Archive of Our Own

It had been a clean blow, at least—no bone to grind down afterwards or flesh to fester and rot. And it wasn’t even his knife hand, which Mikyung had said was a blessing when she packed the wound with staunchweed and seagrass. Never mind that he’d lost the knife itself. But his tail…

“A moon at least,” she said, laying thick strands of seaweed over the deepest of the wounds while Namjoon floated, holding a jutting tower of coral to keep himself steady for her ministrations. “Perhaps two.”

Namjoon said nothing, staring at the empty space in the water just past where his elbow bent. He’d had a hand there a sunset ago. If he closed his eyes and clenched his fist, he would swear he had a hand there still.

“It was a brave thing you did.” Mikyung came around to float before him, drawing gentle eddies that tugged at his bandages, and Namjoon pulled his attention away from his wound.

“It was stupid,” he said. The words caught in his throat, raw and bloody as his tail, but he forced them out.

“You saved a life and felled a great foe. The pod will remember this.”

“That doesn’t make it any less stupid.”

Mikyung favored him with a look that strayed too close to pity for Namjoon’s liking, and he looked away. She could dress it in honor if she wanted—certainly it would make a good story, the heroic hunter standing between a yearling on his first hunt and the shark that had thought the youngest of their pod to be easy prey. And he was glad, truly, that Yeonjun was alright. But it was a bitter reward to only be remembered.

At the edge of the reef, the pod milled. The hunt had paused for this, to rest and to feed and to check on the little ones who had been in harm's way. But it would not hold forever. The summer moon grew fat, and the pod would move soon, taking Namjoon’s story with them. Namjoon clenched his missing hand again.

“When does Kyungsik want to leave?”

“At moonrise.”

“It will be good hunting.”

Mikyung sighed, a rush of bubbles coiling towards the surface. “Namjoon…”

“Namjoon.”

Namjoon twisted and felt the sharp sting of the motion from rib to dorsal. Yeonjun hovered near the reef, his yearmates clustered behind him. They were so young. It would have hurt the pod a hundred times over to lose a yearling on his first hunt. Namjoon reminded himself of that as he dragged up a tired patience.

“Yeonjun.”

“I— Thank you.” He swallowed hard and shook himself, hair clouding around him, and drew his knife. The blade glinted in the faint sunlight when he raised it across his forehead, the flat of it pressed to his skin. “I honor you with my blade and the hand that wields it.”

The oath was kindly meant, Namjoon was sure, but it grated all the same. “Honor me by looking twice before leaping,” he said, and he turned back towards Mikyung. The waters shifted against him, a warning as Yeonjun came closer. Namjoon clenched his jaw, then made himself make the effort to unclench it.

“Hyung, wait. I just thought… You’ll need protection. You saved my life. It’s only right I should lend you my knife hand, until—”

“Stop,” said Namjoon. He was aware of Mikyung watching him, and Yeonjun’s yearmates, and the pod waiting for the light of the moon to guide them on the hunt again. The catch had been stored, the trophies taken. It was time to carry on.

“Don’t,” he said, quieter. Yeonjun stared at him with dark eyes, mouth parted as though to protest. Namjoon lifted a hand to forestall him and realized it was the left one when Yeonjun blanched. To the boy’s credit, he didn’t look away.

“It was my fault.”

“The decision was mine,” Namjoon said. “This is your first hunt. It’s not worth abandoning it for my sake.”

“Hyung—”

“Don’t. I’ll refuse.” At Yeonjun’s look, he softened. “Save your knife hand for something more worthy.”

Yeonjun stared at him a moment, then at Mikyung, and then he nodded once and turned tail, dashing back to his yearmates. Soobin caught him and reeled him in, and Namjoon turned away from the press of hands and tails. 

“He means well.”

“I know,” said Namjoon, wounded and aching and fed up with meaning well and being brave. “Wake me at moonrise?”

Mikyung sighed but did not argue, and Namjoon let himself drift.

He made it almost three days, which was two longer than he had expected. He could not hunt, but he drove himself forward with a furious stubbornness. He had felled the shark, and so he had his rights to the spoils, and it kept him fed. But they were pushing north into colder, heavier waters, and the food had been eaten, and Namjoon could not hunt and so could not feed.

But the worst was that his wound opened again, blood leaking slowly into the water. Even the most patient elders would not risk the pod for one dying mer. When he woke the morning of the third day, sluggish and sick with pain, he was alone.

For a long time, he lay on the sandy ocean floor, staring at the fracture of sunlight through the surface high above. His tail burned; his head ached; his hand itched but there was no hand to scratch. Hunger picked at him and so did exhaustion, and beneath it all was a deep, welling certainty that he had nothing left to give, and no one to give it to, and nowhere to go.

It was not until the sun was high overhead and his stomach was a cramp that he noticed the knife and the necklace. Someone had taken one of the shark’s teeth and bound it roughly with what looked to be twine. The knife was Yeonjun’s.

Namjoon stared at them both, then tenderly touched the tooth. It was blunted now, no longer as sharp as it had been when it took his hand, and for a moment he regretted that it would not still cut. Then he pulled the necklace over his head and slid Yeonjun’s knife into his belt and made the slow, aching push to the surface to seek a private place to die.

“That’s it?”

“The last one.” Jimin dropped the box and braced his hands on his hips to stretch, wincing as something popped.

“Are you sure?” Jungkook gave him a narrow, distrustful look. “Because you said that earlier and then we ended up having to go back to Tae’s place—”

“I swear on Yoongi’s cooking.”

“Don’t bring me into this,” said Yoongi, stomping sand from his boots as he ducked into the cottage. “Or my cooking.”

“It’s a compliment, hyung. Jungkook thinks I forgot something.”

Yoongi frowned. “Well, now that you mention it—”

Jimin propped his hands on his hips. “What else is left! I swear I have moved every single one of those boxes—”

“You did,” Yoongi grinned. Asshole. Jimin gave him the finger, and he laughed. “It’s fine, you’re good. Everything’s out.”

“Even your old man radio?”

“Don’t knock the radio,” said Jimin, aiming to flick Jungkook in the forehead and missing. “How else am I going to keep up with Yoongi-hyung?”

“I have a phone,” Yoongi offered.

“You don’t answer it,” Jimin shot back.

“He’s kind of right, hyung,” said Jungkook, plopping down right in the middle of the room. Yoongi only shrugged. “So are we done? Is there pizza? I want pizza. Do they even deliver this far out?”

“It’s not that far,” Jimin protested, dropping down himself. The hardwood floor was pleasantly cool after a day of moving boxes and furniture under the summer sun, and even lying down he could feel the stretch in his back. Moving was a bitch. “I’m like, ten minutes away. Barely outside of town.”

“That’s still outside of town.”

“Aw, sweet Jungkookie. Are you going to miss me?”

“No,” said Jungkook peevishly, but he didn’t pull away when Jimin reached out blindly to pat his knee, so he was probably lying.

“Hyung’s bringing pizza,” said Yoongi, shoving his phone back into his pocket and sitting on the couch, which was the only piece of furniture not wrapped in cardboard or plastic or still in its flatpack packaging and propped against the wall. “And beer.”

“Jin-hyung my savior,” said Jimin, staring up at the ceiling. Someone had painted the cross beams, he noticed—the pictures were faded, but he could just make out tiny seashells and sailors and shifting waves decorating the braces.

“What does that make us?” asked Jungkook, and Yoongi answered, “Peons.”

“My dear friends,” Jimin corrected, sitting up and running a hand through his hair to survey the mess. They’d managed to group the boxes up to allow access to the kitchen and the bedrooms and the small hallway that led down to the bathroom and the laundry and the back door to the beach. It was certainly smaller than the apartment he’d shared with Taehyung in town, but it was a cozy sort of small. And it was so close to the water, and without a roommate he had the extra room for the studio, which was the entire point of the move. That and taking care of the place for his uncle. “My dear, strong, sturdy, dedicated friends, who are very good at building furniture—”

“What do you want to start with?” sighed Yoongi. Jimin beamed at him.

“The bed,” he said. “And then probably a table, otherwise we’ll be eating pizza on the floor.”

They ended up eating on the floor, but by then they hardly minded. There was something charming about it anyway, gathering together in the blazing glow of a late summer sunset—which reminded Jimin he’d forgotten to buy curtains, dammit—and enjoying a warm meal and a cold beer after a long day’s work. Seokjin complained about his creaky knees, which earned him a great deal of flack from Jungkook, who was quick to point out he hadn’t been the one here unloading the truck. Besides, he’d laid claim to the couch as soon as he’d arrived, playing the hyung card with glee, so it wasn’t really any hardship at all. Jimin watched them bicker back and forth, full and grateful, and thought he’d miss this, at least a little.

But it was like he’d said—he was only just barely any further away. When he stepped out into the yard to wave them off, he could make out the smattering of lights down the coast that was the town center, even if the population was barely larger than his high school student body—though it would balloon soon with the tourist season, of course. He’d still see them plenty.

It was just a change. A bit of space, and a place of his own, a chance to see what other shape his life could take. And he liked that he could hear the waves, the ocean vast and close and hidden in the dark.

“Text me when you get home,” he called as they piled into Jin’s truck. Jungkook snapped his fingers and smiled, one eye scrunched in a wink.

“Yes, mom.”

“Yah,” Jimin laughed, lost in the rev of the engine and the slamming of doors, and he stood and waited until their tail lights disappeared around a bend in the road. He lingered a little longer after, alone, listening to the waves and the wind.

Then he retreated back inside to collapse face-first into his freshly-built bed and sleep the sleep of the dead.

The beach was cold in the morning, and the water a flat, sleepy grey. Jimin shrugged his sweater tighter around himself and considered that maybe the idyll of an early beach walk should have been postponed until later, after the clouds burned off. But he’d finally woken up early enough to catch the early summer sunrise, and by the time the clouds burned away he’d be in town for lunch with Taehyung. So here he was, doing the sort of thing one was supposed to do when one lived a minute’s walk from the water.

The beach itself was lovely—clean, private, hidden from the tourist-dense southern beaches by the craggy rise of the cliffs. As a boy, he’d spent his summers tidepooling here, following the curve of the coast towards the rocky shoreline and the sea-carved caves further north. Back then, the trek had taken ages. This morning, following his feet, he was at the base of the cliffs by the time the sun rose, the receding tide lapping at his toes.

He stopped to breathe as the first rays spilled over the horizon, grey ceding to a blaze of pink and orange. The sun rose fat and yellow, caught between the plane of the ocean and the slate clouds overhead, and for an instant everything glowed. Jimin turned his face toward the light, eyes shut and morning chill forgotten. Colors smeared behind his eyelids, the bright, clear glow of dawn. It would make a nice glaze, if he could capture it right. He’d been putting off picking up a new project, busy with the move and catching up on all the old work he’d had to put on hold for it. And alright, yes, maybe he was a little intimidated by the pristine potential of a new studio. He liked clean starts, beginnings bright with intent, but maybe an sunrise glaze was—

A nearby splash interrupted the thought. The noise rang loud in the lull of the morning, a slap of water out of place in the quiet privacy of the beach. He squinted his eyes open with a frown, scanning the water. 

For a moment, there was nothing—only the steady swell of the waves at high tide and the glinting glare of the sunrise. Then the splashing came again, further away up the coast, and Jimin caught a glimpse of a head above the water, a flash of skin. It looked like a swimmer, out near the cliffs and swinging closer to unforgiving stone with each swell of the waves.

Jimin’s heart leapt into his throat. “Hey,” he shouted. “Hey!” He waved his arms, trying to catch the swimmer’s attention. For a moment, it seemed he’d succeeded—the head turned in his direction, bobbing between the swells. Jimin stumbled towards the surf. “Watch out!”

Then another wave rose, and the swimmer disappeared.

Fuck. The one day he’d finally managed to get down to the water for a nice quiet morning walk and some poor hapless tourist was going to drown right in front of him.

“Hey!” he shouted again, wading a little ways forward into the water. The tide tugged at his ankles, eating the sand out from under his feet. He scanned the water desperately, straining to catch some glimpse, some sign of life.

