Cold Water

He lets himself leave his den to hunt once and only manages to get back into his cave before the heavy doors open that evening.

When he eats he feels sick.

Another scale turns up in his den, Bain doesn’t come back.

*

It doesn’t matter what time it is because Knauss has no way of counting the passage of time anymore besides the flipping of the artificial lights. There are no windows in the room to allow him to see the outside world that he only caught glimpses of when he first arrived here, and the humans come and go whenever they please.

He has been caught out only once more, but every time it happens he’s so nauseous that he has to force himself to sleep lest he get ill. They clean the inside of his tank with long sticks and the noise is horrendous against the glass.

It’s not like he can ever leave to enjoy the view anyway.

Two days pass by like years, and Knauss doesn’t bother moving when the lights switch to purple of the third night. It’s so quiet that hears a knock on the door. It’s hesitant and quiet, and then it comes again, more firm.

At least this time he doesn’t bite his tongue in surprise. He rolls over to stare despondently out at the sand, it’s kind of bright against his sleepy eyes. Outside the door opens.

There’s a sort of shuffling as a human goes over to the couch and Knauss blinks slowly. His stomach hurts.

“Uh, hey. It’s me,” Bain says, clearing his throat.

Knauss doesn’t reply. The silence is thick and heavy and Bain clears his throat again.

“So, listen. Can we figure something out or something?” Bain shuffles.

For a moment Knauss considers being petty. He thinks about rolling back over and curling around the scales he’s shed, but suddenly he’s too tired to bother. He feels as tired as he used to be, too exhausted to even leave his den. He’s never wanted to sleep more than he does now.

There’s a heavy silence and before he can reply Bain is speaking again, this time faster, more frantic and entirely out of his depth, “Okay I get it, I was kinda a dick. You’re right, humans are assholes. I don’t know what it’s like, I mean, I get why you hate people. You got a good reason. I don’t know man, there’s a whole species of people who ain’t such assholes and I don’t know. It sucks. I just, I mean, are we cool?”

Knauss pauses because he’s never cool. He’s always hot. When he opens his mouth, his throat is scratchy, “Do you have food?”

Bain goes quiet, confused, before scoffing softly.

“Yeah, whatever. I brought you an apple,” Bain says, bravado back in full force. Knauss wants to go out to get it because an apple sounds really good right now, but he hesitates.

“Throw it in?” Knauss asks. Bain seems confused before it dawns on him.

“It won’t sink down, if that’s what you want.” Bain says, Knauss shifts his weight, feeling more awake. He doesn’t want to come out, but he doesn’t think that Bain would be speaking to him if there were more humans in the room. He also doesn’t want to chance it.

“Why don’t we make a deal?” Bain says. Knauss frowns.

“Okay.”

“If I’m in the room, then there ain’t gonna be no one else in here you don’t want, but you gotta come out and get this apple?” Bain proposes.

That seems deceptively easy, “Is that all?”

“Well, kinda? You trying to say I ain’t asking for enough? Cause I can ask for more,” Bain is a little indignant.

“Okay.”

“Alright fine, you gotta get it from my hand?” Bain sounds less sure the more he speaks. Knauss’ stomach knots again at the prospect of a human being so close. How badly does he want that apple? He thinks of the extra scales that joined the pile and it suddenly feels a lot more pressing of an issue than it did earlier. Why didn’t he care about that more, before?

Regardless, he says, “Okay.” and listens for the heavy footsteps of Bain going up to the second floor.

“Ready,” Bain calls down and Knauss takes a steadying breath before swimming out. He stretches before swimming up, stomach twisting hard because he doesn’t want Bain to look at him before he realizes that he isn’t. He’s got a hand covering his eyes, in his other hand he’s holding out the apple as far away as possible.

It’s so absurd that Knauss almost wants to laugh. And he’d been nervous. Without hesitation he grabs the apple and takes his time swimming back down. For the first time this week his stomach finally settles. He takes a bite and he’s never tasted anything so good.

*

The next week Bain knocks every day and when he comes in he hands Knauss food personally, chattering about how last week had been a fucking shitstorm or some other nonsense that Knauss only kind of pays attention to.

Usually he’s more focused on snacking. Bain brings him things called a tomato, which looks deceptively like an apple but has no crunch when you bite into it, and a pickle, and once Bain brought him something called a sushi. He claimed it was how humans eat raw fish, but it tasted better when Bain slathered something green and pungent called wasabi on it.

