starts to slip under again—and feels Haru catch him.
Haru tows him over to the side. As he holds on, Makoto moves his dangling legs, holding them together to see if he can feel a little of what it must be like to move through water with a tail, kicking apart to see what it's like for a human. Looking over his shoulder, he sees Haru watching him. "I feel like a little boy," Makoto confesses with a grin.
Expression smooth, Haru looks at him straight on. Makoto is unaccustomed to being looked at so directly by someone who is not a member of his own family. Even his teacher drops his eyes when he isn't training Makoto. Haru has been looking at him directly all night but there is something different in this gaze. It is strange... but not unpleasant.
Then Haru says, "You don't look like one."
It quiets Makoto, the look as much as the words; the look, more. This is not the way his parents and siblings and teacher hush him. This calms him and it somehow excites him at the same time.
They look at each other for longer than they have before.
The smile shimmers Haru's lips again. Then that shimmer touches Makoto's own mouth.
Haru's lips are as soft as his skin, his tongue as supple, his mouth as cool. Makoto himself feels so hot that he imagines anyone and everything would feel cool in contrast, but he thinks Haru really is. He wonders if he feels as hot as the desert to Haru, if Haru has ever known that heat.
Makoto doesn't remember letting go of the glass but he is holding onto Haru now, held only by Haru and the water. As they kiss, he feels something more solid than water brush against his feet and slide up between his legs; he lets himself part and feels Haru's tail rise to support him fully as Haru leans back, drawing Makoto down with him. It is more glorious, yes, kissing and floating like this, oh~ yes.
There is a supple ripple of movement between Makoto's legs as Haru flexes his tail and swims them out to the center; the parted water rushes softly against Makoto's legs, thrilling him more. Each surge rubs him against Haru just a little and Makoto realizes he is fully aroused. He realizes that there is no way to hide it. He realizes too that he doesn't want to.
He has been taught words for different permissions but never any for this. It is like floating, he decides: he will trust himself, he will trust Haru. He smiles. "Is this acceptable?" he asks with a light grind.
"Yes." Haru smiles in return, curving and flexing beneath him, stimulating Makoto with the textured softness of his scales even as he continues to support Makoto, his hands and body encouraging Makoto to rub against him more. Arousal twines with the salt in the air, which Makoto, open-mouthed, sucks in for the breathable elements; he is not as practiced at such extraction as Haru, and he feels he is inhaling arousal itself, mixing it inside himself, breathing it out again in sighs and inarticulate pleasure.
A soft splash joins the sounds of delight as Haru arcs his tail out of the water. "Sit up," Haru instructs, hands on Makoto's hips. When Makoto obliges, Haru slides Makoto down his torso. He arches more and Makoto sinks in just a little deeper, just a little more, slowly, until the water has covered the head of his cock. One of Haru's hands leaves Makoto's hip to push him back until the curve of Haru's tail cradles him; the other hand wraps around Makoto's cock and begins to stroke, just as smooth and decadent as the water's caresses, stronger and more heated. Eyes closed, Makoto floats on Haru's strokes; he opens his eyes as he cries out softly and watches himself spill pearlescent ropes onto Haru's skin and into the water.
When breath enough for words has returned to him, Makoto asks, "How may I bring you to pleasure?" But Haru only smiles and says he got his pleasure, and Makoto follows his gaze to silver threads drifting in the water, shimmering more darkly than his own offerings.
Makoto watches the drift for a while, the flow, the water itself. "Is this the ocean?" he asks, touching it; touching his wet fingers to his lips and savoring the salt. "Is this the true taste?" He inhales. "The scent?" He turns to Haru. "What does it sound like, the ocean?"
"Here." Haru lowers Makoto as he straightens and reaches for Makoto's face. "It sounds like this." Covering Makoto's ears with the palms of his hands, he presses gently but closely, fingers lying flush along Makoto's skin. A curious rush and thrum, low and soft, fills Makoto's ears.
As he listens, Makoto looks at Haru, watching Haru watch him, the smile soft on his lips. The ocean's heartbeat fills Makoto with comfort and wonderment, with longing. Looking into Haru's eyes, he reaches for Haru and feels Haru's tail coming up to support him; he cups his hands to Haru's ears and gives what ocean he can to Haru.
They gaze at each other, delight shimmering their smiles.
In the oceans they are giving, they kiss again.