His hope was rewarded—the swimmer appeared again, not dashed against the rocks as Jimin feared but closer to the caves, angling for the entrance. Clearly they were a strong swimmer, if they were able to fight the current. 

Not a hapless tourist, then. Just a particularly stupid one.

As he watched, the figure—a man, Jimin thought; he caught a glimpse of broad shoulders and a bare chest as he bobbed in the water—looked around, then disappeared back under the waves. He didn’t appear again.

“Shit,” said Jimin, sloshing towards the caves. “Shit shit shit.”

There was a narrow path along the cliffs that rose above the line of high tide, marked off by a stiff, salt-stained rope hung between metal poles. Jimin paused only long enough to stuff his feet back into his shoes and squelched along it as fast as he could go, one hand braced against the rock face and the other held out to grab the rope. There was—or there had been, anyway, when he was younger—another way into the largest of the caves, a back entrance of sorts he’d gotten in trouble for playing around as a kid. Dangerous, his uncle had said; the sort of place where little boys could slip and fall and brain themselves and never be found. The caves were for low-tide only.

His mother had agreed with her brother’s reasoning, only much louder and longer, and also grounded him. It had been a particularly boring summer.

Now, the memory of his mother’s fear echoed in the back of his mind as he hurried forward, barely paying attention to the slippery path underfoot. He was too preoccupied with what he might find in the caves. A limp body, broken bones—or worse, nothing at all.

“Shit,” he said again for good measure. He didn’t even have his phone with him, like an idiot. “Fuck.”

But when he reached the entrance—which was exactly where he remembered, if much more overgrown and narrower than it had been when he was younger—there was no broken body dashed upon the rocks. Instead, as Jimin ducked under the heavy stone lintel, there was something so incredibly strange that he stopped in his tracks.

The interior of the cave was wide and high, and from the cliffside fissure he could see all of it. Through the mouth, the sea crashed against the cliffs, a rushing white spray that settled into rippling eddies as it spread across the deep basin of the cave floor, surprisingly gentle. The ledge he was on ran all the way forward to the entrance, where in low tide the cave was accessible from the sea, and down to a sandy bank below him, where a warren of water-worn tunnels snaked deeper into the cliffs. The blaze of dawn splintered through the mouth of the cave, drawing fractal rainbows in the seaspray, and in the irregular block of sunlight, lying half in and half out of the water, was an unconscious man.

Except it wasn’t a man. Or he was, but only slightly. He had the head and chest of a man—golden skin, broad shoulders, a head of short-cropped hair so dark it looked almost blue where the light caught it. But where his legs should have been was a tail, a great bronze coil of scales and sleek fins spilling out into the basin and eddying with the slight ebb and flow of the tide. It was beautiful, glowing in the morning sun like polished metal, and also entirely impossible. And bleeding, Jimin realized with a start. There was a cloudy reddish haze in the water wisping from some hidden wound.

“What the fuck,” said Jimin.

Maybe, he paused to consider, he was the one who had fallen into the surf. Maybe he’d tripped in his haste along the cliff path and had hit his head, just as his uncle had cautioned him all those years ago. Or maybe he was still in bed, asleep, and waking up early enough for a sunrise walk was just a dream—which, he’d admit, wasn’t entirely unlikely. He didn’t do mornings very well unless he happened to stay up so late that the sun caught up with him.

Just in case, he counted all his fingers—ten, normal—and pinched himself, hard. Right. Definitely awake, then.

Down on the sandy bank, the figure—for a moment he thought mermaid and then immediately shook the thought away—groaned, barely loud enough to make out over the lapping water. It was a simple, human sound, and it jolted Jimin back to himself. The strange impossibility of it all could wait. Dream or not, Jimin wasn’t going to leave someone bleeding in the shallows when he was right there to help.

He picked his way along the ledge until it reached the sandy bank below, then paused again to survey the man.

Up close, he was even stranger. He lay twisted to one side, half in and half out of the water. His eyes were shut tight, brow furrowed in obvious discomfort, and he wore a shark’s tooth on a cord around his neck, as well as a sash looped around his hips with a polished black knife stuck through it. He was also covered in scars. There were narrow lines scored across his golden torso, and the imprint of teeth around one shoulder, and a ropy pattern that looked almost like a net around his belly, where his skin turned into scales. Jimin’s only experience with any kind of fighting was the boxing he sometimes did with Jungkook, but it was clear just from looking at him that this man was a fighter.

And it was clear he hadn’t been eating well. Jimin could count his ribs beneath his skin, and his stomach pulled in hungry and hollow when he breathed. His face was handsome but gaunt, with dark bruises beneath his eyes and his skin pulled tight over his cheeks. 

Jimin took another step forward and something crunched underfoot. He looked down to see oysters scattered across the sand, their shells split open. Had the man been eating them? More importantly, had he been eating anything else? There was no other sign of life here, no fish bones or even food wrappers, which the gulls left lying around when they scavenged. Jimin’s stomach twisted.

He took another crunching step forward and the man stirred slightly. His tail twitched in the water with a fresh cloud of blood, and his body twisted, and Jimin realized with a lurch that it wasn’t only his tail that was injured.

He was missing a hand. His left arm ended just shy of his wrist in a stump that was wrapped in what looked like some kind of seaweed held loosely in place by a badly tied knot. Some of the covering peeled away when the surf licked it, revealing a red, scabbing mess. It didn’t look like an old wound. It looked half-healed and painful.

Jimin’s stomach sank as his heart climbed up into his throat, a confusing migration of organs that left him feeling mostly queasy and a little horrified. He’d expected a tourist, some idiot out-of-towner who thought he knew better than the ocean. Maybe a broken bone, maybe exhaustion, but the sort of situation where he could see a stranger off with a lecture and a ride back into town. The sort of thing that made a story to tell later over drinks.

This wasn’t a story to tell over drinks. This wasn’t a lecture-and-a-ride-home sort of problem. This was a strange and impossible and beautiful man bleeding in the surf, unconscious and starving, and nobody but Jimin around to help. What the hell was he supposed to do?

“What the fuck,” he said again for good measure, and then he inched closer to get a proper look at the bleeding.

It wasn’t, he was relieved to discover, as bad as the blood in the water made it seem. Not that it looked good —it was a jagged curve of puncture marks studded high up along the man’s tail, some messier than others—but it wasn’t fresh, which had been his immediate gut-clench fear. A bite of some kind? It definitely looked like teeth. Jimin could imagine a few things that might take a bite so big and didn’t like what he was imagining.

But like his hand, it was partly healed. A few of the punctures were bleeding sluggishly, but others were scabbed over, and one or two had a pinkish, new-skin look to them, though the scales were discolored—instead of gleaming bronze, they were muddy brown, and a few were a muted, bloody sort of maroon, like a bruise beneath a nail. Jimin glanced from the wound to the man’s face—still slack with sleep, a suggestion of pain in the pinch of his brow and the frown of his mouth—and back down again.

He sighed, then knelt in the sand. Dampness seeped into the knees of his jeans immediately, a clammy cold he ignored as best he could.

“Okay,” he said out loud, watching the man’s face for any sign he was waking, or any sign of anything else. He vaguely wished Seokjin were here, or maybe Yoongi, or even Taehyung—anyone who could offer some advice about what to do with a… a person in this situation. Anyone who could confirm he wasn’t dreaming.

But there was only Jimin and the bleeding man, and the tide was starting to go out but still hours from low. This was what he got for wanting a little independence, he thought ruefully. If he’d stayed in town with Taehyung…

But then there wouldn’t be anyone here at all. The thought twisted in his gut, a fresh kind of horror. Jimin couldn’t imagine anything worse than being abandoned.

“Okay,” he said again, trying to steady himself, and he gave the unconscious man a stern look. “I’m here to help, okay? So if you wake up, please don’t stab me. Thanks.” 

He hesitated a moment longer, then decided that if he was going to do something incredibly stupid, he might as well stop waiting and get on with it. With a deep breath—it would be so embarrassing if this got him killed, and also probably tragic, and his uncle would say I told you so and Jimin wouldn’t even be around to say no, he hadn’t slipped and brained himself on the rocks, he’d been killed by a perfectly impossible mermaid, thank you very much—he reached out and gave the man’s shoulder a brief shake, then yanked his hand back.

The surf crashed. The water lapped against the sand. A gull screamed somewhere outside, and the sun climbed steadily higher in the sky. The man didn’t stir.

Jimin gave him another shake, a little firmer—his skin was cool, and surprisingly smooth, except for the raised, shiny knot of his scars—but the man’s eyes stayed firmly shut. He didn’t suddenly sit up and reach for his knife to run Jimin through, nor did he grab Jimin and drag him down into the water to drown him. In fact, he didn’t really do anything except twitch a little and groan again, lips barely parting. Jimin swallowed and sat back on his heels.

Okay. Right. First aid—and now he was glad Seokjin had dragged them all along to his classes. The trouble was, he had nothing to use to staunch the bleeding. There was nothing nearby but sand and oyster shells and the man’s badly tied arm bandage. Hell, his own shirt would—

Oh. Hm.

He shrugged out of his sweater and yanked his shirt over his head, then promptly pulled the sweater back on, zipping it up to ward against the morning chill. That left him knelt in the sand with his shirt in his hands, staring at the wound and feeling impressively stupid. Seokjin’s first aid class hadn’t exactly covered this sort of situation. The training dummies had been a lot more human shaped, and also plastic, and dry, and not actually bleeding. How was he supposed to apply pressure to a tail? How was he even supposed to get the man out of the water far enough to bandage him up? And once he did, how was he going to get anything to stick? He’d need something to hold the bandage down.

“If you have any suggestions,” he said to the unconscious man, and then his eyes fell on the knife. 

Well. It was an idea.

He slid it free slowly, doing his best not to nick either of them. It gleamed a little in the morning light, surprisingly beautiful and also very sharp. Jimin adjusted his grip on the hilt and took a deep breath as he dug the point into the seam of his shirt. “Sorry about this,” he said to the man. “I hope you don’t mind.”

It was awkward more than anything. The tail was, as it turned out, fucking heavy, and he was sweating by the time he managed to drag the man far enough out of the water to keep the bandage dry and then actually get it around him, cutting strips from his shirt to tie it down. The man stayed passed out through it all, an unpleasantly dead weight—though that was probably better than him waking up while Jimin was half draped over him, trying to put pressure on the bleeding.

He took the time to fix the bandage around the man’s arm as well, fixing the knot, then tucked the man’s knife back into his strange belt and sat back on his heels to roll out his neck and his shoulders.

“I really hope that helped,” Jimin said. He didn’t see any blood spotting through the shirt, though, which seemed promising. It wasn’t exactly a nice-looking bandage—it looked kind of stupid, actually, an old t-shirt wrapped tight around a tail easily as wide around as Jimin himself—but it was wrapped, and the man’s breathing had evened out, and the lines of his face softened. He really was shockingly handsome. Jimin brushed some of the sand from his dark hair and stared at him for a moment longer.

What a weird fucking morning.

Food, he thought next. For himself—he’d stayed out far longer than he intended, and his stomach grumbled—and also for the man, who clearly needed a square meal or six. Jimin could do that. Seokjin had brought over his fresh catch just last night, and fish seemed like a promising option given the oyster shells. And then maybe Jimin could— Well.

“Ask you about it, hopefully,” he said to the man. “If you can understand me. If you’re even real.”

He seemed real, though. The dampness of Jimin’s pants was real, as was the chill of the ocean breeze and the stiffness of drying blood he couldn’t entirely scrub out from between his fingers, even in the cold water.

Jimin pushed his hair out of his face and glanced at the mouth of the cave. He still had a bit of time before the tide was fully out. He could run home, get something, bring it back—hopefully before the man woke up. Like feeding a stray cat, he thought with a touch of what might have been hysteria. A very large, very wet stray cat. With a fish tail.

“Try no to go anywhere,” he said, pushing himself to his feet, already drawing up a mental list. Food first, and then better bandages—and antiseptic, probably, and maybe painkillers. Antibiotics? No, one step at a time. That could come later. He’d ask Seokjin. Though how the hell he was going to have that conversation was a problem for future Jimin.

