Cold Water

When he wakes next, it’s harder to think, but the pain is much more distant and foggy.

He doesn’t move much, but something must have tipped off Bain because he’s there in a moment. Brown eyes staring down at him through the dark of the vehicle, illuminated by passing lights outside.

He’s very pretty. Knauss would like to tell him so, but he can’t make the words form. He decides humming a low greeting is enough.

Bain just keeps staring and he drifts back off to sleep without realizing.

*

The fourth time he comes to conscious Knauss is starkly aware of an ache in his torso. He blinks back the haze and glances out into the cab. This time, Bain isn’t looking at him, but rather he’s sitting, grimacing in the low light as another human tends to his side.

He was wounded. The memory hits Knauss like diving into frigid water. Bain had been bleeding.

With an urgency that made his movements jerky, Knauss hurries to sit up in his sling before realizing the ache in his torso has sharpened into something jagged and he hisses through his teeth in surprise.

“Knauss?” Bain’s voice is strained and he must try to move because he makes a pained grunt and the human tending to him snaps.

“Sit still! Don’t pull this out and make me redo it,” she barks but Bain angles his body towards the mermaid regardless. His hands fidget slightly in his lap, out of tune with the needle going in and out of his side. His eyes don’t leave Knauss’ face and he’s only jostled by a particularly harsh bump in the pavement and the woman growls a quiet “Woah.”

He tenses, eyes tearing back to her and the rest of the cab. Like he’s only just realized that everyone is looking at them, “Are you feeling alright?”

Knauss pauses to catalogue everything before answering, “I do not feel alright.”

Bain grits his teeth but Knauss isn’t sure if it’s because they jerk over another bump in the road or if it was him.

Somewhere from by to his tail a woman scoots closer on the metal truck bed. Knauss counts five others total, not including Bain who is still looking at him with intensity. The silence lingers long enough that he can hear a car zoom by just outside.

“My chest hurts,” Knauss admits. Bain stares at him, expression devastatingly blank, before he curses under his breath, ripping his eyes away off to the side.

“I’m so fuckin’ sorry. I was fucking wrong, humans are the worst.” Bain admits it like it’s being ripped from him, but Knauss can only furrow his brow, confused.

“I do not follow.”

“Can you feel your arm?” Bain asks, throwing him off. Knauss tries to move his right arm but it hardly twitches at his side. That doesn’t seem promising, but he can’t feel any panic. The silence must go too long because Bain laughs a single, hysterical note, “What about your tail? Can you feel anything?”

“Yes, I can feel my tail and arm. They are hard to move,” Knauss replies, not letting the silence drag too long this time. Bain’s expression tips into something closer to distraught before he looks away and Knauss can’t read him anymore. The human is deceptively good at hiding his expressions.

“That’s not good, that’s -”

“Kiss me again,” Knauss requests and Bain looks like he’s been stabbed.

“God, Knauss, no. That’s such a fucking terrible idea. I’m literally one of the the worst things that has ever happened to you.”

“Bain, you’re being stupid,” Knauss says, unintentionally harsh because he can’t think of any other word for how he feels that the human would understand. Bain flinches.

“You ain’t gettin’ it- “

“Bain,” Knauss snaps firmly.

“No, Knauss!” Bain cuts him off with frustrated urgency, “This ain’t a Beauty and the Beast remake, Belle, this is real life stockholm syndrome!”

Knauss blinks at him, trying to process what that means given the context of a children’s animated film.

“My name is not Belle,” he says, finally. Bain snorts aloud and he didn’t mean to make a noise if the way he fumbles to regain composure is any indication.

“No, I know, it’s a - nevermind. I’m saying you ain’t right, man, in the head,” Bain gestures at his own temple. Knauss frowns as he continues, “You’ve been locked up with nobody else but me for like, almost nine months. This isn’t how I wanted this to go, you weren’t supposed to get- I mean, we was supposed to get you straight to the beach and now we can’t.”

There are a few feelings that hit him nearly all at once: the thought of returning to the sea sparks an instant, bright feeling before the next wave hits him with something akin to… regret? Disappointment? Concern?

Nine months, he laments, but the bigger, more looming thing in his mind was-

“What would you do after?”

Bain looks cross. Scowling like this isn’t important when they have so many other things to talk about.

“I don’t know, get into some sort of - look,” he rasps his tongue over his chapped bottom lip. Knauss can remember distinctly how they feel against his own lips. He’s distantly aware of the way Bain’s eyes flick around nervously towards the other humans in the cab before continuing, “Look, I ain’t exactly welcome back home. I’d figure something out. Witness protection or something.”

Not welcome at home? “Because your brother shot at you?”

Bain’s shoulders are tense and the human tending to his side makes a frustrated noise, “Ow, fuck! Don’t fuckin’ say it like- I mean, yes. It wasn’t him shooting though.” He sounds defensive, Knauss doesn’t want to push it. It doesn’t matter.