When they part, Makoto murmurs, "Tell me what is true and what is tale. Tell me if the ocean is as wide and as blue as the stories say."
"It is wide." The water around them sways with each easy movement of Haru's lower body as he keeps them buoyed. "And yes, in some places it is the bluest blue beneath the sky, bluer even than the sky." He smiles into Makoto's wide eyes. "But too, there are places where the water runs green. As green as your eyes."
Haru's eyes sparkle as he smiles and Makoto sees that the sparkle is not caught moon and stars now but traces of dawn, the light that stretches from the sun just before it rises.
Makoto looks at Haru solemnly. "I must go."
Smile gentling on his lips but not fading from them, Haru bows his head. The water parts before them graciously as Haru brings Makoto to the steps. "All fortune to you, Makoto."
"I thank you, Haru." Makoto lingers, one foot on the solidity of the first step, the other still suspended in the water. When Haru raises his head, Makoto inclines his own without breaking their mutual gaze; the smile from his heart, meant for his lips, lodges thickly in his throat. "Thank you."
Gathering his clothing, Makoto uses an undergarment to dry himself hastily, then pulls on his robe and slips into his sandals as he plans his route back into his quarters, and what he will say. There is little chance that he will make it without being seen. Much of the household will be up already, preparing for the celebrations that will continue this most important day, the actual day that marks his turning. The celebrations will continue without the carnival, which will spend most of the day packing before moving out as soon as it has cooled enough to allow travel.
At the open tent flaps, Makoto turns around: Haru is watching him underwater. Their eyes meet, and as surely as any lyrical invitation to the depths, the gaze draws Makoto back. Their hands touch through opposite sides of the glass; so too their lips.
Then without another word, without another look, Makoto turns and runs.
The water here is wondrously, gorgeously, fantastically blue. This is not the first stretch of ocean Makoto has seen in his travels, but no matter how much he sees, it is still a wonder to behold. As true and real as he knows the ocean to be now, it is somehow still fantastical to him. Standing on the shore, he gazes and gazes and gazes. He knows that no matter how much he does so, he will never see it all; rarely will he see more than the surface and never even all of that. He gazes into wonder and beauty, fantasy and reality...
And he realizes that someone else has stopped to gaze too.
The salt breeze has picked up and Makoto has to lift a hand to keep his hair out of his eyes when he turns to look. The other young man does not look back but continues gazing out, the breeze whipping a dark halo of hair about his face.
Makoto returns his own gaze seaward. Waves swell and crest, swallowed back down into the expanse of blue that stretches luxuriously for shore, the ocean murmuring inarticulately. "Marvelous," Makoto murmurs back.
"A marvelous blue." The breeze carries the other's words to Makoto, and Makoto looks at him again, but the man has not turned.
"Someone once told me that there also are places where the water flows green," Makoto says conversationally.
The man continues to gaze unwaveringly out to sea. "He did not lie to you."
"You have seen such waters?"
For the first time now, the man turns to him and looks Makoto full in the face. A smile slides slowly along his lips, opening his mouth as he says, "I have."
Makoto looks at him, at the sparkle of smile in his eyes. Fallen waves rustle up the sand to them and caress their feet before sliding back to deeper waters.
"It's you, isn't it?" Makoto says. "I thought it was, when I saw you."
"I didn't know if you would remember." The man is still smiling softly.
"I have never forgotten, Haru."
"Nor have I, Makoto," Haru says. "In fact, if my memory tells me true, this is the day you mark your turns of time in the world. Your twenty-first such day."
"It is," Makoto acknowledges with a pleased grin.
Haru returns the smile. "Then you must allow me to grant you the wish of food and drink, if such pleasure you desire."
The ocean accompanies them as they walk. Raising his hands, Makoto twists them at the wrist to cover his ears. He relaxes his hands to listen to the ocean's true murmuring, then presses in close again and listens to the one inside him. Haru is smiling at him and Makoto flashes a smile too as he drops his hands. "It has never stopped speaking to me," he tells Haru. "The whisper you gave me that night took up in my heart and remained in every beat, every pulse." He looks out to the water, though his gaze cannot penetrate its depths. There were nights he wondered if this was the song that pulled sailors beneath the water, if they went more willingly than the tales told. "The sand seas of my father and his father and his father's father no longer sang to me. And so I left two years ago, to walk the earth and sail the waters."