And he’d have to cancel on Taehyung. There was no way he was going to make it into town by lunchtime.

Namjoon woke in stages, first to the familiar disappointment of waking and then the guilt of disappointment. He’d thought, maybe, this time… It had been a marvel that he’d managed to find his way back to the cave at all, and the memory of dragging himself up the bank was hazy at best. He ached all over, and the light hurt, and he was tired as he had never been. And he was alive, still, and still alone.

He shouldn’t have gone after the school. He’d only thought, maybe— It was one of the first things they taught the yearlings. A school was easy hunting; there would always be slow ones in the crowd, the confused ones who couldn’t get away in time. He’d thought, even weak and wounded, he might catch at least a mouthful. But it wasn’t the same without his pod to corral them, or drive them into the reefs for easy picking, and trying to keep up with the flashing of silver bellies had left him dizzy and disoriented in the water. All he’d managed to do was split his scabs, blood calling other hungry creatures. 

And now here he was, as hungry and exhausted as he’d been before. He let out a breath, air heavy in his lungs, and blinked his eyes open to stare at the unchanging ceiling of the cave he’d made his sickbed.

A clatter of rock startled him. His hand flew to Yeonjun’s knife, drawing fresh lines of pain up his tail and from the awful itch of his missing hand. He pushed himself up on an elbow in a rush, head spinning. Stupid, stupid. He should have picked a safer spot to lick his wounds. If he was found—

“Oh,” said a voice, and Namjoon twisted towards the mouth of the cave where a human stood silhouetted. “You’re awake!”

Namjoon pulled the knife free, heart trembling and hot in his throat. This was a hundred times worse than exile—to fall behind was one thing, but to be caught by a human was something else altogether.

“Okay, hey,” said the human. “I just patched you up, so it would be a kind of dick move if you stabbed me now.”

The human held his arms out, hands empty. He stood just inside the entrance, out of view of the beach beyond. If Namjoon moved quickly enough, he could catch the man and drag him under. He was a narrow thing, and probably would make a poor meal—and Namjoon didn’t particularly relish the thought of eating something sentient—but still. Food was food.

He shifted, and that was when he became aware of something wrapped around his tail. He glanced down to find… cloth? A thick, ungainly bandage of some kind of human fabric was wrapped around his tail, hiding the slow-healing mess the shark had made of him. And his arm was bandaged too, he noticed; the haphazard mess he’d made of the seaweed binding had been fixed and tied properly, soothing the constant burn.

“See?” said the human. Namjoon’s eyes flicked up; he hadn’t moved, and his hands were still raised in caution. “Sorry. I know it’s not very good. A friend of mine is a nurse but I didn’t want to call him or anyone just in case. I don’t think they’d react very well to you being. Um.” He gave Namjoon a look and left the sentence hanging. “But I did bring food!”

The man crouched down, and Namjoon thought, Now. But when he tried to push himself off the beach and into the water, his head swam again and his vision spotted, and it took every ounce of his strength and stubbornness to keep his arms from buckling beneath him. Then the man was straightening again, bag in hand, and the moment was lost.

“I’m going to come a little closer,” said the man. “I don’t actually know if you can understand me? But I promise I’m not going to hurt you, so I’d really really appreciate it if you also didn’t hurt me. Please.”

Namjoon watched him warily, fingers tightening around the hilt of Yeonjun’s knife. The man moved slowly, awkward in his obvious telegraphing of each movement. When he’d come around the edge of the basin to the sand where Namjoon lay, he knelt and began pulling out something that smelled like—

Namjoon’s stomach rumbled as the man reached into the bag and pulled out his catch.

“It’s not the freshest,” he said, “but I hope it’s okay? I’m not really sure what you can eat but I figured, um, this would probably be alright? So I’m just gonna.” He twisted the sides of the bag down and pushed it forward, within arm’s reach of Namjoon. Namjoon stared at him, hand still around the knife, ignoring the clench in his gut, trying not to breathe too deeply.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was here to die, not— not whatever this human thought he was doing.

“Right,” said the man, standing again. “Okay. So I’m just gonna leave that for now, and I’ll be back in a bit? I have to go into town but, uh, I’ll be back by sunset. You know that right? Sunset? When the sun, y’know.” He made a motion with his hand, a downward arc. Amusement flickered somewhere deep in Namjoon’s chest, and he crushed it just as fast.

“I’m Jimin, by the way,” said the man. He tapped his chest. “Jimin. It’s nice to meet you. I’m really glad you woke up. Please eat.”

With that, he rose, moving with a grace Namjoon envied fiercely. He took a few teetering steps backwards, then turned around, showing Namjoon his back. Now, said the small, hungry voice in the back of Namjoon’s head. But he was tired, and aching, and hungry. One stupid human probably wasn’t worth the effort to drown.

Still, Namjoon watched him the whole way, attention unwavering. The man kept pausing every few steps and turning back to look at him, until he reached the mouth of the cave and, with a last lingering glance, disappeared around the rock face and out of sight. Namjoon watched longer still, attention sharp, waiting for him to come back. 

When he still didn’t return, Namjoon slipped his knife away, and slowly reached for the crinkling plastic bag. There were three fish inside, whole and more fresh than not. It was more food than he’d had in weeks, more than the slow lobsters with the shells he couldn’t split and the scant mouthful of an oyster. Namjoon swallowed hard and lifted one and glanced again towards the entrance of the cave. But the man was gone.

It could have been poisoned. It could have been a trap. It could all be some terrible human trick to kill him or bind him or bring him to some other unimaginable ending. But Namjoon didn’t care. He was exhausted and hungry, and here was a meal he didn’t have to bleed for.

He ate.

Jimin made it back to the cave just as the sun was setting. The tide was rising again and the sun drew long, warping shadows across the ground as he clambered along the cliffside path and in through the back entrance of the cave. For a moment he thought the man might be gone—but no, he was still there on the sand, poking at the ungainly wrap of Jimin’s attempt at first aid. His head snapped up as Jimin entered.

He’d been pretty asleep, but awake he was something else. There was something about the way he moved, the shift of muscle under skin, the faint motion of his tail in the water, the soft fall of his hair. His eyes were a deep amber, more gold than brown, with wide black irises, and they fixed unerringly on him and didn’t blink. Jimin shivered under the gaze, but didn’t let his steps falter.

“Hi again,” he said. He still wasn’t sure if the man understood him, but the fact that he hadn’t tried to eat Jimin earlier seemed promising. “I’m back! I brought you some things.”

He eased his way around the ledge until his feet hit sand. The man watched him steadily, held so still that it made Jimin nervous. But he didn’t pull the knife this time, which was probably an improvement. And the bag Jimin had left was—

“Oh good, you ate,” Jimin said, nerves easing in favor of relief. He’d worried the whole anxious drive to the town pharmacy that maybe he wouldn’t touch the fish. He picked up his pace, eager as he skittered down the sandy bank. “Was it okay? How are you feeling? I figured you didn’t want it cooked, but if you do I could probably do that. I know a couple recipes.” He gave the man an assessing look. “Can you eat stew?”

“Leave,” said the man.

Jimin startled so hard he nearly fell over—and then he grinned, wide and thrilled.

“You can talk!”

He took another step forward but the man made a noise, a strange and harsh clicking sound, and Jimin paused again. His heart was still racing, but it was a bright, trembling kind of delight that seared through him. He wet his lips, a little breathless.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you or anything. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

The man’s lips pulled back, brow dark and heavy. “Leave,” he said again.

He had a deep voice, hoarse around the edges—from disuse maybe. Or maybe he just sounded like that, an ocean roughness. Jimin swallowed.

“Okay,” he said. “I will. Just— Can I leave you some things first?”

He reached blindly into his bag and the man flinched. His tail snapped in the water, drawing ripples across the surface of the basin, and Jimin watched the pain flicker across his face at the sudden movement. He made the noise again, the clicking—which was probably a warning, Jimin thought, but the wariness sounded more like fear. Was Jimin frightening him? He couldn’t imagine he was Even injured, the man was easily twice his weight. And armed.

But the last thing Jimin wanted was to scare him, so he took a breath and knelt in the sand, well out of reach of the man.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, doing his best to tamp down his own awe and excitement and his trembling, eager wonder. He knew, sometimes, he could be a little too much. “It’s just that you’re in kind of bad shape, and I want to help. I promise I’m not going to hurt you. And I’m not going to tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about. I promise. I know you don’t know me, and you don’t really have a reason to trust me, but I— I just want to help.”

The man watched him silently. It wasn’t much, but it was better than the bared teeth and the clicking, so Jimin figured it was about as much as an opening as he was going to get. He nodded slowly and began pulling things out of the bag, narrating each one.

“I brought you some pain meds and some antiseptic—that’s to help keep your wounds from getting infected or anything—and fish. And some rice. Can you eat rice? I figured it would be pretty easy on your stomach.” He gave the man a look, assessing, and the man looked at him back. “I mean, if you can eat it. Can you eat human food?”

For a long minute, they only stared at each other. The waves crashed beyond the cave, a steady rhythm, and Jimin breathed along with them, swallowing back his impatience. He could wait. He was willing to wait, if it meant helping this wounded stranger. He knew firsthand—and perhaps with a tiny, lingering flush of embarrassment—how difficult it could be to accept help, especially when it was sorely needed.

The man looked away first. His attention fell down to his tail and the awkward, ungainly bandage wrapped around it. Jimin let out a slow breath and felt his shoulders unwind, tension easing without the weight of the man’s gaze on him. He rubbed at his chest, a little rueful.

“Yes,” said the man, so quiet Jimin nearly didn’t hear him. His breath caught, and he wet his lips again.

“Okay, great. Um, can I come closer?”

“No.” That came much faster, the man’s attention swinging back around to him to glare. The intensity of his stare was somewhat ruined by the way he swayed slightly, arms shaking where he held himself up on his elbows. Jimin nodded.

“Okay. I won’t. How about, um. Can I know your name? I’m—”

“Jimin,” said the man, and Jimin brightened. He wasn’t sure he’d remembered.

“Yeah! What should I call you?”

There was another long, surf-shot pause. Jimin breathed slowly and kept himself still, his hands loose where they rested on his thighs. It reminded him, in an odd and slantwise sort of way, of being in the studio—the rhythm of the wheel, the attention it took to keep the pressure steady, the slow shaping of something graceful out of water and earth. Also, like the studio, his knees were starting to ache from sitting still so long.

“Namjoon,” said the man, finally.

“Hi, Namjoon,” said Jimin. He couldn't keep the smile off his face, and he didn't bother trying. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Namjoon looked at him a moment longer, then turned away. Unwatched, Jimin stared at him. The cave had grown dim with the late afternoon, sunlight slipping away behind the cliffs, but Namjoon still gleamed. The bronze of his tail was deeper now, honey-rich, and his hair had dried out of the water into something of a bird’s nest, salt-stiff. He hunched forward, and his sandy back was just as scarred as his front and just as golden. Even in the half-light, he was lovely.

“I’m going to leave these for you,” said Jimin. “The pills are to help with the pain. The little tube has a cream that goes on your wounds. You’ll need to unbandage them for that, sorry. And there’s rice and more fish, so be sure to eat.”

He waited for a moment longer, expecting some kind of rejection or refusal, but Namjoon stayed silent and turned away. So Jimin left everything he’d picked up—a blister packet of pills, the antiseptic, the packet of bandages that advertised themselves as shower-safe, the open container of rice, the fresh fish. He set them out as far down the bank as he could reach, so that Namjoon wouldn’t have to drag himself up to them, and then rose with a creak, dusting off his knees.

“Take care,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He waited a minute longer, half hoping Namjoon would turn to look at him one more time, or say something, or give any sign of acknowledgement. But he didn’t.

So, slowly, Jimin turned and made his back up the bank and out of the cave, emerging into the golden gleam of sunset and wondering what the hell he was getting himself into.

True to his word, Jimin was back in the morning.