At one point Bain asked him what he does when he isn't there and Knauss didn’t really know how to reply to that.

Bain let's it go eventually, moving around to get comfortable while Knauss swims as much as he can. He doesn't turn in early anymore, instead he takes up every second Bain is here by swimming or sitting on the deck. The first time he got out of the water Bain nearly had a heart attack. Knauss only decided to stay out once he was sure Bain wouldn’t turn around.

“Jesus, dude, some warning maybe? I thought you broke the damn tank or something,” Bain complains from the couch.

“I do not know if I could,” Knauss replies seriously. He’d tried not long after he’d been first captured, desperate to escape back to the sea. The glass is much stronger than it looks.

“I don’t know. I guess not. Do you get out often? Is that normal?” Bain asks, more curious than whiny now. He asks a lot of questions that Knauss usually ignores, but if he’s in a good mood he’ll play along.

“Yes.”

“What, really? Why?”

“It sounds different. Air is strange,” Knauss admits, leaning back on his hands, his tail curling in the water. He likes to kick up little waves and sometimes a brave salmon will surface to investigate. They’d taken to putting other smaller fish in his tank just to have some diversity but he doesn’t eat them. They’re too small to fill him now that his diet is so time sensitive.

Meaning, of course, that he can only eat for the few short hours Bain visits every evening lest some human stumble into his domain to gawp at him.

The idea still disgusts him.

“So, what’s it like being a mermaid?” Bain’s tone is inquisitive and hesitant. Knauss has absolutely no idea how to respond to that.

“What?” he asks.

“I mean, you got gills and shit. I ain’t never had gills.”

“You want to know what it is like having gills?” Knauss clarifies, confused.

“Maybe? I don’t know man,” Bain huffs like he’s embarrassed for even asking but apparently he’s not embarrassed enough because he speaks up again not five minutes later, “So you can breathe above water and underwater?”

Knauss is relaxing on the deck, “Yes.”

“It don’t hurt or nothing? Breathing air?”

“No.”

Silence, then Bain prompts, “And?”

“And what?” Knauss asks.

“What else, dude, I wanna know more,” his tone is sour, sounding a bit like a young bull. Knauss bites back a smile at the thought.

“I do not know what to say. It does not hurt, just different. It is colder?”

“Oh,” a pause, “I forgot to turn down the heat in your tank, can I go do that?”

“Yes,” Knauss huffs lazily. For a mer that does nothing all day except sleep he feels really nice laid out like this. The more time he spends above water the more he can appreciate how dry scales feel. They don’t look quite so shiny without the water’s reflections, but they look matte underwater anyway. At least like this he can forget about it.

Outside his tank Bain is dawdling around, plucking at the temperature controls and stretching his arms. He never looks up, but even if he did from this angle he wouldn’t see anything but fins anyway.

Which isn’t ideal, but Knauss is too comfortable to be bothered.

“I’m setting it to 60, should be fixed tomorrow. Tell me if you want it colder this time, yeah? Don’t gotta wait a goddamn week before complaining about it, just say something,” Bain says, Knauss hums loftily.

That was something he’d been doing more often, too. Humming. He caught himself doing it a few nights ago, humming a song. When he stopped Bain had quietly asked him what it was about but he didn’t reply.

It’s a song he knows well, the story of a curious seal that played in the sea and dozed on the beach. It was a happy, carefree tune, easy for children just finding their voices. It’s been so long that he hadn’t forgotten, but the music feels like it’s something he just recently rediscovered. He finds himself doing it more often than not lately.

“Okay, I will,” Knauss agrees distractedly, flicking his tail and stirring up the still water.

*

From late night experimenting Knauss has discovered he likes all kinds of meat. That’s not really a surprise, but Bain was surprised with how not picky he is about it. Once as a joke he brought in something called Spam and it quickly became Knauss’ favorite. He also likes fruit, but only the crunchy kind, and vegetables are a no-go. They tried soup once but more ended up in the water than in his mouth.

Knauss has also gotten used to taking the food directly from Bain's hand and waiting at the surface for him to explain how to eat whatever he's been given, which is nice but usually amounts to “just shove it in your mouth.”

One night after Bain had handed him a pear they somehow ended up back on the subject of food, specifically what was their favorite foods. While Knauss wasn’t really an expert on the subject he listened to Bain chatter, admitting that he actually likes to cook even though he doesn’t do it often.