The sun has begun to set. They stop wordlessly. Makoto looks at the sun, at the colors seeping out of it into the sky, touching the water. He watches as the water stretches itself, stretching the sun upon it, rushing up the shore for darkened sand, touching their toes. The water is colder than the blood beneath his skin and he shivers, though not unpleasantly.
"I think this must be the most miraculous place in all the world." The salt on his lips is sweet in his lungs. "This place where the waters meet the skies meet the lands."
Haru smiles. "Are you speaking of miracles or romance?"
Makoto turns to him, his own smile as full as his look. "Are they not the same?"
The sun has yielded the sky; melted golds and oranges and roses linger at the horizon, slowly being swallowed by the darker tones of the night. On the ocean's surface, the moon shimmers a faint silver.
"You know," Makoto confesses as they begin to walk again, "I thought you were real back then." His mouth curves up on one side. "I guess I always did think so, until this very moment."
"I am real." Haru smiles, brushing an arm against Makoto as they walk.
"Oh yes, of course." Makoto laughs. "It's only, I thought you were really a merman. What a foolish, fanciful boy I was! My sister and brother always said so; everyone did." He laughs again and Haru joins in, low and light like the voice Makoto remembers, and Makoto feels it curl warmly in his belly.
"Well," Haru says, "I may not be able to duplicate the experiences of that waterful night, but you are welcome to spend this one with me as well."
Makoto doesn't realize he had stopped smiling until he feels himself smile anew.
In Haru's rooms, the ocean murmurs to Makoto through the open window as they kiss. Haru's mouth moves along Makoto's jaw to his ear, his murmuring nearer and damper now than the ocean's. Makoto turns to take his mouth again, to lick and swallow these murmurs, to breathe his own into Haru. As they undress, their fingers whisper over skin, joining the caresses of the night breeze.
Haru lies on his back and Makoto straddles him, gazing down as Haru gazes up, his eyes an indeterminate shimmer of color in the moonlight; and Makoto floats upon the gaze. He leans down and kisses Haru. "Open your eyes," he whispers, and kisses Haru again when his lashes sweep up. He still can't see the color, and now he's no longer floating, but sinking, down and into the gaze.
He moves between Haru's legs and, when they both are ready, Makoto sinks into Haru: he takes a deep breath, and oh yes, his body knows how to breathe this, thicker than air; he floats and sinks and breathes, and breathes, and more than breathes. Haru is as warm as sunned waters and Makoto shivers warm, shivers hot, shivers and sinks and floats, inside Haru, inside himself; inside Haru, Makoto goes, and goes, and goes, and comes.
He slips out, takes a deep breath and sinks down again, not into Haru this time but taking Haru into him; he sweeps Haru along with the gentle undertow of his mouth until Haru spills out into him, thicker than the ocean, sweeter of salt.
Makoto shares these traces mouth-to-mouth with Haru, then rests his head on Haru's chest. His fingers move, casual and random, lazily exploring Haru's body. Haru's skin is softer to touch than that of any man or woman Makoto has been with, though he allows that the sensation could be memory-clouded senses.
His fingers slide over skin that is almost too smooth to be skin. Makoto's eyes follow his fingertips and find a trail of glimmer. He raises himself up curiously and leans in for a closer look:
It appears to be a tiny row of scales, embedded in the skin just along the hipbone ridge. Tracing them with his fingertip, he studies the way they shimmer with new angles in the moonlight.
Makoto sits up and looks at Haru's face. Haru is smiling a slow smile; not indolent like the lazy smiles Makoto remembers but full of things unnamable.
"You are real," Makoto says softly.
Haru smiles his smile. "Yes."
Their mutual gaze holds, even when their smiles are overcome.
"How?" Makoto breathes. "How can you be here?"
"I came for you," Haru says simply, and simply touches his lips to Makoto's.
"A wish?" Makoto asks when they part. "A sacrifice?"
"Human fairytales." Haru smiles, amused.
"You come as you will, then?"
"As the moon wills." Reaching out, Haru strokes Makoto's hair, brushing it back from his face.
"How long can you stay?"
"How long do you want me to?"
"Forever," Makoto breathes.
Haru smiles. "Human fairytales," he murmurs again. Kissing Makoto, he explains, "The moon accords me one cycle in twelve of my choosing to spend beyond the sea."
And so each moon-granted interval, they love as humans. And they live ever where the ocean meets the sky meets the earth.