Namjoon was in the water when he arrived. The strange cloth bandage had begun to itch, and he peeled it away carefully, prodding at his mangled tail. It looked a little better than it had a day ago. The bleeding had stopped, which was a relief. It was more of a relief to slip into the water and let the sea hold him again.

Like last time, Jimin came with a bag slung over one shoulder, and Namjoon watched him slip in from a fissure he hadn’t noticed in the back of the cave wall and inch his way around the side until he reached the sand in the back. He had a certain grace to him, Namjoon thought as he picked his way down the bank to where he’d left his things last night. Namjoon hadn’t touched the strange human pills or the little plastic tube, distrustful of their purpose. But the food had been good and simple and filling, even if it stung to be fed like a yearling who couldn’t contribute his share of the hunt.

“Hello!” Jimin called. His hair was a strange color for a human, a fading sort of silver-blue, like morning moonlight, and he pushed it out of his face with a grin. “Did you sleep well?”

He had, actually. His dreams hadn’t been filled with seeping, stalking fears in the dark, and waking wasn’t such a weary task. The change unsettled Namjoon almost as much as the dreams had.

“I brought more rice,” said Jimin, seemingly content with Namjoon’s silence. “I was gonna go to the market but I overslept so I don’t have any fish, sorry. But I’ll pick something up for later! Is it okay if I come closer?”

Namjoon frowned at him. It would be foolish to allow a predator any closer. But in his oversized clothing, with his moonlight hair and a soft, eager face, the man didn’t look much like a predator. Even if he moved like one.

And Namjoon was, as he had been these past weeks, hungry. Slowly, warily, with his good hand on Yeonjun’s knife beneath the water just in case, he nodded.

He turned away, sour with exhaustion and resentment, but not before he caught the gleaming edge of Jimin’s smile. A lump sat in his throat. Accepting help from a human. What would Kyungsik think? What would Yeonjun and the yearlings?

“Oh. You didn’t use these?” Jimin must have seen the unopened pills and small tube of ointment left abandoned on the sand next to the remains of his bandage. “Did you want some help?”

“No,” said Namjoon, and he sank deeper in the water. He didn’t want help. He didn’t want anything.

“Okay,” said Jimin. There was something new in the tone in his voice, a shift in pitch that Namjoon disliked. He wanted to dive, to hide—but the water in the cave wasn’t nearly deep enough for that. Instead, he made a slow, aching lap of the basin and returned to the bank, where Jimin was sitting cross-legged in the sand, pulling things out of his bag.

“I brought bandages too,” he said, pulling the cover off a bowl of rice just like the one Namjoon had left abandoned with the rest of the strange human detritus higher up the bank. “They’re maybe waterproof? The packaging says they’re shower safe but to be honest I’m not sure if that’s the same as being ok to swim in. But it’s better than nothing! And I was thinking, maybe you’d like some broth? I can bring you some this afternoon. It’s what my mom makes me when I’m sick. I mean, not that you’re sick, but. It might help? They say a lighter diet is best if you haven’t eaten in a while—”

Namjoon watched him as he talked. His voice rose and fell not unlike the waves, and he was animated as he spoke, hands moving as though he were shaping his words in the air as he said them. It was the kind of chatter that might have annoyed him coming from one of the yearlings—that should have annoyed him, coming from this strange human—but his voice was soothing. 

Namjoon drifted close enough to snatch the rice from the bank, darting back with a wince to eat it from the relative safety of the water. Jimin stuttered at the sudden movement, but went back to talking.

“—on my own,” he was saying. “I mean, it’s nice to have room for the studio, and I’m thinking about putting a kiln in the yard— Oh, you probably don’t know what a kiln is.” Namjoon didn’t, but he didn’t say it. Jimin, it seemed, didn’t mind the silence. “It’s, um, a big oven, I use it to make pottery.” He gestured at the bowl Namjoon held close to his side in the crook of one elbow so he could use his hand to scoop out the cool, plain rice, which was a little like the crackers he and Heesoo used to steal from the seaside towns, only not as much fun to eat. “I’ve been trying out new glazes but it’s kind of a pain driving everything into town to use the kiln there.”

“Pottery,” echoed Namjoon. He didn’t know the word. “This is a bowl.”

“It— Yes.” Jimin laughed, chiming and bright like the sun off the whitecaps, and tipped sideways in his mirth. For a moment Namjoon feared he would fall into the water—which would be unfortunate, as Namjoon had no intention in fishing him out—but then he righted himself. “Pottery is— I guess it’s a way of making a bowl. I made it out of clay, and then I painted it and I baked it, and now it’s a bowl.”

Some kind of crafts-making, then. Humans were like that, he supposed—soft and bad at hunting, and quick to turn to other tasks to aid their pods. Namjoon supposed bowl-making was as useful a task as any for people who often had the need to hold things.

His missing hand ached at the thought. He could have been content as a healer, or a net-binder, or anything else. Certainly no longer being a hunter would sting, but at least he would not be alone. But he was useless now.

“You should leave,” he said, abruptly tired of the conversation. Jimin stuttered to a stop halfway through—something about a wheel. Namjoon didn’t understand and didn’t care to.

“Are you sure?” Jimin hesitated, mouth gone small and pursed. His hands fell into his lap, and his face dimmed. “I’d really like to check your tail. It looked like it hurt.”

“No.”

“I just— It could get infected. Or worse.” He chewed on his lip, then picked up the tube of ointment Namjoon had refused to touch. “Look, it won’t hurt. See?” He unscrewed the cap and squeezed a small bead of a clear, greasy-looking substance out on the pad of one finger. “I mean, it might sting a little. But it’ll help.”

Namjoon stared at him, expression flat and still as the sea on a clear night, and inside he churned, all embarrassment and anger.

“Or at least some painkillers,” said Jimin, softer. “Please?”

Namjoon’s mistake was letting himself imagine it—a moment without the constant ache, the burn when he moved too quickly, the sting of his cracking scabs and the bruise deep within his tail. He wanted that relief, and he resented the human for offering it, and he resented himself for needing it, and he resented—

No. It did him no good to resent his pod. They were only doing what was right, what was prudent. If there was a failure here, it was his.

And he knew he would have done it again, to save Yeonjun and the yearlings. His knife hand was not worth more than a life. He was not worth more than the safety of his pod.

He pushed himself forward with a wince. The water cradled him, buoyed him, but moving still brought an unending ache. Perhaps the human healing would be worth it.

Or perhaps Jimin would poison him and take his tail. But if he were being honest with himself, Namjoon rather doubted that.

He set the bowl back on the sand, then heaved himself out of the water. It was harder to do one-handed; he had to brace himself with his forearm and inch up the bank like a seal before he could pull himself up to sit with his tail trailing in the water. Jimin startled at his sudden movement, then spluttered and laughed as the water lapped his knees and splattered his clothing, and then stopped doing anything except for staring at Namjoon, mouth slack.

“Alright,” Namjoon said when he was settled, hand held out. “For the pain.”

“Um,” said Jimin. His tongue dipped out to wet his lips, and he didn’t move. Namjoon cocked his head and blinked, and Jimin shook himself.

“Oh,” he said again, “right. Yeah.” His fingers worked at the small plastic square—his hands were small, Namjoon noted, but graceful despite their shape—and the backing peeled away. Jimin shook two small white capsules into his hand.

“You swallow them,” he said, dropping them into Namjoon’s waiting palm. “If you need something to take them with—”

But Namjoon had already swallowed them. There was a brief discomfort, and then a strange awareness of the capsules in his stomach, and then that too passed and nothing had changed. He frowned at Jimin.

“It did nothing.”

“You have to wait,” Jimin said. His smile was back, though it was muted. He did not stop staring at Namjoon, as though he doubted something about this situation. Namjoon could sympathise, he supposed. He had not woken this morning expecting to find himself sitting side by side with a human. “Does this mean I can check your, uh. Tail.”

Namjoon hesitated, distrusting, weighing the cost of saying yes. Mikyung would tell him he was being stubborn about it. Mikyung was not here.

But she would have been right. Namjoon sighed and twisted so Jimin could see the ruin of his tail.

“Thank you,” Jimin said, which was a strange thing to say when Namjoon had only shown him proof of his own failure and his vulnerable, bruised underbelly. “Oh, it looks a little better. That’s good.”

Namjoon pressed his lips together and stared at the wound. Did it look better? He could hardly tell these days. Some of the cracked scabs had peeled away, and there were new ones in their place. It would scar, Namjoon knew. It had begun to already.

“I’m going to put some ointment here,” Jimin said, pointing with his littlest finger at the worst of the punctures. “And then if it’s okay with you I can re-bandage your wrist? I think the rest can probably air out, but that one is— Um. I think maybe you should keep it covered.”

That had been Mikyung’s advice too—from the waxing to the waning moon, and longer if the skin did not knit well. Namjoon had the sinking suspicion it would be longer—he had not been taking care of it as well as it demanded. But he hadn’t had the materials, nor the strength, nor the knowledge of how to do it properly. For a moment he was resentful again, and then he was ashamed.

“Fine,” he said, and he braced himself for the touch.

It was… not unpleasant. Jimin moved with his crafts-maker’s attentiveness, carefully and with purpose. His hands shook a little as he squeezed his ointment out of its little tube and swiped it over the worst of the wounds, but he kept his touch light and fleeting and only to the wounds. Namjoon sat still, straining with patience and attentive to every flinch and flicker of change, ready to move in an instant—to dive, to flee, to pull Yeonjun’s knife, hunter or no, and put down any suggestion of a threat.

But Jimin showed no sign of violence. He moved with the precision of a maker, a mender, and the thought soothed him a little. Enough that he did not hiss or snap when Jimin’s fingers brushed the days-old bandage around his wrist.

“Okay?” he asked, his gaze rising to find Namjoon’s eyes. He had, Namjoon noticed, the faintest brush of freckles across his nose and cheeks, like stars in the night sky. His mouth was soft and his brow furrowed sharply, and his hair danced in the morning breeze, and the contrast intrigued Namjoon for the barest breath before he remembered himself.

Namjoon grunted a vague affirmative, and then he looked away. It was a stupid thing to do, to let the human go unwatched, but he did not want to see the wound.

He felt it instead—the shifting pressure as the bandage came off, the way Jimin cradled his forearm to lay it in his lap, the warmth of his palms. And he heard the low hiss of air—shock, perhaps, or disgust—and the twist of the cap. There was a moment of discomfort as bare air touched the healing wound, and then the same swift, careful brush of the ointment.

Jimin had been correct. It did sting a little.

“Okay,” he said when it was done, and Namjoon dared to look at the bandage sealed over his arm. It was a clean, crisp, winter-moon white, and it hid the ugliness well. 

He raised his hand to feel the edge of it, the line where his damp skin disappeared under the seal. It was unlike Mikyung’s mat of staunchweed and seagrass, and neater than his own fumbling attempts to recreate Mikyung’s wrapping. And, he realized, it didn’t hurt as much as it had been before. The human medicine had worked after all.

He looked up and found Jimin staring at him, closer than he had been, close enough to reach out and touch. Namjoon dropped his hand back to his side, in range of his knife—but he didn’t reach for it, and Jimin didn’t flinch or shift or make any indication that he’d noticed the wariness.

For a moment, they sat together and watched each other, neither of them saying anything. The sun rose higher beyond the mouth of the cave, taking its bright glare with it, and the light softened.

“Is it okay?” Jimin asked, soft as the light. He was still staring at Namjoon.

“Yes,” said Namjoon.

“Good,” said Jimin. “I’m really sorry this happened to you.”

Namjoon had no response to that. It wasn’t something that needed an apology. It was simply the way things were. 

But the thought was kind. It was kind to be sorry for a stranger. This Jimin, he understood, was a kind man.

Namjoon didn’t know what to do with a kind man. It would have been easier if he had been cruel—then Namjoon could have ended him and been done with it. Maybe, if he were lucky, he could have ended them both. But kindness… Kindness was difficult.

A sudden jangling broke him free of the thought, something like music but wave-crash loud. He hissed and yanked himself away, and Jimin made an equally frustrated noise and patted at himself with increasing desperation until finally he pulled a flat slab of black glass from his clothing.