“Most everything is good, but I keep going back to the simple stuff. Shit like hot pockets and, I dunno, pigs in a blanket. Those are so good, I made some Wednesday I think,” Bain is saying as he taps away at his miniature television - laptop, he'd been recently informed.

Knauss lazily flicks his tail, he's laid out on the deck, dripping wet, “What is a pig in a blanket?”

“Oh dude they're great. They're like, little hotdogs wrapped in bread and baked.”

Knauss pauses, trying to picture what that would even look like. All he can come up with is the hotdog Bain brought him last week. It had been quite good in the end, he liked the yellow stuff spread on it.

“I do not understand,” he admits, picturing a plain hotdog speared through a piece of white bread.

“Uh, we might have some leftover, want me to check?”

“Yes.”

So ten minutes later Bain is knocking on the door and Knauss slips back into the water to hide while Bain climbs up the stairs.

“You like shitty meat, I think you're gonna like this. It's better with some mustard and - wow you got a lot of water up here, dude, what the hell? This isn't splash mountain, dickhead, somebody’s gonna break their head open,” Bain complains. Knauss doesn't know what a splash mountain is but he's too focused on the promise of food.

After a moment of shuffling Bain finally says, “Okay, come get this.” and Knauss darts out, curious. When he breaks the surface ready to accept the food he realizes Bain isn't close enough to reach.

“You are too far,” Knauss says, trying not to sound like he’s pouting.

“Uh, okay,” Bain replies hesitantly, suddenly sounding unsure. Knauss isn’t looking at anything but the plate, so he doesn’t notice when Bain’s foot gets caught on one of the slats by the pool. The whole incident happens so fast that before he can react the human rocks back and Knauss can only watch in horror as suddenly Bain's falling and - “Oh shit!”

Bain crashes into the water with an impressive splash, and if he wasn’t so shocked he might have reacted differently.

As it is, Knauss just reaches out and grabs the thrashing human instinctively. They’re both underwater, suspended, and for one horrifying moment their eyes meet, Bain’s wild and terrified, and Knauss is too surprised to bother being disgusted.

With a powerful kick of his tail they break the surface. Bain sputters and coughs frantically and Knauss just stares.

He’s trying to speak, Knauss realizes distantly, but he can’t look away from the cinnamon dusting of color across the bridge of his nose. From this distance he can tell that the speckles he once thought were big splotches were actually tiny dots smattered across the human’s face. He never realized how out of focus Bain was before until he could see him this close.

He also didn’t realize the human had gone silent until he refocused on Bain’s scared brown eyes. He was shaking hard in the chilly water.

“You- You ain’t gonna kill me, are you?” he stutters, voice small. Knauss is so surprised that he laughs once and Bain’s eyes widen further.

“You are absurd,” he replies, voice deep in the open air.

Bain doesn’t respond for a moment before frowning, looking more indignant than scared. Knauss thinks he looks like he’d been fed rotten fish.

“How am I supposed to know? Last I checked, the last dude that swam in here ended up on the news,” Bain snaps haughtily. Knauss cocks an eyebrow, tail kicking lazily to keep them both afloat. Even with all the layers of cloth Bain is still lighter than the last human had been. He just hums acknowledgement, paying more attention to the speckles.

He wonders if they could be cleaned off. On a whim he reaches up to rub them away. Bain flinches, squawking, “What the hell are you doin’?!”

Ignoring his protest, Knauss swipes his thumb across the bone of his cheek. The specks don’t leave, so it must just be a coloration. He had seen things like it before, from the mers in the south, but their coloration on their skin had been bigger. Giant pale splotches on their dark skin that usually went all the way down their tail. Knauss wonders if the speckles are all over the human’s body, too?

Before he can check Bain gives a jerky wiggle, obviously uncomfortable. It’s the first time he moved since falling in.

“Dude, come on, let me go? I can swim,” Bain complains and when Knauss releases him he kicks and flails like a newborn so Knauss grabs him again.

“You cannot,” he assures to Bain’s indignant noises of protest. He’s still scared, but Knauss is too fascinated with this clearer picture that he just keeps looking. Distantly he feels like he should be more horrified that the human is seeing him too, but he can’t really be bothered with it right now.

Maybe he will panic later, but he doesn’t think he will.