“Well, then who was shooting at us, Jack?”

Knauss and Bain both tense when another voice from the front passenger’s seat cuts in. The man is tall for a human, and his face is older, more severe. Bain bears his teeth while Knauss tries to parse english through the man’s Cajun accent.

“Shut up, Bill, that ain’t important. You made it out, no problems, just like I said,” Bain snaps and his eyes reflect the tail lights from the car in front of them, setting alight the dark irises and making him look utterly feral.

“Yeah, but you said the fucking alarms were off!”

“Yeah, well you can -”

“Listen here!” A new voice cuts in loudly, startling the men arguing, “It’s not important if he lied about his name as long as the money’s good. This is about the mission, so what does it matter?” Knauss is surprised to see mousey Jacob speaking up, though he can only guess what “the mission” is.

“Of fucking course it’s fuckin’ good, asshole!” Bain rounds, ready to go, but Jacob just raises his hands in a sign of surrender. In the edge of his vision the world continues swimming, like languid waves in his peripheral.

The woman tending to Bain’s side speaks up now, addressing the human in the front, “Don’t be a dick, we’re on the same side here Bill. Can you navigate, please?” Her tone books no room for argument and Bill glares a beat longer before huffing and turning around. The woman turns back to Bain with a stern look, “I’m done. Don’t fuck up my hard work.”

The words aren’t kind, but her tone is genuine. It’s interesting to parse the different tones from different humans in one closed space. Tone is, and will always be, the easiest way to decipher a human’s state. Though to be fair, he might be sensitive to that information due to the nature of his native speech consisting in mostly deciphering the difference in tonalities.

He also realized that though gills feel a little chapped, it’s not as bad as he thought it would be. Additionally, his hair is still damp, so the humans must have water somewhere nearby.

An oppressive silence stretches as Knauss tries to absorb all the information he’s been given. It feels like he’s adrift, lost with too many questions about his arm, the pain, the water, the fog cushioning the edges of his vision...

There’s so much to consider, but right now all he can really think to ask is -

“What is stockholm syndrome?”

Bain’s attention flicks back to him before he looks away.

“It means you’re imagining things that don’t exist. This whole thing is all like, in your head, cause I was your friend in a shitty situation.” Knauss can feel himself swell, blue eyes stormy as the finals on his forearms flex. When Bain looks back up he the blond shifts uncomfortably, voice now rambling, “Listen, I was trying to get you out, not like, fucking shot, and it’s not like you have any reason to trust a human like me, and we would have never met, or spent literally any time together ever, if you didn’t have any other options.”

“Bain, do you think I am a child?” he phrases the question like a statement. Bain fidgets and when his eyes flicker to the other humans in the cab he can see how uncomfortable this actually makes him. These humans are not friends. Allies, maybe, but obviously not to be trusted. Knauss can’t bring himself to care as he presses, “Do you believe I cannot make decisions myself?”

“No! No, dickhead, that ain’t- I mean…” Bain looks a lot more subdued, his exterior mask hardly dropping for a second but Knauss has spent a lot of time in the human’s company.

They sit in an oppressive silence, the sound of traffic just outside. Knauss speaks again, his low voice finite and steady.

“Kiss me again.” This time when he requests it, there’s hardly a beat of hesitation before Bain finally obliges him.

“This is such a fuckin’ bad idea,” he murmurs, bending to angle himself for a quick kiss. In that instant, Knauss pushes up to deepen the connection, pleased at the beat of lingering reluctance before Bain pulls away. This close and Knauss can make out exactly when Bain’s dazed expression tightens. He can see the self-conscious way his eyes dart around the cab.

Is it because of the public affection? Or perhaps because this sort of contact is new between them? Knauss couldn’t possibly guess.

He would have been be more concerned if the tense set of Bain’s shoulders hadn’t melted away the moment their mouths met. Knauss stares and even in the dark, from this distance, he can pick out some freckles.

“If you have a real problem, say it. If you do not, you can kiss me again,” Knauss replies, tone flippant. Bain only grumbles a little before bending to indulge him.

Unfortunately, he’d learned from before because he quickly backs off to a respectable distance before Knauss can deepen the kiss with a self-conscious grin. The expression drops fast but his eyes are alight like they had been before. Knauss can’t believe that it’s only now when he can actually see the loose set of the human’s shoulders that he recognizes how stressed he’s been lately.

Bain’s been strung tight for weeks, Knauss realizes. In hindsight. It’s always in hindsight with him, he can’t help but muse wryly.

They sit in a silence that’s less oppressive, and though Knauss still can’t really move his right hand, he relaxes into the sling and the sound of tires rumbling across asphalt. He closes his eyes and doesn’t open them again until the human woman comes to administer some sort of drug, muttering something about every four hours to Bain as she does it.

He should ask her name, he supposes. Maybe later.

Maybe then he would wake up and feel like dealing with all of this, but right now Knauss simply closes his eyes again and lets himself drift off as the injection takes effect.