“Shit,” he said as the rectangle let out another jangling chirrup and then went still and silent. He winced. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you. I thought I had turned it off. Oh, damn.” As he spoke, it began making its noise again, lighting up with a strange glow. There was a man’s face on it.

“I have to take this,” Jimin said, pushing himself to his feet. His face was still folded up in concern and apology, and he didn’t bother to pick up any of the things he’d brought with him as he rose. “Sorry, I’ll be back— I’m really sorry about this. Shit.” He turned away, picking a path up the bank, and brought the rectangle up to his ear, the tone of his voice changing.

“Yeah, Tae— No, sorry, I was— Yeah I’m on my way—”

His voice faded and then vanished entirely, leaving Namjoon alone with the lapping of the water and the crash of the waves against the rock and the distant cry of the gulls. Slowly the panic left him and his heartbeat steadied, and his hand unclenched from the knife. In the wake of the surprise, and whatever it had been that came before—the deepwater stillness, the look in Jimin’s eyes, the uncertainty of kindness—Namjoon felt adrift. Even the pain was dulled and distant. He touched, gingerly, the wrapping around his wrist and flexed a hand that was not there, and then he touched his tail, and then he stared out the mouth of the cave, jaw tight.

He didn’t know what to make of it. It was an exhausting prospect to make anything of it, and so he didn’t bother to try. 

But—irrationally, strangely, confusingly—he almost wished Jimin had stayed longer.

“I brought dinner,” Jimin called as he ducked into the cave along with the last gleam of sunset. He held a bag in one hand and his purchase from the fish market in the other, an apology for running out and—he was pretty sure—scaring the shit out of Namjoon. “Sorry about earlier, and about being gone so long, I didn’t— Namjoon?”

The silence pulled him up short. The cave was empty.

“Namjoon?” he called again, picking his way around to the sand. Still, there was no answer. Namjoon wasn’t there.

He hesitated for a moment, then plopped down on the sand and kicked off his shoes, dipping his toes in the water. It was cooler in the cave than out on the beach and under the sky, but the chill was pleasant. The cave was quiet around him; even the waves just beyond the mouth sounded distant, a low thrum of water against stone. After a moment, he flopped back to stare up at the rock above him. It wasn’t a bad place to be, he supposed. In the dying gleam of the sun, the shadows were almost purple, and there were flecks of dark running through the sandy stone. He should try freehanding something like that, he thought to himself. It would be an interesting challenge.

When he woke up, a pair of flashing eyes loomed over him.

“Fuck,” Jimin yelped, scrambling backwards and kicking water and sand up everywhere. “Holy shit, don’t do that.”

Namjoon blinked at him, coiled halfway up the bank. “You were sleeping?”

“Guess I nodded off.” Jimin rubbed at his chest, trying to get his heart to calm down. “Next time just poke me or something. Jesus.”

At least it made them even, he supposed. Maybe now they could cut it out with the scaring the shit out of each other and move forward as friends. Or something.

“I brought dinner,” he said, collecting himself. “If it’s still dinner time?” Shit, how long had he been asleep? He dug his phone out of his pocket and was relieved to find it was only some twenty or thirty minutes past sunset. He hadn’t been napping long, it seemed.

Namjoon said nothing about the prospect of dinner time, but he leaned forward to peer at the phone with a frown. The light from the screen illuminated the furrow of his brow and the sharp, handsome line of his jaw. He had the same look he’d had at the mention of Jimin’s pottery—a silent, wary curiosity.

“It’s my phone,” Jimin said.

Namjoon’s frown deepened, and then the phone screen dimmed and it was impossible to make out his expression at all.

“It doesn’t look like a phone.”

Jimin blinked at him in the dark. Where had he seen a phone? “It’s a mobile. It’s, uh. Mobile. I can take it around with me. Here, look.” He tapped the screen again and Namjoon startled at the light. On screen, a picture of him and Taehyung grinned up at him, their faces squeezed into the frame. He unlocked it and tapped over to the number pad. “I can call people, see? But I can also send them messages. And watch videos. And listen to music. And take pictures. Or look at pictures. It does a lot of stuff.”

Namjoon made a low humming noise as Jimin swiped through the various apps, leaning in when Jimin got to the photo gallery. “Are those your bowls?”

“My— Oh, yeah.” He pulled up the picture of a pot that Namjoon had singled out, one of the last things he’d thrown in the old studio. He’d modeled it off an iris, or had tried to anyway. The wide mouth hadn’t quite come together right, less petals and more scallops, and eventually he’d given up. “It’s not my best, to be honest.”

“It’s impressive,” said Namjoon. “Making is difficult.”

“Uh, thanks. I guess it is.” Jimin hoped Namjoon couldn’t see the way his face warmed. He clicked the phone off, just in case. “So… you were out?”

“Yes.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Out,” Namjoon said flatly. Jimin ducked his head, hiding a grin. He sounded a little like Yoongi trying to dissuade them from a line of questioning—not genuinely frustrated, but being uncooperative for the game of it.

“Just out?”

Namjoon’s tail flicked in the water, a splash that reached as far as Jimin’s pants. Yeah. Exactly like Yoongi.

“I guess it must get pretty boring in here,” he reasoned, letting that line of questioning go. “I mean, it’s a nice cave, but it’s probably nicer out in the ocean.” Jimin certainly couldn’t imagine being stuck in here all the time. He’d go mad, probably. But Jimin didn’t do great on his own in general.

Namjoon was quiet for a long moment. “It is,” he said eventually. “It’s beautiful.”

“I’d love to hear about it,” Jimin said, an invitation. Namjoon stayed silent.

Well, that was fine. Jimin wasn’t going to push—not much, anyway. And there was something in Namjoon’s tone, in the quiet wistfulness, that Jimin thought maybe he shouldn’t dig into for fear of bruising it. He had enough injuries to nurse already. “And how’s your tail?”

“Better.”

“That’s good. Is it hurting? You should probably take more painkillers. Here, hang on.”

Jimin flicked on his camera flashlight so he could see the bag. Namjoon hissed at the sudden light and flinched back, and Jimin immediately turned the light away from him.

“Sorry,” he said, hand held out, unsure if he was trying to shield Namjoon or reassure him. “Is it too bright?”

“No,” said Namjoon. Then, “Your eyes are weak.”

“Well, yeah.” Jimin laughed. “I mean, I can’t see in the dark. Can you?”

“Yes.”

Oh. Well. “Neat. Can you pass me my bag, then?”

Namjoon didn’t move for a moment, and then the bag dropped in Jimin’s lap.

“Thanks.” He stuck his phone in the sand, carefully angled to not shine quite so directly in Namjoon’s eyes, and went digging for what he’d brought. First he pulled out the capsule of pills, popping two out without waiting for Namjoon to argue and dropping them in his hand. Next was the tupperware he’d packed, and his utensils, and then he unwrapped his catch from the market and set it down over on Namjoon’s side of the light. It was the oddest picnic he’d ever set up, but he was pleased to note that Namjoon didn’t hesitate nearly as long as he had that morning before he took the pills.

“I thought we could eat together,” Jimin said, crossing his legs. “I brought us both food. Um, mine’s cooked. You can try it if you want?” He popped the lid off the container, breathing in the smell of cooked meat and spice and stew. Namjoon, lingering at the edge of the phone’s glow, frowned.

“It’s not bad,” Jimin assured him. “I mean, I’m not the best cook, but it tastes good. I think.” He went digging for a decent piece of meat. “Here.”

Namjoon eyed him for a long minute, silent. Jimin waited as it stretched, increasingly aware of the damp seeping into his pants and the dark around them and the weight of Namjoon’s attention. His eyes flashed when the light hit them just right.

Slowly, he leaned forward, his stomach flexing as he held himself up on one hand, and took the piece of meat gently between his teeth. Jimin’s breath caught, chopsticks wavering in the air. He set them down quickly, watching Namjoon chew.

“Well?” he asked.

Namjoon swallowed. “I think,” he said, “I will eat the fish.” 

Jimin blinked at him, and then burst into laughter. Namjoon’s nose wrinkled, which only redoubled his amusement.

“You hated it.”

“It is… hot without being hot.”

“Spicy,” Jimin provided. He should have thought about that. “Sorry. I guess fish aren’t usually spicy.”

“Sometimes they have poison in them. Your food tastes like that.”

“Ouch,” Jimin giggled. “I can’t believe you’re accusing me of trying to poison you.”

“Trying badly,” Namjoon said, expression flickering. Jimin barely caught it in the dim light, but—

“You’re joking,” he tested, half a question. Namjoon made the same wrinkled-nose expression—not quite disgust, more some kind of creasing displeasure—but his mouth twitched as he did it, and Jimin knew that he was right. “You are!” he said, delighted. Namjoon’s response was to lean back and reach for the fish Jimin had brought, but his silence was as good as agreement.

“I’ll bring you something not-spicy next time,” he promised, gleeful. “No more poisoning.”

“You do not need to feed me.”

“Okay,” Jimin shrugged, digging into his own meal. “But I will.”

Namjoon didn’t say anything to that. But he did eat the fish, so Jimin figured it was alright.

Jimin, Namjoon thought, was not only kind, but also lonely. It was something he had considered early, but as the days passed and the world turned and the moon shrank to a sliver and swelled again, he was more certain. Each day he came at least once, early, and sometimes twice. And he lingered, especially in the evenings—that was, when he did make that second visit, when he wasn't busy with what he called  keeping up with life. He often seemed tired during his evening visits, but in a pleased way, and there was often earth on his hands, and he often wore clothing smeared with the remains of his making. Studio days, Jimin called them. He said the work was going well. He said he’d show Namjoon, one day.

He said many things. He had, it seemed, something to share about almost everything—the sea and the beach and the town and his crafts-making, and many other things Namjoon did not know anything about, like television and books and his friends, who he clearly loved and missed.

“It’s my uncle’s house,” he was saying today. He’d come earlier than usual, while the sun was still high. Namjoon had been resting in the basin of the cave, enjoying the shade as the sun glanced down blinding over the waves, waiting for the evening and the cool for the chance to swim. It came easier these days—his tail did not ache as badly, and hunger did not sap his strength. He’d almost caught his own meal yesterday, and he itched to try again.

But— later. Now, he lazed in the cave and shared a crinkling bag of human food that Jimin called snacks, and then practically candy—which was, as he’d explained, a sweet treat that was bad for you but too good not to enjoy. This snack was made of many small shapes, but Namjoon liked the tiny, pointed ones best. Jimin called those stars, and Namjoon supposed he could see the resemblance to the creatures that clung to the rocks and lazed in the shallows. He could not see the resemblance to the faint, speckling light high above the ocean at night. Humans, he was learning, had funny ways of calling things.

“He had to move into the city,” Jimin continued, which was another thing Namjoon only knew about in passing. He’d rolled his pants up to stick his feet in the water. They were small, like his hands, and his toes wiggled now and then. There was something endearing about it, a yearling impatience. Namjoon wasn’t certain he knew he was doing it. “I’m taking care of it for now. It’s honestly really nice, but I do kind of miss being in town.”

“Town is close,” Namjoon said. He’d swum this part of the coast countless times in the past moon, and he knew how close this cove was to the piers and docks. In truth, it was a little close for comfort, but he hadn’t been thinking of comfort when settled. Now, with his tail more healed than not, he’d thought about moving on—but he had the sense that Jimin would be disappointed if he did. That, for some reason, stayed him.

“Well, yeah. But I used to live with my best friend and now I live alone. I’m not like you. I’m not good at being solitary.”

It was such an unexpected observation that it took Namjoon, busy picking out the star-shaped almost-candies, a moment to understand what he had said. When he did, the sentiment hurt, sudden and shocking as a sharkbite. It should not have surprised him so badly—he was, indeed, alone. But it was easy to forget when Jimin joined him, his voice filling the hollow of the cave and lingering after like an echo.

“We are not solitary,” Namjoon said, almost unthinking. “We have pods.”

“Pods?”