“Yes I can, I’m freezing my dick off, let me go,” Bain jerks again, weaker this time.

Knauss cocks his head, “Dick?”

Bain tenses, “Uh, nevermind, dude it’s fucking cold. I want to get out, my clothes are fucking soaked and - ugh fuck. My phone.” His tone goes from tense to lamenting as he looks down at the bottom of the tank. Knauss glances down to see the little plastic square Bain usually has on hand.

Looking back to Bain he swims them over to the edge, hooking the human’s hand on the wooden slats where Bain immediately scrambles to get out of the water, before turning back and graciously going to get the phone.

When he surfaces Bain is shivering hard, arms wrapped around himself.

He offers the dripping plastic as an apology, though he doesn’t know why he feels apologetic. If anything Bain should feel guilty. He’s the one that looked at him. Knauss still can’t find it in him to be upset about that.

Bain obviously doesn’t know what to do with this new development, glancing from the phone to him before immediately looking away, not letting his eyes linger on anything. He doesn’t know where he’s allowed to look.

“Great, thanks. I’m gonna have to tell Cal I dropped it in the toilet again. Fuck,” Bain is complaining but he sounds so tense that Knauss just leans against the decking.

“Toilet?”

Bain barks a sharp laugh, “Not now, yeah? I’m kinda dealin’ with how close I was to bein’ fuckin’ dead? You know what they’d have said if they found me floating ass up in a fish tank? They’d laugh me out of my damn grave.”

Knauss lets the human rant, his voice is pitched high and nervous, but he doesn’t move around like the humans he’d seen on the television. In fact, he didn’t move at all until Knauss spoke, not even when he fell in. On TV the humans who encountered something they feared always ran away - sometimes it was futile because they would only die later - but Bain didn’t even bother.

He kind of wonders what that means, but he doesn’t ask. It seems a little rude what with the human already so worked up.

With a sigh he resigns himself to watching Bain try to look everywhere but at him, all the while rambling. He was complaining right now about something to do with a wake or something like that.

Knauss isn’t actually paying attention, he’s thinking about the human’s face. In hindsight he realizes that Bain had long eyelashes and from here he can see that the water has made them webbed. His cheeks are also flushed and he’s still shaking, but less so than he had been.

“- And how the hell am I supposed to know that you won’t like, I don’t know, grab me next time I give you a fucking sandwich and drown me because I’m a fucking witness? Should just fuckin’ write my damn will right now, holy shit,” Bain is going on and Knauss perks up at that.

“I will not kill you,” he says, flexing his gills. Bain’s eyes cut to him before darting away.

He licks his lips, arms still wrapped around himself before saying hesitantly, “Yeah? You ain’t gonna change your mind?”

Knauss laughs again.

“That ain’t an answer, asshole,” Bain’s voice tips back into frantic and Knauss rests his chin on his folded arms.

“No, I will not change my mind,” he clarifies. Bain nods but it seems like it’s more for his own sake.

“Good, good, good. Okay, fine, this is fine. Everything is cool. I’m cool.”

Knauss blinks slowly, “You are panicking.”

Bain barks a sharp laugh, “No shit.”

“Do not.” That gives Bain pause, he tenses and then angrily whips to look at Knauss.

“Listen, asshole, that ain’t how it fucking works. You can’t just tell someone not to freak out,” Bain snaps. Knauss offers a lazy shrug. He doesn’t see why not, but he’s a little tired of listening to him chatter to himself. Regardless, he relaxes and lets the human pace. At least he’s feeling good enough to move around now.

“I did not know you had so many speckles,” Knauss says eventually.

Bain pauses, “The hell does that mean?”

“On your face,” Knauss clarifies, his eyes are closed now. The wash of pale light from the overhead lights hurts his pale eyes if he’s out of water too long.

“Speckles- ? The fuck you talking about - oh. My freckles?” Bain asks, touching his cheek.

“I do not know what that means.”

“Freckles man, I got freckles on my face. The little dots? Sometimes humans got them, I get more in the summer. They fuckin’ suck,” Bain says. That’s interesting news, Knauss will have to pay attention in the future.

They’re both silent for a long moment, Knauss lazily flicking his tail, and Bain wringing his hands. He’s shivering still but he seems to have calmed down, so Knauss doesn’t worry about it.

Bain opens his mouth twice before finally speaking, “Doesn’t this freak you out?”