Namjoon rubbed a hand over the new scars on his tail, a habit he’d picked up without meaning to. It took him a moment to find the words to explain it in a way Jimin would understand. “Groups that travel together. There are many generations. Elders and yearlings and hunters. Some crafts-makers.” He said it for Jimin, who smiled small and pleased. “Siblings and year-mates.”

“Like a family.”

“A large family, maybe,” Namjoon allowed. Jimin grinned.

“I know what that’s like. So where’s yours?”

“My pod is gone.”

Jimin paused partway through reaching for the bag, and his face made a terrible, twisted shape.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t— I just assumed.”

Namjoon raised one shoulder, a gesture he had picked up from Jimin. “You did not know. You have not met them.”

“I’m really sorry though. Did whatever attacked you hurt them too? Is that why you’re— Is that why they’re gone?”

Namjoon frowned at him for a moment, confused, and then understood what he meant. The ache in his chest grew, and with it came a heaviness he often forgot when Jimin was near. The human made living light work.

“No,” he said, words awkward. His deftness with human speech left him almost entirely, and he struggled to put his words in order. “They are gone away, not— They weren’t hurt. It was only me.”

It wasn’t that kind of gone. They weren’t dead. Namjoon was the dead one, gone from them. His hand drifted towards the necklace around his throat, and then he realized it wasn’t his hand, only the ghost of it.

A strange look came over Jimin’s face, like a cloud passing over the sun. “They left you?”

“I can’t hunt,” said Namjoon, dropping his arm. The admission stung, even though it was the truth. Maybe it stung more for being the truth. “They were right to leave me.”

“But they’re your family.”

“I was a mouth to feed, and I would have slowed them. The blood in the water would have brought other hunters. Hungry things. The summer hunt is long and difficult already, without bait to put everyone in danger.” 

Jimin’s face didn’t change, and shame coiled in Namjoon. He should at least be able to do this, to explain properly the importance of the pod’s survival and the insignificance of his own. But he didn’t know how to make Jimin understand how important it was to swim, to seek, to give to the pod, and how he couldn’t do any of those things, so it was only right that they move on without him. It wasn’t cruelty or callousness. It was the only way to survive.

But when he opened his mouth to explain, grief stuck in his throat, the unbearable choking weight of being left behind. That shamed him worse than any misunderstanding. It was unworthy of him. He had no right to it.

“It’s the way things are done,” he said, more to himself than to Jimin. He struggled for a moment for something else to say, then settled on silence. There was nothing else to add.

Jimin’s stormcloud expression lingered for a long minute, and then his hand touched Namjoon’s arm, just above the tie of his bandage.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We don’t— That isn’t how I learned to do things.”

“Clearly,” said Namjoon, and he was surprised to find himself smiling as he said it. But it was true—no mer would ever go through such effort for a hunter who could no longer hunt. “Perhaps it is different as a human.”

“Maybe it shouldn’t be,” Jimin said, cloudy again. The expression sat badly with Namjoon. He reached for the bag of practically candy and poked through it. With one hand, it was difficult to find what he was looking for, and he spilled more of the tiny treats on the sand than he meant to before he found one of the stars. He reached over to give it to Jimin. 

“It is the way things are done,” he said again. “But I am lucky to meet someone who does things differently.”

“You are,” Jimin said, and he took the star with a smile like true starshine—faint and flickering and a guiding light in the dark. “Thank you for telling me. If there’s anything I can do to help… Well, I don’t know how much I can do.” He laughed, a little awkward, and ducked his head briefly so Namjoon couldn’t see the face he made. “I guess it doesn’t help to tell you not to feel bad. But I’m here to listen. Or just be here. You’re not alone.”

“I know,” Namjoon said. He touched Jimin’s knee, careful, and Jimin’s head rose. It didn’t help—Namjoon still couldn’t tell what kind of face he was making, even staring straight at him. But there was something in it that he liked. Something sweet. “Thank you, Jimin.”

Jimin’s strange, confusing expression cleared, and his eyes smiled, and Namjoon’s heart beat quicker in his chest. “You’re welcome, Namjoon.”

A light flickering on the beach long after dark drew Namjoon’s attention as he made his slow, stiff way back to the cave from another evening’s swim.

Jimin had come early that afternoon and apologized for not staying longer—something to do, he said, mouth pursed with some kind of misplaced guilt. Namjoon, restless, hadn’t minded his company but had been grateful when he left so that he could make his limping way out of the cave and stretch his tail. He’d made a halfhearted attempt at hunting, and when that had only soured his mood, he’d gone south to stare at the town instead.

It lit up at sunset these days—which Jimin called tourist season and tried to explain to Namjoon, as though Namjoon didn’t know humans migrated the same as anything else. With the pod, the busy summers meant straying further from crowded shores towards the uncertainty of deeper waters, but alone and in the dark, Namjoon could drift close to see the lights and the people spread out across the piers. Humans were dull things, Namjoon thought—but dull was the wrong word for the gleaming lights strung over the water and the sound of laughing children, shrieking like the gulls and greedy with life.

Tonight, the gleam and the laughter twisted in his chest, and he was slow and heavy with more than just injury when he made his way back towards his paltry shelter, alone up the coast. 

And then: the light on the beach, and a moment later a cackle of laughter. A fragment of the town spread over the empty sands. A curiosity. 

There was not—save for Jimin, out walking some mornings before he made his way to the cave—often movement on this particular beach. Jimin called it private, some turn of human law that meant the screaming children and their migrating families did not disturb the waters here. But they were disturbed tonight, by fire and by figures who moved around it. Their voices carried over the water as Namjoon approached, equal parts intrigued and wary.

There were three of them—no, four—no, six, and Namjoon would have recognized the figure picking his way across the sand anywhere. He moved as he had the first time Namjoon had seen him in the cave, with the grace and precision of a hunter. There was something light and keen about how he placed his feet in the shifting sands, even as he gesticulated wildly and listed into the man next to him, who Namjoon recognized as well. He was taller and leaner in the flesh, but it was unmistakably the man from Jimin’s phone picture. Taehyung.

“Here he is,” crowed Taehyung as the two approached the fire, which another man, small and square-shouldered, was feeding long, knotted lengths of driftwood. “Our missing Jiminie.”

“How am I missing,” said Jimin, shoving against Taehyung as he collapsed on the sand. They had a yearling’s bond, Namjoon had thought from the way Jimin talked about him. Seeing them now, tussling together in the firelight, he thought perhaps they might have been each other’s knife hand. The thought caught on the twisted thing in his chest and set it aching all over again.

“You never come to visit,” said another of them, pulling cans from a large box and passing them over.

“I saw you three days ago,” Jimin returned.

“Barely.”

“He’s busy, Jungkook-ah,” said the man who was feeding the fire. “He doesn’t have time for us anymore.”

“You’re so full of shit,” said Jimin, but he was laughing, a bright and sparking sound. “Maybe I wanted you to miss me.”

“Distance makes the heart grow fond,” said another one, picking himself up from his spot on the sand and stumbling around the fire to drop next to Jimin’s other side, wrapping a long and limber arm over his shoulders. He had a smiling face. “So we’re very fond.”

“Just-down-the-road fond,” said the one at the fire, and the one he’d called Jungkook reached out to punch him in the shoulder.

This was Jimin’s pod, Namjoon understood, drifting closer to watch. They folded into each other with the familiarity of time and affection, all their edges blunted. Jimin, in the firelight, shone among them, the loneliness shedding like old scales. Namjoon bobbed with the slow and shallow waves, unable to pull himself away.

“Did you figure out the first aid situation?” one of them asked, his silhouette broad where it blocked the fire.

“First aid?” echoed Taehyung.

“Jiminie had questions about infections.”

“Just hypotheticals,” came Jimin’s voice. “I mean, y’know. If I cut myself in the studio or anything.”

“You’ve managed this long,” said the one tending the fire, low and drawling.

“Is that why you were buying half the pharmacy?” said Jungkook. The youngest, Jimin had said. Namjoon certainly heard it in his teasing, and in the way the others let him be a bother.

“Yah, Jeon Jungkook, if you keep lying about shit I’ll shove you in the ocean.”

“You wouldn’t. Oh, but we could swim!”

“Not at night,” said the one with the broad shoulders—Namjoon thought he might be Seokjin, who Jimin had called a nurse, a healer of sorts, and their eldest. “You never know what’s out there.”

“Yeah,” said Jimin, his head turning towards the water. Namjoon dipped low, only his eyes peering over the waves. There was little chance they would see him, not in the dark—but the moon was full and bright overhead, and he swore for the span of a heartbeat that Jimin’s eyes had found his own.

Then the heartbeat passed, and Jimin’s attention moved on.

“Never know what’s out there,” Jimin said. “You might get eaten.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Jungkook. “I could fight a shark.”

Namjoon snorted. On the beach, so did Jimin.

“You definitely couldn’t.”

Jungkook sat up. The fire caught his expression, all eager stubbornness. “I could!”

“He probably could,” said Taehyung. Jimin shoved him.

“Nobody is fighting any sharks,” said Seokjin. He had a patient, vaguely amused air as he waved Jungkook back down. “And nobody is swimming at night.”

“Safety first, safety second,” said the limber one, sunk low in the sand. Taehyung reached around Jimin to pat at him blindly. “Coolness third.”

“Spoilsport,” said the one tending the fire. Seokjin made a series of high-pitched, irritated noises that made the rest of them laugh.

“We should go swimming, though,” said Jungkook, sinking back down next to the one tending the fire, seemingly content to be corralled so long as there was amusement to be had. “Now that Jiminie-hyung has a beach.”

“Maybe,” said Jimin, and his eyes glanced out towards the water again. “I’m pretty busy with the studio. And it’s really not safe, you know, swimming alone.”

“It’s not alone if it’s all of us. Jin-hyung’ll look out for us.”

“Ah, still…”

It was sweet of him, the concern. Namjoon wanted to tell him that it was alright. He would not make trouble for his pod, and he did not think Jimin’s pod would make trouble for him. But he was far away, and hidden in the dark, and would not have known how to say it even if Jimin had been sitting next to him, alone.

“Come on, why not?”

“It’s just…” Jimin hesitated again. “It’s so calm without all the people. I’m worried about scaring away whatever might have made a home here. I wouldn’t want to run anyone off by being too loud or… y’know. Annoying.”

Namjoon drew back in the water. The others clamored to disagree, and to ask about the wildlife, and to promise calm, but Namjoon dipped below the waves and their protestations turned to muffled, muted sound.

Had he made his home here? He had not intended to, certainly—he had sought the shelter of a quiet grave and little more. But the moon had turned in the time he had been here, and he was not, he realized, eager to leave. And here was Jimin, denying his pod so that Namjoon might keep his safety and his privacy. Namjoon had not expected to find such protectiveness from a human. 

But he had not expected to live either, and here he was, more healed than not, fed and free. He felt unwieldy with the realization, and gentle too. He wanted to see Jimin. The man was mere spans away, laughing with his friends, and Namjoon missed him.

Namjoon pushed himself through the water, the sea cradling him, and slipped home.

Jimin was in the studio that afternoon, midway through centering his most recent commission, when Yoongi’s voice broke through the trailing end of a song with a crackle of radio static. Jimin slowed the wheel with a frown.

“Sorry for the interruption,” Yoongi said, voice lacking his usual slow announcer’s cadence. “The station has received news of a severe weather warning issued from Pohang to Uljin. Everyone is advised to bolt doors and bring in or tie down outdoor furniture.”

Jimin twisted to look through the window. The sky had been grey all morning, but the water had a chop to it that it hadn’t earlier.

“Phone and power lines may be affected,” Yoongi carried on over the radio. “Anyone in outlying coastal areas is invited to shelter at the Sunwonbok Middle School gym. Food and lodging will be provided for the night.”

Jimin wiped his hands on the rag over his thighs, scraping off the worst of the wet clay before he picked up his phone, which promptly buzzed with a weather alert. Trust Yoongi to be ahead of the curve.

“Listeners with friends or family in the area are advised to shelter inland,” Yoongi was saying in the background as Jimin pulled up the weather map and whistled at the size of the storm bearing down on them. “Kkul FM advises against weathering this alone. Don’t be stubborn. This is a great chance to visit friends.”

Jimin laughed. Subtle. Well, he supposed he could spend the night in town. Taehyung would be thrilled, and he was already behind with work. Another day wouldn’t matter. Though it would be too bad to miss dinner with—

Oh, shit. Namjoon.

Jimin twisted to stare out the window again, where the sky loomed low and dark over the stormy water. The wind had picked up too, yanking on the towels hanging on the line and the scrubby grasses of the cliffs. Shit.

Jimin stood, knees knocking against the wheel, and scrubbed roughly at his hands. He didn’t even bother to turn off the radio, only dropped his rag on the ground and yanked on a jacket as he shoved his way out the door.

Outside, the wind hit him full in the face, bringing with it the sting of brine, a fine dusting of sand, and the first faint speckling drops of rain. Jimin squinted, hand raised to shield himself from the worst of it, and braced himself as he stumbled along the now-familiar path to the cave.

“Namjoon!” he called as soon as he reached the fissure of the back entrance. He nearly slipped as he squeezed into the shelter of the cavern, overbalancing as he stepped out of the scouring force of the wind. He shoved his hair out of his face. “Joon!”

“Jimin?” Namjoon was in the basin, tail stretched out behind him. In the grey stormlight it was a deep, rippling gold beneath the water. He took one look at Jimin and immediately pushed himself forward onto the sand. “What is it?”

“There’s a storm coming,” said Jimin. “A big one. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure what else to do. Concern seared in his chest, made worse by the certainty that there wasn’t much he could do to help if Namjoon wasn’t okay. Namjoon might be a strong swimmer, and in far better shape now than he’d been a month ago, but he was still injured. Just like that first day on the beach, Jimin’s mind conjured up all sorts of images of worst case scenarios: Namjoon dashed on the rocks, or swept out to sea, or… well, at least he couldn’t drown. But Namjoon himself had explained the danger of deeper waters, especially while he was still healing, and worry buzzed under Jimin’s skin like a second heartbeat.

“I mean, will you be okay here?” he asked, coming down the bank to crouch next to Namjoon. Namjoon watched him approach, a frown tucked between his brows. His hair dripped over his forehead, and Jimin itched to push it back to see his amber eyes better. He tucked his hands into fists and pushed them against his knees to hide their trembling. “It’s supposed to be really bad.”

He could hear it already—the rushing of the wind, the crash of the waves picking up against the cliffs. The basin of the cave, usually so placid, had begun to shift, water sluicing in from outside and eddying around, creeping up the bank. It was hard to make out through the foaming of the waves and the darkening sky, but Jimin thought perhaps it had started to rain. The temperature, usually cool in the cavern, had dropped to a proper chill, and even in his sweater he was cold.

Namjoon pushed himself up on his good arm, mouth pursed. “Will you be safe?”

Jimin gave a hollow laugh. “I mean, I’ve got the house. I’ll be indoors. But you’re… I don’t want you to get hurt.” Again , he didn’t say, but he thought maybe Namjoon could tell given the way his mouth tilted.

“And your house is safe?”

Jimin shrugged. “Safer than here.”

For a long minute, Namjoon stared at him. Jimin didn’t know what he was thinking, but he knew they didn’t have time for it.

“Namjoon,” he said. “Please. How do I help you?”

Namjoon stared at him, and he seemed to come to a decision. “Help me out of the water,” he said.

Jimin stared, but Namjoon seemed to mean it, injured arm held out towards Jimin. Even in the gloom, his face was clear. Jimin rose in confusion, hands hooking around his bicep and the bend of his elbow, and Namjoon dragged himself forward with his good arm as Jimin helped pull him up the bank.

“I don’t know if this will help,” he said as they struggled together. “The caves flood when the weather gets bad.” Already he could hear the trickling of water spilling through the warren of smaller caves and passages behind them as the rain began to soak through the earth. “Is there something I can bring you?” He couldn’t imagine what. Towels? Food? Clean water? What did a mermaid need to survive a storm on land?”

“Do not— bring anything,” Namjoon panted, his tail curling out of the water. It was the first time Jimin had seen all of him on land. “I will come with you.” 

“You— What?” There was no way he had heard that correctly. “I’m sorry but there’s no way I can drag you all the way home. Maybe from the beach?”

“Not from the beach,” he said, holding a hand out to gesture Jimin back. “Wait.”

Jimin took a few cautious steps away. “What are you doing?”

“Molting,” said Namjoon, as though it were obvious, and then his tail began peeling away.

Jimin gaped as the gleaming bronze of his scales grew dull and started to drop onto the sand, shedding in uneven clumps—except for the parts that didn’t shed but instead began to fuse, texture softening. It was the strangest sort of optical illusion, as though something were being made and unmade at once, textures and shapes all wrong until suddenly, like blinking, they were right. There were fins and then there weren’t, and a great divot split and stretched down through the center of his tail, and suddenly there were ankles and calves and thighs, and something between his thighs. Jimin slapped a hand over his eyes—and then, curious, peered through the cracks of his fingers, and then raised his face to stare intently at the rock face above them.

“What the fuck,” he said, a little faint. “Have you been able to do that the whole time?”

“Not until I healed,” said Namjoon. He sounded short of breath, pained, and Jimin immediately turned back to him.

He lay shivering on the sand, tucked around himself, wearing nothing but his strange belt and his knife and surrounded by dull, faded scales. If Jimin hadn’t known what they looked like before, he would never have imagined they belonged to anything as marvelous as Namjoon—they looked like the detritus of dead fish, some seabird’s feeding ground. But Namjoon hadn’t come out of the transformation unscathed. The wound on his tail was visible on his thigh, and it was bleeding again, a little, obviously irritated by the transformation. He cradled his arm close to his chest, shuddering, and Jimin forgot entirely about modesty as he crouched down to help Namjoon sit.

“That was really cool,” he said, an arm around Namjoon’s back. His skin was cool and soft, his scars smooth beneath the palm of Jimin’s hand. His chest rose and fell. “And kind of gross. Does it hurt?”

“It is not meant to.”

Which meant it probably did. Jimin shook himself.

“Okay,” he said, peeling off his jacket and draping it over Namjoon. It wasn’t much, but it was the only thing he had to offer. Fortunately the walk to the house wasn’t too far. “Can you stand?”

“Yes,” said Namjoon, though it took both of them to get him to his feet, and once he was upright he leaned mostly against Jimin, limping as he took a few tentative steps. Even without the tail, he was taller than Jimin, and heavy too. Jimin’s jacket, long on him, barely reached mid-thigh. At least it offered some modicum of privacy, if nothing else.

Jimin grunted and wedged himself under Namjoon’s arm, one hand around his shoulders and the other braced on his chest, which was every bit as solid and warm as it had looked. Jimin would have appreciated it more if the water level hadn’t begun to rise, lapping at their feet and soaking his shoes. The various water-worn warrens at the back of the cave kept up their steady dripping, beginning to spill as well, and it was clear the cave would flood before the weather calmed.

“Right,” said Jimin. “You good?”

“Yes,” Namjoon grunted, and together they made their way out into the storm.

It had truly begun to rain in the few minutes Jimin had been in the cave, a constant steady downpour that dripped down the back of his shirt and plastered his hair in his eyes. Namjoon stumbled along next to him, his breath heavy in Jimin’s ear as they picked their way along the craggy, windswept path up and over the cliffs. They had to move slowly, between the weather and Namjoon’s clumsiness, and with his hands busy holding Namjoon up, Jimin couldn’t clutch the guide rope for stability. Below them, waves crashed against the rock, and the wind whipped up to a gale. In the distance, thunder pealed. Jimin grit his teeth.

“Sorry,” he said, pitched loud over the storm. “Just a little farther. There!”

His house was a yellow beacon against the grey of the water and the clouds and the descending night, and they forced their way toward it, a lumbering four-legged beast seeking shelter. Jimin had the presence of mind to grab his towels off the line—the ones still there, anyway, soaked and flapping in the wind. Then they were at the door, and Jimin let go of Namjoon for long enough to force it open against the gale, and then they were in the narrow, chilly galley of the laundry room, panting and leaning against each other and soaked through.

“Wow,” said Jimin, pushing his dripping hair out of his face and dropping the towels to worry about later. “I can’t believe we made it.”

They moved more slowly towards the bathroom, leaving puddles in their wake. Namjoon’s footprints were mixed with blood, and he hissed when Jimin deposited him on the seat of the toilet, bloody water streaked down the outside of his left leg.

“Okay,” said Jimin, turning to the cabinets to find them dry towels. He pulled out the whole stack, draping one over Namjoon’s shoulders and dropping another on the floor to soak up the worst of the mess. “You dry off, and I’ll find you something to wear. Okay?”

“Yes,” said Namjoon. He leaned forward, the sodden jacket tugged tight around him, staring at his toes as they flexed against the tile. Jimin touched his shoulder, and when Namjoon’s attention swung up to him, he smiled and pressed his best, softest towel into Namjoon’s hands.

“Don’t worry about the blood or anything. I’ll help you clean up, okay?”

“Yes,” said Namjoon again, softer. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” said Jimin, and he padded out of the bathroom and towards his bedroom to hopefully find anything in Namjoon’s size.

He managed to scrounge up a pair of old pajama pants, still folded in the bottom of a box he hadn’t finished unpacking. They were checkered white and tan and big enough on Jimin that he hoped they might fit. He grabbed a sweater for good measure, in case Namjoon got cold. Then he changed out of his own soaked clothing and dressed again and hurried back to the bathroom.

Namjoon had shed the jacket and wrapped one towel around his shoulders and another over his lap. He still wore the knife around his hip, and the wound on his thigh beaded blood down his leg, mixing with the blood and water across the bathroom floor. He looked uncommonly small, sitting bare and shivering in Jimin’s bathroom. Jimin’s heart clenched in his chest, and he took a deep breath.

“Hey,” he said quietly from the doorway, afraid to startle him. Namjoon’s attention flicked up to him, unsurprised. “I found you some pants. If, um. You wear that sort of thing?”

“I can,” said Namjoon. He made no move to rise.

“Okay. And can I see your leg?” He crouched to pull the first aid kit from the cabinet under the sink. It had grown far more robust since Namjoon arrived. “I’ve got some painkillers too.”

“Thank you,” said Namjoon, taking them dry. One day Jimin was going to explain how that was meant to work, but for now he knelt to Namjoon’s left and began dabbing at the damp and the blood down his leg.

Namjoon was silent as he worked, and perfectly still. Jimin kept his movements as gentle as he could, wiping away the blood and dabbing antiseptic over the wounds—which looked, he was relieved to note, shallow and only a little irritated—and then taping a bandage over them. When that was done, he helped Namjoon rise to pull on the pants, though he turned down the sweater. After, Jimin moved all the soaked clothes and towels to the bathtub to worry about later. Namjoon watched him through it all, unmoving.

“Sorry,” said Jimin when the quiet grew too much. “Is it uncomfortable? Being out of water?”

“Strange,” Namjoon said. “Not uncomfortable.”

“Do you want to sit down?”

“I am sitting.”

“I mean like— Not in the bathroom. Um, here. Come see my house, I guess.”

Namjoon leaned on him again as they made their way towards the living room, limping a little—though not as badly as he had been, Jimin was relieved to note. But he paused before they made it to the main room, staring through the door of the studio.

“This is where you do your crafts-making,” he said, and Jimin blinked.

“Oh, uh, yeah. Do you want to see?”

Together, they shuffled into the room. Rain lashed against the windows, and the sky and the sea were one great smeary blot of grey-black down past the beach. The radio was still on, Yoongi’s voice blending into another song, and his phone was right where he’d dropped it in his haste to get to Namjoon.

And it was ringing. The contact photo was Hoseok’s, a cheeky snapshot of his hyung winking at him. Jimin cursed and sat Namjoon down at his wheel and grabbed for the phone just in time to miss the call. It started ringing again seconds later. Jimin swiped it open.

“Park Jimin I swear to God—”

“I’m okay,” Jimin said immediately. “I was just away from my phone.”