“Hm?” Knauss hums.

“This? Me seein’ you? You’re weird about this shit, why ain’t you freaking out?” Bain asks, sounding unsure again. Knauss opens his eyes and looks over to the human, completely unsurprised to see that he isn’t even looking his way.

“I do not know,” Knauss answers truthfully because he does feel like he should be at least a bit concerned, but he isn’t.

“Dude,” Bain snaps, “Gimme more to work with here?”

“I do not know what you mean,” Knauss admits.

“I mean, shit, I don’t know. Are we cool?”

“Why do you say that?” Knauss asks.

“Say what?”

“‘Are we cool’,” Knauss repeats. Bain hesitates.

“It’s slang I guess, means that we’re good. That you ain’t mad or nothing?” Bain explains haltingly. Knauss kind of wishes he had been able to eat one of those ‘pigs in a blanket’ but last time he checked the fish already got to them, the plate nothing but a soggy paper disk half-hidden in the sand.

He looks back up to Bain to see that the human has sat down on the deck. His clothes are still dripping and the puddle he’s making is even bigger than the one he left there earlier and he looks so pathetic that Knauss can’t help but flex his gills.

“No, I am not mad,” he assures, earning a deep breath.

“Okay,” Bain says eventually.

“What is splash mountain?” Knauss asks as he watches Bain pluck at his sleeve. He cocks his head, brow furrowing.

“What? What does that gotta do with anything?”

“You are dripping,” Knauss points, Bain shifts in his seat to get a better look at the growing puddle he’s sat in. His blonde hair is half plastered to his forehead and it looks weird seeing it between dry and wet. Knauss wonders if his hair looks like that when it’s drying but he has no way of really checking. Bain’s hair is much shorter than his anyway.

“Yeah, so what?” Knauss shrugs because it doesn’t actually matter. Bain looks over at him nervously and then over to the books lining the wall. It doesn’t make his stomach tighten like he expected it to.

They’re both quiet for another moment and it’s long enough that Knauss decides that he doesn’t want to be in the water right now. Bain nearly jumps out of his skin when the mer hauls himself onto the deck to sit and then lay on his back. Knauss has his eyes closed because they’re feeling a bit dry.

“Shit dude, are you seriously okay with me seein’ you right now?”

“You are having a hard time with this,” Knauss observes, unmoving. Bain sputters indignantly.

“What the fuck, yeah I am! You flip out for like months about people seeing you and I literally just fell in your tank and- ugh. What the fuck dude?” Bain goes off again. Knauss tilts his head back to look at the human upside down. His tan skin looks better wet, but he’s mostly dried now. The clothes, however, are still soaked.

“Why do humans wear clothing?” Knauss asks, the sudden subject change seemingly throws Bain off. His ears get red when he’s embarrassed, Knauss notes.

“‘Cause we ain’t fucking savages,” he snaps. Knauss would be upset at the implication if Bain didn’t look so completely uncomfortable. All he can think of is a haughty youngling caught out after curfew. Nervous and scared of the consequences.

“Yours are still wet. How do you bathe?” Knauss tilts his head back, raising an arm to put it behind his head to pillow against the hardwood floor. He’s spent hours like this before, dozing with his tail dipped into the water. He can feel Bain’s eyes on him.

“What? You don’t do it with your clothes on, ain’t you seen that on TV?”

“Not really,” Knauss admits. He can’t see the television that well despite how large it actually is, everything tends to be a little fuzzy, so he usually just listens to the English and if he gets confused about a word then he’ll try to look and see what’s going on. It gets easier to sort out what’s going on on the screen if it’s the same television show. Bain has been interested in one in particular lately and he can sort out which human is which because he’s so familiar with it.

“Well now you know,” Bain says, shifting. They sit in vaguely uncomfortable silence until Bain huffs and pushes himself off the ground.

“I’m gonna go change. You gonna go hide?”

Knauss hums, “Probably.”

“What’s the point if I’ve seen you?”

“I do not want others to,” Knauss says it matter of factly.

“I don’t get it. Okay, whatever. I’m leaving,” Bain huffs and Knauss only moves to get back in the water when he starts going down the stairs.

“Bring more pigs in the blanket,” Knauss calls.

“Fuck you, dude,” Bain snaps but when he comes back he brings another plate and he’s right, Knauss does like them.