Through the window, lightning flashed, and another boom came seconds later. Jimin winced.

“Four missed calls!”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I’m really okay.”

“Is that Jimin? Is he alright?” Taehyung’s voice sounded muffled in the background, and then he was loud at the speaker. “Jimin-ah, are you alright?”

“I’m fine.”

“You should come into town,” said Hoseok, voice serious. “Yoongi-hyung says they’re saying it’ll get worse. There are already outages down south, and you’re all alone out there.”

“I…” Jimin hesitated and looked at Namjoon, strange and beautiful sitting at his wheel, fingertips skimming the lump of half-centered clay Jimin had left drying. He looked a little ridiculous in his flannel pants and his knife belt with his scars on display. And he matched the clay, a bit—he had the same burnished richness to him. Jimin couldn’t leave him here, couldn’t leave him alone. “I can’t.”

“Jimin—”

“I can’t, hyung. I’ve got— There’s someone here who needs me.”

“What?” Taehyung was loud again. “Who?”

“I’ll introduce you later,” he said, still watching Namjoon, whose head rose to watch him back. He didn’t make any protest, though. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“Jimin-ah, please.”

“I mean it, hyung. I can’t leave him. I— I just can’t. We’ll be okay.”

“The power—”

“I’ve got candles. And flashlights. I swear you gave me half the disaster kit when I moved. I’m probably better off than you are.”

“He’s kind of right,” said Taehyung, and then there was the sound of a scuffle and then a yelp, as though someone had just been pinched. Hard. Jimin smiled.

“Look, I’ll call later, okay? And I’ve got Yoongi-hyung on the radio so I know what’s going on. We’ll be alright.”

“I want to meet this mystery man,” said Hoseok, clearly unhappy. “And you take care, okay? Both of you.”

“We will,” said Jimin. “I promise.”

A moment later, the line went dead. Jimin sighed and looked at Namjoon.

“Well,” he said, injecting as much levity as he could. “I guess we’ll be hanging out for a bit.”

“That was your friend,” said Namjoon. “Your pod.”

“My— Yeah, I guess they kind of are. They want to meet you. I mean, if you want to meet them. I’m not sure what, uh. What the rules are.”

“We don’t often mix with humans,” said Namjoon. “But I would like to meet them.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” said Jimin. “Assuming we don’t get blown away first.”

“You have a good house,” said Namjoon, looking at the window and the long row of shelves where his project dried and the wheel in front of him. “You make good things here.”

“I try,” Jimin said. “Do you want to see the rest of it? We can come back here after if you want. You can use the wheel.”

“I don’t know if I will be any good,” said Namjoon, his arm cradled close to his chest, drawing attention to where his wrist ended. “But I think I’d like that.”

“Everyone has to start somewhere,” said Jimin. “Do you need help up? I’ll give you the tour.”

“Thank you,” said Namjoon. “My legs are still a little weak.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Jimin, ducking in close to him. “I really don’t mind.”

“You don’t?”

“Ah, well.” Jimin helped him rise, and then they were even closer. “You’re sort of. I mean. You’re very.”

Outside, lightning flashed, followed immediately by a crack of thunder so strong it shook the house. And then, with a great whirring buzz, the lights went out, and the radio went quiet, and everything went still except for the rattle of the storm.

“Well,” said Jimin. “Fuck.”

Namjoon sat on the couch as Jimin moved around, fetching candles and matches and a blanket, which he paused long enough to drop over Namjoon. Namjoon meant to tell him that he didn’t mind the cold, that the water was always chill and he was built for it, but his human shape appreciated the softness and the warmth as he draped the fabric over his shoulders. It was more freeing than the shirt, which had caught around his neck and choked him. He sat, watching Jimin move in the dark, his phone’s light shining in front of him to light the way.

“I’ll have to conserve battery,” he said as he returned with his find, setting up a half dozen narrow cylinders of wax. “But these should last us a while. I guess this means no TV, though.”

“I don’t mind,” said Namjoon. “Do you need help?”

“No, just sit there. I’ve got it.”

He had, it seemed. He struck the matches and lit the candles easily, and soon they glowed brightly across the table. 

Namjoon shifted on the couch. It was difficult to get comfortable with Yeonjun’s knife digging into his side. Eventually, equal parts embarrassed and irritated, he untied it from his hip altogether and laid it out on the table. Jimin paused his business with the candle to glance at it, and then at Namjoon.

“It is an oath-knife,” Namjoon said, answering the question on Jimin’s face. “I lost my knife saving a yearling in my pod. He swore his knife-hand to me in return.” Namjoon’s mouth twisted at the memory. “I did not want it, but he left it anyway. And this.” He touched the shark’s tooth at his neck. “To remember my kill.”

“You killed a shark?”

“Yes.”

“That’s.” Jimin’s eyes were wide, and he sat slowly next to Namjoon on the couch. “Wow.”

“It was stupid,” said Namjoon. “Only a fool fights a shark.”

“You should tell that to Jungkook.”

“Your pod’s yearling.”

“Oh, you should definitely call him that,” said Jimin, laughing. “Yeah, he’s the baby.”

Namjoon shook his head. “It was a stupid thing to do. It would be a stupid thing for him to do. But the yearlings were in trouble, and I am—I was a hunter.”

“I think you’re still a hunter,” said Jimin. “I mean, I guess I don’t really know how it works, but I think I’m still a potter even if I’m not making pots, you know? Just because you need a little time doesn’t mean you can’t be a hunter.”

“I might never hunt again,” Namjoon said. It didn’t sting quite so badly, sitting in Jimin’s human home, watching candle flames dance. Jimin sat close enough that Namjoon could feel the warmth of him. He wanted, inexplicably, to be closer. “Will I still be a hunter then?”

“There are other ways to hunt,” said Jimin. “You should talk to Jin-hyung. He fishes. I bet he has some tips.”

“I don’t know if that is the same thing,” said Namjoon. “But thank you. I would— I would like to meet your pod.”

“I’d like that too,” said Jimin, as though he hadn’t promised such a thing already. “I really would.”

He was close again. Namjoon had the sudden lightning-strike sensation that he’d been here before, close enough to count Jimin’s freckles, to see the light reflected in his eyes. He was warm, even with the space between them—and Namjoon did not want any space between them. He took a breath and glanced away, back at his knife. The reminder of the life that had abandoned him.

“The knife is a promise,” he said. His voice sounded strange to his own ears. “But it does not matter now. I am not part of the pod anymore. I have no right to the oath.”

“But you still have the knife,” said Jimin. “And the necklace. Does that mean something?”

“I don’t know,” Namjoon said. The uncertainty did not cut as deeply as he thought it would. “I am… I don’t know what I am.”

“Alive,” said Jimin with a surety Namjoon envied. “And here.”

Namjoon stared at the knife and said nothing. There was nothing he could say to make sense of the clamor in his head.

“Hey,” Jimin said, doing what he did best and breaking the silence for him.

“Yes?”

For a moment, there was no response. Then Jimin’s fingers touched under Namjoon’s chin, and Namjoon looked at him, mind going quiet. His eyes gleamed a little in the candlelight—not in the reflective way Namjoon’s did, but the dark of his irises caught the light and turned it to flickering stars. “Namjoon-ah.”

Namjoon’s mouth was dry. “Jimin,” he said, wetting his lips. He could not decide where to focus his attention—the stars of Jimin’s eyes, or the shape of his lips as he said Namjoon’s name, or the faint freckling over his cheeks and nose. The touch against the soft skin of his chin burned, and he wanted more of it.

“You know I really… I want you to be okay.”

“I know.”

“And I want you to want to be okay.”

There was a look in Jimin’s eye, rueful maybe—or maybe only knowing, as though he understood that they were not always the same thing. Namjoon wondered how he had come to know that, and hoped it was kindly. A kind man deserved kindness, even in that.

“I know,” Namjoon said, quieter. And then— “But I don’t know why.”

“Can’t I just care?” asked Jimin. He said it like a joke, like laughing, but his eyes stayed dark and star-bright at the same time, and the smile slipped away too quickly to be as light as he made it sound. Namjoon, with his hunter’s patience, waited.

“I guess I just—” said Jimin, and his fingers drew a line along Namjoon’s jaw. “Or, I mean, you’re just—”

His face was very close, and he was warm—like lazing in the summer shoals, like the sun breaking through the water. Namjoon leaned into him.

“You can stop me,” said Jimin, whisper-quiet. But Namjoon did not want to stop him. Namjoon pressed forward, until there was no space between them at all.

Jimin’s mouth was a shock against his—the best sort of shock, like the first breath of breaching, like catching a current and riding it through the depths. His lips were soft but seeking, and his hand curved against Namjoon’s jaw, holding without binding, guiding without insisting. Namjoon ceded to him, mouth opening beneath his, pulling him closer to soak up his warmth.

They kissed slowly, time held suspended around them like the unbreaking crest of a wave. The storm raged outside, but it did not touch them in Jimin’s small, sweet shelter of a home. There was only the couch, and Jimin’s warmth, and the flicker of firelight, and Namjoon wanted more, and more, and more. He could not think for it, could barely breathe. His fingers found the hem of Jimin’s shirt and pushed it aside to touch warm skin, to soak in the heat of him.

“Yes,” said Jimin, and then he was in Namjoon’s lap, his weight careful and poised, avoiding Namjoon’s injury—and that, Namjoon thought with the fragment of attention that was not wrapped up in Jimin, was kind, was thoughtful, was good. Namjoon did not know what one was meant to do with a good man, but he knew what he wanted. He pulled Jimin down into his lap, grateful for the weight of him, the solidness, the feeling of his crafts-makering hands roaming over his chest.

“Please,” said Jimin, soft and eager, breathing into his mouth. “Let me help, let me take care of you. Namjoon-ah—”

“Okay,” said Namjoon. There was nothing he wanted more than the safe surety of Jimin’s care. “Okay.”

In the morning, Namjoon woke on the couch, Jimin’s weight pressed against him. For a moment he lay there, staring up at the ceiling. Someone had painted the cross-beams, and in the faint bleed of morning light the scenes of the sea seemed almost to move. Namjoon watched them as the light bloomed and settled, and then he carefully untangled himself from Jimin’s sleeping form and rose to his feet and pulled on the pair of pants Jimin had given him. He was steadier now. His leg did not ache as badly, and he had his land legs again. It had been some time, but he had not completely forgotten what it was like to walk. That was a relief.

Carefully, he padded his way to the studio. It was as it had been left last night, save that Jimin had removed the lump of unturned clay from his wheel. The drying shapes of Jimin’s makings lined the shelves—bowls and pots and platters, and other things Namjoon wasn’t sure how to name. They were all lovely. They all had something of the sea to them, in the sweep of their curves and the rise of their walls. In their care and precision, though, they were all Jimin.

He was sitting on the stool in front of the wheel when Jimin found him.

“The storm’s cleared,” Jimin said by way of greeting, standing in the open doorway. It was obvious the storm had cleared, Namjoon thought—the sunlight touched Jimin’s face and the floor around his feet, slanting in through the sea-side window, where the sky was clear and the water calm. “If you want to leave.”

Namjoon looked at the room, and the sunlight, and Jimin. The clothing he wore felt strange, and his hip was bare and light without Yeonjun’s oath-knife strapped to it. He would have to return it, Namjoon thought, and the thought of the pod and the yearlings and their distance was a yellowing bruise, fading and gentle. He watched Jimin, and Jimin watched him.

“Or there’s breakfast,” Jimin said. “If you’re hungry.”

“I’m hungry,” said Namjoon. He was full of hunger. He hadn’t know how to say it, but Jimin was full of words. He made it easy.

“Okay. Breakfast, then. And you can leave later, if you want. Whenever you want.”

“Alright,” said Namjoon. “Would you like some help?”

Jimin blinked at him. “You don’t have to,” he said, uncertain. Namjoon rose from the stool.

“I know,” he said. “But would you?”

Jimin, when he smiled, was like the sunrise.

“I wouldn’t mind the company.”

“Alright,” said Namjoon again, and he knew then that he would not leave for a long, long time.